Daniel Treisman Quotes

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

Because of unsure and undecided leadership in the field of foreign policy, questions are being raised on all sides. The administration is plagued by a Hamlet-like psychosis which seems to paralyze it every time decisive action is required.

You can never predict what problems a President will face.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.

Putin is going to do what Putin is going to do.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

It is clearly unwise for us to continue the attempt to carry alone, or largely single-handed, the opposition to Soviet expansion. It is urgently necessary for us to restore something of the balance of power in Europe and Asia by strengthening local forces of independence and by getting them to assume part of our burden.

When you're in the real world as President of the United States it doesn't go according to the script.

It is the President alone who must make the major decisions of our foreign policy.

No American President should ever take any option off the table.

No President is going to say, “I am not going to preempt.” This is simply a reality.

You always have to decide whether an international problem is like a skinned knee or an abscessed tooth. If it’s a skinned knew with a scab and you start messing with the scab you can make it worse. But if you let it alone, it will heal itself. If it is an abscessed tooth, and you leave it alone, it will only fester more and become a bigger problem.

No world power has ever tried to manage affair in this particular circumstance: The cycle of News, the cycle of crises, the complexity of grievances in increasing numbers of failed and failing states.

When you are Commander in Chief, you should keep all your options on the table.

Obama has made incredibly poor decisions that have made us less safe.

I've stood up to Russia. I've taken on Putin and others, and I would do that as president.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

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.

It was in our power to cause the Arab governments to renounce the policy of strength toward Israel by turning it into a demonstration of weakness.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

So with the end of the Cold War, it became increasingly obvious that there was no basis upon which any decision was being made, not in the White House, and certainly because of that, not in the Congress.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.

You'd better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line.

I often heard Latvians compare Russia and America. Latvians find both countries and their leaders possessed of the same mysterious confidence.