Mark Steyn Quotes

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States.

The fall of the Syrian regime is in the interest of America and Israel.

Saddam was a bastard, but he was our bastard.

It's pretty well known that the CIA has been installing friendly dictators around the world for years.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

Anyone supported by the United States is cursed by us.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

When it comes to the Middle East, this is always a very difficult issue for any American president.

An economic version of mutual deterrence is preserving the uneasy status quo between China and Japan.

Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973.

Both China and Russia felt duped by the U.N. 'no-fly' zone resolution regarding Libya in 2011 that eventually led to the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. China and Russia had abstained from the Libyan resolution, and neither country plans to make what they regard as a similar mistake again.

Rogue states are the main threat to peace and freedom, and they require a strong, comprehensive policy response - a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback,' in which our goal is not simply to contain rogue regimes, but to drive them from power.

In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission. The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.

China is ruthlessly pragmatic. It supports North Korea for its own selfish interests. And I believe that China no longer considers us an ally. The current president, Xi Jinping, cultivates close relations with South Korea. He has never met with me, the leader of North Korea, something that the leader of China has always done. At the grand celebrations in Beijing two years ago commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, he placed the president of Russia and the president of South Korea at his side. In North Korea, we pay a lot of attention to ceremonies and what they signal.

We need to learn from history. These same leaders - [Barack] Obama, [Hillary] Clinton, and far too many Republicans - want to topple [Bashar] Assad. Assad is a bad man. Gadhafi was a bad man. Mubarak had a terrible human rights record. But they were assisting us - at least [Muammar] Gadhafi and [Hosni] Mubarak - in fighting radical Islamic terrorists.

Any time someone says "that's it, I'm leaving" I ask them whether they'd prefer to live under US domestic policy, or US foreign policy. As bad as things get inside an empire, they're usually worse in the protectorates.

The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age.

As far as the Ukraine is concerned, it's a mess. And that's under the Obama's administration, with his strong ties to NATO.

In almost every case (where the United States has fought wars) our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.

If you want Russia to be a real fully developed partner, then America should invest in Russia and activate Russia as a strong nation.

We've seen what happened in Libya, what a disaster that's been driven by Hillary Clinton, and the disaster in Syria and almost disaster in Egypt. What a close call that's been. We're not out of the woods yet with Egypt.

It was at a certain stage (you might have forgotten, haven't you?) that the United States actively collaborated with Saddam when he was at war with Iran: weapons were supplied, diplomatic and political support was provided and so on. Then the US fell out with him for some reason and decided to do away with him.

The U.S. has and still is cooperating with various military dictatorships around the world. Obviously we would prefer to see them democratized, but we are doing it because we have national interests, whether it's working with Pakistan on Afghanistan or whatever.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.