Richard N. Haass Quotes

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

… realpolitik

The fact is that no foreign-policy doctrine is perfect.

Things change. There has to be flexibility. Let me give you an example. President Xi, we have a, like, a really great relationship. For me to call him a currency manipulator and then say, “By the way, I'd like you to solve the North Korean problem,” doesn't work. So you have to have a certain flexibility, Number One. Number Two, from the time I took office till now, you know, it's a very exact thing. It's not like generalities.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

I started, you know, to work as a diplomat during the Soviet days, and in spite of ideology being very high on the Communist Party agenda, I can assure you that in practical terms, we have always been trying to be pragmatic.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

No nation has friends only interests.

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.

In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

Americans tend to go for it all. In international politics you can’t have it all. You have to compromise.

Let the king consider as hostile his immediate neighbor and the enemy of such a foe, as friendly.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests. [This is a generalized expression of British Prime Minister John Henry Temple's statement a century earlier.

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world.

The art of foreign policy is to help guide the inevitable.

Foreign policy is not philanthropy.

We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge; we ought rather to reserve the possibility of becoming friends again with our adversary of the moment, and in any case to regard the Austrian state as a piece on the European chessboard and the renewal of friendly relations as a move open to us. If Austria were severely injured, she would become the ally of France and of every other opponent of ours; she would even sacrifice her anti-Russian interests for the sake of revenge on Prussia.

[To Americans] diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interwar period, appeasement of Fascism.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.

Foreign policy should be strategic, not tactical.

Just because you change administrations doesn't mean you have to change [foreign] policy.