Best 95 quotes in «international relations quotes» category

I encounter one example after another of how relative truth is.

I don't like hypocrisy-even in international relations.

Among all the methods non-violence is most successful and I strongly believe that only non-violence can set the true mood of peace and harmony among the nuclear nations. Our experiments with non-violence should be more wide, more engaging and more humble.

The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do.

A single strand appeared to unite these conflicts, and that was the advancement of a small coterie's concept of American interests in the guise of the fight against terrorism... I recognized that if this was to be the single most important priority of our species, then the lives of those of us who lived in lands in which such killers also lived had no meaning except as collateral damage.

But then everybody who has been in the Soviet Union for any length of time has noticed their concern with the United States: we may be the enemy, but we are the admired enemy, and the so-called good life for us is the to-be-good life for them. During the war, the Russian combination of dislike and grudging admiration for us, and ours for them, seemed to me like the innocent rivalry of two men proud of being large, handsome and successful. But I was wrong. They have chosen to imitate and compete with the most vulgar aspects of American life, and we have chosen, as in the revelations of the CIA bribery of intellectuals and scholars, to say, "But the Russians do the same thing," as if honor were a mask that you put on and took off at a costume ball. They condemn Vietnam, we condemn Hungary. But the moral tone of giants with swollen heads, fat fingers pressed over the atom bomb, staring at each other across the forests of the world, is monstrously comic.

As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East -- he's already confused. The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. ...Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.' The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated -- because a woman can't think for herself. ...You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men.

Bringing countries together above their conflicts require great minds and great hearts.

Democratizing China is not, however, the principal rationale for engaging it; that is the task of the Chinese themselves. But creating a mutually nonthreatening and beneficial relationship is an appropriate,and achievable, goal for the United States. Acting on the presumption of an existing or probable China threat, on the other hand, exaggerates China's intentions and capabilities and opens the door to a new Cold War.

Daily, the media report human activity in which force is used to settle disputes. Since 1945 not a single day has gone by without war, and the end of the Cold War has not reduced its frequency. For example, in 1994 more than thirty major armed conflicts were fought in twenty-seven locations throughout the world in such places as Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya, Liberia, Rwanda, and Somalia. Given its wide spread occurrence, it is little wonder so many people equate world politics with violence. In On War, Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz advanced his famous dictum that war is merely an extension of diplomacy by other means - "a form of communication between countries," albeit an extreme form. This insight underscores the realist belief that war is an instrument for states to use to resolve their disputes. War, however, is the deadliest instrument of conflict resolution, its onset indicating that persuasion and negotiations have failed. In international relations, conflict regularly occurs when actors interact and disputes over incompatible interests rise. In and of itself, conflict is not necessarily threatening when the partners turn to arms to settle their perceived irreconcilable differences.

Even as individuals become families and families become communities, and communities become nations, so eventually must the nations draw together in peace.

Grand strategy is about marrying ends to means, about doing what you can, consistent with the nation's capabilities and resources.

Americans may say they love our accents (I have been accused of sounding 'like Princess Di') but the more thoughtful ones resent and rather dislike us as a nation and people, as friends of mine have found out by being on the edge of conversations where Americans assumed no Englishmen were listening. And it is the English, specifically, who are the targets of this. Few Americans have heard of Wales. All of them have heard of Ireland and many of them think they are Irish. Scotland gets a sort of free pass, especially since Braveheart re-established the Scots' anti-English credentials among the ignorant millions who get their history off the TV.

Diplomacy, if conducted sensibly, is a matter of small gains offset by small losses, an attempt to maintain a state of equilibrium in which catastrophes are either mitigated or, with luck, avoided entirely.

Even a little practical working familiarity with cattle goes a long way in Africa, but how many international relations studies include this?

Far too many people—many of them academics, many politicians—continue to jabber about a supposed 'special relationship' between our two countries. I used to think that no such thing existed. Recently, I have become convinced that it does, and that it is in fact a Specially Bad Relationship.

History has taught us that the idea of superpower is for a political maniac to design the art of control over other countries.

How do you know... how do you know anything... US officials are making Maduro sounds like a corrupt, evil dictator... almost like a Stalin! Then the alternative voices (Thank God) are saying well they seem to like Maduro just fine over there... and since there must be nothing else to do in the world, US is just playing the old game of 'stop hitting yourself' let's do sanctions, and freeze your assets, and then... THEN LOOK MADURO'S STARVING HIS PEOPLE! Umm. Ya... no. I guess it really doesn't take a lotta brain to be a diplomat.

Ideally, the ISS program will just be one more incremental step on an expanding, incredible journal of exploration and understanding, taking us higher and farther.

I dream, one day the consciousness of the countries will be so high that they will be ashamed to place military on the international borders. All international borders will be place for the tourist, gardeners and cultural celebration.

If blue helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run.

[In case of zombie uprising] Marxists and Feminists would likely sympathize more with zombies. To Marxists, the undead symbolize the oppressed proletariat. Unless the zombies were all undead white males, feminists would likely welcome the posthuman smashing of existing patriarchal structures.

In the lives of nations the really worthwhile things cannot and will not be hidden.

In the long run, even a tyrannical government only has the power that the people confer on it and coming to understand history is the beginning of making things right.

In the realm of international relations, the dilemma with 'State Morality' is that the rich countries choose to be immoral to maintain their dominance, whereas the poor countries can't afford to be moral in order to just survive.

It is never right for any individual or government to do any vast evil as a means to some hypothetical good.

