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- Now that the Olympics are over, we need to watch the behavior of the Russians. And I believe the president needs to up his game and send a clear, unequivocal, public message to Putin not to interfere in what is happening in Ukraine.
- Far too often, the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other – it should function as a bridge between them.
- [Putin] is a bully. And bullies only understand when we punch them in the nose, but we need to do that economically.
- There would be some price to pay for this country and our allies…But there is a huge price to pay for allowing aggressive bullying behavior to continue…History teaches us that we have to stand up to such bullying behavior from one state on to another.
- We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington’s elites — politicians and intellectuals — miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today’s world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.
- The relationship has truly been fine. Our defense cooperation and intelligence sharing, which has been substantial in both directions, and our work on anti-missile and anti-rocket defense have been very good. And this work continues under Chuck Hagel and President Obama - and I’m pleased with that. That doesn’t mean we can’t have differences of opinion on Iran.
- The ongoing war in Afghanistan is being imposed on us, and Afghans are being sacrificed in it for someone else's interests. We are not blocking the interests of the United States or other major powers. But we are demanding that if you consider Afghanistan the place from which to advance your interests, then you should also pay attention to Afghanistan’s interests.
- Putin stepped in, but he didn’t step in to save Barack Obama. Putin stepped in to maximize Russian influence in the Middle East. That is, strategically, a defeat for the United States.
- And, as a consequence of the pressure that we've applied over the last couple of weeks, we have Syria -- for the first time -- acknowledging that it has chemical weapons, agreeing to join the convention that prohibits the use of chemical weapons, and the Russians -- their primary sponsors -- saying that they will push Syria to get all of their chemical weapons out. The distance that we've traveled over these couple of weeks is remarkable.
- How can you talk about what happened if you don't have evidences? We're not like the American administration. We're not social media administration or government. We are the government that deal with reality - when we have evidence.