Detente Quotes

When your enemies are fighting one another, don’t support one or the other. Weaken both.

In the post war period I began again to have my doubts about Russian policy.

Germany has an interest in détente—for general European and national reasons. Here we are in accord not only with our allies … but with almost everyone. Here we join with the nations and governments of the uncommitted world. Here interests we have in common with the Communist-governed states also come to light in spite of some polemics.

Russia does not want confrontation of any kind. And we will not take part in any kind of 'holy alliance.'

People nowadays don't know about the Cold War and the U.S.'s old rivalry with the U.S.S.R.

The Cold War has ended for America.

Historians will look back and say, 'Foreign policy in the Ford presidency was very much dominated by Kissinger, with a kind of continuity from the Nixon period.' Ford is not going to be remembered as a really significant foreign policy maker.

Our plan was to have no Interest, Connection or Embarrassment in the Politicks or Wars of Europe, if we could avoid it.

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Only Nixon could have gone to China. Anyone else would have been criticised from the Right.

Communism will never be halted by negotiations or through the machinations of detente. It can only be halted by force from without or by disintegration from within.

President Nixon was a pragmatic strategist. He would engage, not contain, China, but he would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.

I had a minor in Russian history, and this was at the time when the big Cold War was going on.

But we cannot expect the Soviet Union to show restraint in the face of United States weakness or irresolution. As long as I am president, we will not permit detente to become a license to fish in troubled waters. Detente must be, and I trust will be, a two-way street.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

Ronald Reagan, when he was campaigning for President, said that he would break relations with Communist China and re-establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But when he got into office, he pursued a very different policy of engagement with China and of increasing trade and business ties with China.

America must never accept as a final fact the division between East and West …

Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.

We seek no wider war.

Without Kissinger's work in the Middle East, with Sadat especially, I doubt if the Camp David Agreements five years later would have happened. His achievements over detente, the seeds of trust he sowed in a very distrustful and hostile Moscow, helped over a long period.

Where were they when the Russians went down?

Without perestroika, the cold war simply would not have ended. But the world could not continue developing as it had, with the stark menace of nuclear war ever present.

Military security and a policy of detente are not contradictory but complementary.

The idea of reasoning with terrorists without force or with appeasement is naive, and I think it's dangerous.

A strong defense is the surest way to peace. Strength makes detente attainable. Weakness invites war, as my generation - my generation - knows from four very bitter experiences. Just as America's will for peace is second to none, so will America's strength be second to none. We cannot rely on the forbearance of others to protect this Nation. The power and diversity of the Armed Forces, active Guard and Reserve, the resolve of our fellow citizens, the flexibility in our command to navigate international waters that remain troubled are all essential to our security.