International Relations

"But that's the document, I'm interpreting that document. And to think that one might learn from other countries in how best to apply this American Constitution is something I think -- I've been reading about the Founding Fathers, and I think Franklin and Hamilton and Jefferson and Madison and maybe even George Washington all would have thought that we, on occasion at least, can learn something about our country and our law and our document from what happens elsewhere."

"Do you think things outside the United States cannot be relevant to an understanding of how to apply the American Constitution? That's what's at issue. What is at issue is the extent to which you might learn from other places facts that would help you apply the Constitution of the United States. And in today's world, as I've said, where experiences are becoming more and more similar, I think that there is often -- not a lot, not always -- but in a finite number of instances there is something to learn about how to interpret this document."

"The purpose of democratic statecraft is, or should be, to find the means of ordered liberty in a world condemned to everlasting change."

"To the political elite, statecraft is predicated on the notion that society is theirs to put into some type of hegemonic order. It is immaterial whether this institutionalized order actually helps society or instead puts it into a chokehold that slowly squeezes the air out of life. To the authorities, supremacy is always the primary objective."

"Some scholars consider the initial period of the Spanish conquest—from Columbus’s irst landing in the Bahamas until the middle of the sixteenth century— as marking the most egregious case of genocide in the history of mankind. The death toll may have reached some 70 million indigenous people (out of 80 million) in this period. Millions of natives died of disease— smallpox, measles, influenza, and typhus, in particular— brought to the Americas by the conquest. Alien microbes traveled more quickly than did the European conquerors themselves, by the highest estimates killing an estimated 95 percent of the pre-Columbian Native American population, by the lowest estimates about a half. There is no evidence that the Spanish purposely infected the indigenous peoples. Yet the Spanish imposed conditions upon the Indians that made them more susceptible to the imported diseases. They were exploited as forced laborers and were concentrated in work camps, especially as the search for gold and silver brought a frenetic Spanish interest in mining for precious ores. The Indians were forcibly deported from their homes to alien locations for the purpose of replacing local labor of natives who had died out. The newcomers were deprived of food and water and housed, if at all, in unsanitary, makeshift dwellings. They were separated from their families and normal support systems. They were beaten, brutalized, and deprived of freedom."

"The West’s use of what was its temporary edge in technology, including guns, armour and steel, enabled it to take over much of the rest of the world before the subjugated peoples learned how to fight back. It also helped, in the case of the Americas, that the Europeans brought new diseases with them. The Spanish adventurers Cortés and Pizarro overthrew great empires in Mexico and Peru, which had millions of subjects and huge armies, with mere handfuls of men. The odds were fantastic but the Spanish had the advantage of the germs they carried, which were already spreading inland, going ahead of them to lay waste the local populations, which had no immunity to such things as smallpox or measles. In addition, the Spanish rode horses against foot soldiers, wore steel armour and carried steel and guns against men armed with bronze and wood and armoured with quilted cotton."

"The evidence of profit was even greater, of course, in the vast land empire which the conquistadores swiftly established in the western hemisphere. From the early settlements in Hispaniola and Cuba, Spanish expeditions pushed towards the mainland, conquering Mexico in the 1520s and Peru in the 1530s. Within a few decades this dominion extended from the River Plate in the south to the Rio Grande in the north. Spanish galleons, plying along the western coast, linked up with vessels coming from the Philippines, bearing Chinese silks in exchange for Peruvian silver. In their "New World" the Spaniards made it clear they were here to stay, setting up an imperial administration, building churches, and engaging in ranching and mining. Exploiting the natural resources—and, still more, the native labor—of these territories, the conquerors sent home a steady flow of sugar, cochineal, hides, and other wares. Above all, they sent home silver from the Potosí mine, which for over a century was the biggest single deposit for the metal in the world."

"The Aztecs were Polytheists, practising human sacrifice and, in some areas, ritual cannibalism; but there were also points of comparison with Christianity - their chief god was born of a virgin, they ate pastry images of him twice a year, they had forms of baptism and confession, and a compass-point cross. Yet there was no attempt to build on these foundations, contrary to early Christian practice and, indeed, to the instructions of Gregory the Great. From the time of Juan de Zumarraga, first Bishop of Mexico, a great destroyer of religious antiquities, a systematic attempt was made to erase all trace of pre-Christian cults. Writing in 1531, he claimed that he personally had smashed over 500 temples and 20,000 idols."

"The Spanish did not find the American colonization easy. The first island-town Columbus founded, which he called Isabella, failed completely. He then ran out of money and the crown took over. The first successful settlement took place in 1502, when Nicolas de Ovando landed in Santo Domingo with thirty ships and no fewer than 2,500 men. This was a deliberate colonizing enterprise, using the experiences Spain had acquired in its reconquista, and based on a network of towns copied from the model of New Castile in Spain itself. That in turn had been based on the bastides of medieval France, themselves derived from Roman colony-towns, an improved version of Greek models going back to the beginning of the first millennium BC. So the system was very ancient. The first move, once a beachhead or harbour had been secured, was for an official called the adelantano to pace out the street-grid. Apart from forts, the first substantial building was the church. Clerics, especially from the orders of friars, the Dominicans and Franciscans, played a major part the colonizing process, and as early as 1512 the first bishopric in the New World was founded. Nine years before, the crown had established a Casa de la Contracion in Seville, as headquarters of the entire transatlantic effort, and considerable state funds were poured into the venture. By 1520 at least 10,000 Spanish-speaking Europeans were living on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, food was being grown regularly and a definite pattern of trade with Europeans had been established."

