Stephen Kinzer Quotes

#1. With the exception of China, and perhaps Turkey, no country in the world matters as much to the United States as Mexico.

Stephen Kinzer

#2. Many Afghan intellectuals in the United States believe that their country is best kept together. They are encouraged by the fact that no leading tribal or political figure there has called for secession.

Stephen Kinzer

#3. Allowing a friend to careen toward self destruction is not friendship. That is a habit the United States needs to break as it pursues a richer and more deeply supportive relationship with Israel.

Stephen Kinzer

#4. American oil companies - including Amoco, Unocal, Exxon, Pennzoil - have invested billions of dollars in Azerbaijan and plan to invest billions more. As a result, they have developed a strongly pro-Azerbaijan position.

Stephen Kinzer

#5. The idea that Arabia is best run by Arabs is no more palatable to Western leaders today than it was to Napoleon or Churchill.

Stephen Kinzer

#6. After installing friendly leaders in Iran and Guatemala, the United States lost interest in promoting democracy in either country.

Stephen Kinzer

#7. Western powers remain imprisoned by the idea that the world is a dangerous place, that it needs to be managed, and that they are called upon to do the managing.

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#8. No one will presumably ever be able to prove or disprove such fundamental religious principles as the existence of God.

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#9. To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club. It's great not to be the only member any more!

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#10. Ataturk approved of the mevlevi dervish approach to God as being 'an expression of Turkish genius' that reclaimed Islam from what he saw as hide-bound, backward Arab tradition.

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#11. Chechens are Muslim, and some share the belief that the West is engaged in a global campaign against Islam.

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#12. Saudi Arabia supplies much oil to the U.S. And it is the world's largest consumer of American weaponry.

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#13. In a ravenous fifty-five-day spasm during the summer of 1898, the United States asserted control over five far-flung lands with a total of 11 million inhabitants: Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. Never in history has a nation leaped so suddenly to overseas empire. At

Stephen Kinzer

#14. Mexico needs schools, rural development, and an independent judiciary, not high-tech weaponry.

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#15. Archaeologists have made discoveries that challenge fundamental traditions of Judaism as well as those of Christianity and Islam.

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#16. The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

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#17. My general view is the delivery of news is changing in dramatic ways, and will continue to change into ways we can't even predict.

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#18. At the end of the day, there is still one function of journalism that cannot be computerized, and that is reporters. You're always going to need reporters.

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#19. During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.

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#20. A few of the world's most famous non-American novelists have large followings in the United States, among them Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Guenter Grass, who were both popular even before winning the Nobel.

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#21. By the late 1970s, repression and economic chaos were causing increasing unrest throughout Latin America. Army strongmen were forced to cede power in Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

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#22. One of the immutable patterns of history is the rise and fall of great powers. Those that survive are the ones that adapt as the world changes.

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#23. Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they try to imagine how global politics will unfold. In the foreign policy business, however, inertia is a powerful force and 'adroit' a little-known concept.

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#24. Human Rights Watch wants Rwandans to be able to speak freely about their ethnic hatreds, and to allow political parties connected with the defeated genocide army to campaign freely for power.

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#25. Other places are also generators of far-flung violence beyond their own borders - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are obvious examples - but none has as long a history of war, resistance, and terror as Chechnya.

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#26. The reason that Americans have not been able to see the great strategic benefit that could accrue from a closer relationship with Iran is emotion.

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#27. Sultan Mehmet had good relations with the Medici family and other powerful Italian clans, especially in Venice and Florence, and at his request, they sent him artists and craftsmen by the dozen.

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#28. During the 1980s, international interest in the Nicaraguan war was intense. No conflict since the Spanish civil war had provoked such passion around the world. It was a classic good-versus-evil war.

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#29. Pakistan is not about to crack down on terror groups or cut its military budget in order to build roads, schools and hospitals.

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#30. Castro has lived almost his entire life as a clandestine revolutionary. To such figures, truth is always malleable, always subservient to political goals.

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#31. Congress, it turns out, is filled with Republicans and Democrats eager to act as enablers for the most repressive forces in Iran.

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#32. Challenging orthodoxy is a death sentence in Washington.

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#33. In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is.

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#34. There is very little hope that the United States or anyone else can do much to stabilize Iraq, Libya, Syria or Egypt. Stabilizing Iran, and bringing it back into the family of nations, is much more possible. That would be a 'win' for both sides.

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#35. New media and mobile entertainment are revolutionizing the way people learn about the world.

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#36. Few if any countries understand the growing importance of water as fully as Turkey does.

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#37. The withdrawal of more than half a million Russian troops and dependents from Germany since 1991 is described by historians as 'the biggest pullout ever by an army not defeated in battle.'

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#38. On Aug. 19, 1953, Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran became the first victim of a C.I.A. coup. Ten months later, on June 27, 1954, President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala became the second.

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#39. Iranians launched their constitutional revolution in 1906 and established their parliament soon afterward.

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#40. The United States has means to wound Latin American countries deeply, chiefly by altering trade policies to cut imports in ways that would throw thousands out of work.

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#41. It is a great tool of dictators and tyrants, who want to get masses of people to do what they want, to make sure there are no libraries...The fact that there was no public library in Rwanda is one reason why genocide was possible.

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#42. Many Americans, and many more people around the world, have been outraged by what they see as President George W. Bush's radical reordering of American foreign policy.

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#43. The key to Turkey's success has been its ability to reinvent itself as times change.

