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" There's something troubling about a condition in which one country alone, which has roughly 5 percent of the world's population, spends more than 50 percent of the world's defense budgets. There's something weird about it. "

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" The problem with the Iranian regime, of course is, one, its unsettling effects on the Sunnis, particularly Saudi Arabia, and, secondly, its potential threat to Israel. "

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Israel

Threat

Problem

" Americans must place greater emphasis on the more subtle dimensions of national power, such as innovation, education, the balance of force and diplomacy, and the quality of political leadership. "

" American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. "

" With the decline of America's global preeminence, weaker countries will be more susceptible to the assertive influence of major regional powers. "

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Will

America

" The difference between the Bush I war against Iraq and the Bush II war against Iraq is that in the first one, we appealed to the sentiments and interests of the different groupings in the region and had them with us. In the second one, we did it on our own, on the basis of false premises, with extremely brutality and lack of political skill. "

" I'm all in favour of grand important speeches, but the president then has to link his sermons to a strategy. "

" The congressional role in declaring war is especially important not when the United States is the victim of an attack, but when the United States is planning to wage war abroad. "

" During the twentieth century, men fought on behalf of nationalism. Yet the wars they fought were also engendered by dislocations in world markets and by social revolution stimulated by the coming of the industrial age. "

" If we end up with war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran at the same time, can anyone see a more damaging prospect for America's world role than that? "

" It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety. "

" You go to Paris, or you go to Portugal, you go to Poland, and you ask, 'Who are you people?' They'll tell you, we're Portuguese, we're Spanish, we're Polish. Who are the people that are really European? The people in Brussels, in the E.U. bureaucracy. Europe has not been able to move to the level of patriotic identification with the concept. "

" The first 'world' war was in reality the last European war fought by globally significant European powers. "

" Foreign policy should not be justified through making oneself feel good, but through results that have tangible consequences. "

" The potential for regional conflict in the absence of an internationally active America is real. "

" Being a former first lady doesn't prepare you to be president. "

" A president who aspires to be recognized as a global leader should not personally stake out a foreign-policy goal, commit himself eloquently to its attainment, and then yield the ground when confronted by firm opposition. "

" The mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But change in Iran will come through engagement, not through confrontation. "

" To increase the zone of peace is to build the inner core of a stable international zone. "

" All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. "

" A Russia that gradually begins to gravitate toward the West will also be a Russia that ceases to disrupt the international system. "

" During the nineteenth century, men died believing in the cause of royalty or republicanism. In reality, much of their sacrifice was rendered on the altar of the new nationalism. "

" I realise that in an electoral campaign, you don't want to antagonise large groups which are highly motivated. "

" The financial catastrophe of 2008 nearly precipitated a calamitous economic depression, jolting America and much of the West into a sudden recognition of their systemic vulnerability to unregulated greed. "

" The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents. "

" Japan needs the American market and it also needs American security protection. Japan also needs America as the necessary stabilizer of an orderly world system with economies truly open to international trade. "

" We don't have a public that really understands the world anymore, and in the age of complexity, that problem becomes much more difficult. "

" Fear obscures reason, intensifies emotions, and makes it easier for demagogic politicians to mobilize the public on behalf of the policies they want to pursue. "

" War on terrorism reflects, in my view, a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy for a superpower and for a great democracy with genuinely idealistic traditions. "

" I would like to promote internal change in Iran - which is more likely if we don't fuse Iranian nationalism with Iranian fundamentalism. "

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Change

Nationalism

" Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively. "