Dominic Raab Quotes

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

… realpolitik

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

No nation has friends only interests.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Tensions plagued his [Woodrow Wilson’s] presidency--particularly the one between principal and pragmatism in United States foreign policy. This is perpetual and the defies resolution.

When it comes to foreign policy, the American people will ultimately reward not the party with the most ambitious vision but the party with the most sober and realistic one.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

There are those who would draw a sharp line between power politics and a principled foreign policy based on values. This polarized view - you are either a realist or devoted to norms and values - may be just fine in academic debate, but it is a disaster for American foreign policy. American values are universal.

Indeed, in foreign policymaking, inconsistency is often a virtue. I speak not of principles but of policy.

I'm cheering for America as always. Our interest ought to come first and to the extent that making temporary alliances with other countries serve our interests, I met in favor of that. Making sweeping moral claims comparing people to Hitler advances the ball not one that blinds us to reality.

Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.

Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

American presidents always avoid shaking hands with brutal dictators, except when it's advantageous to do so.