Lee Hsien Loong Quotes

Small countries such as Belgium would be well-advised to rally to the side of the strong if the wish to retain their independence.

All small countries have the same problems and concerns about being protected from larger countries and their influences.

Of course as a small country you're not necessarily in the strongest negotiating position unless you're negotiating with other small countries.

What you have to remember about Belarus is that it's a small state - it has a population of less than 10m people - and like many small states, it has to be very careful about its relationships.

No nation has friends only interests.

President Obama's consistent agenda has been to weaken the United States and our allies in pursuit of a more 'balanced' global power structure.

It is the natural desire of each nation to use the other as an instrument of its own purposes and policies. By dint of our mutual dependence, your influence is amplified by our power. Our power is made more responsible and more effective by your influence.

A new multipolar world has brought more uncertainty into international affairs.

Both Russia and the United States are struggling to define their proper roles in the world.

Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states.

I'm in favour of a multi-polar world. I believe that every country has the right to defend its own interests.

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

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

There is not much danger of the smaller nations if the big nations will behave.

Nations, great nations have limitations. All nations have limitations. Even great powers have limitations.

I don't share the view that China and the U.S. need to reach some kind of strategic accommodation to carve up the Asia-Pacific region - that is an arrogant proposition and deeply insulting to other countries in the region, including Japan and potentially also India and Indonesia.

Hegemony is the best way for any state to guarantee its own survival.

The United States is the world's best hope; but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence.

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.

Have not the small Powers reason to fear that they will be victims in a subsequent conflict into which they will be dragged against their will in spite of their policy of indisputable independence and of their firm desire for neutrality? Are they not liable to become the subject of arrangements reached without their having been consulted?

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

Is the balance of power a fixed and unalterable standard? Or is it not a standard perpetually varying, as civilization advances, and as new nations spring up, and take their place among established political communities?

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.