Autocratic Regimes Quotes

Look, I don't think President Obama would have bowed to the ruler of Saudi Arabia if he didn't have oil to the degree that the Saudis do. I think they and other producing states, almost all of whom, except Norway and Canada, are dictatorships or autocratic systems, have thrown their weight around because of oil.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.

In two years, there were 22 military coups d'etat, essentially in Africa and the third world. The coup d'etat of Algiers, in 1965, is what opened the path.

Attempting to achieve U. S. strategic ends through partnerships with Arab autocracies yields mixed results, at best, in the short term and is cancerous in the longer run….Middle Eastern dictators are neither moderates nor good allies.

In many emerging democracies, democracy and stability are mutually incompatible.

The United State can no longer allow its Arab allies to ward off democratic reform.

The color revolution virus affects only weak countries. Belarus does not have any breeding ground for this.

In Asia, democracy has been less advanced than elsewhere. And many of these countries haven't done too badly.

I don't hold America responsible for the largely oppressive governments in the 22 Arab countries. There are repressive Arab governments that are our allies and there are those that are our nominal enemies. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference to what extent we're involved in propping up those governments.

A lot of Arabs have proven to themselves that there is an alternative to Bin Laden-ism if they want to do away with the corrupt, autocratic regimes in their countries.

America has had to deal with eccentric dictators in the past: Idi Amin, Muammar Qaddafi, Ming the Merciless... but now the security of the world is threatened by Kim Jong-il, a nerdy, pompadoured, platform shoe-wearer who looks like something you'd put on the end of your child's pencil.

After more than two decades of traveling with American presidents and chief diplomats - on visits to places that have included some of the world's most repressive nations - I am used to watching leaders disappear behind closed doors.

The modernizing elite in the technologically and economically poor nations responded to colonialism by seizing the power of the state and using it to change their societies, hoping to achieve justice at home and economic and cultural parity abroad. The politics of changing traditional social structures and processes by using state power did not always result in social progress and economic development, but it did lead to state supremacy and autocracy. In the more extreme cases autocratic regimes were transformed to either forward-looking or reactionary totalitarianism-of socialist-Marxist, fascist, or religious-fundamentalist types. These systems clearly failed or are failing. But at the time they were adopted, to many they represented hope and a promise of economic change, distributive justice, and a better future.

When foreign affairs were ruled by autocracies or oligarchies the danger of war was in sinister purpose. When foreign affairs are ruled by democracies the danger of war will be in mistaken beliefs.

In most of the countries in the Muslim world today, most of them are autocratic regimes that are unpopular if not detested by their people. They need a scapegoat and for a long time the imperialist served that purpose.

Foreign aid does not go to foreign people. Foreign aid goes to foreign despots and dictators.

The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.

Few, if any, political analysts predicted the Arab Spring. The raw energy of millions of protestors in the streets of Tunis and Cairo came as a surprise to many who believed that Arabs were essentially reconciled to their governments and non-democratic rule.

You can understand Tunisia revolution as a failure to censor the internet. And Libya had that failure too. It's very difficult for governments that are autocratic and don't have broad popular support to be in power when a lot of people have these devices. That was what Arab Spring was about, that people could express this and lead to revolution.

Iraq is not the only nation in the world to possess weapons of mass destruction, but it is the only nation with a leader who has used them against his own people.

We need autocracies and failing democracies alike to understand that they cannot scapegoat LGBT citizens to distract from their own shortcomings.

If we look at history, we will see that regimes which persecute [their people] do not remain standing.

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.