Daniel Fried Quotes
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We intend to leave it without further discussion. We respect this request by the government of Uzbekistan
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The Russians are using the tools at their disposal to weaken Western solidarity, to create doubt, to support nationalist parties, just as the old Soviets supported leftist parties. We need a united Western response to this multi-pronged threat.
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Nationalism is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you.
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America's security and prosperity didn't work unless other nations were also secure, and prosperous. There had to be something in it for them, so we weren't looking simply to grab territory, or widen our sphere of influence, or anything like that. We wanted to make the world a better place, and get very rich in the process.
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Partisanship is not part of my professional makeup.
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Ronald Reagan reached out to Gorbachev. At the same time, we were pushing back against the Soviets all over the world. He was able to do two things at once, and it worked out very well for us.
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The world should contemplate a nuclear weapons-armed Iran with the greatest of concern.
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Our mistakes, blunders, flaws, and shortcomings notwithstanding, the world America made after 1945 and 1989 has enjoyed the longest period of general peace in the west since Roman times, and decades of prosperity.
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ISIS is the near-term threat, and that the longer - or the mid-term challenge is managing the rise of China. There's some evidence that that's the thinking of the [Donald Trump] administration. That's a perfectly reasonable approach. Well, if that's the case, then you surely want to have a united West to deal with both, and you want to have Russia alongside, but maybe not this Russia while it's busy trying to undermine your chief asset, which is a united West.
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Russia comes from a place of deep resentment against the West, in general, and the United States in particular. They are rapacious, because they want back as much of their empire as they can grab. And we need to resist that. At the same time, we should be able to look for areas of common interest.
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America's sanctions policy remains intact, and it will remain intact until it changes, if it does, and I'm not sure it will.
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Putinsim is not necessarily the end state for Russia. Russia has moved in many directions since the early 1980s.
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George W. Bush tried working with the Russians after 9/11; Obama had the reset. Both presidents achieved less than they wanted, but they both achieved something. Those policies made sense, and it's to the credit of both Presidents Bush and Obama that even as they reached out to Russia, they did not sacrifice core American interests, or core American values. We didn't give the Russians on the altar of better relations other countries. We were able to do two things at once.
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There is nothing wrong when the Trump administration says it wants to find areas of common ground to work with Russia - perfectly reasonable. The question is, are you willing to pay the Russians in advance for the privilege of working with them in areas that are supposed to be of common interest, and that - I don't see the American interest in doing so.
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I believe the liberal international order is under assault from Russia, and from other authoritarian regimes, and it is being questioned from within the West by nationalists, by nativists, and by people who doubt our - doubt the values of the West. We've gone through periods like this before; in the '70s, after Vietnam and Watergate, and certainly in the '30s, when people thought liberal democracy was dead, and the future belonged either to the fascists or the communists.
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Russia despises the West. And is doing what it can to weaken the West.
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At least in my country, we have come to accept the flags burning, but what we cannot accept is violence, burning of embassies and intimidations, and there is no excuse for that.
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We should not assume that Russia is doomed to live according to its worst traditions. In fact, in Russian history, failed efforts at external aggression, when they fail, usually bring on areas of internal reform.
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Republicans - Reagan but also George W. Bush - believed in freedom, and they believed in America's role. To have the governing party speak in terms of a zero-sum world, or speak in terms of America's purpose as no more than grabbing the largest share possible in the short run, goes against our foreign policy tradition that goes back to 1900, really.
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The American tradition of foreign policy exceptionalism, our grand strategy as a nation, reaches back much further. Really at the turn - the end of the 19th century, when we achieved power a generation after the Civil War, the outlines of an American vision came into focus, and what we - it was based on two things. One, our realization that our values and our interests were the same, and that our business interests would advance as our values advanced in the world.
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I am not against working with Russia in areas of common interests at the same time. We're smart enough, or we should be smart enough to have a dual track policy. You know, walk and chew gum at the same time.
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Russia committed an act of aggression in Ukraine, and that's the first time since 1945 a European country has seized the territory of another European country. That's serious business. They started a war with their neighbor. Their troops as well as the separatists funded and controlled by Russia are killing people just about every day.