Warren Christopher Quotes

Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics.

For every African state, like Ghana, where democratic institutions seem secure, there is a Mali, a Cote d'Ivoire, and a Zimbabwe, where democracy is in trouble.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.

By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

In the past decade, nearly a dozen elected Latin American presidents have been forced from office.

There's no checklist of how democracies fail because they fail in different ways. Some of them fail because they break up and civil war breaks out... Often they fail because someone is elected to power who doesn't respect the rules of the democracy.

When Captain Moussa Dadis Camara came to power, too many thought he would hold to his promise to stand down, introduce democratic elections and restore the rule of law.

There is a real and evident problem of democracy in Georgia, and this was the core reason of my entrance into politics. We have no rule of law. It's absolutely absent.

The introduction of political pluralism often quickly led to bad results.

Those strutting, heroic figures who destroyed Spanish rule were, it seemed, unable themselves to rule for any significant period of time, or to build lasting institutions. Worse, the cult of personality that grew up around them served as a precedent for the two most serious evils that were to afflict Latin America until well into the late twentieth century – popular dictatorship and caudillismo, military rule – which alternated in many countries, and even sometimes merged, with doubly tragic results. Latin America’s underdevelopment since independence, particularly as compared with the United States, has been largely ascribed to such misgovernment.

In many emerging democracies, democracy and stability are mutually incompatible.

Ukraine is facing a serious threat of isolation as some local political forces want to put an end to democracy and democratic reforms in the country

Democratization is not necessarily the best way to fight Islamic extremism, because the transition to democracy has been found to be an especially vulnerable period for states across the board.

Strongmen? You have to have strong people to rule. South America is a rough place.

Advancing democracy does not always foster political stability.

Nigeria first entered...'the dismal tunnel' on January 15, 1966, when the military overthrew all the institutions of a democratically elected government... If there is light at the end of this tunnel, it is imperceptible to anyone not paid to see it.

The problem of Africa in general and Uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.

Given the right conditions any society can turn against democracy.

Maduro distanced himself from democracy. He deconstructed the entire judiciary and blocked parliamentary processes.

In Latin America, in the past, it was almost impossible to guarantee democracy. There were military dictatorships, and nowadays there are not so many military dictatorships. Although we have a dictator in Honduras, as a result of a coup, now as a president, he is almost the only one I would say. But again led or managed, gestated by the U.S. government.

The problem with leaderless uprisings taking over is that you don't always know what you get at the other end. If you are not careful you could replace a bad government with one much worse!

Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized.

There is a frustration too, that at moments when there's not a coup, when there are not people in the streets, that the country disappears from people's consciousness.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.