American Foreign Policy Quotes

American foreign policy had still not recovered from its victory over communism when George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice took over at the White House in 2001.

American foreign policy has been - and must continue to be - based on unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist and to be free from terror.

First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.

The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

If America was trying to keep the bubonic plague out of its hemisphere, Canadians would import it just to show their independence of American foreign policy.

Bipartisanship on behalf of an imprudent policy can be folly, just as partisanship on behalf of a just cause can be wise. What is clear is that politics will not stop at the water's edge simply because presidents plead for it. American foreign policy will return to the tradition of Truman and Vandenberg only when the American public demands it.

I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy.

Well, human security is a concept that I am very committed to enshrining in American foreign policy.

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

One of the many, many salutary aspects of Barack Obama's impending presidential nomination is the sea change his victory marks in the battle for the mind-set of the American foreign policy establishment.

The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.

I’m a Muslim, we come from a Muslim community and we are very critical of western or American foreign policy. So if I’ve got the right and if other Muslims have got the right to criticize… likewise everyone else has also got the right to criticize everything else.

I mean, like a lot of kids growing up in the early seventies, I was fed Dr. Kissinger with my Fruit Loops. He was the Dr. Ruth of American foreign policy, and the model statesman.

No, [the U.S.] has made it clear that we consider a peaceful resolution an essential aspect of American foreign policy. This I believe to be a situation understood by China, but again, it is important to not sound too truculent. Taking on a billion-plus Chinese is not an enterprise which one should enter lightly.

It is naturally only a coincidence that all too often, American foreign-policy objectives dovetail nicely with the economic objectives of multinational corporations.

For my generation the relationship with Europe was the central point of American foreign policy. Even during my time in government there was disagreement, sometimes very strong disagreement. But they were all like arguments within a family. I am not sure if the generation which doesn't have these experiences has the same view of things.

We need American foreign policy that tells the world very clearly that it is bad to be our enemy and good to be our friend.

We have Mr. Putin in Russia. And he appears to be a popular president of Russia. And I don't think it's the business of the National Endowment for Democracy or American diplomats or American foreign policy to try to change the nature of that government.

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

The reason I made women's issues central to American foreign policy, was not because I was a feminist, but because we know that societies are more stable if women are politically and economically empowered.

The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

But on the other hand, in discussion and debate concerning social issues or American foreign policy, Vietnam or the Middle East, for example, the issue is constantly raised, often with considerable venom. I've repeatedly been challenged on grounds of credentials, or asked, what special training do you have that entitles you to speak of these matters. The assumption is that people like me, who are outsiders from a professional viewpoint, are not entitled to speak on such things.

Graham Greene, as I understand it, was quite outspoken in his criticism of American foreign policy.

I think that it's always appropriate for Americans and for American foreign policy to make clear why we feel that self-government is most compatible with peace, the well-being of people, and human dignity

I got into journalism not to be a journalist but to try to change American foreign policy. I'm a corny person. I was a dreamer predating my journalistic life, so I got into journalism as a means to try to change the world.

American foreign policy is not understood by the vast majority of American people. And that this is due to a media that in this country is suppressed by Washington and by the owners of this media, who often tend to be corporate entities close to the [White House] and very often are arms manufacturers with a vested interest in chaos [in] the Middle East. And as a result Americans do not actually get both sides of the story.

At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security.

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

Frankly, I do not know how to effect a permanency in American foreign policy.

The great divide in American foreign policy thinking is between those who believe in paper and those who believe in power.

We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

I believe that if we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollar-soaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.... And if unfortunately their revolution must be of the violent type because the "haves" refuse to share with the "have-nots" by any peaceful method, at least what they get will be their own, and not the American style, which they don't want and above all don't want crammed down their throats by Americans.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

Words summarize the American philosophy of life: Live and let live; Let's make a deal. 8 words summarize American foreign policy: We're better than you; Do it our way.

The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy.

I am ... willing to make it clear that American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.

American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.

Hillary Clinton is pretty much what we would call a foreign-policy realist, someone who thinks the purpose of American foreign policy should be to adjust the foreign policies of other countries, work closely with traditional allies in Europe and Asia towards that end.

The thing that should most concern us is a shift in American foreign policy. We have had a bipartisan belief in American foreign policy based on the post-World War II institutions that believed in democratic global world, which Russia and the Soviet Union was often seen as hostile to. And most Republicans and Democrats have always basically believed in this world order. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and maybe Marine Le Pen do not agree with this basic structure of the world.

I think that American presidents, that position in itself, as well as American foreign policy, it has terrorism in it. CIA agents going to overthrow certain governments - they're using terrorist tactics. They're not going in there like, 'Hey, you wanna have some cake?'

My job is to try to advance American foreign policy, to try to advance the president's agenda on democracy and human rights.

The cause of the attack was not American foreign policy but an amoral disregard for human life.It is grotesque to suggest that a four-year-old girl, making her first and only flight in an aeroplane, should somehow bear responsibility for the actions of a government for whom she was never allowed the chance to grow up and vote either for or against.

American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.

So what we have is an American foreign policy that is inextricably linked to domestic matters. It is very dangerous for a politician who desires nothing more than to stay in office to address the mindset that any change in policy is appeasement. And Americans will accept that for a certain amount of time.

In that sense, Obama is America's first postmodern president. If his predecessors tended to see the world in terms of good and evil, Obama sees the world in terms of victims and victimizers - with the United States often in the role of victimizer. In that view, long favored by the academic left that shaped a young Barack Obama, American foreign policy is one long train of abuses, marked by casual aggression and eager imperiousness.

American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.