Wesley Clark Quotes

Many Europeans are concerned that stronger sanctions are a slippery slope toward war unless the U.S. is at the table.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

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.

Colin Powell has said over the years that Saddam Hussein is like a toothache. It recurs from time to time, and you just have to live with it. At other times, he's compared Saddam Hussein to a kidney stone that will eventually pass. But he has never said, 'You have to operate and take out the kidney stone.'

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

Pat Roberts and I both feel very strongly that when we get to Iran, that we can't make the same mistakes. We have to ask the questions, the hard questions before, not afterwards, and get the right intelligence.

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

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

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

Soft power … cannot accomplish much in the absence of a willingness to use hard power.

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.

We do not agree with policies that would lead to attempts at easing sanctions or lifting them and returning to business as usual with Russia. We believe that such behaviour will only embolden the aggressive behavior of Russia, as the last 12 years have shown, starting with Russia's attack on Georgia in 2008.

Certainly we must combine forces . South African troops are within the country.We raised this matter with Mrs [Margaret] Thatcher and Lord [Peter] Carrington when we met them and we wanted to get from them a definite commitment that they were going to get the South African troops out.

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

If you make a treaty first with the United States and settle the matter of the opium trade, England cannot change this, though she should desire to do so.

The United States prefers that Iraq meet its obligations voluntarily, yet we are prepared for the alternative.

I did more than anyone else in persuading the U.S. to get rid of Saddam.

Too often in Washington we tend to see foreign policy as an abstraction, with little understanding of what we are committing our country to: the complications and consequences of endeavors.

We must have a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces - or at the very least a plan for it - something the administration has incredulously failed to do for over two years.

Sanctions are a sign of irritation; they are not the instrument of serious policies.

I would say issues around human rights - either you're going to take a hard stance, or you're not. You can't borrow money from China the way the U.S. has done and then turn around and say, 'But you've got a human-rights problem.' You can't be half pregnant.

Therefore, if one were to consider that there was virtually no possibility of success through the US-Japan negotiations, the military and economic pressures would only force Japan into further crisis if time were allowed to pass in vain.

Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

There is very little hope that the United States or anyone else can do much to stabilize Iraq, Libya, Syria or Egypt. Stabilizing Iran, and bringing it back into the family of nations, is much more possible. That would be a 'win' for both sides.