Geopolitical Competition Quotes

I believe some of the tensions the U.S. has had with Russia and that the Europeans have had with Russia... China is taking advantage of some of those dealings.

It's not possible for two countries to be the leading dominant political power at the same time.

Russia and China deride western democracy and deploy both hard and soft power to promote their alternative models of political development.

Globalization, far from putting an end to power diplomacy between States, has, on the contrary, intensified it.

The neoconservative doctrine declares that it is the principal goal of U.S. foreign policy to prevent the rise of any country that would have sufficient power to serve as a check on American unilateralism. This neoconservative doctrine puts Russia and China in Washington's crosshairs.

Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.

The starting point for understanding the deterioration in the relationship between the U.S. and Russia lies in Washington rather than Moscow. After 1989, Russia was a defeated power. Despite the fine words and some limited gestures, the Americans have treated it like one. Their policy has been one of encirclement.

Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen; and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of their neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and fear.

It was designed to have an impact on the stalemate over Mutually Assured Destruction with the Soviet Union. Us reaching the moon convinced Gorbachev and other leaders that the Soviet Union couldn't compete with the U.S., so they revised their agenda. But people have short memories.

NASA was invented as a response to Cold War steps. There are those who presumed that we went to the moon because we're explorers. We went to the moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. And so when it became clear that they (Soviet Union) were not going to the moon, we're done with the moon.

We didn't win the Cold War, we were just a big bank that bankrupted a smaller bank because we had an arms race that wiped the Russians out.

More often than not, Americans and Westerners overestimated the power and capability of the Soviet Union.

In Russian foreign policy, nationalism -- patriotism -- is defined as opposition to the West.

I don't trust any country that looks around a continent and says, "Hey, I'll take the frozen part."

The communists have lost the cold war, but the west has not yet won it.

Challenging American leadership is not at stake.

The object of China's strategy is inexorably to supplant the United States as the world's premier economic power, and if necessary, to defeat us militarily.

They [China] have indicated that they’re trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.

Reagan "has conducted an arms race on earth," boomed Mondale. A race generally implies two parties. The Soviets contributed a little bit to this problem, if Mondale had not noticed.

The best way to contain China and make it the peaceful rise of China is for us to have an enormously robust navy that is the greatest navy in the world, that can patrol two oceans, that can fight two or three wars, and China will not challenge us because the Chinese are practical.

So many dictators trying to blackmail the free world because they have no way to compete on ideas, innovation or creativity. The Cold War was two competing visions of the future. I was always anti-communist but it was an idea at least, an alternative idea. We do not have a competing vision for the future because the ideals of these dictators are in the past. They are time travellers. They need confrontation and destruction to survive. The problem is, many people in the free world are sympathetic to Vladimir Putin.

This document will play an important role in protecting the strategic interests of Russia and Uzbekistan and ensuring stability and security in the region, which some politicians call Russia's soft underbelly. It's not a secret that after the Soviet collapse and especially in recent years, Central Asia has become the focus of interest of major nations because of its geographic location and rich mineral resources.

Political scientist Herfried Münkler is right: If you only take normative positions, if your focus is solely on values, you won't find success in a world where others are relentlessly pursuing their interests. In a world full of meat-eaters, vegetarians have a tough time.

Stop thinking that if Britain or America or Russia or the West or whatever becomes superior, then we'll beat them, and then we'll all have a rest and live happily ever after. That doesn't work.

The Russians and the Chinese have been making enormous investments in the military. We have the smallest Navy since 1916. We have the lowest number of troops since the end of the Second World War. We've got to work with Congress, and Donald Trump will, to rebuild our military and project American strength in the world.