Richard K. Betts Quotes

We shall have world government whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World government will be achieved by conquest or consent.

Power is never so overwhelming that there's no room for resistance.

We shouldn't discuss the world of tomorrow in terms of becoming a balance to the United States. The real issue is whether the United States will define herself as part of the U.N. system-or not.

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.

If I were remaking the United Nations there would only be one permanent representative—the United States because that’s the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world.

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority!

Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

In the United Nations, the United States can almost always get its way…. The United States has the ability to make the United Nations work or not work---if it cares enough.

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.

The U. S. is not the Boss, not the Boss any longer.

Both Russia and the United States are struggling to define their proper roles in the world.

Multi- polarisation has become an inevitable trend in the process of shaping a global political pattern and has been widely welcomed by the international community as it reflects the common interests and aspiration of the overwhelming majority of countries.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

America has a critical role to play as the most powerful member of the world community.

But I believe that the DPKO at this time was very much involved with American administration and was acting, taking on consideration the demand or the recommendation of the American administration. American administration was very powerful.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.

The USSR has emerged from the war in the role of one of most authoritative powers in world. It is now impossible to solve serious questions of international relations without participation of USSR.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

The international body must have the institutions and powers it needs to do what it is created to do; in other words it must be boldly and openly set up as a super-state on a level above the national sovereignties, and that, in turn, means that the Member States must have accepted in advance as much limitation and subordination of their particular sovereignties as this superior sovereign power requires.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

When the big powers are in agreement, the U. N. performs. When they aren't, the U. N. is paralyzed.