Toomas Hendrik Ilves Quotes

The logic of collective security is flawless, provided it can be made to work under the conditions prevailing on the international scene... The odds, however, are strongly against such a possibility.

In a world in which the United States does less, whatever set of calculations, other countries will tend to calculate - to move in one of two ways. Either they will assuage or, to use a more loaded term, appease the strongest power in the neighborhood with all the consequences of that, or they will determine to take matters into their own hands.

Nations, like individuals in a state of nature, are equal and independent, possessing certain rights and owing certain duties to each other.

I am against preventive war because it means measures by the UN against us.

The Disarmament Conference has become the focal point of a great struggle between anarchy and world order... between those who think in terms of inevitable armed conflict and those who seek to build a universal and durable peace.

To solve the problem of organizing world peace we must establish world law and order.

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.

Great powers reserve the right to police bad actors in their neighborhoods.

The U.S.-led western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights, is acting from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the U.N. Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad.

Most Americans have no memory of the designs Franklin Roosevelt's New Dealers had for postwar-American foreign policy. Human rights, self-determination and an end to European colonization in the developing world, nuclear disarmament, international law, the World Court, the United Nations - these were all ideas of the progressive left.

We will always apply the same principles of collective security, prudent caution, and superior weaponry that enabled us to peacefully prevail in the long cold war against the Soviet Union.

Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

All members will refrain in their international relations from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

If it must come to war, I argue that the world should respond through the United Nations. This is the best way to give legitimacy to the use of force in these circumstances.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

...In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions...It is puerile...to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbor's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.

How is it that nations composed of people who don't want war are continually fighting?" The answer is that the opinion against war has been without adequate institutions to give it effect. War is an international affair; and to prevent it there must be international opinion, and international action upon that opinion, and international institutions to give effect to that opinion.

The situation that exists among nations in their relations to one another is such that it tempts even those who ordinarily come far short of cynicism to say that there is no connection between ethics and international relations.

The U.N. charter bars the threat of force.

The rogue states have to be told that there are lines that cannot be crossed.

When you look at territorial disputes, there are good arguments on any sides. I think it's important that we don't take sides on legitimacy.

You don't have to be a brilliant historian to know that in Europe, messing with countries' borders, messing with their self-determination, their ability to choose their own futures, this is extremely dangerous, and that's why I think it is important to stand up to Putin.

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.