Unilateral Action Quotes

I've got a pen, and I've got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive action. I've got a pen to talk executive actions where congress won't. Where congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own. I have got a pen and I got a phone. And that is all I need.

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

Conflict with our allies in a war is terrible. But the only thing worse is fighting a war without allies.

Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.

The ultimatum is unworthy of notice!

Rumsfeld and Cheney and the President made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction. And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error…

Our sovereignty has been taken away by the European Court of Justice...Our courts must no longer enforce our national laws. They must enforce Community law...No longer is European law an incoming tide flowing up the estuaries of England. It is now like a tidal wave bringing down our sea walls and flowing inland over our fields and houses.

The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.

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

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist.

This system of splitting up into spheres of influence a country which, while nominally a unit, represents as a matter of fact different political and administrative entities, is not one that can be recommended. More especially is this the case where, as in Morocco, it was done without consultation with the ruler or the people of the country, and introduces frontiers that only to a very small extent are based upon natural or physical features--frontiers that pass through unexplored and unknown districts.

The U.S. will ignore the opinion of the Iraqi people and it will compose the new government according to its own desires.

All government wars are unjust.

What right to 49 states have to punish the citizens of one state by dumping their garbage in that state without their consent.

I have experienced the intensity of patriotism as a submarine officer, the ambitions of a competitive businessman, and the intensity of political debate. I have been sorely tempted to launch a military attack on foreigners, and have felt the frustration of having to negotiate with allies or even former enemies to reach a consensus instead of taking more decisive unilateral action.

Why are American boys dying in a war the President refuses to call a war, yet commits our forces to it?

The notion that the U.S. can impose its will unilaterally on the World Bank reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about how multilateral organizations should work.

The government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other.

It is the case that the Russians are misusing the veto in the United Nations, but you must recall that it was we who insisted upon the veto. Without the veto we could not gotten it through Congress.

When the U.S. claims the right to invade any country unilaterally and then defines a country like Iran or North Korea as 'evil,' then it is a rational response for these countries to develop nuclear weapons as the only military deterrent to invasion. We create what we most fear.

It isn't true, in any conventional meaning of the term, that the United States or its NATO partners 'invaded' Afghanistan.

We would be hard pressed to find a majority of any country in the world who admired the United States the way they did from World War I up until the day we went into Iraq.

… presidents launch [military] campaigns with inadequate planning, and Congress feels no obligation to back them when things go awry. And because this takes place under the auspices of the non‐legal constitution, the judiciary cannot decide cases that set rules for the future, which allows the disasters to recur.

Democrats misinterpreted the mandate for change in 2008 as an ideological mandate to move the country sharply to the left. They rammed through policies like ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank with little, if any, bipartisan support.

The [Mexican] war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President.