Chris Murphy Quotes

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.

The principles that should guide American foreign policy are simple: the world is safer when America leads, only strength ensures peace and freedom, and America must stand with its allies and challenge its adversaries.

Foreign policy is effectively the assertion of many individual countries intersecting on the global marketplace. And you have to figure out how to get your interest served in a way that meets the interests and needs of these other folks.

Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.

President Obama's record on national security is a tribute to his strength, and judgment, and to his preference for inclusion and partnership over partisanship.

I don’t talk to countries that exhibit bad behavior.

Americans tend to go for it all. In international politics you can’t have it all. You have to compromise.

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

Reason is the only umpire between just nations.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations... It brings us into very dangerous territory and it could be used and abused by any other country. We need to continue to base our security on multilateralism, and on the Security Council.

Our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please …. Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

I think it also important that the policies of the great nations be made simple and clear, so that the chance of misunderstanding is minimized.

Foreign policy is the most constraining form of policy-making

The United Nations is a means. It is not an end for American foreign policy.

Foreign policy exactly suits Obama's strong points as a leader, which turn out not to be giving the masses a clear sense of direction and hope, but instead exercising good judgment on a case-by-case basis while thinking many steps ahead of the present moment.

Foreign policy is about the execution of ideas as much as their formulation.

In international relations, you don't base your work on hope.

Not every threat to America's national interests can be addressed with military power.

I'm a career diplomat. I spent 30 years as a diplomat, out of which seven years as foreign minister. I've always believed in the United Nations as a centre of multilateralism and multilateral diplomacy.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

There is one criticism which cannot be leveled at interparliamentary conferences but which is applicable to a great extent to peace congresses: the meetings waste time.

American decision-makers must understand how damaging a foreign policy that privileges order and profit over justice really is in the long term.

So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.