Stansfield Turner Quotes

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

We do not worry about how a sovereign country keeps its relations with others.

What we need now is a Treaty of the World not a Treaty of Rome.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

If governments do not want to work with the U.N. and the international organizations, there is a limit to what you can do. And there is also a limit to patience.

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

The United States does not feel any need to consult with anybody … except when it suits them.

American foreign policy must uphold the sanctity of international treaties. That is the cornerstone on which all relations between nations must rest.

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

We’re not the world’s policeman. Nor the world’s judge, jury and executioner.

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

Americans must step back and realize that an effective foreign policy is very difficult to devise, and we must present a united front to make it work.

I can't stress enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation's affairs.

American national security and American economic interests, of course - every president, every secretary of state - that is the primary goal. As you are in this job and in the work, you begin to see, though, that in the long run, both American economic interests and American national security are better served when there are other decent countries in the world who are both your allies and even when your adversaries are acting more decently.

I think this country and the world would be far better off if the US is not an outlaw state.

Today, it is imperative to end this hysteria, to refute the rhetoric of the Cold War and to accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

I spend every day up at the United Nations where I have to interact with 192 other countries. I know how well the United States is viewed.

The U.N. is much more than the case of Iraq.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

Now, the United Nations is an organization that I believe was founded with good intentions. As a matter of fact, a prominent Tennessean named Cordell Hull was very involved with it.

We shouldn't discuss the world of tomorrow in terms of becoming a balance to the United States. The real issue is whether the United States will define herself as part of the U.N. system-or not.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

Legislation that would withhold funding for the United Nations is fundamentally flawed in concept and practice, sets us back, is self-defeating, and doesn't work.