Mohsin Hamid Quotes

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

World Affairs Councils are great organizations. They help keep people throughout our country alive to important developments in world affairs and underscore that, in the country, we stay engaged and we are part of the world.

I think it is very important for any U.S. administration to be clear that America stands on the side of freedom and democracy and respect for individual rights.

A multipolar world means more compromise [on Human Rights violations]… more back-scratching and less principled denunciation.

We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth.

The U.S. should worry about the effects of its polices on the rest of the world. We would like to live in a world where countries take into account the effect of their policies on other countries and do what is right, broadly, rather than what is just right given the circumstances of that country.

There are those who would draw a sharp line between power politics and a principled foreign policy based on values. This polarized view - you are either a realist or devoted to norms and values - may be just fine in academic debate, but it is a disaster for American foreign policy. American values are universal.

We no longer live in an era in which foreign policymakers can claim to serve their nations' interests treating what happens to people in other countries as an afterthought... What happens to people in other countries matters. It matters to the welfare of our own nations and our own citizens.

Americans in general, I think, don't understand the weight and gravity of foreign policy and how to engage the world at large.

There is a widespread view among the liberal intelligentsia to the effect that Henry Kissinger, U.S. National Security Advisor from 1969 to 1975 and Secretary of State from 1973 to 1977, was a bad man. That may even be an understatement. In this fashionable consensus, he is not just a bad man: he is a war criminal.

An isolationist America is no bloody use to anyone.

There's been a deliberate and systematic effort to convey to countries around the world, friends and foes, that if they cross the United States there's a price to pay.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

America has lost the moral high ground with the rest of the world, and we have fewer allies as a result. President Bush and his administration have undermined the war on terror by using tactics outlawed by international treaty and condemned by even our closest friends.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

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.'

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

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

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

I would say issues around human rights - either you're going to take a hard stance, or you're not. You can't borrow money from China the way the U.S. has done and then turn around and say, 'But you've got a human-rights problem.' You can't be half pregnant.

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.

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.

You will never see President Bachmann step one toe out of the United States and apologize for this country.