Administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end of the Second World War.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the administration's failure in managing international relations effectively.
Henry A. Kissinger highlights the paradoxical situation of an administration that is equally at odds with both allies and adversaries, while also facing significant global upheaval. This situation reflects a notable decline in diplomatic relations and indicates a broader instability in the world order since World War II, emphasizing the complexities and challenges of modern governance.
In practice
In a political debate, one could use this quote to illustrate the failures of current foreign policy.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.
There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.
Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't.
Could you imagine if the U.N. had endorsed the war in Iraq, what our reputation would be like?
I think the political class in Berlin doesn't need to be supervised and monitored by intelligence services in order to find out what they're thinking. Just go to lunch with them, go to dinner with them, or read the papers.
We can't get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can't just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.
I think that it's a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it's only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections.
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