Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes
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The 'war on terror' has created a culture of fear in America.
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War on terrorism reflects, in my view, a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy for a superpower and for a great democracy with genuinely idealistic traditions.
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The costly unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency led to a decade of war in the Middle East and the derailment of American foreign policy at large.
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Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.
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Nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.
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The congressional role in declaring war is especially important not when the United States is the victim of an attack, but when the United States is planning to wage war abroad.
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I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena - the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.
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In early times, it was easier to control a million people than to kill a million. Today, it is infinitely easier to to kill a million people than to control a million.
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The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.
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The Israeli-Palestinian problem becomes very acute with Gaza dominated by Hamas. With the possibility of the conflict escalating, not only in terms of Gaza but also the Hezbollah and Lebanon, with the continuing crisis in Iraq, which is very dynamic and unpredictable and which could get out of hand, and maybe even escalate and enlarge.
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It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety.
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We can't have an intelligent foreign policy unless we have an intelligent public, because we're a democracy.
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Americans don't learn about the world; they don't study world history, other than American history in a very one-sided fashion, and they don't study geography.
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The Eastern Europeans invested too many of their hopes in the notion that somehow or other the missile shield, even if directed at Iran, would reinforce their security links with the U.S. vis-à-vis Russia.
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Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America's status as a global power.
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One has to define very clearly what one's objectives are, determine in advance how much one is prepared to pay to achieve that objective and then act accordingly.
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We have a large public that is very ignorant about world affairs and very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans.
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America has exercised its power to insist on elections in Palestine, which Hamas did win. Once they won, we then engaged in a policy not only of ostracism, but by financial boycott, in effect of undermining it, and creating more tension and radicalism and poverty in Gaza, which was susceptible to exploitation by Hamas.
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Benchmarks are targets that have to be fulfilled. They cannot be fulfilled in an indefinite period of time, so there are timetables in benchmarks.
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It certainly would be possible for America to redefine its role in the world, especially if, in the short run, America is able to cope effectively with the ongoing dilemma in the Middle East.
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The momentum of Asia's economic development is already generating massive pressures for the exploration and exploitation of new sources of energy and the Central Asian region and the Caspian Sea basin are known to contain reserves of natural gas and oil that dwarf those of Kuwait, the Gulf of Mexico, or the North Sea.
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People, governments and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations.
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Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.
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Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen.