Richard N. Haass Quotes

Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.

I don't believe in ideology in international relations.

... American temptation to beleive that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

In international relations, you don't base your work on hope.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

… realpolitik

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

One doesn't set aside reality in pursuing our interests abroad.

[Sanctions] make us feel like a player in foreign policy where our powers tend to be more limited …. We’re less patient with diplomacy.

When it comes to foreign policy, the American people will ultimately reward not the party with the most ambitious vision but the party with the most sober and realistic one.

President William Clinton is a man who thinks international affairs means dating a girl from out of town.

No American president will ever pay a political price for choosing national security over world 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.

My dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than these two bozos.

People think that it only takes an American decision to solve this or that problem [in foreign affairs].

People are always asking me in interviews, 'What do you think of foreign affairs?' I just say, 'I've had a few.'

I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism.

Bush doesn't present himself as a realpolitik politician.

I'm a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy.

I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy.

We can not play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

I would never play any role in anything that involves the United Nations for obvious reasons.

No nation has friends only interests.

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.