Words matter. These are the best Antony Blinken Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
It’s hard to overstate the lasting harm Mr. Tillerson’s tenure will do to America’s diplomacy.
We need to take actually concrete actions to make sure, for example, that none of our companies are providing China with things that they can use to repress populations, including the Uyghur population. But we also have to make sure that we are dealing with all of our interests.
Pyongyang possesses thousands of artillery pieces 30 miles from Seoul. Just one retaliatory salvo could decimate South Korea’s capital.
President John F. Kennedy demonstrated the value of presidential credibility at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when he sent emissaries to America’s allies in October 1962 to secure support for the quarantine of Cuba.
As we look at China, there is no doubt that it poses the most significant challenge of any nation state to the United States, in terms of our interests the interest of the American people.
The Iran nuclear deal, the so-called JCPOA, was very effective in cutting off all of the pathways that Iran then had to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon. And we know that that agreement was working.
We put a lot of money into Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, trying to support it economically, trying to support democratic institutions.
Interests change and diverge; values do not.
Even the most disciplined commander-in-chief misspeaks from time to time.
In times of crisis, credibility is an American president’s most valuable currency.
As the personal trajectories of Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi diverge, so too does the focus of their leadership. While Mr. Trump is obsessed with building walls, Mr. Xi is busy building bridges.
We deal, unfortunately, every single day with leaders of countries who are responsible for actions we find either objectionable or abhorrent, whether it’s Vladimir Putin, whether it’s Xi Jinping, whether it’s any others on a long list of people I can name. But we find ways to deal with them.
As deputy secretary of state, I spent hours with my Turkish counterparts trying to find a modus vivendi for continuing American support to the Syrian Democratic Forces.
Especially when it comes to national security, there is a premium on an administration speaking clearly, consistently and precisely, starting with the president.
When we’re actually modeling good behavior, and when we get results, other countries are more likely to follow our lead.
President Trump’s daily assault on our own democracy, on its institutions, on its values, on its people, that’s deeply tarnished our ability to lead.
The United States will rightfully go on deploring human rights excesses in the Soviet Union. And it is hardly likely Americans will one day espouse the communist ideology. But nowhere does it say we cannot live in peace with the U.S.S.R. In the nuclear age, there is truly no alternative.
Mr. Tillerson’s obsession with downsizing our diplomacy has colored his time at the State Department.
It fell to President Harry Truman to contain Soviet expansionism. He built America’s first peacetime alliances, starting in Western Europe, then in Asia.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps is the official protector of Iran’s revolution, with 100,000 troops divided into air, naval and ground divisions. It plays a large role in Iran’s economy. Its international paramilitary arm, the Quds Force, is Tehran’s main vehicle for supporting Shiite proxy forces.
Visitors to a future Donald J. Trump presidential library may find a whole section dedicated to his demolition of the 2015 Iran nuclear accord: ‘worst deal ever;’ ‘horrible’ and ‘one-sided;’ ‘major embarrassment;’ ‘defective at its core.’
In countless communities across America today, refugees are giving back to the country that has given them a new start.
Mr. Putin’s primary goal in the 2016 elections was to delegitimize our institutions and pit Americans against each other.
Vietnam’s transformation – like that of so many nations – has been supported and even accelerated by an international, rules-based order dedicated to the progress of every nation.
By alienating Muslim communities and our closest allies, Mr. Trump would destroy the partnerships we need to effectively fight terror.
As Vietnam opens its markets and strengthens fundamental rights, the relationship between our nations will continue to grow – to the benefit of both our citizens.
When we’re in the business of picking fights with our allies instead of working with them, that takes away from our strength in dealing with China.
Most of the money that we provide to the WTO is done on a voluntary basis.
The world is not self-organizing.
In the end, North Korea’s conduct may change only when its leadership does.
It is not O.K. for one sovereignty to dictate to another which countries or organizations it may associate with.
Whether we like it or not, we don’t choose Saudi Arabia’s leaders. They do.
Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to. Anyone who poses a challenge to that order, we’re going to stand up and – and defend it.
Mr. Trump is a false prophet.
While the United States has often taken the wrong path, it has rarely failed to demonstrate – at least in the long run – the courage to reverse its steps.
The United States took the lead in shaping the norms, rules and institutions of what became the liberal international order, including the United Nations, the international financial institutions and the Marshall Plan.
The lessons Noam Chomsky sets out to teach us in ‘Toward a New Cold War’ are invaluable. The United States, like any other nations, can and does err, and often in a big way. But Chomsky cannot support at all his implicit diagnosis that America is ‘bad.’
Russia wants stability along its Western borders, neighbors who treat their Russian minorities with respect and prosperous trading partners. NATO enlargement promotes such developments.
The late 1990s were really a moment of still tremendous hope and optimism about the relationship between Russia and the United States.
There is no shortage of objectionable Iranian behavior.
It’s one thing for a foreign partner to doubt a president’s judgment; it’s entirely more debilitating when that partner doubts the president’s word.
The world’s greatest power deserves to have the world’s very best diplomatic corps.
When President Clinton opened NATO’s doors in 1994, some predicted a crisis with Russia. That did not occur, mainly because the Kremlin understood that NATO enlargement did not threaten Russia’s interests.
Climate change, the spread of weapons of mass destruction. None of those can really effectively be dealt with by any one country acting alone and even the United States can’t handle them alone. China needs to be part of the game on that.
The United States can’t dictate outcomes to a sovereign Iraq. But it can support, incentivize and mobilize those willing to move Iraq in the right direction.
Some friends of Israel believe that the Palestinians will never, in their hearts, accept a Jewish state in Palestine. Yet Germans and French, Chinese and Japanese, Mexicans and Americans have overcome their once insurmountable differences. Palestinians and Jews also have much to gain from peaceful coexistence.
The United States genuinely sought to advance Russia’s integration into the West and into international institutions. We genuinely sought to support Russia. We wanted a strong, successful Russia, not a weak and contained one.
Mr. Xi is all-in on robotics, aerospace, high-speed rail, new-energy vehicles and advanced medical products.
Bringing the Baltics into the alliance is not a zero sum game in which NATO’s gain is Russia’s loss, NATO’s strength Russia’s weakness.
As Vietnam increasingly opens its doors, it will reap the rewards of progress for its people.
