David Ignatius Quotes

Israel and the United States have been locked in a mutually necessary and beneficial intelligence-sharing relationship for more than 60 years.

We would like to have friendly regimes with enough broad participation of their populations to maintain long-term stability, so that we would have not only access to the region's wealth, but we would be able to ensure the security of our good friend Israel.

I wasn't privy to all of the intelligence that was coming in about Guatemala, but I did see the traffic that was coming in from Guatemala City, because it was very relevant to me, and of course I exchanged what I had with the chief of station in Guatemala City.

The security [of European national is dependent on the effective intelligence of their neighbors.

What did U.S. officials have to lose by saying that bin Laden was being protected by the Pakistanis, if it were true?

We've got to do everything we can to vacuum up intelligence from Europe, from the Middle East. That means we've got to work more closely with our allies, and that's something that Donald [Trump] has been very dismissive of.

I believe that Israel is one of our most important friends in the world.

Japan does not consider itself an ally or partner of the United States but rather a nation which for the time being is being forced by circumstances to cooperate with the United States ...

Normalization of relations with the United States should not be a reward for good behavior .... It should depend on America's interests.

When you have an American Presidential election, everyone [in NATO] "goes to tea" for a while.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

The United States may have to abandon its policy of avoiding entangling alliances.

From the beginning [of the Cold War] our objective was not to build an empire of satellites, but of nations and regions so that they could become partners.

The relations of our two countries rest on traditional bases, quite other than those with other nations, and are of commanding influence on the whole of the world!

America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America…. Pakistan is the pivot of the world, the frontier upon which the future of the world revolves

America’s military defense capability owes more to the Israeli intelligence input than it does to any other single source of intelligence… it’s value is worth more than five CIAs

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.

Even allies don’t share every single interest that you have. That’s a law of nature in the international system. They will tell you most of what you need to know but there may be some things that they don’t tell you that you need to know in order to formulate your policy as wisely as you can.

Nothing guides Russian policy so much as a desire for friendship with the United States.

CIA relies on a partner's focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA's resources, technology, and global view.

A chief of station is the head of all intelligence operations in any given country.

Frankly, our adversaries are emboldened by the lack of American leadership in the world, and our friends and our allies, they have lost trust in us.

No one would argue that it's in the United States' interest to have independent knowledge of the plans and intentions of foreign countries. But we need to think about where to draw the line on these kind of operations so we're not always attacking our allies, the people we trust, the people we need to rely on, and to have them in turn rely on us.

Information-sharing is elementary to good intelligence work.

The United States is our best friend, and our relations are excellent. Our relations will be strengthened even more, despite our differences in views.