Bruce Riedel Quotes

Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down.

I don't know that I'm gonna get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there's a good chance I won't. And if I don't, do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me?

President Carter famously said the hostages were the first thing he thought about in the morning and the last thing he thought about at night. It was a downright foolish thing to say, because it made the people holding the hostages realize that they had an awful lot of influence over the United States.

The American pledge not to negotiate with terrorists has been honored more in the breach than the observance from the moment President Ronald Reagan made it.

It's humiliating for Barack Obama and, therefore, the United States to have American sailors held hostage during his final State of the Union.

The Obama Doctrine is to ignore an international crisis or go to war. There is no in between.

In several speeches and interviews, Donald Trump has brought up his book 'The Art of the Deal,' and said that Obama would have negotiated a better deal with Iran if he had read it. It got even more awkward for Obama when Iran was like, 'It worked for us - you guys got screwed!'

Kennedy was trying to keep us out of war. I was trying to help him keep us out of war. And General Curtis LeMay, whom I served under as a matter of fact in World War II, was saying "Let's go in, let's totally destroy Cuba."

I guess my biggest failure was not getting re-elected. And I learned two things; one is that you ought not to ever let American hostages be held for 444 days in a foreign country without extracting them. I did the best I could, but I failed.

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is a necessary art …. If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.

The Navy and the foreign office had to find the argument to support the action; it was anxious work.

We have to develop preventive diplomacy.

You can't just answer everything with the application of force. By the time you have to apply force, there's already been a failure, and you're trying to pull your chestnuts out in the worst possible way

Statecraft, as these cases convincingly illustrate, is demanding and often exhausting work. There are risks, and success is not guaranteed. It requires major governmental and political resources and the same kind of hourly, year-round planning and execution as the conduct of a military campaign.

Mr. Roosevelt. You perhaps believe that your intervention can be effective anywhere.

We don’t negotiate for hostages’ release.

We have to deal with it diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must.

You always have to decide whether an international problem is like a skinned knee or an abscessed tooth. If it’s a skinned knew with a scab and you start messing with the scab you can make it worse. But if you let it alone, it will heal itself. If it is an abscessed tooth, and you leave it alone, it will only fester more and become a bigger problem.

The United States does not negotiate with terrorists.

Unilateralism in secret is sometimes necessary at the height of a crisis.

… deterrence success is heavily dependent both on signaling the adversary on your intentions and on that adversary interpreting your signals correctly. Communications, through words and deeds, is thus central to a deterrence relationship.

Foreign policy is like plumbing. You never notice it till it breaks and then all hell breaks loose.

Accidents will happen. We have formulated our policy on the assumption that some bluffing contest will eventually go wrong, resulting in dead soldiers. The focus has to be on minimizing damage.

There's no question, I think, as more and more people get to know Rex Tillerson, they're going to be really proud of the choice that Donald Trump made as our next secretary of state.

On foreign policy, Obama has talked softly and carried a big stick.