Fred Thompson Quotes

I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too.

As an Englishman, particularly as an Englishman standing upon foreign soil, I am, of course, prepared to argue that every war we have ever fought was a purely defensive war. But I am obliged to take cognizance of the quite simple historical fact that for about one thousand years, since the time indeed when Norwegians ravaged our coasts and a certain Scandinavian landed at Hastings in 1066, every war we have fought happens to have been fought in other people's countries. Now if defense means merely keeping burglars out of the house, what were we doing on all those occasions in other people's houses?

At a time when Europeans already had a long history of violent contact with Native people, Lewis and Clark made most of their journey in peace.

If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.

Japan possessing paramount political, military and economic interests in Korea, Great Britain recognizes the right of Japan to take such measures of guidance, control and protection in Korea as she may deem proper and necessary to safeguard and advance those interests, provided always that such measures are not contrary to the principle of equal opportunities for the commerce and industry of all nations.

If you drop a perpendicular from the frontier of Tunis, through Lake Chad to the Congo, you could say that the greatest part of the territories bounded by this line and the sea … are French, or destined to be included in France’s sphere of influence. We have a vast domain which it is for us to colonize and make fruitful …

Now what sensible person wants Turkey to be a world power again … ?

They are based on the universal assumption that a nation, in order to find outlets for expanding population and increasing industry, or simply to ensure the best conditions possible for its people, is necessarily pushed to territorial expansion and the exercise of political force against others.... It is assumed that a nation's relative prosperity is broadly determined by its political power; that nations being competing units, advantage in the last resort goes to the possessor of preponderant military force, the weaker goes to the wall, as in the other forms of the struggle for life.

in their ideal forms nation and empire stand at opposite ends of a political spectrum, but in the actuality of history they influenced, reinforced, and undermined one another at different times and in different ways.

The number one foreign policy goal of Russia is control of the former Soviet space.

We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)

Americans’ manner of viewing foreign adversaries today is rooted in the history of their country’s past relations with the outside world. Their attitudes have been shaped especially by the most costly and all-consuming episodes in that history, in particular the wars—hot and cold—of the 20th century.

No country can decide for another county.

The German people mistrust the Anglo-Saxons in the belief that they begrudge Germany her legitimate economic expansion…. Between Germany and France the gulf of mistrust is much deeper… the historical controversy between the two neighbors appears in French eyes as merely the result of permanent Teutonic aggression throughout the centuries.

Our history is responsible for the differences in the South African way of life.

The American government cannot escape its history.

Japan has won a reputation in certain quarters of the world for being imperialistic and aggressive. No impartial student of politics can deny that there were grounds for the criticism.

Japan’s rise in Asia while the European nations are bogged down [in WWI] threatens white supremacy on this planet.

Participants in all conflicts with more than two belligerents have different motivations for deciding to fight, and this was emphatically true in 1914.

Might gives the right to conquer and occupy..

In British tradition, the American elite expected the lower classes to fight their wars.

This deep-rooted view [of the American government] is based on the view that the West not only seeks to continue geopolitical expansion in its classical form but also wants to make everyone do things it's way, by persiusion and example when possible, and by force when necessary.

America's militarized brand of malignant exceptionalism is founded on the idea that the United States transcends history.

China has been developing, growing in economic strength and its influence in the region. That will continue.