Geopolitical Realignment Quotes

I'm no apologist for Russia or the Assad regime, but actually, this has been staring us in the face for a number of years now, and I think it's time to turn a page and accept reality. Our strategy - if that is the right word - failed miserably, and Russia's with Iran has been successful.

I will not hide from you my intention to unite Holland with France, both to complete my territory and as the deadliest blow I can inflict on England.

Most of the conversation about how geopolitics is changing in the 21st century focuses on the shift from west to east and on how we're moving from the bipolar power equation of the Cold War to a new bipolar relationship, that of the U.S. and China, that determines the mood music for everyone else.

Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.

The post-Cold War order in Europe is finished, with Vladimir Putin its executioner. Russia's invasion of Georgia only marked its passing. Russia has emerged as a born-again 19th-century power determined to challenge the intellectual, moral and institutional foundations of the order.

Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role. The attempt to playa separate power rolethat is, a role apart from Europe, based on a special relationship with the United States, on being the head of the Commonwealthis about to be played out. Her Majesty's Government is now attempting, wisely in my opinion, to re-enter Europe.

During the Cold War, the United States took its friends where it found them. If they were willing to cast their lot with us, from the Shah to Gen. Pinochet, we welcomed them. Democratic dissidents like Jawaharlal Nehru in India and Olof Palme in Sweden got the back of our hand.

A Russia that gradually begins to gravitate toward the West will also be a Russia that ceases to disrupt the international system.

The Philippines must ensure that it adopts, as much as possible, an equi-balancing strategy towards both China and America. To push back against Chinese adventurism by deepening Philippine dependence on another power runs counter to the very logic of protecting its national sovereignty.

So my judgment is that Syria will move; Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West and economic opportunity that comes with it and the participation that comes with it.

Even people who aren't engaged on the actual battlefield - the effects of war reach out like tentacles into families, into economies, into the changing geography, into politics. It shakes up everything.

The BRIC countries - Brazil, India, China, Turkey, South Africa, Indonesia even, and Russia - are now new actors. Over the last eight years, China multiplied by seven its economic presence and penetration in the Middle East. And if this happens on economic terms and there is a shift towards the East, the relationship between these countries and Israel is completely different from the United States. And it means that the challenges are going to be different, because China is not supporting Israel the way the U.S. are supporting Israel.

Аt the end of the day, unless Iran and Russia want to have a rump Allawite state and a rump Sunni state, and a Kurdish state, then they're going to have to come to the table and bring about an end to this regime.

It looks like the so-called "winners" of the Cold War are determined to have it all, and reshape the world into a place that could better serve their interests alone.

A U.S. war with Iran could end with a Kurdish enclave in Iran's northwest tied to Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran's Azeri north drifting toward Azerbaijan, and a Balochi enclave in the south linked to Pakistan's largest province, Balochistan, leaving Iran only Persia.

America is interested in re-arranging the region as it sees fit.

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.

The world has always been a dangerous place. Now it is dangerous in a different way, because the world order that we've known since the end of the Cold War has been radically transformed. All of the institutions that preserved peace and promoted global trade will be weaker - NATO, the EU, NAFTA - and US relationships with other countries will change, too.

Politics abhors a vacuum, and Asian countries will gravitate towards China if U.S. influence is perceived as declining.

The wars in Georgia and Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea have represented, in part, Russia's answer to its perceived exclusion from the post-Cold War European Security Order.

While President Putin is busy redrawing the map of Europe, President Obama is busy filling out his brackets.

Russia is now a lonely fraction of what the old Warsaw pact was. It not only has lost its old Eastern European allies; those allies are now arrayed on the other side, as members of NATO

Following the end of the Cold War, there was much discussion concerning the point of NATO. In the event, it was reinvented as a means of reducing Russia's reach on its western frontiers and seeking to isolate it. Its former East European client states were admitted to NATO, as were the Baltic states.

A split between the U.S. and its traditional allies, if it becomes a permanent feature of the new global order, would lead to deeper fragmentation among the world's market-oriented democracies. That will surely shift the long-term balance of power in China's favor, as it moves steadily toward becoming the world's largest economy.

The Middle East that will emerge from the crucible of the Iraq war may not be more democratic, but it will definitely be more Shiite.