Zbigniew Brzezinski Quotes

Everyone in the Middle East pretty much wants to come and be an American citizen, but pretty much everybody is angry with the U. S. foreign policy.

Washington sees the various local and national conflicts in the Middle East as part of a battle for regional hegemony between the U.S. and Iran.

So much of our attention is trained on the Middle East these days, but we cannot ignore East Asia.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe. Latin America doesn’t matter…. And … there’s nothing you can do about the Middle East.

The Middle East does not follow Las Vegas rules. Whatever happens in the Middle East affects the rest of the world.

The United States is as weak as the Soviet Union. If enough pressure is applied to them, they will pull out of the Middle East.

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

If you get a President (Hillary) Clinton, you might well find, just as after Vietnam, that there is a retraction from Iraq and of American influence in the world. And in a couple of years the Europeans will be complaining about that too.

What I'm interested in is Britain projecting itself abroad, and through that its values and the things it holds dear. And I don't think you do that by refusing to talk to the world's second-largest economy [China]. In fact, that is positively counter-productive in my view.

I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan. These things are interrelated. And if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.

He [Vladimir Putin] will not be able to push Donald Trump around the world. Believe me.

One has to remember that every progress that has been made towards peace in the Middle East has come under American leadership.

I believe, and always have, that America must engage - not retreat - in the world.

The Americans have a very active presence and policy in every single part of the world and if we broke with them, we would lose any possibility of influencing them. They would go in for global unilateralism, and the world would be a more dangerous place.

The main international problem facing America is our lack of - our loss of influence in the world and our lack of an ability to define what U.S. interests really are.

The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast.

Franklin Roosevelt is one of the great leaders because he does get along with other people. He makes this huge effort. He's a very charming man. He tries to bring Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill into this tripartite agreement to run the world. And he really was close. If he hadn't died in April of '45, the whole history would be different.

When I became secretary of state, I felt one of my primary jobs was building relationships around the world. And I did spend a lot of time and effort thinking through, How do I connect with this person?..

What [Donald] Trump is essentially saying is what has always been the case: America is the solution to the problems of the world. But to [Barack] Obama and Hillary [Clinton] and many on the left, America's the problem. America and its superpower status is the problem in the world.

After flirting with neoisolationism, the U.S. is now deciding it wants to run the world.

Values-oriented foreign policy of the free world would be much better, supported by the self-awareness of being on the right side of history.

Americans hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world. We are not at war with these countries.

I think we're going to have to accept the fact the U.S. is off the world map. We are not a great player any longer. And when we come home - as we will have to do because we've run out of money - we will discover that Argentine debts means Argentine politics. And on that note, you can wake up in the middle of the night.