115 Quotes About Foreign-policy

Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world.

[American exceptionalism] is a reaction to the inability of people to understand global complexity or important issues like American energy dependency. Therefore, they search for simplistic sources of comfort and clarity. And the people that they are now selecting to be, so to speak, the spokespersons of their anxieties are, in most cases, stunningly ignorant.

First Afghanistan, now Iraq. So who's next? Syria? North Korea? Iran? Where will it all end?' If these illegal interventions are permitted to continue, the implication seems to be, pretty soon, horror of horrors, no murderously repressive regimes might remain.

McChrystal had organized a jaw-dropping counterterrorism campaign inside Iraq, but the tactical successes did not translate into a strategic victory. This was why counterinsurgency - blanketing the population in safety and winning them over - was necessary.

Even though the Congo is the stage of intense international peacebuilding efforts, and even though it recently experienced a transition from war to “peace and democracy,” it continues to be plagued by the deadliest conflict since World War II. Why did the international intervention fail to help the Congo achieve lasting peace and security?

But many people don’t realize that the domestic and the foreign policies are actually intertwined. If your government needs to spend billions on waging wars, guess where are they going to get it from? Yes, from your schools, health systems, and other essential public services and institutions.

The few powerful Western elites…benefit from wars twice: first, by destroying other countries and stealing their resources under different pretexts. Second, by bringing millions of refugees to Western countries and using them as cheap labor. This is where the strong connection between the military-industrial-complex and the refugee-industrial-complex precisely lies.

[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.

Al Qaeda's central political objective is the creation of an Islamic republic, not the progressive realignment of American foreign policy.