George Washington Quotes

No nation has friends only interests.

… realpolitik

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.

We have no eternal allies, and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

Foreign policy is not philanthropy.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

There is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation's national security affairs. At the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it's many times a very difficult decision-making process.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

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

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

I don't believe foreign policy is about altruism.

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

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.

In power politics, it's usually not enough to be liked. A nation has to be considered essential.

France has no friends, only interests.

Every foreign policy of every major nation involves reason, common sense, carrots and sticks. You can't have all carrots and no sticks.

'Tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

Men are very apt to run into extremes, hatred to England may carry come into an excess of Confidence in France... I am heartily disposed to entertain the most favourable sentiments of our new ally and to cherish them in others to a reasonable degree; but it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.

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

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.

But the same intelligence compels Germany to practise the same policy.