Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes
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America's decline would set in motion tectonic shifts undermining the political stability of the entire Middle East.
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Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership.
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Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
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The difference between the Bush I war against Iraq and the Bush II war against Iraq is that in the first one, we appealed to the sentiments and interests of the different groupings in the region and had them with us. In the second one, we did it on our own, on the basis of false premises, with extremely brutality and lack of political skill.
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It is axiomatic that the security of America and Europe are linked.
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Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating.
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In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option.
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During the twentieth century, men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age.
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I realise that in an electoral campaign, you don't want to antagonise large groups which are highly motivated.
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If we slide into a pattern of just thinking about today, we'll end up reacting to yesterday instead of shaping something more constructive in the world.
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The external Soviet empire lasted 45 years. It is shattered, beyond redemption or repair.
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I have been struck by the pervasive frequency of pompously patriotic ads for the defense industry, usually accompanied by deferential salutations to our men and women who are heroically sacrificing their lives in our defense. Do we really need all of that for our security?
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We shouldn't overdramatize the current disagreements with the Russians. They are real, but they're not really all that threatening. And the notion that we're moving back to some Cold War I think is really an exaggerated judgment.
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Can we really mobilize support, even of friends, when we tell them that if you are not with us you are against us?
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Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that lurking behind every terroristic act is a specific political antecedent. That does not justify either the perpetrator or his political cause. Nonetheless, the fact is that almost all terrorist activity originates from some political conflict and is sustained by it as well.
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There's something troubling about a condition in which one country alone, which has roughly 5 percent of the world's population, spends more than 50 percent of the world's defense budgets. There's something weird about it.
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Not to mention the fact that of course terrorists hate freedom. I think they do hate. But believe me, I don't think they sit there abstractly hating freedom.
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Though Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy for both the Russian people and communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was, as we shall see, a blessing in disguise.
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The legitimacy of the leadership depends on what that country thinks of its leaders.
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You go to Paris, or you go to Portugal, you go to Poland, and you ask, 'Who are you people?' They'll tell you, we're Portuguese, we're Spanish, we're Polish. Who are the people that are really European? The people in Brussels, in the E.U. bureaucracy. Europe has not been able to move to the level of patriotic identification with the concept.
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A Russia that gradually begins to gravitate toward the West will also be a Russia that ceases to disrupt the international system.
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There's no point considering something which is very unrealistic.
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The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents.
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If we end up with war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran at the same time, can anyone see a more damaging prospect for America's world role than that?