"Popé … ordered in all the pueblos through which he passed that they instantly break up and burn the images of the holy Christ… and that they burn the temples, break up the bells, and separate from the wives whom God had given them in marriage and take those whom they desired. They were ordered likewise not to teach the Castilian language in any pueblo…."

"The magistrates of the realm … draw 30,000 Ps. from the magistracy and become rich, doing harm to the poor Indians and the chiefs, despising and taking away their jobs and positions in this realm.… From this there is no defense by the principal chiefs, because they act with him and are partners. They are praised by the priest, the magistrate: "Oh, what a good principal chief, don Pedro!"… The said magistrates … and other Spaniards who walk among the Indians are as absolute rulers with little fear of God and justice."

"The Inca asked Fray Vicente who had told him so. Fray Vicente responded that the Gospel had told him, the book. Atahualpa said, "Give me the book, so that it will tell me." So he gave it to him and he took it in his hands and began to look through the pages of the book. The Inca said, "Well, why doesn't it tell me? The book doesn't even talk to me!" Speaking with great majesty, seated in his throne, the Inca Atahualpa threw the book down from his hands.… Don Francisco Pizarro and Don Diego de Almagro shouted and said, "Out, knights, against these infidels who are against our Christianity, and for our Emperor and King let us have at them!""

"Great was the stench of death after our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, half of the people fled to the fields. The dogs and the vultures devoured the corpses. The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the king and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh, my sons! So we became when we were young. All of us were thus."

"Often quoted: to serve God and His Majesty, to bring light to those who were in darkness, and to grow rich, as all men desire to do"

"Broken spears lie in the roads; We have torn our hair in our grief. The houses are roofless now, and their walls Are red with blood."

"The city of Temixtitan Tenochtitlán] is itself is as big as Seville or Córdoba.… This city has many squares where trading is done and markets are held continuously.… There are, in all districts of this great city, many temples or houses for their idols.… Among these temples there is one, the principal one, whose great size and magnificence no human tongue could describe, for it is so large that within the precincts … a town of some five hundred inhabitants could easily be built."

"The Indians were totally deprived of their freedom and were put into the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity which no one who has not seen it can understand. Even beasts enjoy more freedom when they are allowed to graze in the field."

"I promise this, that if I am supported by our most invincible sovereigns with a little of their help, as much gold can be supplied as they will need, indeed as much of spices, of cotton, of mastic gum (which is only found in Chios), also as much of aloes wood, and as many slaves for the navy, as their Majesties will wish to demand."

"Those who died so cruel a death, who rendered such important services to God and to their emperor, and who gave light to those who lived in darkness, ought to have had their names perpetuated in letters of gold; but they were never remunerated! They did not even obtain wealth, although this is the goal of all men!"

"I wished to give a complete relation to your Highnesses, and also where a fort might be built…. However, I do not see it to be necessary, because these people are simple in armaments…. With fifty men I could subjugate them all and make them do everything that is required of them."

"Presently we discovered two or three villages, and the people all came down to the shore, calling out to us, and giving thanks to God.… An old man came on board my boat; the others, both men and women cried with loud voices: "Come and see the men who have come from the sky. Bring them victuals and drink.""

"And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They…spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!”…They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. …With still others, …they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck …"

"Not only have [the Indians] shown themselves to be very wise peoples and possessed of lively and marked understanding, prudently governing and providing for their nations … and making them prosper in justice; but they have equalled many diverse nations of the world, past and present, that have been praised for their governance, politics and customs; and exceed by no small measure the wisest of all these, such as the Greeks and Romans, in adherence to the rules of natural reason."

"In order to bring those people to Christianity and obedience unto your Imperial Majesty, they should be well treated, and not otherwise."

"They [Indians] brought us blankets, which they had been concealing from the Christians, and gave them to us, and told us how the Christians had come into the country before and destroyed and burned the villages, taking with them half the men and all the women and children, and how those who could escaped by running off."

"We traveled over a great part of the country and found it all deserted, since the people had fled to the mountains, leaving their houses and fields out of fear of the Christians. This filled our hearts with sorrow, seeing the land so fertile and beautiful, so full of water and streams, but abandoned and the places burned down, and the people, so thin and wan, fleeing and hiding."

"Who can doubt that gunpowder against the infidels is incense for the Lord?"

"Who could conquer Tenochitlán? Who could shake the foundation of heaven?"

"For, as it happens, this is the one example of a Culture ended by violent death. It was not starved, suppressed, or thwarted, but murdered in the full glory of its unfolding, destroyed like a sunflower whose head is struck off by one passing."

