140 Quotes About International-relations

We essentially had to build a docking mechanism between the two capsules. We didn't have to share a lot of data, and we did that at the height of the Cold War, which was pretty symbolic." –Bill Gerstenmaier

An hour of innocence builds more trust than years of diplomacy.

Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.

Since every nation tends to believe that each of its past wars was fought in self-defence, a drawn war is more likely to be remembered as a victory.

When two nations had a contradictory assessment of their own military power and the issue at state was vital to both nations, war was likely.

Wars end when nations agree that war is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute; wars begin when nations agree that peaceful diplomacy is an unsatisfactory instrument for solving their dispute. Agreement is the essence of the transition from peace to war and from war to peace, for those are merely alternating phases of a relationship between nations.

Manchester’s disciples believed that paradise was an international bazaar. They favoured the international flow of goods and ideas and the creation of institutions that channeled that flow and the abolition of institutions that blocked it. Nations, they argued, now grow richer though commerce than though conquest.

In the palace of glass and iron, the locomotive and telegraphic equipment were admired not only as mechanical wonders; they were also messengers of peace and instruments of unity.

War made the state, and the state made war