Tim Ryan Quotes

In international affairs, you never threaten things you're not prepared to do.

Sanctions are a bad idea.

We have tried to make it clear that the United States is not just an old cow that gives more milk the more it is kicked in the flanks.

Certainly, the Bush Administration will rely in the first instance on its friends, since it would be both illogical and counterproductive to reward its adversaries.

Economic sanctions rarely achieve the desired results.

Serbia must now be dealt with.

The United States should not frame its policy options in terms of doing nothing or unilaterally sending in the Marines.

Frankly, we should publicly increase them [ anti-Russian sanctions ].

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.

I don't think Donald Trump is a conservative. I think his line on China for example, that he's going to talk tough to China. China didn't create Social Security, Medicare. China isn't spending a fifth of a billion dollars every hour that it doesn't have.

My big focus is China and OPEC and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying the United States.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words.

Like Prince von Bismarck in diplomacy, I have no secrets.

Richard Holbrooke is known for many things, but I will remember him as an impressive, sometimes even intimidating diplomat who understood the value of culture in diplomacy.

Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.

And we ought to work our diplomacy first and I think it's a reason it's going to respond increasingly to our diplomacy particularly with the president's direct involvement in the peace process, and I think that's extraordinarily important.

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China's behavior overnight.

Colin Powell has said over the years that Saddam Hussein is like a toothache. It recurs from time to time, and you just have to live with it. At other times, he's compared Saddam Hussein to a kidney stone that will eventually pass. But he has never said, 'You have to operate and take out the kidney stone.'

Sanctions are not really an economic weapon.

I've been arguing this for months. This is not our war. This is not a war we should be in. Australia's better spending its time negotiating with North Korea.

This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.

In foreign policy, there are times when speaking with one voice - and it doesn't have to be mine - allows us to engage better on issues, and enables us to do things more effectively.

Sanctions historically are quite counterproductive in the sense that if you impose sanctions on your enemy, it tends to strengthen your enemy.

I would have a democratic process for people to get together and talk about the way they want the government to conduct business with China.