Chuck Hagel Quotes

The policy of freedom for Eastern Europe was for domestic purposes only for an America that did not want to face its limited power in the world.

Europe is perhaps the first example in history of a non-dominant world power.

The overall or political objective is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire.

The uniqueness of the United States in human history is the United States is the first global power in human history which emerged far away from Africa or Asia, which is the main land of human history.

The Soviet Union did not achieve victory over the West, so was my information inadequate to help them to victory, or did it play no particular role in their failure to achieve victory?

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.

Geopolitical drama lessened but did not die after the Cold War; in 2008, the specter of thousands of seeming automatons banging drums at the opening of the Beijing Games frightened and enthralled the world, reminding us that China was a nation on the rise, a competitor for global dominance.

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age, was bearing the signs of what is now very visible: the emergence of a multipolar world.

If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down.

While the West has enjoyed overwhelming global power, its moral preachings have been legitimised, and in effect enforced, by that power. But as that power begins to ebb, then the morality of its actions will be the subject of growing scrutiny and challenge.

With the rise of America, the global balance of power shifted away from the old European powers.

The United States is now, as the defunct Soviet Union was decades ago, the subversive agent of a world revolution.

Today the Soviet Union is a friend and an ally. We need this friendship. However, no one can know what will happen tomorrow. Just like the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, it may tear itself apart or shrink in size. Those peoples that it holds so tightly in its grip may one day slip away. The world may see a new balance of power.

America has been dominant in the last 200 years, China has been dominant in 1800 of the last 2000 years.

Russia and China completely disagree with the international order that was established after World War II, and they're trying to take it apart right before our eyes.

North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.

Most of the conversation about how geopolitics is changing in the 21st century focuses on the shift from west to east and on how we're moving from the bipolar power equation of the Cold War to a new bipolar relationship, that of the U.S. and China, that determines the mood music for everyone else.

The Soviet Union's termination, which brought to an end the bipolar world, ushered in an era of U.S. hegemony. Hegemony, however, should not be confused with omnipotence. Hegemony is not omnipotence but is certainly preponderance.

You know, we did a good job in containing the Soviet Union, but we made a lot of mistakes, we supported really nasty guys, we did some things that we are not particularly proud of, from Latin America to Southeast Asia, but we did have a kind of overarching framework about what we were trying to do that did lead to the defeat of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Communism. That was our objective. We achieved it.

For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, aren't we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?

India is a regional power. It does not need anything to establish it.

After the Berlin Wall came down and Communism was on the run, I looked around and wondered what the next threat to the United States would be.

It is people who are the objects of globalization and at the same time its subjects. What also follows logically from this is that globalization is not a law of nature, but rather a process set in train by people.

The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010.