Steve Breen Quotes

I think George H.W. Bush was confronted with some huge challenges - the invasion of Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union - that he managed with great aplomb.

And the big question for the West, of course, and to the Europeans is, what other countries, which were formerly part of the Soviet bloc, should be incorporated into western institutions?

The world has fundamentally changed. It fundamentally changed when the Berlin Wall came down and the 'evil empire' ceased to exist. We are engaged around the world whether we like it or not.

Our real battlefield today is Asia and our real battle is the one between democracy and communism.... We have to prove to the world and particularly to downtrodden areas of the world which are the natural prey to the principles of communist economics that democracy really brings about happier and better conditions for the people as a whole.

I do not believe that Communism will overwhelm the free world.

The United States now has as its goal much more than simply containing Soviet expansionism. We seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the communlty of nations.... Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order.

The Cold War is Over

I don't put any dates on these things. I don't say what is going to happen in one year, five years, ten years, but I am confident that the trend toward freedom in the Communist world is a basic truth.

At the present moment in world history, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life.

What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?

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.

I think George H. W. Bush, who I had lots of disagreements with, remarkably managed the end of the Cold War in a way that history will look back at and say, 'Wow.'

All Americans and freedom-loving people around the world owe President Reagan our deepest gratitude for his strong, principled leadership that ended the Cold War and brought freedom to millions of people.

I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too.

Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.

With his trademark courage and conviction, President Reagan led us out of the Cold War, spreading his vision of freedom, resulting in the release of millions of people from the yoke of communism.

There are people on staff who have made that point, that the upside to a second Bush term is that it makes 'American Dad' work better. To me, the price is too high. I would gladly give up the comedy to have a President Kerry. But you work with what you have.

I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed. That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices.

Wojtyla was a warrior, who did more to end the Soviet Union than even America.

I distinctly remember the vivacious optimism that inundated the United States when the Soviet Union imploded in the early 1990s. This was not glee generated by the doom of an implacable enemy, but thrill germinated by the real possibilities that the future held for freedom.

The Soviet Union represents a threat in terms of might. It is a joke in terms of its economy and what it has to offer the Third World - a laughingstock to countries that are looking for an economic-development model.

When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers - and new threats.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever.