Max Boot Quotes

Power alone is respected and ... in order to gain peace, the United States has no alternative but to wield it

I do not believe that diplomacy equals weakness…. If you are going to use force you better make sure that it is effective.

Negotiation is not a solution and will not solve anything. Those who think of negotiation when they are threatened only reveal their weakness and incapability. That is a bad move.

The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end.

Peace is purchased from strength. It's not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats.

You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done

Diplomacy without arms is music without instruments.

There’s no reason to respect anyone’s word in that part of the world. The only thing they respect is force and the threat of force.

International negotiation has a nasty tendency to remind its practitioners that the laws of gravity affect them, too, and that international life is a two-way street in which one may have to give in order to get.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

Is a military solution the only way to stop nations from doing bad things?

Soft power … cannot accomplish much in the absence of a willingness to use hard power.

There is a middle ground between sitting on our hands and sending in the marines.

The way that you get your diplomats listened to in an imperfect world is you make certain you back them up with hard power. The reason I say that is, as much as I’d like to live in a world where people who are out to do others harm would be willing to listen to rational thought, not everyone is.

I'm a mediator by training and inclination.

To attempt to superimpose its views through the exercise of force, is seldom the part of intelligence; it is frequently the part of ignorance.

Sometimes you need conflict in order to come up with a solution. Through weakness, oftentimes, you can't make the right sort of settlement, so I'm aggressive, but I also get things done, and in the end, everybody likes me.

Negotiating with the Taliban must be done from a position of strength. Negotiating from a position of weakness would be a disaster.

War is the ultimate tool of politics.

Reasonable, even intelligent people can, and frequently do, disagree on how best to achieve peace in the Middle East, but, peace must be the goal of our foreign policy tools, whether they be by the stick or by the carrot.

You can't go to a negotiating table pointing a gun, but you've got to keep it over your shoulder.

Diplomacy and force are two sides of the same coin.

Surely diplomacy is needed when there is conflict, not when there is harmony.

You can't get a diplomatic solution unless behind that, is the threat of force.

We have to develop preventive diplomacy.