Josef Joffe Quotes

The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

American presidents always avoid shaking hands with brutal dictators, except when it's advantageous to do so.

I told him that my own opinion was that the time now and the method now to deal with Russia was to keep our mouths shut and let our actions speak for words.

No nation has friends only interests.

Someone has said that nations have interests, they don't have friends, and you see that over and over in U.S. policy.

President Obama, like every other leader on Earth, is still going to be looking out for national and economic interests. States don't cease to be states overnight just because they get a great visionary as their new president.

It's almost as if Putin is brilliant, really - he's outfoxing Obama all the time.

… realpolitik

I could have been very popular if I had launched a military attack on Iran but I chose patience.

A state worthy of the name has no friends—only interests. [This is a generalized expression of British Prime Minister John Henry Temple's statement a century earlier.

If we find what we need [arms] among friendly nations and if they give us what we ask, they do so for money. We are not getting anything for free. So, if things become complicated with a certain country we will find other countries, regardless of whether they are Eastern or Western.

nations that talk democracy make dirty little secret deals with strategic allies who have no use for democratic values

Foreign policy is not philanthropy.

The best war is the one that doesn’t have to be fought, and the best military is the one capable and versatile enough to deter the next war in the first place.

We had to avoid wounding Austria too severely; we had to avoid leaving behind in her any unnecessary bitterness of feeling or desire for revenge; we ought rather to reserve the possibility of becoming friends again with our adversary of the moment, and in any case to regard the Austrian state as a piece on the European chessboard and the renewal of friendly relations as a move open to us. If Austria were severely injured, she would become the ally of France and of every other opponent of ours; she would even sacrifice her anti-Russian interests for the sake of revenge on Prussia.

Whoso desireth to govern well and securely, it behoveth him to have a vigilant eye to the proceedings of great princes, and to consider seriously of their designs.

More and more countries, mostly all countries, do not want large American forces on their soil. That’s a reality. We can live in the denial of that, but we are also living in the reality of that.

It’s not in our interest to drive the Russians into a beleaguered attitude where they have to prove what they can do.

… international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

Moscow believes that using force constitutes strategic defense.

We need to quit appeasing our adversaries, and we need to stand with our allies.

The premise of Russian foreign policy to the West is that the rule of law is one big joke; the practice of Russian foreign policy is to find prominent people in the West who agree.

Indeed, in foreign policymaking, inconsistency is often a virtue. I speak not of principles but of policy.

A supreme pragmatist, Kissinger was never interested in the art of the impossible - and nor, as a biographer, am I. That is why, having initially been invited to write his entire official biography, I eventually decided to devote myself to writing just one year in his life: 1973.