"The problems with Russia are not just NATO expansion. There were also a process that began with the second Bush administration of withdrawing from all of the arms control — almost all of the arms control agreements that we had concluded with the Soviet Union, the very agreements that had brought the first Cold War to an end.... In effect, what the United States did after the end of the Cold War was they reversed the diplomacy that we had used to end the Cold War, and started sort of doing anything, everything the opposite way. We started, in effect, trying to control other countries, to bring them into what we called the “new world order,” but it was not very orderly. And we also sort of asserted the right to use military whenever we wished. We bombed Serbia in the ’90s without the approval of the U.N. Later, we invaded Iraq, citing false evidence and without any U.N. approval and against the advice not only of Russia but of Germany and France, our allies. So, the United States — I could name a number of others — itself was not careful in abiding by the international laws that we had supported."

"Long after the damaging excesses of Washington’s hegemonic power —the CIA coups, the torture, the drone killings, and those never-ending wars—fade from memory, the world will still need the more benign dimension of its dominion, particularly the very idea of global governance through international organizations and the rule of law, especially as we face a planet similarly in decline."

"These, then, are the qualities of my ideal diplomatist. Truth, accuracy, calm, patience, good temper, modesty and loyalty. They are also the qualities of an ideal diplomacy. But, the reader may object, you have forgotten intelligence, knowledge, discernment, prudence, hospitality, charm, industry, courage and even tact. I have not forgotten them. I have taken them for granted."

"There are all sorts of things you have to do in foreign policy, to get along in the world. To lessen tensions and prevent war. You have to hold your nose and deal with beasts. But you don’t have to tell outrageous and insulting lies, and you don’t have to break faith..."

"Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach -- condemnation without discussion -- can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door. In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable -- and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies. Pope John Paul's engagement with Poland created space not just for the Catholic Church, but for labor leaders like Lech Walesa. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe. There's no simple formula here. But we must try as best we can to balance isolation and engagement, pressure and incentives, so that human rights and dignity are advanced over time."

"As commander-in-chief, I make no apology for keeping this country safe and secure through the hard work of diplomacy over the easy rush to war."

"...but first there is a certain experience we must be careful to avoid...we must not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one's closest friends, then, in the end, after many blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all...This is a shameful state of affairs... and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs."

"I'd like to think the best bunker buster is a diplomat."

"All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means."

"An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country."

"One man's diplomacy will have a chance of success only if it is backed by power."

"... When I look at what we spend on defense, which is pushing up toward $650 to $700 billion dollars a year, as compared to what we spend on diplomacy and development... a couple of dozen billions of dollars a year, the scale is just enormous. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates famously said, look, we have more people on a single aircraft carrier - and we have 12 of those, David - than we do in the entire foreign service. And another one is former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who said, you can spend a lot more money on the military, but if you're not going to spend it on our diplomats and development, you're just going to have to buy me more ammunition. Those are two voices I would listen to. Let's keep this thing in balance."

"When you spend money on defense, on military solutions, it's like surgery. It's painful. It's high-risk. Things go wrong. When you spend money on diplomacy, with our wonderful foreign service officers, it's kind of like going to the clinic and using a variety of different drugs and physical therapy. And when you think about development and soft power, it's preventative medicine. It's those things like working out, taking an aspirin. It's low-cost, low pain, and yet it has long-term benefits. So any military person will tell you, use us as a last resort. Use surgery only when you have to. When you can, use preventative medicine - that's development - or diplomacy, but don't reach for that military instrument too soon.... Unequivocally, the most important ships that I deployed to Latin America and the Caribbean were not aircraft carriers, they were hospital ships. They conducted hundreds of thousands of patient treatments all over Central America, the Caribbean, South America."

"Our position is made difficult because of the general impression, held by all Terrans, that an ambassador is a man who lies to you, who knows that he is lying, and who further knows that you know he is lying—and still goes ahead and lies, smiling cheerfully at the same time."

"A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, “Speak softly and carry a big stick — you will go far.” If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power... So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power."

"The world already faces a series of major and destabilizing crises, one of which is the Ukraine crisis. It is the U.S. arrogance that blocked negotiations in 2021 between the United States and Russia that could have avoided the crisis. We need peace and diplomacy, not provocation. I hope that the U.S. government reconsiders its dangerous and misguided foreign policy. I want the U.S. to have a foreign policy based on the UN Charter. I want all of global economic diplomacy to be based on the ideas of sustainable development and the Paris Climate Agreement, that is finding the ways to decent lives for people in all parts of the world... We need a world of peace, in which war is not used as state policy, and a world in which all countries abide by the UN Charter. We have a lot of things to do on this planet to make our global governance work better, to make the planet safer, to address major ills like pandemics or human-induced climate change. And that can't be done by one side dictating the answers to another."

"A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a tactful way that you’ll look forward with pleasure to making the trip."

"Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century. Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon."

"DIPLOMACY, n. The patriotic art of lying for one’s country."

"'You're in America now' I said. 'Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.'"

"It occurred to me a long time ago, Mr. Lastogne, that diplomacy has very little to do with making friends."