American Diplomacy Quotes

The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves.

American diplomacy is easy on the brain but hard on the feet.

Diplomacy has more to do with (credible) threats than with sweet reason. And threats from America are a lot more credible, nowadays.

Never for a moment, have the responsible and instructed statesmen in charge of the foreign affairs of the United States failed to consider themselves bound to insist upon this policy .... Almost every President and Secretary of State has re-stated the doctrine with vigor and emphasis in the discussion of the diplomatic affairs of his day.

We always have hoped that American diplomacy deploys itself in dialogue and persuasion rather than by ultimatums. That is the path we want in international relations.

The United States, after having risen to heights of courage and idealism in its entry and prosecution of the war, has gone to the other extreme in the making of peace. For taking this course history will probably be even less sparing of us than our present-day critics.

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

Believe it or not, entertainment is part of our American diplomacy, it is part of what makes us exceptional, part of what makes us such a world power. Hundreds of millions of people may never set foot in the United States, but thanks to you, they've experienced a small part of what makes our country special. They've learned something about our values. We have shaped a world culture through you...in a way that has made the world better.

I'm not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it's a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories.

No one places any trust in the words of the Americans.

The rest of the world sees America as weak.

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

George Kennan is another extreme case. He was the American consul in Berlin until the war between Germany and the United States broke out in December 1941. And until then he was writing pretty supportive statements back stressing that we shouldn't be so hard on the Nazis if they were doing something we didn't agree with - basically repeating the idea that they were people we could do business with.

I think that America is a part of the world, that we want to cooperate with the world. We are not the dominant power in the world, that everyone falls in behind us. But we want to reach out and cooperate.

I think the Egyptian people need to restore confidence that Americans, the U.S., means what they say when they talk about democracy, rule of law.

There are no people in the world who are so slow to develop hostile feelings against a foreign country as the Americans, and no people who, once estranged, are more difficult to win back.

We've had eight years of passivity with Barack Obama where whatever anybody around the world wanted to do to America, we just huffed and puffed and did nothing. And with Donald Trump, you want to do something to America, there's gonna be a price. And if you offend our sensibilities - we're not gonna put up with it. And he says and does what he does.

We need an effective American diplomacy that will marshall the resources of nations in the Asian Pacific Rim to put pressure on North Korea, on Kim Jong-un, to abandon his nuclear ambitions. It has to remain the policy of the United States of America, the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, plain and simple.

It is difficult for an American of today to realize that less than twenty-five years ago the United States was not taken seriously as a world power.

From the start of his administration, President Barack Obama had tried to lower tensions with Russia and refocus American attention on a rising China; he had made clear he wanted no part in the problems of the post-Soviet periphery.

The heartfelt sympathy and friendship offered to America after the 9/11 attacks, even from formerly antagonistic regimes, has been largely dissipated; increasingly unilateral and domineering policies have brought international trust in our country to its lowest level in memory.

As a journalist, I try to avoid talking to American diplomats, because I am stunned again and again by just how little grasp they have of what people are really feeling in a country. Especially CIA guys. Maybe they're just really good at playing stupid, but I don't think so.