Madeleine Albright Quotes

To some extent, Rwanda became a victim of the Somalia experience.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.

No one wants to abandon the Israelis. But I think the perception is, and I think it's probably an accurate perception, that the tail is leading the dog - that we are giving the Israelis carte blanche ability to exercise whatever they want to do in their area.

We, Britain and Germany, can neither of us be happy about our handling of the Iraq war.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

In his final year in office, Clinton decided that his contribution to Middle East peace would lie not in the removal of Saddam Hussein but in a grand attempt to resolve the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. With this, he missed his last chance to deal forcefully with the man he was publicly committed to overthrowing.

I very much regret that our administration has pushed the whole issue of Kosovo to the back burner.

For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem.

With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.

Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts.

I think it's appropriate for the international community in situations like this to intervene in Kosovo. I am in favor of an intervention. On some level, you have to say that at least somebody is doing something.

Women and children were slaughtered by the Taliban. You are going to sit down and negotiate with these folks? They never lived up to an agreement. The Pakistanis tried in '08, the Russians tried it when they were there. George Bush tried it in '05. It has never worked.

I don’t like genocide, but I would not commit our troops [to stop it.]

I wish I had intervened in Rwanda. I will spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn’t.

Failed states have become breeding grounds for conflict.

Syria: It’s a messy civil war and we should not be involved in it.

As was true in Iraq and Libya, the United States has no credible government or leader able to bring order, security, and freedom to the people of Syria if Assad is overthrown.

I've been calling for the support of the Syrian rebels for years.

I'm no apologist for Russia or the Assad regime, but actually, this has been staring us in the face for a number of years now, and I think it's time to turn a page and accept reality. Our strategy - if that is the right word - failed miserably, and Russia's with Iran has been successful.

I was very upset in August of 2012 when President Obama declared a red line against Syria and said if these chemical attacks continue, that's it, we're done, we're getting involved and we did nothing. When you're the commander in chief, the buck stops with you.

Secretary [John] Kerry has called Civil War [in Syria] an unbelievably small war that we're going to get involved with.

Israelis do not need to be lectured about the importance of peace by foreign leaders.

Israel wants to make it clear to the government of Egypt that it has no aggressive intentions whatsoever against any Arab state at all

If you give me the chance and give me your vote I will protect America from the wars that are being brought to our door step.

We have important things to talk to the Russians about, despite their meddling in our elections. I hope they're talking about a way to eventually end this horrific humanitarian crisis in Syria, end that war. The Russians have more leverage than we do. I hope they're talking about the fact that, if Kim Jong-un's long-range missiles can reach Alaska one day, they can also reach Vladivostok.