Paul Wolfowitz Quotes

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

It's not the job of the U.S. military to do nation-building or produce democratic utopias.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

There are a growing number of conservatives and Republicans who, while they support the president and support the war in Iraq, wonder how many of these nation-building wars we're going to engage in and what the parameters of that are.

There are, however, cases in which, while our own interests are not greatly involved, strong appeal is made to our sympathies.... in extreme cases action may be justifiable and proper. What form the action shall take must depend upon the circumstances of the case; that is, upon the degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it.

The United States can't go in and impose order on chaos every place in the world.

[The Kosovo intervention] would set a dangerous precedent to commit our troops to fighting civil wars for independence in every corner of the world.

Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the Island.

If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.

We have no desire to be the world's policeman. But America does want to be the world's peacemaker.

An attitude of letting the rest of the world stew in their own juice, is rather a dangerous one, that perhaps in our own interest we may have to take the initiative and have sufficient interest in other people's affairs to really want to help them remain at peace.

To impose justice, stability, and cooperation on oppressed or ungoverned nations is usually a tall order. It is hardly ever done cheaply, especially against nationalist resistance

I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.

America's foreign policy lacks the backbone to do the right thing in Afghanistan - which is leave.

The United States will always be a global leader, and we need to actively engage the international community to make sure all citizens of the world live freely and equally under their country's rule of law. We cannot, however, afford to fight other nations' wars interminably or stabilize their regions.

For eight years, you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world, army first or fist first.

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

We have to bring stability to Iraq, otherwise we will be faced with a future dilemma of sending our loved ones into harms way to stop a civil war or the rise of a new tyrant born from the instability that we created.

The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.

Wars such as those which have occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

You know, I agree with President Obama that in Iraq and Afghanistan, at some point in time, we have to take the training wheels off and we have to allow those countries to stand on their own two feet.

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.

Intervention continues to be a prominent dimension of the post-cold war world.