Timothy D. Snyder Quotes

The advance guard in the campaign for peace that America wages today must be the State Department.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations... It brings us into very dangerous territory and it could be used and abused by any other country. We need to continue to base our security on multilateralism, and on the Security Council.

Is a military solution the only way to stop nations from doing bad things?

Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and the confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do, that's what strong presidents do, that's what I'll do when I'm president of the United States of America.

Some think the worst horrors of war might be avoided by an international agreement not to use atomic bombs. This is a vain hope.

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

In a world of complex threats, our security and leadership depends on all elements of our power - including strong and principled diplomacy.

We've made some mistakes in this country in times past - the Korean conflict proceeding that, some say proceeding the Persian Gulf War, where we were ambiguous as to what we would do.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

So I think that our foreign policy, the president's strong and principled leadership when it comes to the war against terror and foreign policy is going to be an asset.

Look at what President Kennedy managed to achieve during the Cuban missile crisis. If Bush had been president in 1962, do you think he would have avoided a nuclear war?

But as the arms-control scholar Thomas Schelling once noted, two things are very expensive in international life: promises when they succeed and threats when they fail.

Each one of these treaties is a step for the maintenance of peace, an additional guarantee against war. It is through such machinery that the disputes between nations will be settled and war prevented.

Sanctions aren't about weapons of mass destruction. People need to understand that.

India, Pakistan, China, Singapore and South Korea are heavily investing in nuclear arms. Since 21st century is the century of Asia, Asian countries should be the first ones to drop this arms race.

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.

The core of detente [with Russia] is the reduction in arms.

Only by decisions of national policy based upon accurate information can we have the chance that peace will endure.

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

I saw our bombs as political resources for peace.

We have to develop preventive diplomacy.

It is a mistake to isolate arms control from other areas of policy.... There is a danger that arms control will be a safety valve for an otherwise overly aggressive foreign policy.

The main aim of any American President is to prevent World War III.

He had rather spend 100,000 pounds on Embassies to keep or procure peace with dishonor, than 100,000 pounds on an army that would have forced peace with honor.