Colin Powell Quotes

Most people are disturbed by the shift from deterrence to preemption but the fact is that in international relations, deterrence has a poor track record

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.

Foreign policy works best when force and diplomacy are used together.

Many Europeans are concerned that stronger sanctions are a slippery slope toward war unless the U.S. is at the table.

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

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.

The Americans have taken the course of confrontation and do not assess their own steps critically at all.

We ought to nuke North Korea right about now just to give the world a warning.

You help us pay for the war we’ll fight; we’ll launch it while you’re asleep at night. We don’t need friends all around the world; We’ll buy our friends with our flag unfurled, And spread our arms on a global scale To show the world that we still prevail. Oh, we’re not leaders inspiring peace, But we’re in power as the world’s police. So pay your tax for our little war, And we’ll not ask for any more. This year!

The voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long.

Any great power—especially a great one suddenly deprived of its traditional adversary—faces the perennial dilemma of showing a reasonable return on its costly military investments.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

No nation has ever ridden to superpower status except on a tide of war and that includes the United States.

I am saddened, saddened that this President [George W. Bush] failed so miserably at diplomacy that were now forced to war.

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

If Russia and the United States approach each other in starkly adversarial terms, the conflict will badly warp the foreign policy of both countries ...

Moscow believes that using force constitutes strategic defense.

Whether you're dealing with your allies in Europe or you're dealing with a resurgent Russia, whether you're dealing with Iran or North Korea, you have to use the whole panoply of national tools of power to deal with the challenges the world faces.

The costly unilateralism of the younger Bush presidency led to a decade of war in the Middle East and the derailment of American foreign policy at large.

You just hope that we haven't soured an entire generation on the necessity, from time to time, of using force because Iraq has been such a debacle. That would be tragic because Iran is a grave threat.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Let's remember, the CIA's job is to go out and create wars.

The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.

I'm sure it is, I'm not for any kind of war, we've been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.