Diplomacy Henry Kissinger Quotes

Behind the slogans lay an intellectual vacuum.

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them.

A turbulent history has taught Chinese leaders that not every problem has a solution and that too great an emphasis on total mastery over specific events could upset the harmony of the universe.

Because complexity inhibits flexibility, early choices are especially crucial.

Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.

George Bernard Shaw: “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

The war is just when the intention that causes it to be undertaken is just. The will is therefore the principle element that must be considered, not the means... He who intends to kill the guilty sometimes faultlessly shed the blood of the innocents...' In short, the end justifies the means.

The bargaining position of the victor always diminishes with time. Whatever is not exacted during the shock of defeat becomes increasingly difficult to attain later.

When statesmen want to gain time, they offer to talk.

…Policy is the art of the possible, the science of the relative.

history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations.

Realpolitik for Bismarck depended on flexibility and on the ability to exploit every available option without the constraint of ideology.

For the greatest part of humanity and the longest periods of history, empire has been the typical mode of government.

in effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multistate system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale.

Upon learning of Cardinal Richelieu’s death, Pope Urban VIII is alleged to have said, “If there is a God, the Cardinal de Richelieu will have much to answer for. If not… well, he had a successful life.

both the American and the European approaches to foreign policy were the products of their own unique circumstances. Americans inhabited a nearly empty continent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans and with weak countries as neighbors. Since America confronted no power in need of being balanced, it could hardly have occupied itself with the challenges of equilibrium even if its leaders had been seized by the bizarre notion of replicating European conditions amidst a people who had turned their backs on Europe.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

Historically, alliances had been formed to augment a nation’s strength in case of war; as World War I approached, the primary motive for war was to strengthen the alliances.

What is new about the emerging world order is that, for the first time, the United States can neither withdraw from the world nor dominate it.

The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations.

What Nixon sought throughout the Cold War was a stable international order for a world filled with nuclear weapons.

Spanish territory in Florida and Texas—the

At the end of my November 1973 visit, I suggested to Zhou a hotline between Washington and Beijing as part of an agreement on reducing the risks of accidental war.

Harold Macmillan, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, told Ambassador Robert Murphy, a Dulles emissary, that, if Great Britain did not confront Nasser now, “Britain would become another Netherlands.

explanation for such a one-sided transaction: “This accession of territory affirms forever the power of the United States, and I have just given England a maritime rival that sooner or later will lay low her pride.

The basic premise of collective security was that all nations would view every threat to security in the same way and be prepared to run the same risks in resisting it. Not only had nothing like it ever actually occurred, nothing like it was destined to occur in the entire history of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Only when a threat is truly overwhelming and genuinely affects all, or most, societies is such a consensus possible—as it was during the two world wars and, on a regional basis, in the Cold War. But in the vast majority of cases—and in nearly all of the difficult ones—the nations of the world tend to disagree either about the nature of the threat or about the type of sacrifice they are prepared to make to meet it.

Constantly changing shape as its rulers annexed contiguous territories, Russia was an empire out of scale in comparison with any of the European countries. Moreover, with every new conquest, the character of the state changed as it incorporated another brand-new, restive, non-Russian ethnic group. This was one of the reasons Russia felt obliged to maintain huge armies whose size was unrelated to any plausible threat to its external security.

the philosopher of history Emmerich de Vattel could write in 1758, the second year of the Seven Years’ War, that: The continual negotiations that take place, make modern Europe a sort of republic, whose members—each independent, but all bound together by a common interest—unite for the maintenance of order and the preservation of liberty. This is what has given rise to the well-known principle of the balance of power, by which is meant an arrangement of affairs so that no state shall be in a position to have absolute mastery and dominate over the others.15

Torn between obsessive insecurity and proselytizing zeal, between the requirements of Europe and the temptations of Asia, the Russian Empire always had a role in the European equilibrium but was never emotionally a part of it.

For centuries, the Middle Kingdom had assured its security by playing off distant barbarians against immediate neighbors. Deeply worried about Soviet expansionism, Mao adopted the same strategy in his opening to the United States.

