Best 10 quotes of Stephen Kinzer on MyQuotes

Alliances and partnerships produce stability when they reflect realities and interests.

American press, like the press in many countries, acts like a cheerleader to our government rather than a critical observer. This is especially true, when it comes to foreign interventions. That means that when government leaders conclude that intervention in a foreign country is justified, the press rarely criticizes it. In fact, the press has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for many of our foreign interventions.

I don't have any problem with the United States acting on behalf of its own interests. That's what big powers do; that's what all countries do. I would just like to see us analyze in a serious way what really is in our interest. Sometimes we intervene in foreign countries in ways that seem successful at first. In the end, however, we wind up with unpredicted consequences that make us regret those operations.

It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.

New media and mobile entertainment are revolutionizing the way people learn about the world.

The world has paid a heavy price for the lack of democracy in most of the Middle East. Operation Ajax [CIA code for the August 1953 coup] taught tyrants and aspiring tyrants there that the world's most powerful governments were willing to tolerate limitless oppression as long as oppressive regimes were friendly to the West and to Western oil companies. That helped tilt the political balance in a vast region away from freedom and toward dictatorship.

Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons-specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference.

According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct result of a policy authorized by the first American Catholic president.' At one point an aide tried to console him by reminding him that Diem and Nhu had been tyrants. 'No," he replied. "They were in a difficult position.' They did the best they could for their country.

Hawaii was defined by its isolation. Its first settlers, probably Polynesians from islands to the south, are thought to have arrived roughly around the time of Christ. Over the centuries, Hawaiians had little contact with anyone else because almost no one could cross the vast expanse of ocean that surrounded their islands. Thousands of unique plants and animal species evolved, more than almost anywhere else on earth.

The revolution of 1893 and the annexation that followed undermined a culture and ended the life of a nation. Compared to what such operations have brought to other countries, though, this one ended well.