Francis Fukuyama Quotes

Failed states are mainly a threat to their own inhabitants. We should help them anyway.

Failed states have become breeding grounds for conflict.

Libya is a failed state and becoming a launching pad for external operations, as is Sinai in Egypt.

We see nation-states collapsing all around us: Libya, Syria, Iraq. We do not want another failed state in our neighborhood, which would rapidly turn into a stronghold for terrorists, as we have seen in Gaza. We do not want tunnels to suburbs of Tel Aviv or missiles pointed at Jerusalem.

If Sudan starts to crumble, the shock waves will spread.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

Extremism in Syria cannot be contained within Syria.

The United States learned a big lesson. Its greatest danger in the world came not from large nations but from failed states.

I don't want to be overly dramatic, but Iraq and Syria are gone, and they aren't coming back, at least not as centralized states.

To destroy the Islamic State, you have to fix Syria. You have to look at the reasons that created the Islamic State. This is a huge task.

Libya is a huge disaster.

Libya stood as a source of stability in volatile northern Africa in 2011. The administration turned it into a failed state that exposed southern Europe to refugees and terrorist elements, all of which Gadhafi had warned about.

As was true in Iraq and Libya, the United States has no credible government or leader able to bring order, security, and freedom to the people of Syria if Assad is overthrown.

The fact that you had disruptions in the peace process was not only in Rwanda. We had the same problem in Cambodia, we had the same problem in Mozambique, we had the same problem in Salvador.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.

The fate of Syria hangs in the balance, but it is entirely possible that the fall of the Assad regime will result in anarchy and cause Syria to turn into a second Afghanistan, a base for anti-Israel terrorism.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

Violence has been Nicaragua's most important export to the world.

We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.

Somalia is very dangerous, and no one knows that better than I.

I would not be surprised to see Syria break apart entirely.

Every day as Chancellor I see alerts telling me of risks around the world.

The war being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq is bringing about a fundamental change to the environment that has given rise and power to the extremists who export terrorism.

ISIS controls a territory roughly the size of Maryland where 8 million people live. If it's attacked and toppled, who will fill the void?

We can't afford to see Afghanistan roll backwards into a failed state that could become a base from which terrorist campaigns can be launched anywhere in the world.