Peter MacKay Quotes

We’re not the world’s policeman. Nor the world’s judge, jury and executioner.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

The United States does not feel any need to consult with anybody … except when it suits them.

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

My work at the United Nations discomforted some members of the U.S. government, which exercises its power beyond collective understandings and international law.

Both China and Russia felt duped by the U.N. 'no-fly' zone resolution regarding Libya in 2011 that eventually led to the ouster of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. China and Russia had abstained from the Libyan resolution, and neither country plans to make what they regard as a similar mistake again.

There was an implicit conviction that the UN would be stronger than the sum of its constituent member-states.

The U.N. can meet and discuss, but we don't need their permission.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations.

We shouldn't discuss the world of tomorrow in terms of becoming a balance to the United States. The real issue is whether the United States will define herself as part of the U.N. system-or not.

Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.

Probably the most useful thing I can do as secretary of state is to assist the president in adapting and renewing the transnational institutions that were created after World War II.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

As the highest ranking American official in the United Nations organization, I came to understand thoroughly that the national constitutional processes of the member states define the status of territories under their sovereignty.

I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

There is no such thing as the United Nations.

The nations must be organized internationally and induced to enter into partnership, subordinating in some measure national sovereignty to worldwide institutions and obligations.

Attempts to settle crises by unilateral sanctions outside the framework of U.N. Security Council decisions threaten international peace and stability. Such attempts are counterproductive and contradict the norms and principles of international law.

As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations.

Well, there's been plenty of ultimatums, and one thing that we better be very clear is that we can't continue to have the kind of defiance of the United Nations, the defiance of the international community that we've had.

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

George W. Bush will have to come to the UN and admit that he was wrong.

I don't just whisper it, I say it and I say it: 'The United Nations is an anti-Semitic organization, an anti-Israel organization.'