Diplomacy
Page 8
- We can come back here, next year, as we have for the last 60, and make long speeches about it. We can read familiar lists of grievances. We can table the same resolutions. We can further empower the forces of rejectionism and hate. Or we can say that this time will be different, that this time we will not let terror or turbulence or posturing or petty achieves.
- The G8 is finishing the unfinished business of Europe in the post-Cold War era.
- There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world’s collective responsibility to act.
- It is better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none.
- Diplomacy, if properly practiced, is not just talking for the sake of talking.
- With a weak and rotting core, you don’t have much of a foreign policy. You’re discounted at the negotiating table, economically and militarily. So when people ask what’s the best course of action for the U.S.–China relationship, I can give you ten academic responses. But the reality is we need to rebuild our core.
- The real secret about diplomats is that we’re trained to say something, when there is nothing to say, and to say nothing when there is something to say.
- The real secret about diplomats is that we're trained to say something, when there is nothing to say, and to say nothing when there is something to say.
- With a weak and rotting core, you don't have much of a foreign policy. You're discounted at the negotiating table, economically and militarily. So when people ask what's the best course of action for the U.S.–China relationship, I can give you ten academic responses. But the reality is we need to rebuild our core.
- There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world's collective responsibility to act.
- Dictating to dictators doesn't work; they are congenitally delusional about their own indispensability.
- The French president and I cooperate well -- that does not mean it cancels out the conflicts of interest that we have
had over the last 50 or 60 years but what counts for me is the atmosphere in which we find solutions