John Howard Quotes

You should never make alliances with a decadent nation like France and a semi-barbarous nation like Russia

I want you to know what I have told Australia's Parliament in Canberra - what I told General Petraeus in Kabul - what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week. Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States.

Even allies don’t share every single interest that you have. That’s a law of nature in the international system. They will tell you most of what you need to know but there may be some things that they don’t tell you that you need to know in order to formulate your policy as wisely as you can.

We have normal relations with lots of countries whose leadership we do not like..

As our relationship with China grows and matures, tensions will naturally emerge.

The Russians are bent on establishing both a presence in the Western Hemisphere, and they're looking for opportunities to expand military cooperation: sell equipment, air bases, as well as intelligence gathering facilities.

The United States depends on South Korea and Japan to help promote American values in East Asia.

I think India should be our top ally in Asia Pacific. And the two countries have so much in common, including being the largest and most powerful democracies.

We see West Asia as part of our extended neighbourhood.

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.

Shared Sino-American global security goals would not mean that one partner dictates to the other. U.S.-PRC differences will persist, and on the Asian regional level they can even be a source of mutual irritation. Nor should it mean that we ignore the basic differences between our political systems and values.

I recognize the United States is a superpower. It has various interests. It has to balance various things.

Russia and China are very natural partners. We are neighbors with an immense common border.

My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have.

We have no stronger ally anywhere in the world than Israel.

The global importance of the Middle East is that it keeps the Far East and the Near East from encroaching on each other.

The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010.

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

Our relations with the other powers of Europe have experienced no essential change since the last session.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

Israeli interests are not necessarily in harmony with the American interests.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

I'll put it frankly - Britain has more influence in China than Norway or Switzerland, with all respect for the other countries.

The United States has got to adopt a policy of befriending and creating allies around the world.