Daniel W. Drezner Quotes

Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy.

A nation is a superpower not just because of its military strength.

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.

Eurasia is home to most of the world's politically assertive and dynamic states.

Nobody messes with China, nobody messes with the United States, or with Europe, because these are really big entities with a lot of clout and a lot of economic power. They have a place at the table.

The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

Power is the true reserve currency in international affairs.

We must never allow America to become the second strongest nation I the world.

Russia is living proof that hard power is brittle without the other dimensions of great-power status.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

Nations, great nations have limitations. All nations have limitations. Even great powers have limitations.

It is essential in the highest interests, not merely of this country, but of the world, that Britain should at all hazards maintain her place and her prestige amongst the Great Powers of the world. Her potent influence has many a time been in the past, and may yet be in the future, invaluable to the cause of human liberty. It has more than once in the past redeemed Continental nations, who are sometimes too apt to forget that service, from overwhelming disaster and even from national extinction

Very near the heart of all foreign affairs is the relationship between policy and military power.

As long as we can outproduce the world, can control the sea and can strike inland with the atomic bomb, we can assume certain risks otherwise unacceptable in an effort to restore world trade, to restore the balance of power —military power—and to eliminate some of the conditions which breed war.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

Only a United States that is strong and immensely productive can help defend freedom in our world

If we do not have the economic resources to be a leader, it’s going to affect our foreign policy.

There is a rank due to the United States among nations, which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure the peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.

The centuries old Westphalian state system has never resolved the tension between the principle of the sovereign equality of states and the idea that great powers enjoy certain privileges and bear special responsibilities.

In the history of warfare, it has generally been the case that military superiority lies with the wealthiest states and those with the most developed administrations.

The moment it became in the interests of one or the other of the Great Powers to alter the status quo, none of these treaty structures ever stood in the way of such alteration.

The goal of this Nation, I so strongly believe, is to be a preeminent world power. We have to understand what comes with that: The responsibility to be strong.

That is the best Government, which best provides for war.

No nation has friends only interests.

Anyone who has seen the auto factories in Detroit and the oil fields in Texas knows that Japan lacks the national power for a naval race with America.