Tariq Ali Quotes

We better rethink the position of the United States in the world and whether we want to be an empire. Being an empire puts all of us in jeopardy. The American Empire, while it was just wreaking havoc on other nations, didn't bother us.

There is no doubt that the United States now feels that they are the only superpower in the world and they can do what they like.

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

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

The real danger to Britain is a foreign policy that is isolationist in Europe and therefore weak in the rest of the world.

Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

American influence is not what it used to be.

Americans tend to see U.S. primacy as beneficial to both their country and the rest of the world.

It’s not a dictatorship in the United States. But it is dictatorial to the rest of the world. Who’s going to say no?

Americans do not recognize the effect of American power in the world. … People all over the world ask, “Why can’t Americans see how American power affects us?”

A superpower does not have to be the bully on the block.

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.

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

What frustrates U.S. officials is that China sometimes seems more comfortable accommodating a strong United States, as it did in past decades, than partnering with an America that's less dominant.

We are thus in the position of having to borrow from Europe to defend Europe, of having to borrow from China and Japan to defend Chinese and Japanese access to Gulf oil, and of having to borrow from Arab emirs, sultans and monarchs to make Iraq safe for democracy. We borrow from the nations we defend so that we may continue to defend them. To question this is an unpardonable heresy called 'isolationism.'

Vladimir Putin wants practical things, like the end of economic sanctions, but he also wants far greater sway in Europe and in the overall ideological trends of the world.

American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.

I recognize the United States is a superpower. It has various interests. It has to balance various things.

The American empire should be destroyed.

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency.

American power worldwide is at its historic zenith.

Our relations with the other powers of Europe have experienced no essential change since the last session.

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

We really need to stop the imperialist tendencies of countries like the United States and Great Britain.