Boutros Boutros-Ghali Quotes

It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation-states, however powerful. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the imperatives of global environmental cooperation.

The United States does not feel any need to consult with anybody … except when it suits them.

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.

It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals.

Unilateral preemption should not in any way be the model for how we conduct international relations.

Every government is in some respects a problem for every other government.

I don’t talk to countries that exhibit bad behavior.

Multilateralism may be little more than a polite way of camouflaging what is in practice unilateralism with allies.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

You cannot have individual foreign policy. You cannot have celebrity foreign policy.

You don’t do foreign policy unilaterally. Foreign policy is a team sport.

…though the American government did much to encourage the organs of the League, the fact that it stood aside, sharing neither the rights nor the duties of the League powers, was a fatal handicap to joint action.

Under the George W. Bush Administration…, the United States was generally seen as having the capacity and resolve, to pursue its own agenda in complete disregard of other states’ preferences.

The U.N. can meet and discuss, but we don't need their permission.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

There are nearly 200 countries and a population of over 6 billion in today's world. International affairs should be addressed by all countries through consultations rather than monopolised by a few powers.

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations.

On big issues like war in Iraq, but in many other issues they simply must be multilateral. There's no other way around. You have the instances like the global warming convention, the Kyoto protocol, when the U.S. went its own way.

I don't know that there is much the United States can do except work with the international community.

It's dismaying to see the unilateralism that the government is doing.

I think that the president of Iran has the authority wherever which - where - wherever the national interests of the country are involved and, when it is necessary and expedient and required to speak and talk with others in order to promote the rights of its nation, that the president can take that initiative.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

If the United States leads a multinational force into Iraq without United Nations backing, Canada should fight beside its neighbour. We've gone from being a middle power to a muddle power on this one.

The United Nations has become a place where many countries seek to achieve a lynching of the United States by resolution.

But I would say if the Security Council is only relevant if it agrees with the United States, then we have come a long way in a direction that I do not like very much.