Tony Blair Quotes

I would say that foreign policy is a place where intelligence, resolve, clarity, and confidence in cause, is of extraordinary importance.

I'm not one of those critics that believes U.S. foreign policy is confused, or stupid, or misinformed, or well-intentioned but it goes awry. I think it's a brilliant policy filled with many brilliant, terrible, horrible victories.

We have come a long way in terms of foreign policy.

I think if you're going to master policy, especially world affairs, you've got to know history.

One thing that we should have learned from history is to pay attention to the words of foreign leaders.

Americans, who are naive and inexperienced, are up against centuries of diplomatic skill and finesse.

There's too little sense in the State Department of why things happened.

Diplomacy, contrary to the current misconception, is not about making nice, exchanging happy talk, and offering concessions. It is the engine that converts raw energy and tangible power into meaningful political results. In other words, diplomacy is all about the intelligent use of power. Diplomacy is not an alternative to coercion and other forms of power; its effectiveness depends on their skillful use.

A candidate’s command of foreign policy acts as a proxy for assessing broader leadership abilities.

And I think the only way you're going to improve US foreign policy and set a sound course for the future is if you're willing to look back at what went wrong before.

Kissinger's unusually high body count and singular moral imperiousness has the effect, among his critics, of obscuring his didactic utility. An outsized personality who has committed outsized mayhem, Kissinger eclipses his own context. Yet, as animals were to the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, Kissinger is good to think with.

I think George H.W. Bush was confronted with some huge challenges - the invasion of Kuwait, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union - that he managed with great aplomb.

You underestimate John Bolton at your peril.

A mercurial plan of action may have worked in the Trump Organization board room, but it's a disastrous tactic in foreign affairs.

Constantly referring to past wrongdoings can become a substitute for developing a deeper analysis of today's foreign-policy challenges, of understanding what is new and different.

Nixon is a strong leader with a good grasp of the world's problems. He knows that the only way to argue with the communists is from a position of strength.

The great task of statesmanship is to apply past lessons to new situations, to draw correct analogies to understand and act upon present forces, to recognise the need for change.

…everything has a past. Everything – a person, an object, a word, everything. If you don’t know the past, you can’t understand the present and plan properly for the future.

History dies without the present. There is no future without the path made to it by the past.

I think Barack Obama's foreign policy will be regarded more failure than success.

I think, there is a possibility - I would say it's more than that - that we will come to a view of foreign policy going forward that learns from the past but doesn't get captured by it.

The Americans are trying to expand their influence in the world, particularly in Europe. They are defending their own interests, not ours.

Realism as a foreign policy doctrine means basically you don't care about values; you consider them a luxury, and it leads to a kind of acquiescence in spheres of influence. Now, spheres of influence sound good if you're a graduate student, or a certain kind of - an academic with a certain habit of mind. But in fact, spheres of influence don't work out very well, certainly not for the victims, and there are always victims.

I think what you're going to get from President-elect [ Donald] Trump is all of his folks together - Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, John Kelly, CIA, Homeland Security, everyone that you would want in the room, making decisions about that particular document and treaties like that document as to how we're going move forward.

The absence of a peace treaty [with Japan] is an anachronism we inherited from the past and it must be removed. However, how to do this is a complicated issue.