Daniel Fried Quotes

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

… realpolitik

[Describing Russia:] ... the most realistic regime in the world—no ideals.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests

Britain rightly sees herself as a global good citizen, but she must reconcile ambition with power, ends with means - shedding utopian idealism in favour of a more rugged internationalism, putting the national interest first, not last.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.

There is always an element of realpolitik that has to be present in the conduct of any nation's national security affairs. At the same time, we have to also have a balance between realpolitik and Wilsonian principles of freedom and democracy and human rights. And maintaining that balance is the greatest challenge that we in the West, including the Federal Republic of Germany, have to face because it's many times a very difficult decision-making process.

...foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

No nation has friends only interests.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests. [This is a generalized expression of British Prime Minister John Henry Temple's statement a century earlier.

I don't believe foreign policy is about altruism.

When it comes to foreign policy, the American people will ultimately reward not the party with the most ambitious vision but the party with the most sober and realistic one.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

I'm cheering for America as always. Our interest ought to come first and to the extent that making temporary alliances with other countries serve our interests, I met in favor of that. Making sweeping moral claims comparing people to Hitler advances the ball not one that blinds us to reality.

Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.

Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

America is exceptional in combining standard great-power realism with extravagant idealism about the country's redemptive role in creating international order.

A great country worthy of the name does not have any friends.