Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

Barack Obama has been stronger on the Ukraine than all the other countries put together, and those other countries right next door to the Ukraine. I don't think we're treated fair.We're constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. We're reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.

So such an American troops presence in Korea in the South and Japan, total some 100,000 should stay there forever, even after unification of Korean peninsula.

My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world, that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together, and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests.

The Constitution says that troops can be in the Philippines if there's a treaty that provides for it, and we have two treaties with the United States.

Nor should the U.S. military be forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a civil war.

It's very important for Taiwan to maintain its international contact.

There is no battle space the U.S. Military cannot access. They said we couldn't do Afghanistan. We did it with ease. They said we couldn't do Iraq. We did it with 150 combat casualties in six weeks. We did it so fast we weren't prepared for their collapse. There is nobody we can't take down. The question is, what do you do with the power?

[Arguing against isolationism:] This country is not looking for prestige. It has all it can use. It is not looking for power. It has, likewise, all that it knows how to use .... [But] are we willing to live behind a Maginot Line or a Great Wall of China here on the North American continent, and trade and travel in the rest of the world only as permitted by a stronger power than we are?

How much do we really need for the defense of the United States of America? Only the defense to defend its shores? Well I suppose that the maximum for the defense of our shores is one billion dollars. So the rest of our defense budget relates to what we regard as our responsibilities as a world power.

America’s military bases around the world are centers of stability in unstable regions.

More and more countries, mostly all countries, do not want large American forces on their soil. That’s a reality. We can live in the denial of that, but we are also living in the reality of that.

America must always lead on the world stage.

If the United States disengages from many issues confronting the international community it will be replaced.

China has a more assertive, proactive foreign policy as its interests are growing around the world.

Why, a quarter of a century after the Cold War, do we still have 28,000 troops in Korea?

Of course, isolationism will not keep America isolated.

Since taking office, President Obama has pursued a policy that focused more American resources and engagement in the Asia-Pacific, a region that will increasingly define opportunity and security in the 21st century.

America's armed forces are an essential background to much of what the U.S. accomplishes internationally.

The United States has been essentially engaged in an ongoing war that most people date from 2001. That war has taken us to Afghanistan, to Iraq, in a lesser way to other countries - Libya, Somalia, Yemen.

Donald Trump foreign policy speech got good reviews, and it says we're going to defeat the people who are direct threats to us, but we're going to be a lot more cautious about getting involved in long-term, Wilsonian adventures.

I would have troops where they’re wanted, in our bases in Kuwait. I would have a contingency in case of an international terrorist attack. Our involvement in Iraq has led us to fail to focus on the true threat, al-Qaeda in Afghanistan... It was a mistake.

It's fair to say average Americans think that the average Afghan doesn't want American troops in their country.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe-straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment toward us.

The fact that our largest presence in the world is our massive military is going to dictate how we engage with the world.

The only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that.