For nearly twenty years, Bismarck preserved the peace and eased international tension with his moderation and flexibility. But he paid the price of misunderstood greatness, for his successors and would-be imitators could draw no better lesson from his example than multiplying arms and waging a war which would cause the suicide of European civilization.

the American Senate remained focused on domestic priorities and thwarted all expansionist projects. It kept the army small (25,000 men) and the navy weak. Until 1890, the American army ranked fourteenth in the world, after Bulgaria’s, and the American navy was smaller than Italy’s even though America’s industrial strength was thirteen times that of Italy. America did not participate in international conferences and was treated as a second-rank power. In 1880, when Turkey reduced its diplomatic establishment, it eliminated its embassies in Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States. At the same time, a German diplomat in Madrid offered to take a cut in salary rather than be posted to Washington.18

Relations between China and the United States need not - and should not - become a zero-sum game ... Key issues on the international front are global in nature. Consensus may prove difficult, but confronation on these issues is self-defeating.

Balance-of-power diplomacy was less a choice than an inevitability. No state was strong enough to impose its will; no religion retained sufficient authority to sustain universality. The concept of sovereignty and the legal equality of states became the basis of international law and diplomacy. China, by contrast, was never engaged in sustained contact with another country on the basis of equality for the simple reason that it never encountered societies of comparable culture or magnitude.

One of Ronald Reagan’s fantasies as president was that he would take Mikhail Gorbachev on a tour of the United States so the Soviet leader could see how ordinary Americans lived. Reagan often talked about it. He imagined that he and Gorbachev would fly by helicopter over a working-class community, viewing a factory and its parking lot filled with cars and then circling over the pleasant neighborhood where the factory workers lived in homes “with lawns and backyards, perhaps with a second car or a boat in the driveway, not the concrete rabbit warrens I’d seen in Moscow.” The helicopter would descend, and Reagan would invite Gorbachev to knock on doors and ask the residents “what they think of our system.” The workers would tell him how wonderful it was to live in America.

may not lead to reduction in U.S. casualties until its final stages, as our casualty rate may be unrelated to the total number of American troops in South Vietnam. To kill about 150 U.S. soldiers a week, the enemy needs to attack only a small portion of our forces….

Remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own. Remember that He who has united you as human beings in the same flesh and blood has bound you by the law of mutual love… not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilization….34

So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become worried by the frenzy and paranoia of the Nixonian Vietnam policy that consensus itself was threatened. Ordinary intra-mural and extra-mural leaking, to such duly constituted bodies as Congress, was getting out of hand. It was Kissinger who inaugurated the second front or home front of the war; illegally wiretapping the telephones even of his own staff and of his journalistic clientele. (I still love to picture the face of Henry Brandon when he found out what his hero had done to his telephone.) This war against the enemy within was the genesis of Watergate; a nexus of high crime and misdemeanour for which Kissinger himself, as Isaacson wittily points out, largely evaded blame by taking to his ‘shuttle’ and staying airborne. Incredibly, he contrived to argue in public with some success that if it were not for democratic distempers like the impeachment process his own selfless, necessary statesmanship would have been easier to carry out. This is true, but not in the way that he got newspapers like Rees-Mogg’s Times to accept.

Things which ought to be taken for granted lose their force when they emerge in the form of arbitrary pronouncements….

A great president must be an educator, bridging the gap between his people’s future and its experience

No leader among Russia’s immediate neighbors shares America’s faith in Russian conversion as the key to his country’s security.

Intellectuals analyze the operations of international systems; statesmen build them. And there is a vast difference between the perspective of an analyst and that of a statesman. The analyst can choose which problem he wishes to study, whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed on him. The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion; the overwhelming challenge to the statesman is the pressure of time. The analyst runs no risk. If his conclusions prove wrong, he can write another treatise. The statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable. The analyst has available to him all the facts; he will be judged on his intellectual power. The statesman must act on assessments that cannot be proved at the time that he is making them; he will be judged by history on the basis of how wisely he managed the inevitable change and, above all, by how well he preserves the peace.

Russian rulers appealed to their people on the basis of their endurance, not their greatness. Russian diplomacy relied, to an extraordinary extent, on superior power. Russia rarely had allies among countries where it had not stationed military forces. Russian diplomacy tended to be power-oriented, tenaciously holding on to fixed positions and transforming foreign policy into trench warfare.

it is almost always a mistake for heads of state to undertake the details of a negotiation. They are then obliged to master specifics normally handled by their foreign offices and are deflected onto subjects more appropriate to their subordinates, while being kept from issues only heads of state can resolve. Since no one without a well-developed ego reaches the highest office, compromise is difficult and deadlocks are dangerous. With the domestic positions of the interlocutors so often dependent on at least the semblance of success, negotiations more often concentrate on obscuring differences than they do on dealing with the essence of a problem.

majority of Russia’s leading figures—whatever their political persuasion—refuse to accept the collapse of the Soviet Empire or the legitimacy of the successor states, especially of Ukraine, the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy.

