Martin Jacques Quotes

At the end of the Cold War, the prevailing view in Washington was that the U.S. was strong, and Russia was weak and did not count in a unipolar world. We disregarded Russia's opposition to NATO expansion, the Iraq War, and the U.S.-led military intervention in Serbia for the independence of Kosovo.

With regards to the expansion of NATO, I see it as a mistake, even a provocation in a way.

While President Putin is busy redrawing the map of Europe, President Obama is busy filling out his brackets.

If Russia and the United States approach each other in starkly adversarial terms, the conflict will badly warp the foreign policy of both countries ...

After spending the 1980s building up Saddam's Iraq as a counterweight to Iran, U.S. policy abruptly reversed course with his invasion of Kuwait and has since tried to cut him down to size. The policy is called 'containment,' but the question is, containment of what?

The post-Cold War order in Europe is finished, with Vladimir Putin its executioner. Russia's invasion of Georgia only marked its passing. Russia has emerged as a born-again 19th-century power determined to challenge the intellectual, moral and institutional foundations of the order.

The overall or political objective is to impose upon Russia the will of the United States and British Empire.

No great power will allow itself to be strangulated.

I believe some of the tensions the U.S. has had with Russia and that the Europeans have had with Russia... China is taking advantage of some of those dealings.

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.

It is still worth talking to Iran to see if there is a way through and to prevent the huge rivalry between Saudi and Iran turning into another version of the Iran-Iraq war. That is what all countries that have influence have to be thinking about.

There is a theory that China will tend to push, and if you bend, they will push some more.

America likes you only if you're on the side she selects. If you don't go along with her totally, you're automatically considered to have entered the Soviet bloc.

America had Russia wrapped around it little pinky through the whole '90s. We did everything you told us. And we were eager to do more and more. The whole nation - Russian nation was like, 'Tell us what else we can do to please you. We want to be like you. We love you.' And then in 1999, bam. You bomb Yugoslavia. And that was the end of it.

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, everyone in America assumed that there would be wars to follow - wars over the reunification of Germany, over the nations within the sphere of Soviet influence, and more. There weren't, because George H. W. Bush's policies and diplomacy prevented that.

The way I think of it is that Russia is not going to change fundamentally. They may change tactics; they may look at their interests and figure out what actions they take, but they're not going to change fundamentally. And they're going to try to gauge what will the responses be to things that they do, and what will our things be. And here, they do wonder what is the level of our resolve? How far are we willing to go? And that is something that is very hard to gauge.

Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. War is merely the continuation of policy with the admixture of other means.

Sometimes and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war.

[Egon] Bahr even said: If Russia agreed to the NATO expansion, he would never come to Moscow again.

Political scientist Herfried Münkler is right: If you only take normative positions, if your focus is solely on values, you won't find success in a world where others are relentlessly pursuing their interests. In a world full of meat-eaters, vegetarians have a tough time.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war.

I'll tell you what the danger is for Europe. It's carrying out a cold war against Russia and pushing Russia into China's arms. That's the threat to Europe.

Detente - isn't that what a farmer has with his turkey - until Thanksgiving?

China is a rising adversary. So one of the things we have to do if we want China's support is to push back on China.

We shouldn't overdramatize the current disagreements with the Russians. They are real, but they're not really all that threatening. And the notion that we're moving back to some Cold War I think is really an exaggerated judgment.