David P. Auerswald Quotes

Is a military solution the only way to stop nations from doing bad things?

This president failed so miserably in diplomacy that we are now forced to war.

He had rather spend 100,000 pounds on Embassies to keep or procure peace with dishonor, than 100,000 pounds on an army that would have forced peace with honor.

We have to deal with it diplomatically if we can, militarily if we must.

I differ in my ideas from most of our people on the subject of retaliation. Sometimes I know it to be necessary, but it should not be resorted to at all times, and in our case policy dictates that it should be avoided whenever possible.

You may meet commercial restriction with commercial restriction, but you cannot safely confront premeditated insult and injury with commercial restrictions alone.

War is always an option. Peace is not.

Many Europeans are concerned that stronger sanctions are a slippery slope toward war unless the U.S. is at the table.

We advised them to do what they think proper against the war.

War is much too serious a thing to be left to military men.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

Appeasement was never a very clever policy, and it should not be our option today.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

The main force used in the evolving world of humanity has hitherto been applied in the form of war.

You can't make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace without Syria.

I've been arguing this for months. This is not our war. This is not a war we should be in. Australia's better spending its time negotiating with North Korea.

Diplomacy and force are two sides of the same coin.

The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end.

Success in diplomacy is often most advantageous when it is incomplete, an adversary needs an honorable path of retreat if we are to achieve our main policy goals through the reputation of our power rather than through the actual use of force.

I am too realistic to believe in pacifism. But, nevertheless, the use of force should always be the last resort.

Repel force by force

There appears to be almost no way in which the deployment of military force ... could be brought rationally to bear upon the decision of any of the political, economic, emotional or philosophical issues by which men still remain divided.

All States do not have the same interests, but are there any interests which cannot be infinitely better reconciled before than after a war?

The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations.