Robert Dallek Quotes

Promoting democracy is one goal of U. S. foreign policy dating back at least 100 years. But it has always been one goal of many, often negated and outweighed by other competing interests.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

Iraq is part of a legitimate American effort not to have democracy everywhere but to have democracy somewhere.

People the world over now see democracy promotion as a dishonest, dangerous cover for the protection of U. S. power and influence.

We have no constitutional authority to police the world or involve ourselves in nation building, in making the world safe for our style of democracy. Our founders advised against it and the early presidents followed that advice.

While American interests in the Middle East must obviously be protected, America's credibility to support democracy for everyone everywhere is crucial.

Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United State the role of promoting freedom in the world.

But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don't agree with that, because I don't think we're capable of doing that.

People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people's governments, especially in the Middle East.

I don’t think America wants democracies in the Middle East. They wouldn’t be nearly as friendly to us

I think that there is a limit on how far you can export democracy.

I don't think it's the job of the United States to build democracies from whole cloth. That's Wilsonianism to me of the most crazy kind.

The American preoccupation with promoting democracy abroad fits into a larger liberal view about the sources of a stable, legitimate, secure, and prosperous international order.

Neoconservatives habitually overstate America’s ability to export democracy.

American interests dictate that we teach other peoples to govern themselves.

For the 30 years I have been involved with U. S. national security, our policy has been shaped by the assumption that we could shape other countries’ policies throughout the world. This has always been a bit of a myth.

American foreign policy towards Egypt, even before the Arab Spring, was tentative. When the Muslim Brotherhood moved against the NGOs—many of whom were American, President Obama, instead of raising Hell, raised questions.

Preemption, democracy promoting and nation building have all been sullied by association by association with the War in Iraq.

The concepts of "democracy promotion" and "transformational diplomacy" pursued by the George W. Bush Administration conditioned interstate relations on altering any system of government that did not match Washington's understanding of democracy.

One does not export democracy in an armored vehicle.

Our foreign policy has made a wreck of this planet. I'm always in Africa... And when I go to these places I see American policy written on the walls of oppression everywhere.

I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions.

Venezuelan interests are to be defended by Venezuela. The U.S. should defend the interests of the U.S. Where are the U.S. people, where are the intellectuals, who could put limits on their government?

You do not export democracy through the Defense Department or the Defense Secretary. You do it through trade agreements, through the Department of Commerce and favorable agreements with our friends and neighbors across the globe.

Many Americans, and many more people around the world, have been outraged by what they see as President George W. Bush's radical reordering of American foreign policy.