Fred Thompson Quotes

The United States is the most powerful nation on Earth and it just can't walk away from the Middle East and central Asia and the Horn of Africa.

There is a great deal of concern in the Chinese military that Taiwan's reunification with China is drifting further and further away.

You'd better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.

The long-term strategic goals of Iran and the long-term strategic goals of Turkey are close to the long-term strategic goals of the United States.

The greater concerns in China and Taiwan are on the political side, not on the economic side.

When I was in Taiwan, I was taught in school that Taiwan is part of China.

We attach great importance to the peaceful development of cross-strait relations. But if our diplomatic relations is subject to China's goodwill, we will lose the autonomy of our diplomacy.

The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain that there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China …. The United States does not challenge that position.

Relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are like those of a family.

What China would do, I cannot predict. China has all but given up the claim to the use of force, except in the circumstance of Taiwan declaring its independence. That is a huge step forward over what the situation was many years ago.

France... What can you say about a country that was too stupid to get on board with our wonderfully-conceived and brilliantly-executed war in Iraq?

We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.'

The frontier of America is on the Rhine.

The sanctions have nothing to do with our relations with China, because our relations with the People's Republic of China are at an unprecedented high both in terms of their level and substance. They are what we call "a comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation".

Iran is the middle child of the Axis of Evil. Iraq is the oldest child and gets the lion's share of the attention, and North Korea is the crazy baby.

The policies of all powers are inherent in their geography.

I would sooner want a strong partnership with the United States - even with (US President George W.) Bush, who I think is the worst president in a long, long time. I would sooner want a friendship with Bush than with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.

Every time there has been an attempt to disturb it, it led to two things. It led to immediate intense conflict with China, and it led to a reaffirmation in the end, because nobody wanted a major confrontation with China to this principle of a "one China" policy within which Taiwan is finding a place now. Its own position has greatly improved since the Nixon policy. It is richer, it is stronger and it is participating in many international organizations.

Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East. That is why we are in contact with most of the problems forever, let us say, whether directly or indirectly.

The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases.

There's an interesting book by the former Brazilian ambassador Celso Amorim. In 2010, he initiated an effort along with Turkey to settle the whole Iran issue. Nobody outside of the United States takes it to be much of an issue. They made a deal with Iran for Iran to essentially give away its low enriched uranium to Turkey for storage, and in return, the Western powers. It was immediately scratched by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And the main reason was they didn't want anybody else to be involved in it. We were supposed to run things, but we didn't say that.

The Americans have a very active presence and policy in every single part of the world and if we broke with them, we would lose any possibility of influencing them. They would go in for global unilateralism, and the world would be a more dangerous place.

The US wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The department of state desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.

Appeasing the Castro brothers will only cause other tyrants from Caracas to Tehran to Pyongyang to see that they can take advantage of President Obama's naiveté during his final two years in office. As a result, America will be less safe as a result of the President's change in policy.

I believe that Israel is one of our most important friends in the world.