Mitchell Reiss Quotes

We want to have diplomatic engagement with the North Koreans.

If they think they can get anyone who could have better handled the complex and difficult issues surrounding North Korea, Iran and other controversies, they are not understanding the world right now.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.

Wishful thinking won't make the Palestinians an Israeli peace partner, no matter how much President Barack Obama pressures Israel to make concessions; caustically mocking Putin's worldview won't make it any less real or mitigate the Russian threat.

Turkey can be a bridge to regimes and actions the United States can't reach. Turkey can talk to people the United States can't talk to.

We probably could more successfully resolve the North Korean nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning. We could successfully resolve what American leaders seem to perceive as an Iranian nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning.

Great powers engage.

The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end.

The only thing that is worse than dealing with Pakistan is the neglect of doing so.

Whether you're dealing with your allies in Europe or you're dealing with a resurgent Russia, whether you're dealing with Iran or North Korea, you have to use the whole panoply of national tools of power to deal with the challenges the world faces.

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.

I would not say that the North Koreans will do anything that the Chinese want them to do.

I don't think the North Korean leadership is interested in a genuine deal to end their WMD programs or their stranglehold on the North Korean people.

You have North Korea, you have nuclear weapons, and China could solve that problem. And they're not helping us at all.

I can't take anything off the table. Because you look at some of these countries, you look at North Korea, we're doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.

President Trump also mentioned that under the right conditions, he is willing to engage in dialogue with North Korea.

I don't know that I'm gonna get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there's a good chance I won't. And if I don't, do you honestly believe that Hillary would be tougher on Putin than me?

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.

I don't know that I'm going to get along with Vladimir Putin. I hope I do. But there's a good chance I won't.

Historians in the future will surely wonder what went so wrong when the United States, for the first time ever, focused its foreign policy on the Islamic world.

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

Alliances do have to deal with political realities.

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