How can you cry for others’ struggles when you are facilitating mayhem in your own land?

How can you measure progress if you don't know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the "market" put a price on things - food, clothes, electricity, running water - when it doesn't take into account the REAL cost of production?

If the UN has not failed in maintaining world peace or bilateral relations between nations, it has definitely not succeeded either.

I have a dream to make this world a better place to live for our unborn generations and that dream will come true through silent revolution - the revolution of positive actions and positive deliberations. Be a part of that revolution.

[Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.

International awareness of his deceptive practices is the reflection of the frustration that is prevailing in Sri Lanka which the President is trying to undermine by the traditional emotive and hate mongering politics.

International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others- in this case, the domination of liberal principles of economics, domestic politics, and international relations over other, nonliberal principles. It will last only as long as those who imposed it retain the capacity to defend it.

International peace negotiations need more value creation than value claiming. The more we create value for peace and development, the easier it is going to be to claim value for nuclear weapons free world.

International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power

I stood backstage watching the words roll on the teleprompter. In just two months, the world had turned upside down. We’d seen a regime fall in Tunisia, broken from a longtime U.S. ally in Egypt, and intervened in Libya. History, it seemed, was turning in the direction of young people in the streets, and we had placed the United States of America on their side. Where this drama would turn next was uncertain—protests were already rattling a monarch in Bahrain, a corrupt leader in Yemen, a strongman in Syria.

It is a tragedy, at rate at which EBOLA VIRUS is spreading in West Africa. It is a fatal disease in the history of the world. Intensive education (formal and informal approaches) of the citizens of African can help prevent the spread. International cooperation is urgently needed to combat the EBOLA virus.

It is only when all the peoples of all countries grow together holding hands in harmony and not pointing guns at each other in hatred, that we can really advance in the path of progress as one species.

It's enough already - we can’t keep sacrificing lives of our siblings, of our children, of our friends at the borders, simply to appease the nationalist insecurities of a handful of brain-less chimps.

Line of control must be renamed as garden of love and the barbed wire fencing should be replaced by the garden of flowers.

Line of control should be a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.

It is the duty of United Nations is to make every international border a garden, a place of art and cultural festival.

It was far easier for me to see how the war in Syria was in part an unintended consequence of other American wars, no matter how well-meaning they might have been. The toppling of “Saddam Hussein had strengthened Iran, provoked Putin, opened up a Pandora’s box of sectarian conflict that now raged in Iraq and Syria, and led to an insurgency that had given birth to ISIL. The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi had made plain to dictators that you either cling to power or end up dead in a sewer. Syria looked more and more like a moral morass—a place where our inaction was a tragedy, and our intervention would only compound the tragedy. Obama kept probing for options that could make a positive difference, finding none.

Nation has to be proud of itself to move forward. It should be clear that as long as India does not stand-up, there will be no peace in Asia.

Most of the institutions that come in to offer help after disaster don't have the resources to provide concrete help. . . . Donor communities invest billions funding peace talks and disarmament. Then they stop. The most important part of postwar help is missing: providing basic social services to people. Not having those resources might have been a reason men went to war in the first place; they crossed a border and joined an armed group because they didn't have jobs. In Liberia right now, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, and they're ready-made mercenaries for wars in West Africa. You'd think the international community would be sensible enough to know they should work to change this. But they aren't.

Nations are guided only by their own interests and have no obligation to other countries which did not conform to those interests.

No matter which side of the border wins in the battlefield, precious lives are always lost in the process. And no amount of victory can bring those lives back – no amount of victory can wipe away the tears of a mother, a father or a spouse. What's the point of such victory that brings only destruction!

OBAMA’S FRUSTRATION WITH HIS critics boiled over during a lengthy trip to Asia in the spring of 2014. In the region, the trip was seen as another carefully designed U.S. effort to counter China. We’d go to Japan, to bring them into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—weaving together twelve Asia Pacific economies into one framework of trade rules, environmental protections, and labor rights. We’d go to South Korea and discuss ways to increase pressure on North Korea. We’d go to Malaysia, something of a swing state in Southeast Asia, which we were bringing closer through TPP. And we’d end in the Philippines, a U.S. ally that was mired in territorial disputes with China over maritime boundaries in the South China Sea.

... only a country to which people flock by the thousands from all corners of the world, has the right to advise others how to live. And the country from which so many others break out, across its frontiers, in tanks, or fly away in the homemade balloons or in the latest supersonic fighter, or escape across mine-fields and through machine-gun ambushes, or give the slip to packs of guard-dogs, that country certainly has no right to teach anyone anything - at least not for the time being. First of all, put your own house in order. Try to create there such a society that people will not dig underground passages in order to escape. Only then shall we earn the right to teach others. And not with our tanks, but with good advice and our own personal example. Observe, admire, then go and imitate our example, if it pleases you.

Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way. Not merely the activities of our neighbors, but those of the inhabitants of the most remote mountain valleys of the farthest-flung countries of our planet, have become our business. We need to extend the reach of the criminal law there and to have the means to bring terrorists to justice without declaring war on an entire country in order to do it. For this we need a sound global system of criminal justice, so justice does not become the victim of national differences of opinion. We also need, though it will be far more difficult to achieve, a sense that we really are one community, that we are people who recognize not only the force of prohibitions against killing each other but also the pull of obligations to assist one another. This may not stop religious fanatics from carrying out suicide missions, but it will help to isolate them and reduce their support.