"The decay of the Soviet experiment should come as no surprise to us. Wherever the comparisons have been made between free and closed societies -- West Germany and East Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, Malaysia and Vietnam -- it is the democratic countries what are prosperous and responsive to the needs of their people. And one of the simple but overwhelming facts of our time is this: Of all the millions of refugees we've seen in the modern world, their flight is always away from, not toward the Communist world. Today on the NATO line, our military forces face east to prevent a possible invasion. On the other side of the line, the Soviet forces also face east to prevent their people from leaving."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Ronald Reagan, Address to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 8 June 1982
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/NATO
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
NATO
45 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by NATO →
Related Quotes
"The best thing for the security of Sweden and the Swedish people is to join NATO...We believe Sweden needs the formal…"
"Washington and its NATO partners more and more often resort in international relations to the policy of blackmail and…"
"...one Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations wit…"
"Before joining NATO, each country had to establish civilian control of its army. Before joining the European Union, e…"
"The [2014] crisis in Ukraine, and the prospect of a further crisis in NATO itself, is not the result of our triumphal…"
"The Atlantic Treaty is not aggressive. It is purely defensive. Those who attack it as offensive do so from a bad cons…"
"[T]his Pact is a purely defensive arrangement for the common security of the countries who join it, and it is not dir…"
"[T]he Pact must be regarded as a concrete expression of the identity of view long held among the Western nations. It …"
"Needless to say, in the 1950s when most Africans were still colonial subjects, they had absolutely no control over th…"
"The paramount purposes of the pact are peace and security... It is clear that the North Atlantic Pact is not an impro…"