Balkans Quotes

This fight has nothing to do with soldierly gallantry or principles of the Geneva Convention. If the fight against the partisans in the East, as well as in the Balkans, is not waged with the most brutal means, we will shortly reach the point where the available forces are insufficient to control the area. It is therefore not only justified, but it is the duty of the troops to use all means without restriction, even against women and children, so long as it ensures success.

This is nothing less than a national tragedy…. It is time to consider these refugees arriving from Poland and elsewhere purely on their merits as migrants and in an unsentimental light. In the last 50 years these people have swarmed all over Europe, coming principally from Armenia, Russia and the Balkans. We should remember that they are European neither by race, standards, nor culture. They are, in fact, an Eastern people. In 2000 years no one but Britain has been successfully able to absorb them, and for the most part they owe loyalty and allegiance to none.

Italy, which is inhabited only by a single race speaking the same language and professing the same religion, experiences so many difficulties in its unification. For the moment all it has achieved is anarchy and disorder. Judge what would happen in Turkey if free scope were given to all the different national aspirations …. It would need a century and torrents of blood to establish even a fairly stable state of affairs.

Many people would rather have fine words and false hopes than the truth which is unacceptable.

There has been enough blood in the Balkans. Serbia is offering its hand. Let us turn to the future and not deal with the past.

Diplomacy has been exhausted .. Continued instability in the Balkans threatens important U.S. national interests,.

It was Jacques Chirac and Schroeder both, who pushed us into a conflict to remove Milosevic.

There’s no reason to respect anyone’s word in that part of the world. The only thing they respect is force and the threat of force.

A strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment.

Through democracy we shall have peace [in the Balkans].

Live and let live has never been a Balkan rule…. Following five centuries of subjugation the Balkan peoples have had only half a century of freedom for experiment in nationhood,--a half-century, too, which has been distracted by the plots and counter-plots of foreign statesmen.

I love the combination of the words 'spies' and 'Balkans.' It's like meat and potatoes.

Historically, the Balkans have been an incubator of war.

If NATO troops will come with ground forces, I will be the first volunteer in the Yugoslav army to defend my country, my family, my children.

I distrust all multiculturalism, liberal or conservative. The Balkans amply demonstrate the perils of Balkanization.

It is clear that several countries, in the Balkans for example, need to be considered countries of safe origin. But others like, in my opinion, Eritrea, undoubtedly need to be considered a country of origin with a valid claim to asylum. And with a third group of states, like Nigeria for example, each individual case needs to be evaluated. Then there are also very controversial cases like Afghanistan. In any case, united European action is needed. This argument for Europeanization may sound utopian, but there is no alternative.

The virus is moving quite substantially into new locations. My attention is pretty much equally divided between Europe, the southern Balkans and Black Sea area, Africa and south Asia.

Some places seem to have a civil war habit.

They have been waiting for eight years to tell me that I am a war criminal and now they do it.

Let us turn to the future and not deal with the past.

This should be represented to the Austrian government, and you should impress upon how necessary it is that their decision to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina should be reconsidered.

No one will be harmed. You have nothing to fear. You will all be evacuated.

We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment.... In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies.

If this war is not fought with the greatest brutality against the bands both in the East and in the Balkans then in the foreseeable future the strength at our disposal will not be sufficient to be able to master this plague.

Take a look at the bombing of Serbia in 1999. The US was quite open about the reasons for the bombing. A main reason was to preserve stability and credibility. Serbia was interfering with stability, meaning that it was the one part of the Balkans that was not integrated into the Western-dominated (mostly US-dominated) system.