Richard N. Haass Quotes

Making the case for sustained U. S. [world] leadership is not always easy. Unilateralism or isolationism often make for better sound bites.

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.

America remains the indispensable nation. There are times when America, and only America, can make a difference between war and peace, between freedom and repression.

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

Nixon was an awful president in many ways, including in some of his foreign-policy choices. But he left no doubt that foreign policy and America's leadership in the world outside its borders was of paramount importance to him.

Roosevelt was the one who had the vision to change our policy from isolationism to world leadership. That was a terrific revolution. Our country's never been the same since.

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.

Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. He believes America's role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe a strong America must - and will - lead the future.

This is the American moment in world history and one for which we shall ever be judged.

Multilateralism is regarded as somehow un-American, a trick by which foreigners seek to sap the strength and authority of the United States.

Under the George W. Bush Administration…, the United States was generally seen as having the capacity and resolve, to pursue its own agenda in complete disregard of other states’ preferences.

America must always lead on the world stage.

U. S. [world] leadership has endured, in part because American principles are embedded in the international economic framework.

The United States has such an opportunity to be a leader in the world, and that opportunity has been frittered away.

A Trump presidency - neutral between dictatorships and democracies, opposed to free trade, skeptical of traditional U.S. defense alliances, hostile to immigration - would mark the collapse of the entire architecture of the U.S.-led post-World War II global order.

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.

America has been a force for much good in the world. But we should learn from the mistakes of an over-expansionist foreign policy and return to the restraint that George Washington and John Quincy Adams advocated.

Today, America has become one of the most powerful forces for good on earth. We must keep it so.

After flirting with neoisolationism, the U.S. is now deciding it wants to run the world.

Interventionism is inextricable from the American idea. If the United States retreats into isolationism, it ceases to be itself ? a nation dedicated, however much it falls short, to a universalist ideal of freedom.

Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United State the role of promoting freedom in the world.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

American power worldwide is at its historic zenith.

There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.