Robert Dallek Quotes

Kissinger celebrants inevitably point to two things to justify their admiration: an opening to China - 'rapprochement' - and improved relations with the Soviet Union - detente - which included SALT, a historic arms-limitation treaty.

In the years just before... during the Carter years, the Soviets regularly violated, if you will, both the spirit and theletter of arms control agreements, I think, that they had negotiated during the period of detente.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.

I'm a product of the Kennedy era. Kennedy's Inaugural plus the accident of Dean Rusk brought me into the government. Those were my values.

Kennedy is remembered as a success mainly because of what came after: Johnson and Vietnam. Nixon and Watergate.

We've come a long way since Nixon's first visit to China, or Carter's reestablishment of diplomatic relations.

Kennedy was haunted by the Bay of Pigs invasion but carried the country through the Cuban Missile Crisis. He later increased the number of U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam to more than 16,000.

People nowadays don't know about the Cold War and the U.S.'s old rivalry with the U.S.S.R.

Kennedy was president for only 1,037 days, but during his short tenure, he achieved much. At the Cold War's most dangerous hour, he preserved the peace. He improved relations with the Soviet Union and replaced tension over Berlin with a limited test ban treaty.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Communist China and re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But when he got into office, he pursued a very different policy of engagement with China and of increasing trade and business ties with China.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

Where were they when the Russians went down?

The scales dropped from his eyes only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter felt betrayed by Brezhnev, but Brezhnev never betrayed him; Carter was just too naïve and too stubborn to listen

The United States now has as its goal much more than simply containing Soviet expansionism. We seek the integration of the Soviet Union into the communlty of nations.... Ultimately, our objective is to welcome the Soviet Union back into the world order.

The Cold War is Over

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.

Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973.

As America's nuclear strategic monopoly faded, the United States sought to create advantages elsewhere, notably in the peaceful cooperation between the United States and communist China under Deng Xiaoping.

The events of October 1962 are widely hailed as Kennedy's finest hour.

Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.

The Cold War has ended for America.

My generation was the tail end of the Cold War.

Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to smash ISIS.