Ian Bremmer Quotes
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International institutions like the Security Council, the General Assembly, the G20, the BRICs, the IMF, etc., continue to be little more than an extension of the (increasingly conflicting) values and interests of member states.
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Strong states and blocs of strong states are the only source of power and legitimacy capable of driving an international agenda in today's world.
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I think the best way to control a population is to urbanize and to educate women. We have seen historically in many, many countries that once women are educated and have opportunities, and that happens when they live in cities and once they improve their economies, they no longer want to have eight kids.
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It's very hard for someone who makes $1,000 a year or some who makes less than $1 a day to care about the environment.
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The government has to be on the side of the people if the corporations take too much power.
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I absolutely am an environmentalist. I am probably more of an environmentalist than most people who live in the world, but I think that comes from my position in the world and that doesn't make me a better person.
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Academics were not a challenge when I was fifteen in college. The challenge was figuring out how to fit in socially.
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Sometimes you check things off because you've done them. If you aren't checking stuff off your bucket list, you aren't living very well.
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In China, the state controls the corporations, whereas in the United States, the corporations control the state.
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The United States is not longer going to be the world's policemen and our days of determining you're in or you're out around the world no matter what the level of direct American interest or connection are going to be very limited. Increasingly, Africa will be doing that.
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It’s foolish to talk of an “Asian century” or an “emerging market century” because events move at a pace that renders this degree of durability obsolete.
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I think that the environment is very a complicated question. I am very sympathetic to people who support the environment who live in the United States. I am very sympathetic to people who don't support the environment who live in a very poor country.
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I don't take things off. I either check things off or I add things.
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An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market.
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I think it's fantastically narcissistic to believe that in the entire universe, with all of the planetary systems that we've already discovered and the countless others that are out there, that we are the only forms of life.
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I think political science is bad at prediction. We don't gaze into a crystal ball. I do not believe that we predict things.
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We live in a fantastically wealthy country. We don't have to worry about food. We don't have to worry about clothing. We don't have to worry about our safety. It's very easy for me to be an environmentalist. It's very easy for me to care about making sure that we protect the forests and the whales, and all that stuff.
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The real question is not are there other forms of life in the universe, but are there other intelligent forms of life out there right now. Because the universe is not only really big but it's also really long. It's been around for a long time; it's going to be around for a long time.
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There is always the risk that a conflagration in the Middle East becomes larger and more dangerous. In this scenario, we discover that the Arab Spring was merely the prelude to a deeper and much farther-reaching upheaval in the region that has greater impact on countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
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The two world wars boosted American power and devastated potential rivals to an extent that could not have lasted more than a few decades.
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In environments where corporations become too interventionist and capture regulation themselves, the government must be able to battle back so that the people have a chance.
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Deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth.
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I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.
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Berlin is a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It's a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way.