George F. Kennan Quotes

I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

The next time some neocon, demanding whatever military intervention neocons are demanding that day, invokes Hitler or Munich or appeasement, lock up your silver.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

Foreign policy is painstakingly difficult, and if there is to be anything gained from the experience in Libya, it is how not to conduct world affairs.

But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don't agree with that, because I don't think we're capable of doing that.

We will not send troops. Germany is not committed to Iraq - we will not commit ourselves with troops.

And, perhaps most importantly, regional conflicts will again and again confront us with a cruel choice between costly engagement and costly indifference.

I'm a national security liberal, which I tell people because it's meant to sound absurd.

We're not going to spread democracy at the business end of a M16 held by a 23 year old Marine.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

War is but an instrument of international policy.

I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation-building. I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.

If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.

Preemption, democracy promoting and nation building have all been sullied by association by association with the War in Iraq.

War should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy.

I did not support the U.S. decision to intervene with military force in Libya. The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent. Policies other than military intervention were never given a full chance.

Donald Trump's United States is not isolationist. He has authorized the use of limited military force against the Syrian government in a manner his predecessor rejected.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.

In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.