Almost as if according to some natural law, in every century there seems to emerge a country with the power, the will, and the intellectual and moral impetus to shape the entire international system in accordance with its own values.

El orden que hoy está surgiendo deberán edificarlo estadistas que representan culturas sumamente distintas, que administran enormes burocracias de tal complejidad que, a menudo, la energía de estos estadistas se gasta más atendiendo a la maquinaria administrativa que definiendo un propósito. Estos estadistas han llegado a la cumbre del poder gracias a unas cualidades que no siempre son las necesarias para gobernar y aún son menos apropiadas para edificar un orden internacional.

What remains to be dealt with is to move from crisis management to a definition of common goals, from the solution of strategic controversies to their avoidance. Is it possible to evolve a genuine partnership and a world order based on cooperation? Can China and the United States develop genuine strategic trust?

I am for such a League provided we don’t expect too much from it…. I am not willing to play the part which even Aesop held up to derision when he wrote of how the wolves and the sheep agreed to disarm, and how the sheep as a guarantee of good faith sent away the watchdogs, and were then forthwith eaten by the wolves.

In such societies [in which the state has preceded the nation], the political process is about domination, not alternation in office, which takes place, if at all, by coups rather than by constitutional procedures. The concept of a loyal opposition--the essence of modern democracy--rarely prevails[...]Western-style democracy [is unique in that it] presupposes a consensus on values that sets limits to partisanship.

History is the memory of states,' wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those statesmen's policies. From his standpoint, the 'peace' that Europe had before the French Revolution was 'restored' by the diplomacy of a few national leaders. But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation - a world not restored but disintegrated. My viewpoint, in telling the history of the United States, is different: that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Side by side with the limitless possibilities opened up by the new technologies, reflection about international order must include the internal dangers of societies driven by mass consensus, deprived of the context and foresight needed on terms compatible with their historical character. In every other era, this has been considered the essence of leadership; in our own, it risks being reduced to a series of slogans designed to capture immediate short-term approbation. Foreign policy is in danger of turning into a subdivision of domestic politics instead of an exercise in shaping the future. If the major countries conduct their policies in this manner internally, their relations on the international stage will suffer concomitant distortions. The search for perspective may well be replaced by a hardening of differences, statesmanship by posturing. As diplomacy is transformed into gestures geared toward passions, the search for equilibrium risks giving way to a testing of limits.

Силата се оказва твърде трудна за измерване и волята за нейното прилагане – твърде различна, за да й бъде позволено да служи като надеждно ръководство за международен ред. Равновесието действа най-добре, когато бъде укрепено със съглашение за общи ценности. Балансът на силите намалява способността да се събори международният ред; съгласие по отношение на споделените ценности подтиска желанието да се събори международният ред. Мощ без законност изкушава към премерване на силите; законност без мощ изкушава към празно перчене.

Henry Kissinger is the titular head of the intelligence community’s clandestine operations reaction faction. His appearance as a one-man power center is simply due to the fact that he fronts for the Secret Team and the secret intelligence community. Thus, he vies with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and certain others in the “traditionalist” group, who would like to see a return to national planning, strong diplomacy, and moves toward peace through successful conferences between the United States and other countries of the world.

Qiao Guanhua and I drafted the last remaining section of the Shanghai Communiqué ... The U.S. side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves. With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes.

But Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.” We all said yes. By the summer, Holbrooke had assembled his Ocean’s Eleven heist team—about thirty of us, from different disciplines and agencies, with and without government experience. In the Pakistani press, the colorful additions to the team were watched closely, and generally celebrated. Others took a dimmer view. “He got this strange band of characters around him. Don’t attribute that to me,” a senior military leader told me. “His efforts to bring into the State Department representatives from all of the agencies that had a kind of stake or contribution to our efforts, I thought was absolutely brilliant,” Hillary Clinton said, “and everybody else was fighting tooth and nail.” It was only later, when I worked in the wider State Department bureaucracy as Clinton’s director of global youth issues during the Arab Spring, that I realized how singular life was in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—quickly acronymed, like all things in government, to SRAP. The drab, low-ceilinged office space next to the cafeteria was about as far from the colorful open workspaces of Silicon Valley as you could imagine, but it had the feeling of a start-up.

