Ivo Daalder Quotes

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

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

Isolationism is over.

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.

Unfortunately, the real focus in this country has not been on the rest of the world. It's been on our own issues and our own problems. Fair enough. But it means that our simple hopes that everything will just work out abroad aren't really coming to pass.

If Australia wants an effective United Nations, we have to be comprehensively, not marginally, engaged.

In critical ways, Obama has reversed not just Bush policy but every president's approach to the world since the Second World War, save for that of his soulmate Jimmy Carter.

We intend to continue our interest in the affairs of Europe and of the world.

The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.

Look, I think the notion that there's a dogma or doctrine of foreign policy that gives you a textbook recipe for how to react to all situations is really nonsense.

Its easy for a country to talk about global affairs but unless you can do something about it, you are not a player.

No country can dictate its laws to the world.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

The diplomatic relations upon which our present system of international comity is based are being encountered by new forces and combinations which are fast rendering them impotent and antiquated

I think there is a failure in foreign policy. And you have to acknowledge that under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton was the architect of that foreign policy. Whether it was malevolent or not, I don't know.

I think that America's recovery of a global strategic view is an absolutely essential element of our foreign policy.

Isolationism is not leadership.

I do believe American leadership in the world matters, that we can't just disengage from the world.

Americans in general, I think, don't understand the weight and gravity of foreign policy and how to engage the world at large.

One of the things you learn in government is there's a long tail to American decision-making when it comes to foreign policy. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran deal, pulling out of Paris, not speaking up for democratic values - the world doesn't end the next day.

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.

In the United States, there is a broadly shared view that the U.N. is one of many potential instruments to advance U.S. issues, and we have to decide whether a particular issue is best done through the U.N. or best done through some other mechanism.

It's not just Iraq - it's the Atlantic partnership which is at stake.

Obama's foreign policy is strangely self-centered, focused on himself and the United States rather than on the conduct and needs of the nations the United States allies with, engages with, or must confront.

No Western government has ever played the long-term in terms of foreign policy.