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#44. The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

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#45. Because Iranians have had to fight so long and painfully for political freedom, they have a deep appreciation for its value - perhaps deeper than many in the West who take their electoral rights for granted.

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#46. No one will ever be able to say what the comandantes would have done with their historic opportunity in Nicaragua if they had not been confronted with civil war.

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#47. Honduras is strongly anti-Communist, maintains no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and has provided vital support for United States-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.

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#48. Since German reunification in 1990, historians and researchers have been free to work in the East, where the lost Nazi art collection disappeared.

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#49. During the 19th century, Iranians lost vast territories in disastrous wars, and corrupt monarchs sold everything of value in the country to foreigners.

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#50. In 1983, most Nicaraguans had still not fallen to the depths of deprivation and despair which they would reach in later years, but many were already unhappy and restive.

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#51. Accepting that Arabs have the right to elect their own leaders means accepting the rise of governments that do not share America's pro-Israel militancy.

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#52. Exceptionalism" - the view that the United States has a right to impose its will because it knows more, sees farther, and lives on a higher moral plane than other nations - was to them not a platitude, but the organizing principle of daily life and global politics.

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#53. For many years as a foreign correspondent, I not only worked alongside human rights advocates, but considered myself one of them. To defend the rights of those who have none was the reason I became a journalist in the first place. Now, I see the human rights movement as opposing human rights.

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#54. Most Pakistani politics is conducted within a narrow spectrum. Politicians spend much time debating the best ways to fight India, or take Kashmir, or dominate Afghanistan, or punish the United States for its real and imagined sins.

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#55. In fairness, Latin America's elected civilian leaders have made progress in some areas. They have brought their countries back to international respectability, curbed flagrant human rights violations, and sought to build democratic political institutions.

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#56. Countries that control water are likely to be the big winners of the future.

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#57. On December 4, 1972, President Salvador Allende of Chile told the United Nations General Assembly that his country would "no longer tolerate the subordination implied by having more than eighty percent of its exports in the hands of a small group of large foreign companies.

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#58. Washington sees the various local and national conflicts in the Middle East as part of a battle for regional hegemony between the U.S. and Iran.

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#59. Americans overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones.

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#60. In 1907, Britain and Russia signed a treaty dividing Iran between them; no Iranian was at the negotiations or even knew they were taking place.

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#61. Not all eagles can be trained, but those who take to life with a master display intense loyalty. Although they are not tethered, they always return after killing their prey.

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#62. The fundamentals of what journalism is about don't necessarily change. What will change is the delivery of news.

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#63. No step the United States could take anywhere in the world would bring strategic benefits as great as detente with Iran.

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#64. The main concern in Chile is that [Allende] can consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the world will be his success. . . . If we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble.

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#65. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." In

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#66. The long-term strategic goals of Iran and the long-term strategic goals of Turkey are close to the long-term strategic goals of the United States.

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#67. The long conflict between Israel and Palestine has, for better or worse, become the world's conflict. It permanently destabilizes the Middle East, blocks the settlement of urgent crises, and intensifies looming threats to the West.

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#68. Emotion is always the enemy of wise statesmanship.

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#69. As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.

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#70. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has denounced negotiation with Iran as a 'historic mistake' that is making the world 'a more dangerous place.' His partners in Washington vigorously echo that view.

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#71. Iran's most formidable modern leader, Reza Shah Pahlavi, was obsessed with the idea of building a steel mill, but in 1941, soon after he assembled all the components, Allied armies invaded Iran, and the project had to be abandoned.

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#72. The Afghans are probably the world champions in resisting foreign domination and infiltration into their country.

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#73. For decades, Turkey was widely viewed as a reliable NATO ally: prickly at times, but safely in America's corner.

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#74. After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism blew through the developing world.

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#75. Turkey can be a bridge to regimes and actions the United States can't reach. Turkey can talk to people the United States can't talk to.

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#76. If women are being oppressed in Egypt or children are being forced to join armies in the Congo, for example, it is not only acceptable but wonderful for Americans to be concerned, outraged, and active.

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#77. Americans had to choose between permitting them to become democracies or maintaining power over them. It was an easy choice.

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#78. To kill weeds, you must pull them up at the roots,

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#79. The United States is now harbouring Luis Posada Carriles. His continued freedom mocks victims of terrorism everywhere. It also shows how heavily the 'war on terror' is overlaid with politics and hypocrisy.

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#80. Chechens are not ethnically or culturally Russian, and have now been fighting for generations to free themselves from Russian rule.

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#81. During the Cold War, the non-aligned movement tried to become a 'third force' in world politics, but failed because it was too large and unwieldy.

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#82. In the mid-1950s Winston Churchill advised his American friends to recognize that Ho Chi Minh was unbeatable, accept his victory, and try to make the best of it. This the Dulles brothers could not do - because they were Americans.

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#83. American strategic doctrine suggests that Mexico is of second-level importance to the United States. It ranks below Japan and Indonesia, Brazil and India, Egypt and Israel, and European powers including Britain, France, and Germany. This is a grave geopolitical miscalculation.

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#84. Successive American presidents have turned a blind eye to piles of evidence that Saudi money is being used to foment holy war against America.

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#85. Was Castro sincere when, during his guerrilla war, he swore that he was not a Communist? If so, when did he change, and why? Looking back, does he believe he might have chosen a better course?

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#86. In the 1980s, the U.S. