The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.
Interpretation
Mistakes in foreign policy occur when sound principles are applied in the wrong context.
Henry A. Kissinger highlights that the difficulties faced by American foreign policy during the 1960s and 1970s stemmed from a mismatch between the application of rational principles and the complex, often unsuitable political realities of the time. This suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to foreign relations can lead to significant errors and unintended consequences.
In practice
This quote can be used in a political science discussion to illustrate the pitfalls of foreign policy decisions.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that werenβt 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.
The massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.
Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.
Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.
One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.
In 2008, I spoke out against calling the president a Muslim as if that was a curse. And then in 2012, once again, I was very disturbed about some of the intolerance I was seeing in the party, so I made a statement saying there's a level of intolerance in some parts of the Republican Party. And there was, and I think there still is.
The Sudanese government has been playing games with the world, with the Africa Union, in particular, have been playing for time in order to conclude its mission of ethnic cleansing in the Sudan.
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