Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

The crises in North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, show how quickly things can change and how they can go wrong. We must be prepared. And right now the Army is not.

My time as editor has been overlapped by a crisis - a prolonged, labyrinthine, tragic, seemingly non-ending crisis - that involves the prehistory of 9/11, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, fraught histories between the United States and almost everyone.

I don't think that anyone seriously fears that the world can be blown to pieces all together. But what one can fear and rightly so are regional things, like in the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the Korean Peninsula, borders in Africa, etc.

The war in Iraq is a serious situation. It's - it involves the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country. So we should take everything serious. This is - we find ourselves in a very deep hole. We need to find a way to dig out of it.

History teaches, perhaps, very few clear lessons. But surely one such lesson learned by the world at great cost is that aggression, unopposed, becomes a contagious disease.

Running on the pledge to end two wars, President Obama has the country entangled in three: Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, and that doesn't include the American's foray into Libya.

The potential for regional conflict in the absence of an internationally active America is real.

I think we have to knock out ISIS. Right now Syria is fighting ISIS. We have people who want to fight both at the same time. But Syria is no longer Syria; Syria is Russia and Iran, who she made strong, and Kerry and Obama made into a very powerful nation and very rich nation very, very quickly. Very, very quickly. I believe we have to get ISIS.

The President reminded us that the war in Iraq is a central battlefield in the war on terror that began the morning of September the 11th.

Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

As soon as one nation claims the right to take preventive action, other countries will naturally do the same. If we go down that road, where are we going?

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

The only one who thinks the world is safer since the occupation of Iraq is Bush.

One of the lessons from Sept. 11 is that America requires a long-term presence in those parts of the world that endanger us. This notion has become controversial, but frankly, the need could not be clearer.

The whole kind of post-World War I settlement that formed the modern Middle East is in danger of collapsing, and we can - we, the United States, you know, the preeminent power in the world - we can say that we want to ignore that, but how long can we avert our gaze? And how long can we stay out?

As I've said many times and publicly, a war between China and Taiwan that involves the United States is a lose-lose-lose.

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.

No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.

Victory is the most important aspect in Iraq, because victory in Iraq will help us have victory in the War on Terror.

I know the war in Iraq is controversial in the States, but for us in the Middle East it has made a great and significant impact.

American power in the Middle East is collapsing. It doesn't need much more than a shove, and it will - and that's not going to be a good thing.

We cannot win this war on terror if people are undercutting us. And one way to undercut us is to empower Iran.