Michael Spence Quotes

Politics abhors a vacuum, and Asian countries will gravitate towards China if U.S. influence is perceived as declining.

The U.S. will lose its status as the superpower of the world financial system. The world will become multi-polar.

One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America that is too weak.

America has been dominant in the last 200 years, China has been dominant in 1800 of the last 2000 years.

Most of the conversation about how geopolitics is changing in the 21st century focuses on the shift from west to east and on how we're moving from the bipolar power equation of the Cold War to a new bipolar relationship, that of the U.S. and China, that determines the mood music for everyone else.

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations.

In the long march of history, at least two poles of attraction and antagonism have been the norm in world politics. Rarely has only one nation carried the burden of leadership. The unipolar world of the 21st century, dominated for the past two decades by the United States, is a historical anomaly.

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age, was bearing the signs of what is now very visible: the emergence of a multipolar world.

Alliances and international organizations should be understood as opportunities for leadership and a means to expand our influence, not as constraints on our power.

President Obama's consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more 'balanced' global power structure.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

Today's global landscape is increasingly interconnected. China and the Middle East play critical roles towards international peace and security.

The situation of the principal powers of Europe are singular and portentous. Connected with some by treaties and with all by commerce, no important event there can be indifferent to us.

In South America governments are being overthrown all the time. In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn. Also what the Canadian government does doesn’t really matter very much. We’re much more affected by what happens in Washington or Moscow, than what happens in Ottawa.

Commercial interests survive longer than strategic interests. When countries do business together, they stay together.

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

A Trump presidency - neutral between dictatorships and democracies, opposed to free trade, skeptical of traditional U.S. defense alliances, hostile to immigration - would mark the collapse of the entire architecture of the U.S.-led post-World War II global order.

It is neither feasible nor desirable for Europe to establish itself as a geopolitical equal or competitor of the U.S.

It doesn't matter to me who's the most powerful or profitable country in the world. All countries want to be prosperous. What's happening is a zero-sum game between China and the U.S., where their gain is our loss.

America has an identity crisis. This is a relatively new country compared to the rest of the world, yet it's the bully that fronts to know war and democracy like none other, therefore leading the global arbitration on both fronts.

In a changing global landscape, Europe will be more and more an indispensible power.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the liberal story shaped not only the foreign policy of the United States and its allies, but also the domestic policies of governments across the world, from South Africa to Indonesia.

I would never want Ukraine to be a piece on the map, on the chessboard of big global players, so that someone could toss us around, use us as cover, as part of some bargain.

My belief is that the U.S. is looking at the world through a short-term lens of tariffs and elections, while China is looking at a 25-year plan of becoming the dominant global power.