Metternich system, in a world consisting of three major elements: the European balance of power; an internal German equilibrium between Austria and Prussia; and a system of alliances based on the unity of conservative values.

Holbrooke brought to every job he ever held a visionary quality that transcended practical considerations. He talked openly about changing the world. “If Richard calls you and asks you for something, just say yes,” Henry Kissinger said. “If you say no, you’ll eventually get to yes, but the journey will be very painful.

Ministers: "A minister who flies to a foreign capital to undertake negotiation is inevitably short of time, ill equipped in technical knowledge, subjected to great publicity and inclined to conclude some vague and meaningless agreement rather than to return empty-handed to his home. "More misery has been caused to mankind by the hurried drafting of imprecise or meaningless documents than by all the alleged machinations of the cunning diplomatists. Thus I should, wherever feasible, leave it to the professional to do his job quietly and without fuss." — Harold Nicolson, 1953 Ministers, how to influence: "Ministers are but men and as such have their weaknesses, that is to say, their passions and interests, which the ambassador ought to know if he wishes to do honor to himself and his Master." — Abram de Wicquefort Ministers, relationship to experts: "A minister, who is likely to be a somewhat transient occupant of his office, will be well-advised to listen to his country's experts both on the technical matters at issue and on the conduct of negotiations and what in any given circumstances can be achieved through diplomacy. An elected or politically nominated statesman is, in Henry Kissinger's apt phrase, not hired as a whiz kid on technical answers but to supply a sense of direction to the diplomatic dialogue conducted by the state he represents." — Adam Watson, 1983

But military pressure was only one part of the new strategy. Global diplomacy, too, had an important role to play, as Nixon and Kissinger turned first to Russia and later to China for assistance in helping them out of the quagmire. Secret channels to the Kremlin that sidestepped the State Department, followed by a spectacular trip to Beijing and a widely celebrated Moscow summit, were employed alongside the American air force. “The objective of all these things,” Nixon said, “is to get out.” In the heyday of the Domino Theory, such moves would have been unthinkable, since all of North Vietnam’s actions were understood as being directed from Moscow, and one Communist was no different from any other Communist. But by the time Nixon and Kissinger entered the White House, with the theory, in Morgenthau’s words, “intellectually untenable,” Nixon had his own, Nixonian way of refuting the notion of monolithic Communism. In the privacy of the Oval Office he said, “No Communist trusts another Communist.” He had moved far from dominoes and the body-snatcher image of brain-dead totalitarian automatons.

Polemics: Moral and ideological argumentation intended to reassure the populace of one's own state of the justice of their cause and to sow doubt among the people of hostile or neutral states about the justice of the opposing cause, thereby dividing them, undermining their will to resist, and sapping their morale. Policy and bureaucracy: "The spirit of policy and that of bureaucracy are diametrically opposed. The essence of policy is its contingency; its success depends on the correctness of an estimate which is in part conjectural. The essence of bureaucracy is its quest for safety; its success is calculability. Profound policy thrives on perpetual creation, on a constant redefinition of goals. Good administration thrives on routine, the definition of relationships which can survive mediocrity. Policy involves an adjustment of risks; administration an avoidance of deviation. Policy justifies itself by the relationship of its measures and its sense of proportion; administration by the rationality of each action in terms of a given goal. The attempt to conduct policy bureaucratically leads to a quest of calculability which tends to become a prisoner of events. The effort to administer politically leads to total irresponsibility, because bureaucracies are designed to execute, not to conceive. "The temptation to conduct policy administratively is ever present, because most governments are organized primarily for the conduct of domestic policy, whose chief problem is the implementation of social decisions, a task which is limited only by its technical feasibility. But the concern with technical problems in foreign affairs leads to a standard which evaluates by mistakes avoided rather than by goals achieved, and to a belief that activity is more likely to be judged by the pre-vision of catastrophes than the discovery of opportunities." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Policy, defensive: "Limited policies inevitably are defensive policies, and defensive policies inevitably are losing policies." — John Foster Dulles, 1950 Policy, national security: Diplomacy is the form which national security policy takes in normal times; it is the silent, bloodless stuff of strategy.

