Henry Cabot Lodge Quotes

First, we could have defied both of them and could have gone to war against both of these nations for this violation of international law and interference with our neutral rights.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

In these days of intimate relations, of economic stress and of intense desire to protect national interests and advance national opportunity, the treatment of questions which, from a legal standpoint, are domestic, often seriously affects international relations. The principle, each nation for itself to the full extent of its powers, is the principle of war, not of peace.

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of.

Countries that intervene militarily rarely do so out of pure altruism.

There are a lot of things that have to be considered in National. The military aspect of it is only one of them. I'm confident that President Bush will have all of those things laid out for him before he makes the decision.

War is but an instrument of international policy.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

Americans must not be given the impression that they have a duty to go to war against every evil leader in the world and against every transgression of the international order.

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute..

We've never declared war on anybody. We [Iran] defended ourselves against wars that were imposed on us. We have no desire to engage in confrontation with anybody.

Germany will never break the peace of its own accord.

If, on our own account, we do not intend to wage war, we are much less willing to do so for interests which do not concern Germany and are alien to it.

Many Europeans are concerned that stronger sanctions are a slippery slope toward war unless the U.S. is at the table.

Your message is stupid. Iraq is not afraid of you or anyone else when it has a right to claim. What you warned about is not on Iraq's agenda. Iraq is vital and powerful. It is not an opportunistic country. Your administration has not learned from the past.

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

Taking a principled and consistent stance over Iraq has attracted much criticism from our detractors and opponents.

We had, after all, no other recourse to protect ourselves, no other document, let's say, than the Monroe Doctrine. So that could be cited as a cause for intervention if and when it might become necessary.

So we are disappointed that some of our closest allies, including Canada, have not agreed with us on the urgent need for this military action against Iraq.

It kind of scares me, the notion that we're going to be injecting ourselves into other countries' affairs when they're not posing a threat to our security. I wouldn't be telling Israel what to do.

If there is one lesson for U.S. foreign policy from the past 10 years, it is surely that military intervention can seem simple but is in fact a complex affair with the potential for unintended consequences.

So while I will never minimize the costs involved in military action, I am convinced that a failure to act in Libya would have carried a far greater price for America.

Moreover, if the territorial state is to continue as the last word in the development of society, then war is inevitable.

Foreign policy is about choosing from nasty options.