Words matter. These are the best Michael Mandelbaum Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.
The American empire will not disappear… because America does not have an empire.
The less oil the world uses, the less important the region that has so much of it becomes.
Certainly, protecting oppressed people, stopping ethnic conflict and promoting responsible governance are worthy goals. But none is as important for American security and prosperity as keeping the peace in the Middle East, Europe and East Asia.
The war on terror, I believe, will be waged by effective intelligence and police work and cruise missiles.
After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.
American power confers benefits on most inhabitants of the planet, even on many who dislike it and some who actively oppose it, because the United States plays a major, constructive, and historically unprecedented role in the world.
In the past, a blow to the international system’s strongest power would have been welcomed by its rivals. In the wake of September 11, however, every significant government in the world declared its support for the United States.
The cardinal sin in sports, what could really wreck it, is not cheating to win, which has gone on forever, but cheating to lose. That threatens a fundamental aspect of sports’ appeal, which is their spontaneity. If games are fixed, they’re no different from movies; they’re scripted.
The values, the programs, the formula, the determination, and the patriotism responsible for America’s past success are still here to be tapped.
Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.
The windfall of great riches can, if mismanaged, make things worse, not better, for the recipients.
The United States will continue to be number one, and I do not see any country or group of countries taking the United States’ place in providing global public goods that underpin security and prosperity. The United States functions as the world’s de facto government.
To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.
Read the news section of the newspaper and there is confusion and uncertainty, a world buffeted by large forces people neither understand nor control. But turn to the sports section and it’s all different.
The main division in the world is between democratic and undemocratic countries.
Societies raise their grandest monuments to what their cultures value most highly. As the tallest buildings in a city noted for tall buildings, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were certainly monumental.
If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.
The amount of military force necessary to provide reassurance depends on how dangerous people think the world is. And that I think ultimately depends upon the kinds of government that hold sway in major countries.
In truth, every American administration since that of Franklin D. Roosevelt has maintained close ties with the Saudi rulers, and for a single, simple reason: oil.
Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.
Great wars can only be fought by great powers.
While analogies are useful, however, they can also be misleading. They smuggle in assumptions that can be wrong.
The attacks of September 11 persuaded many Americans that what might seem to be obscure or distant potential threats can very quickly materialize and it therefore makes sense to attend to them even before they become urgent.
The United States plays, for the most part, a constructive global role, and to the extent that that role shrinks, other countries, even those most critical of what America does abroad, will suffer.
The American political system is so porous, it’s so open, it’s so frustrating for those who are trying to make policy.
The United States contributes to peace in both by serving as a buffer between and among regional powers that, while not preparing for armed conflict, do not fully trust one another.
The world needs a strong America.
Words matter, especially words defining complicated political arrangements, because they shape perceptions of the events of the past, attitudes toward policies being carried out in the present, and expectations about desirable directions for the future.
First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn’t be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right – at least in democracies.
