Robert Kagan Quotes

Many agree that the worst thing that could ever happen is if Russia and China get closer.

An economic version of mutual deterrence is preserving the uneasy status quo between China and Japan.

If America and China collide, both will suffer.

The United States is afraid of China; it is not a military threat to anyone and is the least aggressive of all the major military powers.

In my judgment, us assisting the Chinese military in advancing technologically is not in U.S. national interests.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

The amount of military force necessary to provide reassurance depends on how dangerous people think the world is. And that I think ultimately depends upon the kinds of government that hold sway in major countries.

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

All in all, the League of Nations is not inevitably bound, as some maintain from time to time, to degenerate into an impotent appendage of first one, then another of the competing great powers.

NATO expansion and Russian expansion - one leads to the other, and one reflects the other.

The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.

A war in the Taiwan Strait would destroy China's international relations overnight. It would destroy Chinese - Japanese relations, not to mention Chinese - American relations.

If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down.

Mr. Chamberlain desires to avert the threat to England's peace by making England, in alliance with Germany, stronger than her rivals and so to force them to renounce their hostile intentions against her.

Globalization, far from putting an end to power diplomacy between States, has, on the contrary, intensified it.

For some reason, I grew up generally believing that Japan and Korea were quite friendly. I do know that there is some bad history and the extremists on both sides are unreasonable.

I don't share the view that China and the U.S. need to reach some kind of strategic accommodation to carve up the Asia-Pacific region - that is an arrogant proposition and deeply insulting to other countries in the region, including Japan and potentially also India and Indonesia.

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

Time after time … when policy makers confronted a conflict between foreign policy and domestic interests, the diplomatic imperative prevailed.

That's the problem with Russia: The world has changed. Europe is not at war, and no one wants to negotiate with us. The world has changed, but Russia prefers to pretend it has not.

It has become increasingly clear that Pakistan’s chief aim in aligning with the West was to gain support against India

History teaches that the rise of new great powers often triggers major global conflict.

What starts in the Middle East never stays in the Middle East..

If Russia and the United States approach each other in starkly adversarial terms, the conflict will badly warp the foreign policy of both countries ...

… international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.