U. S. State Department Quotes

We [the Russians] are going to do something terrible to you [America]—we are going to deprive you of an enemy.

Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973.

America is not really a strong enough state for us to regard it as an enemy of Russia.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

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.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

For the Kremlin, it is more feasible to preserve its great-power status in cooperation with the United States than in confrontation.

We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.

We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Many agree that the worst thing that could ever happen is if Russia and China get closer.

The United States and Russia probably do not have common aims and dreams, but they have common worries: Both Washington and Moscow are concerned about the rise of China and are threatened by the rise of radical Islam.

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

Many in China find it perplexing that the U.S. and Russian perceptions are still so heavily influenced by the Cold War.

That's the problem with Russia: The world has changed. Europe is not at war, and no one wants to negotiate with us. The world has changed, but Russia prefers to pretend it has not.

… this whole Near East problem is not just an Arab-Israeli dispute but a problem of the influence of the West as opposed to that of the Soviet. We want no wars, but we do not want a Sovietized world.

If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?

We used to fight with Pakistan with bombs. Now we are fighting with them on the playing ground.

I don't think Russia could start a war by attacking any of the NATO member states.

Nineteen-seventy-nine had been a year of American setbacks around the globe. Before the year began, Cuban troops were already roaming Angola, and a pro-Communist regime ruled Ethiopia.

In most recent times, as the West started being hostile to us, we deliberately declared a Look East policy.

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

During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.

The unthinkable occurred: two communist countries went to war with each other.

Nuclear deterrence doesn't work outside of the Russian - U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.