Wilhelm II, German Emperor Quotes

All small countries have the same problems and concerns about being protected from larger countries and their influences.

It's never easy to be a small country next to a big neighbor.

Just as the United States doesn't like others to take charge, other countries also don't like the United States to play a dominant role in the United Nations.

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

Have not the small Powers reason to fear that they will be victims in a subsequent conflict into which they will be dragged against their will in spite of their policy of indisputable independence and of their firm desire for neutrality? Are they not liable to become the subject of arrangements reached without their having been consulted?

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

Conquest or superiority among other powers is not or ought not ever to be the object of republican systems.

The demands of Germany may require too much sacrifice of the rights of others for them to be granted, but for the peace of the world they must be considered with the utmost seriousness, and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that sooner or later some of them will have to receive satisfaction.

What you have to remember about Belarus is that it's a small state - it has a population of less than 10m people - and like many small states, it has to be very careful about its relationships.

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

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

No nation has friends only interests.

I don't consider Americans bullies, but I do consider the American government bullying.

The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come.

Of course as a small country you're not necessarily in the strongest negotiating position unless you're negotiating with other small countries.

It's essential for the U.S. and Europe to prevent Putin from going farther and reversing the hard-won independence of former Soviet republics.

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.

the avowed pretension of the United States, to put themselves at the head of the confederacy of all the Americas, and to sway that confederacy against Europe (Great Britain included), is not a pretension identified with our interests, or one that we can countenance or tolerate. It is, however, a pretension which there is no use in contesting in the abstract; but we must not say anything that seems to admit this principle.

If Germany wins, she will dominate France; the independence of Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and perhaps of Norway and Sweden, will be a mere shadow; their separate existence as nations will be fiction; all their harbours will be at Germany's disposal; she will dominate the whole of Western Europe, and this will make our position quite impossible. We could not exist as a first class State under such circumstances.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

Europe is perhaps the first example in history of a non-dominant world power.

Hegemony is the best way for any state to guarantee its own survival.

The United States may have to abandon its policy of avoiding entangling alliances.