Foreign Policy Objectives Quotes

My job is to try to advance American foreign policy, to try to advance the president's agenda on democracy and human rights.

Let's remember that the reason we are there is that we have vital interests in Afghanistan, hugely important national interests, as do the other countries involved.

Foreign policy is about US national security, it is definitely not non-intervention. It is definitely not isolationist. That's where people want to hear what they want to hear and not listen to what Donald Trump says. It is about national security for the United States, and that's fine.

We are apt to say that a foreign policy is successful only when the country, or at any rate the governing class, is united behind it. In reality, every line of policy is repudiated by a section, often by an influential section, of the country concerned.

Vladimir Putin wants practical things, like the end of economic sanctions, but he also wants far greater sway in Europe and in the overall ideological trends of the world.

Israel serves as America's most reliable strategic partner in the Middle East and supports U.S. regional and global policy objectives.

International incidents must not be allowed to shape foreign policy, foreign policy must shape the incidents.

It should never be the goal of U.S. foreign policy towards any country to have a - quote, unquote - "good relation." Then what? What do we get out of that? We get - Trump is helping the approval ratings amongst Russians. How does that advance American national security interests?

My hope is the Trump administration will approach Russia strategically, with a clear purpose of trying to find more common ground, but without giving up on fundamental values and principles that are at the core of the United States' foreign policy.

Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.

Guerrilla war is a test of wills. Obama's actual objectives - rollback in Iraq, containment in Syria - are not unreasonable. But they require commitment and determination. In other words, will. You can't just make one speech declaring war, then disappear and go fundraising.

Vladimir Putin is a Russian czar. He's kind of a mix of Peter the Great and Stalin. He's got both in his veins. And he looks out first and foremost for the national security interests of Russia. He accepts that, in Eastern Europe, that is a Russian backyard, that is a Russian sphere of influence. Ukraine lives most uncomfortably and unhappily in a Russian backyard.

Realism in foreign policy means careful consideration of all aspects pertinent to the issue, before taking a decision. This is the only way you can move from where you are to someplace else.

The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy.

I travel a lot on foreign policy, as you know. I'm in Europe a lot. I travelled over a million miles as vice president. They didn't do stimulus. Look where they are. Come on. I mean, this is like, I just get so frustrated. Like come on.

Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he wants from the relationship with USA. In return for good relations, he wants lifting of sanctions, ratification, approval of his wars in Ukraine and Syria, and his dream of dreams, an acknowledgment of his sphere of influence in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.

It is naturally only a coincidence that all too often, American foreign-policy objectives dovetail nicely with the economic objectives of multinational corporations.

Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They're interested in keeping Assad in power.

What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?

Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation's early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia.

For the West, they wanted to undermine the Syrian positions. For the petrodollar countries like Saudi Arabia, they're thinking undermining Syria will undermine Iran on sectarian basis.

Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.

American foreign policy must be more than the management of crisis. It must have a great and guiding goal: to turn this time of American influence into generations of democratic peace.

When it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

We'd be better off if the whole purpose of the adventure in Iraq was, say, to protect Israel or to protect the flow of oil to America and keep it at a reasonable price and try to get some more control. If it was about oil, going into Iraq, I guess, could have made sense. But at a certain point, when the insurgency began and we were in real trouble, there would have been some awareness that we were going to jeopardize the oil.