Peace, reconciliation with enemies: "We become reconciled with our enemies because we want to improve our situation, because we are weary of war, or because we fear defeat." — François de la Rochefoucauld, 1665 Peace, security of: Peace is secure only when there is no obvious profit in war. Peace, term of: War subdues peoples but does not capture their hearts; it is a principal task of diplomacy is to reconcile the vanquished to their defeat. Peace, war termination: "As a general rule, countries striving for stability and equilibrium should do everything within their power to achieve their basic peace terms while still at war. ... If this principle is neglected and the key issues are left unresolved until the peace conference, the most determined power [in a coalition] ends up in possession of the prizes and can be dislodged only by a major confrontation." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1994 Peace and war: It sometimes happens that statesmen are unable to make peace, because they are too weak at home, and unable to make war, because the risks are too great.

Balancer: A state that occupies the key swing position within an existing distribution of power, able to assure continuing equilibrium by joining with a defensive state or coalition to check the ambitions of another state or coalition whose accretion of power threatens otherwise to gain it a preponderance of power. Bargaining: Bargaining is the process of concessions, conditional offers, threats, and inducements by which compromises and mutual accomodation are reached. Bargaining: "A large part of diplomacy, as of all politics, is concerned with bargaining. Allies bargain to determine the extent and limits of their commitments to each other. Adversaries also bargain when elements of implied or explicit threat may be among the inducements used. All the economic discussions which bulk so large in the contemporary diplomatic dialogue involve bargaining ... The essential feature of bargaining is that the other party does not know how far you will go, and it is therefore most effectively done in private discussion; though the final results of a bargain, or a package of limited conditional bargains, can of course be made public." — Adam Watson, 1983 Bargaining position: "The bargaining position of a country depends on the options it is perceived to have." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1994

Morality in diplomacy: "To lie, misled, betray, to attempt a sovereign prince's life, to foster revolt among his subjects, to steal from him or trouble his state, even in peace-time, and under cover of friendship and alliance, is directly against ... the law of nature and of nations; it is to breat that public faith without which human society and, in truth, the general order of the world would dissolve. And the ambassador who seconds his master's views in such a business doubly sins, because he both helps him in the undertaking and performing of a bad deed, and neglects to counsel him better, when he is bound to do so by his function which carries with it the quality of councillor of state for the duration of his mission." — Hotman de Villiers, 1603, cited by J. J. Jusserand Morality in foreign policy: "Our choice is not between morality and pragmatism. We cannot escape either, nor are they incompatible. This nation must be true to its beliefs or it will lose its bearings in the world. But at the same time it must survive in the world of sovereign nation with competing wills. We need moral strength to select among agonizing choices and a sense of purpose to navigate between the shoals of difficult decisions." — Henry A. Kissinger Morality in foreign policy: "The policymaker must be concerned with the best that can be achieved, not just the best that can be imagined. He has to act in the fog of incomplete knowledge without the information that will be available later to the analyst. He knows — or should know — that he is responsible for the consequences of disaster as well as for the benefits of success. He may have to qualify some goals, not because they would be undesirable if reached but because the risk of failure outweight potential gains. He must often settle for the gradual, much as he might prefer the immediate. He must compromise with others, and this means to some extent compromising with himself." — Henry A. Kissinger Morality in foreign policy: "The only good principle is to have none." Attributed to Talleyrand

Power, balance of: "The balance of power is a system of alliances; and alliances may very easily vary, be mixed up like a pack of cards, provided a certain equality is the result. The object is peace, not any high ethical purpose." — Lord Acton Power, balance of: "Those who scoff at 'balance of power diplomacy' on the world scene should recognize that the alternative to a balance of power is an imbalance of power — and history shows us that nothing so drastically escalates the danger of war as such an imbalance." — Richard M. Nixon, 1972 Power, balance of, conditions for: "The balance of power works best if at least one of the following conditions pertains. First, each nation must feel itself free to align with any other state, depending on the circumstances of the moment. ... Second, when there are fixed alliances but a balancer sees to it that none of the existing coalitions becomes predominant. ... Third, when there are rigid alliances and no balancer exists, but the cohesion of the alliances is relatively low so that, on any given issue, there are either compromisers or changes in alignment. When none of these conditions exists, diplomacy turns rigid. A zero sum game develops in which any gain of one side is conceived as a loss for the other. Armaments races and mounting tensions become inevitable." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1994

Power, persuasiveness of: "A man-of-war is the best ambassador." — Oliver Cromwell Power, policy and: "Policy which is not supported by commensurate power is inoperative." — William Macomber, 1975 Power, reliance on: "To rely on the efficacy of diplomacy ... may lead to disaster; but to rely on power with insufficient means is suicide." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Power, size: In international relations, size does not equate to power, nor energy to strength. Practicality: "Nothing is unreasonable if it is useful." — Thucydides [See History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 6 Chapter 85 Section 1: "Besides, for tyrants and imperial cities nothing is unreasonable if expedient."]

