Thomas Friedman Quotes

The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe. Latin America doesn’t matter…. And … there’s nothing you can do about the Middle East.

The confrontation between America and Europe reveals not so much a rapprochement as a distortion, an unbridgeable rift. There isn't just a gap between us, but a whole chasm of modernity.

Turkey can be a bridge to regimes and actions the United States can't reach. Turkey can talk to people the United States can't talk to.

It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America's foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.

There is an enormous difference between Russia and Western Europe.

Everyone should unconditionally accept that Israel is an indispensable element of the Middle Eastern mosaic.

The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

Germany has traditionally played a very constructive role regarding E.U. ties with Russia and the West as a whole with Russia.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

It is clearly unwise for us to continue the attempt to carry alone, or largely single-handed, the opposition to Soviet expansion. It is urgently necessary for us to restore something of the balance of power in Europe and Asia by strengthening local forces of independence and by getting them to assume part of our burden.

The thing is so done... The Yankees will shout in triumph; but it is they who lose most by our decision. The great danger of the time – a danger which the policy of the European System would have fostered – was a division of the world into European and American, republican and Monarchical; a league of worn-out governments, on the one had, and of youthful and stirring nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. We slip in between; and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have gotten the start of us in vain; and we link once more America to Europe. Six months more – and the mischief would have been done.

The conservation of monarchy in any portion of South America will tend to break the shock of that inevitable divorce by which the New World is about to be divided by the Old... But as to putting it forward, as a project or proposition of ours, that is out of the question. Monarchy in Mexico, and monarchy in Brazil, would cure the evils of universal democracy, and prevent the drawing of the line which I almost dread – America versus Europe. The United States, naturally enough, aim at this division and cherish the democracy which leads to it.

Is Turkey one of the Ayrab countries with which you don't get on very well?

I don’t think America wants democracies in the Middle East. They wouldn’t be nearly as friendly to us

Historians in the future will surely wonder what went so wrong when the United States, for the first time ever, focused its foreign policy on the Islamic world.

In Ankara, your words might weigh more than that of the U.S. administration.

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners … — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.

Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster…

That's the problem with Russia: The world has changed. Europe is not at war, and no one wants to negotiate with us. The world has changed, but Russia prefers to pretend it has not.

The Middle East does not follow Las Vegas rules. Whatever happens in the Middle East affects the rest of the world.

… this whole Near East problem is not just an Arab-Israeli dispute but a problem of the influence of the West as opposed to that of the Soviet. We want no wars, but we do not want a Sovietized world.

Germany has an interest in détente—for general European and national reasons. Here we are in accord not only with our allies … but with almost everyone. Here we join with the nations and governments of the uncommitted world. Here interests we have in common with the Communist-governed states also come to light in spite of some polemics.

There is, however, much to be said for the division of this great area [the Ruhr valley], as at present, rather than its union under a single state which would have, in war and peace, a practical monopoly of iron and steel on the Continent.

The threat to Europe is for us to push Russia into China’s arms.