JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER

You want to win the wars you fight. That’s why you have to pick your wars carefully.

… international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

Lying in issues of foreign policy facilitates lying on a broader scale; it creates an atmosphere where people think it’s routine to try and deceive the American people, that it’s OK to deceive the American people

The public, by and large, trusts its leaders not only to tell the truth, but to get the job done. When they don’t get the job done, they get punished, and when they don’t get the job done and it comes out that they lied, they’re in really serious trouble. This is what happened to [Lyndon] Johnson and it’s what happened to [George W,] Bush. If you’re going to tell a lie, make sure the policy works out.

There’s no question that once a president lies, people are then quite jaded in how they look at that president. But that quickly wears off. Trust reasserts itself. And then people are vulnerable all over again.

There is a huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

The United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia.

The public, by and large, trusts its leaders not only to tell the truth, but to get the job done. When they don’t get the job done, they get punished, and when they don’t get the job done and it comes out that they lied, they’re in really serious trouble. This is what happened to [Lyndon] Johnson and it’s what happened to [George W,] Bush. If you’re going to tell a lie, make sure the policy works out.

Lying in issues of foreign policy facilitates lying on a broader scale; it creates an atmosphere where people think it’s routine to try and deceive the American people, that it’s OK to deceive the American people

There’s no question that once a president lies, people are then quite jaded in how they look at that president. But that quickly wears off. Trust reasserts itself. And then people are vulnerable all over again.

You want to win the wars you fight. That’s why you have to pick your wars carefully.

… international politics has always been a ruthless and dangerous business, and it is likely to remain that way.

There is a huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

The United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia.