Fareed Zakaria Quotes

Foreign policy is painstakingly difficult, and if there is to be anything gained from the experience in Libya, it is how not to conduct world affairs.

What is the Obama Doctrine? It seems to be one of disengagement, to try to ignore the hot, religious, dry, poor countries from Algeria to Pakistan.

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

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.

Foreign policy works best when force and diplomacy are used together.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Your message is stupid. Iraq is not afraid of you or anyone else when it has a right to claim. What you warned about is not on Iraq's agenda. Iraq is vital and powerful. It is not an opportunistic country. Your administration has not learned from the past.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

The war in Iraq has as much to do with terrorism as the administration has to do with compassion.

In fact, it struck me when we invaded last year that if we did it without European and East Asian support, we were risking losing our alliance in Europe in exchange for Iraq, and that is a very undesirable exchange.

If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'

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

There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration's foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.

I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

As the U.S., the world is questioning why not end it, and so if, in fact, we were to pull out, the world would definitely question why we did this to begin with. But I still believe the world would call upon us for help if they needed it.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

You do not build a foreign policy based on one man.

The [foreign] policy of the United States is modeled on interventionism and aggression. It is logical that we should always be very suspicious.

Would it not be worthwhile to pause a moment before we commit ourselves to war at the pleasure of other nations in whose councils we shall have but one vote?

No American President should ever take any option off the table.

A United States President should never, never, never, never threaten the use of force unless he is prepared to follow up.

History teaches us these lessons for the interveners: leave your prejudices at home, keep your ambitions low, have enough resources to do the job, do not lose the golden hour, make security your first priority, involve the neighbors.

There is every prospect that events arising out of our growing foreign investment will present us in the future with decisions involving war and peace, will bring us, whether we like it or not, to concern ourselves with distant causes.

Nations want the United States to fight their wars, until they go bad.