I think there's a very strong set of historical examples which suggests that, without that careful work by so-called sherpas helping the climbers to climb the mountain Mount Everest and reach an agreement, there is no agreement, or if there is an apparent agreement, it falls apart very quickly. Usually a summit is an occasion to ratify what has previously been agreed, and maybe reached final agreement on a few points that are still in dispute. For example, the opening to China, which I participated in with President Nixon, would not have been possible without several trips and discussions between Henry Kissinger, General Alexander Haig, and Chinese counterparts. Almost everything had been pre-aggreed. I actually wrote part of the Shanghai Communique well in advance of the trip. And the one issue that had to be finalized was the Taiwan issue, and President Nixon's discussions with Chairman Mao and with Premier Zhou Enlai were able to bridge that gap. This is normal. [...] There is a global professional culture of diplomacy. Diplomacy in its modern state has its origins really with Belisarius, who was a figure in the Byzantine Empire under Justinian. He invented the modern foreign office, the modern intelligence agency. He was a master practitioner of divide and rule. He probably gave that Byzantine Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, an additional 400 years of existence that it otherwise would not have had. Of course, Justinian didn't like being upstaged by this Bulgarian peasant who had risen in the ranks in what was then called Constantinople, now Istanbul. And Belisarius was of course punished for having been so successful. He was a brilliant general also. He conquered much of Italy, and restored the Roman Empire's rule briefly in Italy as well as in North Africa. You know, great figures can sometimes accomplish great things. But the tradition of diplomacy which then was basically developed in Renaissance Italy and then perfected by Richelieu, the French Cardinal statesman, always involves extremely careful notetaking and recordkeeping. It's very notable to me that, American diplomats when we meet with, let's say, the Chinese or the Russians, are at a grave disadvantage. Because we don't have access to our own records. We have not mastered the record. I don't think anybody who is professional, whether they're Russian, Iranian, Chinese, whatever, goes into a meeting without have having carefully reviewed the record, and also considered the psychological profile of the persons they will be meeting with. (Excerpt from interview "Amb. Chas Freeman: Trump’s Next Move: Does He Even Know?")

War, limited: War for objectives declared by those conducting it to be narrow and limited rather than broad and open-ended. The purpose of such a declared limitation of objectives is to diminish the apparent challenge to the strategic interests of potential adversaries and thereby forestall the broadening of the war to include them. Limited war, in a self-defeating variant, is also occasionally taken to mean the pursuit of broad ends by strictly limited means, an approach more likely to produce frustration than victory. War, limited: "There are three prerequisites for a strategy of limited war: (1) the limited war force must be able to prevent the potential aggressor from creating a fait accompli; (2) they must be of a nature to convince the aggressor that their use, while involving an increased risk of all-out war, is not an inevitable preclude to it; (3) they must be coupled with a diplomacy which succeeds in conveying that all-out war is not the sole response to aggression and that there exists a willingness to negotiate a settlement short of unconditional surrender." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1960 War, logic of: "For any war effort — offensive or defensive — that is supposed to serve long-term national objectives, the most essential question is how the enemy might be forced to surrender, or failing that, what sort of bargain might be struck with him to terminate the war." — Fred Charles Ikle, 1991

War, without victory: If there is no clear victor in war or combat fails to secure the terms set by the victor, the issues will become less, not more, tractable. The bitter memory of conflict will imbue these issues with an emotional ferver far beyond that which they originally possessed. War and diplomats: "While war is merely hell for the soldiers, it is unemployment and degredation for the diplomats." — Martin Mayer, 1983 Warfare, political: Political warfare is an aspect of grand strategy that combines polemics, propaganda, public diplomacy, subversion, and psychological operations. Warriors, as peacemakers: "A man who is used to command finds it almost impossible to learn to negotiate, because negotiation is an admission of finite power." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Warriors, diplomats and: "The diplomat is the servant, not the master of the soldier." — Alexander II (of Russia), 1863 Warriors, diplomats and: "The military wants to do what the diplomats don't think is necessary, and the diplomats want the military to do what the military is too nervous to do." — George P. Shultz, 1982 Warriors, politics and: "There is no greater fatuity than a political jugment dressed in a military uniform." — David Lloyd George

