Mike Coffman Quotes

Obama is thoroughly mixed up with all these things he's got. He's got to solve Libya. He's got to solve Afghanistan. He's everywhere. And this nation, I don't know why it's not showing the leadership and capacity to attend different issues at the same time.

One thing that we should have learned from history is to pay attention to the words of foreign leaders.

You do not build a foreign policy based on one man.

For foreign policy it is necessary to have men who inspire confidence.

It was a mistake. I was wrong, but I discovered this many years later. I was acting on the basis of this mandate given me by the most important leaders of the world: President Bush's father, prime minister of France, President Mitterand, the Chinese, everybody.

When I was in college, I became interested in various aspects of foreign policy and international relations. Even as a kid, I was interested in what I call, loosely speaking, forbidden knowledge.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

Believe me, as one who has seen a number of international crises firsthand, they cannot be handled without an understanding of history.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.

During the past few years I have led a sometimes hard battle for German foreign policy.

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.

When we see a lack of leadership coming from the White House, that's what brings leaders in Turkey to attack Israel the way they do. When we see a lack of leadership coming from the White House, that's why we see the leader of Iran... continuing to build the nuclear reactors.

The United States is a strong and ardent ally of Israel. The fact of the matter is that friends can disagree. I think what's important is that world leaders are able to sit down with one another, have frank conversations and move forward.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.

There are legitimate, even powerful arguments, to be made against the Bush administration's foreign policy. But those arguments are complicated, hard to explain, and, in the end, not all that sensational.

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

George Bush has shown great skill at disguising an incredibly weak foreign policy.

Woe to the statesman whose reason for entering a war do not appear so plausible at its end as at its beginning.

Foreign policy matters cannot be intelligently decided in a large general meeting.

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

There is no area where experience matters more than in war and diplomacy.

The Japanese sit up all night thinking of ways to screw the Americans and the Europeans.