Cold War Mentality Quotes

Putin has demonstrated his fondness for the Cold War…. Once a KBG agent, always a KGB agent.

Chamberlain and Halifax were more afraid of the spread of Communism than they were of Hitler or Mussolini.

You don’t have a democracy. Most Americans want good relations with Cuba, but a few thousand Cuban-American right-wingers control U.S. policy and make everything between us bad.

Vladimir Putin hates America, he wants to hurt us. Suddenly Vladimir Putin is a good guy, Russia is okay, no it's not. Russia is evil, Russia is our enemy.

I come out of a Cold War sensibility, a Cold War mentality, and during those Cold War years, I used to know, I thought, the answers to everything. And since the end of the Cold War, I'm just a dumb as everyone else.

Much of the hostility toward Putin stems from the fact that he not only defies the West when standing up for Russia's interests, he often succeeds in his defiance and goes unpunished and unrepentant.

When we came to office, President Obama reset our relationship with Russia. . . . But just a month ago, Governor Romney called and here again I quote, ‘without question our number one geopolitical foe’ is Russia. As my brother would say, go figure. Look, I think it’s fair to say when it comes to Russia, based on only what we know he’s said so far, Governor Romney is mired in a Cold War mindset.

So many people of my generation who served in the government were prisoners of the Cold War culture, still are.

Many Western officials are comfortable with confrontation, and discount or ignore the rising risks and costs of continued arms modernization. They would be intellectually and programmatically bereft without the focal point of a major "enemy".... Can the West get over its need to have an enemy?

Russia's assertiveness in global affairs is something I look upon with great concern, which we need to address with eyes wide open and a healthy degree of skepticism.

For the Russians, frankly, it's time that we punched the Russians in the nose. They've gotten away with too much in this world and we need to stand up against them, not just there, but also in Eastern Europe where they threaten some of our most precious allies.

I believe that Trump is a danger. I believe that he wants to tighten and build up his relationship to Russia for whatever reasons.

We should be I hope finally realizing what Vladimir Putin is. He's an old colonel, KGB, apparatchik, and he dreams of the restoration of the Russian empire.

While President Obama raised the hopes of Americans and Cubans alike with a forward-looking opening in diplomatic, commercial and people-to-people ties, President Trump is turning back the clock to a tragically failed Cold War mindset by reimposing restrictions on those activities.

The president(Obama) comparing him to a kid in the back of a classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president's lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is. He's an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to act in an autocratic fashion.

In my view, [Vladimir] Putin despises the West in general and the United States in particular, both for who we are, our liberal values, and for what we've done, which is to take down the Soviet Empire.

The Conservative Party has one overriding concern in foreign policy, and that is the growth of Communist power and influence in the world, and the dangers it can bring for all of us.

The current attitude is pretty much the attitude we had in the CIA during the 1950s. When we analysed the operational climate and all the political forces in any given country, we had our friends and we had our enemies. There was no one in between. The friends were centre and Right wing social democrats, conservatives, liberals, in some cases all the way over to neo-fascists. The enemies were Left wing social democrats, socialists, Communists, all the way to those advocating armed struggle.

[Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don't mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.