Wartime, diplomacy in: "If we accept the notion that the object of war is to induce a certain frame of mind in the consciousness of the adversary and not to destroy him or to render him helpless in the determination of the postwar settlement, it follows that diplomacy is never in suspense. It has a three-phased task: to prevent war when possible; to control its course once it has broken out, and to end it as soon as possible in conditions likely to prevent its renewal." — Abba Eban, 1983 Weapons: Weapons are tools for making your enemies change their minds. Weapons: "Weapons are of little use on the field of battle if there is no wise counsel at home." — Cicero Will: "There are no purely political solutions any more than purely military solutions and ..., in the relation among states, will may play as great a role as power." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1957 Wisdom: "Men and nations do behave wisely, once all other alternatives have been exhausted." — Abba Eban, 1967

Stability: "Stability ... has commonly resulted not from a quest for peace but from a generally accepted legitimacy... , [meaning] an international agreement about the nature of workable arrangements and about the permissible aims and the methods of foreign policy. It implies the acceptance of the framework of the international order by all major powers, at least to the extent that no state is so dissatisfied that ... it expresses its dissatisfaction in a revolutionary foreign policy. A legitimate order does not make conflicts impossible, but it limits their scope. Wars may occur, but they will be fought in the name of existing structure and the peace which follows will be justified as a better expression of the 'legitimate,' general consensus. Diplomacy in the classic sense, the adjustment of differences through negotiation, is possible only in 'legitimate' international orders." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 "'Stalemate' exists when the circumstances prevent either party [to a dispute] from creating a solution alone. Each party has necessary but insufficient ingredients of a solution; making this known to another party in the same position (assuming that together their ingredients are sufficient) can turn stalemate into agreement." — I. William Zartman and Maureen R. Berman, 1982 Stamina: "A negotiator must have stamina — physical and mental stamina. He has got to be physically prepared, since he cannot always control the time of negotiations because other people are involved. He must not tire easily." — I. William Zartman and Maureen R. Berman, 1982

Strategy: A strategy is a direct or indirect course of action, consisting of a series of maneuvers, to reach an objective at a cost that is significantly less than the benefits to be gained. A strategy is defined by judgments about what to do, how to do it, what to do it with, and how to limit both the costs and adverse consequences of doing it. Tactics apply strategy to the circumstances of the moment. Strategy: "The best strategy is always to be strong." — Carl Maria von Clausewitz, 1832 Strategy, components of: "Insofar as states act to prepare or to avoid war, or use a capacity for warmaking to extort concessions by intimidation without any actual use of force, the logic of strategy pplies in full, just as much as in war itself and regardless of what instruments of statecraft are employed. Thus, except for their purely administrative aspect, diplomacy, propaganda, secret operations, and economic controls are all subject to the logic of strategy, as elements in the adversarial dealings of states with one another." — Edward N. Luttwak, 1987 Strategy, criteria for effectiveness: "To be effective, a strategy must ... be able to win a domestic consensus, both among the technical and the political leadership. It must be understood by the opponents to the extent needed for ... deterrence. It must receive allied endorsement if alliances are to remain cohesive. It must be relevant to ... problems in ... uncommitted areas so as to discourage international anarchy." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1964 Strategy, diplomacy and: "The distinction between diplomacy and strategy is an entirely relative one. These two terms are complementary aspects of the single art of politics — the art of conducting relations with other states so as to further the 'national interest'. If, by definition, strategy, the conduct of military operations, does not function when the operations do not take place, the military means are [yet] an integral part of diplomatic method. Conversely, words, notes, promises, guarantees, and threats belong to the chief of state's wartime panoply with regard to allies, neutrals, and even today's enemies, that is, to the allies of yesterday or tomorrow." — Raymond Aron

Unprecedented: "In foreign policy, the term 'unprecedented' is always somewhat suspect, because the actual range of innovation is so circumscribed by history, domestic institutions, and geography." — Henry A. Kissinger, 1994 Useful: "There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reprots that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished." — John Kenneth Galbraith, 1969 [See also Candid, Cordial, Frank, Friendly, Productive]