Foreign Policy Shift Quotes

Many Republicans who traditionally were for a positive role in the world, anti-Russian, now they want to defend their party and leader, and they don't care about real arguments. The paradox is the Democrats were so timid in criticising Vladimir Putin. Barack Obama appeased him and now they are criticising Putin's interference in American democracy. It is a strange reversal of the roles.

The scary thing is a dramatic erosion of American position in the world - its economic, military position, as well as America's influence. Obama is not the man at the wheel desperately trying to conserve American power, influence and wealth. For ideological reasons, he wants the slipping to continue. He's actually the architect of it.

The hour of the liberal interventionists like Hillary Clinton in Libya, like the neocons' hour of power in the GOP, is over.

So you're quite right that when... as the Cold War grew and expanded out of Europe, we ourselves had to take refuge behind the shield of the Monroe Doctrine.

If a new president personalizes a rather different concept of America and a different sense of America's mission in the world than has been the case with president George W. Bush, then that almost automatically will help to improve America's global image. But the tangibles involving the war and the economy are not going to be easy to fix.

Visionless status quo policy towards Latin-America, particularly towards Cuba, has turned off a lot of people, and I think it's created an opening.

The Obama administration has been trying out a new policy toward Syria since the day it came to office. The Bush cold shoulder was viewed as a primitive reaction, now to be replaced by sophisticated diplomacy. Outreach would substitute for isolation.

You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy.

George W. Bush is long gone, and with him the idea that 'Israel can do no wrong.'

Donald Trump's United States is not isolationist. He has authorized the use of limited military force against the Syrian government in a manner his predecessor rejected.

[Donald Trump] has shifted - President [Barack] Obama has shifted American policy in a much more critical way in Israel with the settlements than the previous presidents.

I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.

What Trump has announced - that he is going to not obey rules by which we govern our relations with other countries. He's going to reject the treaties that we have had in the past. He is going to go from what is called a multilateral system, where we all work together, to trying to deal country by country and basically throw out what has been achieved over a 60-year period.

For decades, free nations tolerated oppression in the Middle East for the sake of stability. In practice, this approach brought little stability and much oppression, so I have changed this policy.