Mel Martinez Quotes

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

The Government of the United States is not entitled to affirm as a universal proposition, with reference to a number of independent States for whose conduct it assumes no responsibility, that its interests are necessarily concerned in whatever may befall those States simply because they are situated in the Western Hemisphere.

The stakes are very high for us in Haiti. We have many important interests there. Perhaps the most important to me is our interest in the promotion of democracy in this hemisphere.

There is very little hope that the United States or anyone else can do much to stabilize Iraq, Libya, Syria or Egypt. Stabilizing Iran, and bringing it back into the family of nations, is much more possible. That would be a 'win' for both sides.

Hostility toward Iran may not be the silliest of all American foreign policies - that would probably be the continuing trade embargo of Cuba - but it is undoubtedly the most self-defeating.

President Obama has been clear about the future that the United States seeks... when it comes to the Asia-Pacific, the United States is 'all in.'

I don’t think America wants democracies in the Middle East. They wouldn’t be nearly as friendly to us

Sure, we could send in the troops, but the threat of communism wouldn’t diminish until the people’s standard of living was improved and the totalitarian countries of Latin America gave them more freedom.

[Czechoslovakia is] ... the godchild of the great and glorious Republic of the United States.

The best American internationalists reject the idea that their nation holds a global copyright that gives it a mandate to churn out replicas dotting the world.

Promoting democracy is one goal of U. S. foreign policy dating back at least 100 years. But it has always been one goal of many, often negated and outweighed by other competing interests.

No one can think intelligently on the many complicated problems of American foreign policy unless he decides first what he considers the real purpose and object of that policy…. Fundamentally, I believe the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the liberty of the people of the United States.

It’s not America’s job to fix the Middle East. Our job is to look after our own interests..

I'm not a big fan of Putin. I'm not a big fan of Russia.

The U.S. Embassy in Havana may be reopened, but outside its gates, an open society with more freedom for its people is still absent.

Look what we did with Cuba. You isolate a country, and all you do is impoverish that country.

It is imperative the United States continues to demonstrate its commitment to a unified Iraqi.

Our Cuba policy was a major obstacle to getting things done in the hemisphere and a source of tension around the world.

If there's any country that has the capacity not to control North Korea, but to influence North Korea, it's still China. The Chinese always say they have very little influence. They have more than they say they do. We should put pressure on them to do it and there's finally, we're seeing the first signs of a little bit of Chinese disaffection. At some point they're getting tired of the antics of this country. This is a dangerous ally for China to have. And the more Chinese can pressure them and put the economic screws on them, the better it will be for everybody.

This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.

Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United State the role of promoting freedom in the world.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.