Coercive Diplomacy Quotes

Stability is when the U.K. and U.S. invade a country and impose the regime of their choice.

Making coercive diplomacy work requires a mix of threats and promises—sticks and carrots.

Politics is pacific war.

I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

The United States is the Godfather when it establishes edicts. Others had better live up to them, or else. We have to demonstrate that. So that's what the bombing of Syria was to have demonstrated.

A United States President should never, never, never, never threaten the use of force unless he is prepared to follow up.

It’s not in our interest to drive the Russians into a beleaguered attitude where they have to prove what they can do.

A democracy is severely restricted in its use of armed forces as a weapon of peacetime foreign policy. It cannot manipulate them tactically on any extensive scale for the accomplishment of measures short of war.

We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.

Regime change cannot be the objective of military action.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

We do not need Pakistan to win our war in Afghanistan, but as long as we say that we do, the Pakistanis will play us like a bad fiddle.

China's propaganda approach with the West is different than the one used by the Soviet Union, which used Western belligerence to maintain its control over its domestic audience. China's strategy is one of influence and inertia.

If we really see the necessity for military action against Serbia, I would think it regrettable if we did not take advantage of the present moment, which is favorable from our point of view.

Even in the best of times, the United States' ability to influence events in faraway places is limited. The tools we have, from soft power and diplomacy to sanctions and bombing campaigns, are never guaranteed to succeed.

Diplomacy has more to do with (credible) threats than with sweet reason. And threats from America are a lot more credible, nowadays.

Knowing what an opponent values is a necessary condition for deterrence success.

Deterrence is a dynamic, interactive process between at least two entities. Deterrence policies are predicated on threatening an adversary with pain if that adversary changes its behavior in ways that you find detrimental to your interests.

Why should Iran have a deterrent strategy? Well, it's surrounded by hostile enemies. Both of its borders have been under occupation by a hostile superpower, the United States, which is constantly violating the U.N. charter by leaving open what they call the saying, 'all options are open' - meaning the threat of war.

Synchronize the presentation of diplomatic notes with the arrival ... of a first-class warship with landing forces.

We have a model that we're following, and it's the Libya model.

It never pays … for one great power to take advantage of the momentary weakness or distraction of another great power in order to force upon it concessions it would never have accepted in normal circumstances.

Any time you use military force, you have got to have a clear purpose that military forces can achieve.

The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.