Omar Bongo Quotes

… this whole Near East problem is not just an Arab-Israeli dispute but a problem of the influence of the West as opposed to that of the Soviet. We want no wars, but we do not want a Sovietized world.

The trouble with the First World War, for example, is that people think war was inevitable, but I don't agree. If you look at the Cold War, you could argue that a war was bound to happen between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies, but it didn't.

I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.

I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest.

Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military.

During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

Moreover, the accomplishment of Russia's aims has been greatly simplified by the fact that we have heretofore offered the world no practical antidote for the Russian poison.

From little involvements—little CIA wars—big wars grow.

The Cold War is over. The world has become much more complicated.

The cold war is over; Japan won!

The Cold War didn't end. It was won.

If there's Cold War, no 'Star Wars' in China.

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.

I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.

And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.

I was very much a child of the Cold War.

Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.

With Germany conquered, the Kremlin checkmated, Japan converted, it became easier - safer - to peek around looking for someone to fear... and maybe do something about. Ideally, somebody far away, from a country about which almost nothing was known.

The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?

During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.

There's no longer a monolithic evil empire somewhere, spreading a different philosophy of life. That doesn't exist.

We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

The politicians always told us that the Cold War stand-off could only change by way of nuclear war. None of them believed that such systemic change was possible.

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.