Brent Scowcroft Quotes

Growth at home depends on growth abroad.

The farmers in America who are raising wheat and beef and cotton, and the great multitudes engaged in manufacture, depend for the rewards of their labor largely upon the orderly continuance of purchase, consumption and payment by the people of other countries. It would be a real misfortune to the American breakfast table if Brazil ceased to produce coffee and Cuba ceased to produce sugar and China ceased to produce tea.

Whoever thinks... that the European economy can be competitive without economic cooperation with Russia, whoever thinks that energy security can exist in Europe without the energy that comes from Russia, is chasing ghosts.

I also believe that most of the emerging economies have a fairly large amount of foreign exchange reserves, relative to 10 years ago.

Of course we run a very open economy, and therefore what happens in the rest of the world, in economic terms, obviously has an impact on us.

Russia and China, when they were communist-like adversaries, they didn't participate. They're participating now in the world with us. They're trading monetary instruments. We're buying and selling goods back and forth, trading oil and so forth.

The more there is a European solution to a theoretical, but possible, problem in the markets, the less we will have to talk about an I.M.F. solution.

Oil prices have certainly become a threat for the world economy.

If another euro country fails, so does Slovakia. Our economy is 80% open and if the citizens of Spain and Portugal have no money to buy cars made here in Slovakia then that will be bad for us. Everything is connected.

So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments.

Bahrain lies at the epicenter of Gulf security and any violent upheaval in Bahrain would have enormous geopolitical consequences. Global economic stability depends on the uninterrupted export of crude oil from the Gulf to markets around the world - a job that historically has been assigned to the U.S. Fifth Fleet.

The reality is that nearly 80 percent of the world's purchasing power lies outside the United States, and if we don't tap those markets, others will.

I think there's a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they're not sufficient because markets don't look after social needs.

Nonetheless, the developing countries must be able to reap the benefits of international trade.

Wealthy nations cannot grow richer unless they have customers beyond their border.

It's the nation that's at risk, not just Oklahoma or Pennsylvania. It's the whole country that's competing with Korea, Germany and Japan.

In order to have the benefits of free trade, you must have full employment in the trading countries.

The key to our economic prosperity depends on increasing our contacts with Asian traders.

Land has lost its original strategic value; military forces are no longer employed primarily to conquer land, but to ensure stable economic, energy and information flows, which constitute the true resources, along with the natural resource

… international confidence is the foundation stone of international credit, and international credit is essential to international trade.

I think that the ability to export our abundant resources of LNG is good for us and quite honestly helps with the balance-of-trade issue. Japan would love to see LNG coming from its friend and closest ally, the United States.

Japan needs the American market and it also needs American security protection. Japan also needs America as the necessary stabilizer of an orderly world system with economies truly open to international trade.

The lack of a consistent policy from major economies is the main source of volatility.

The United States cannot achieve significant economic growth without expanding exports.

Look at a map of the world: the countries which do not trade much, or which trade only in oil and gas, tend to be in regions which suffer the most social and political instability.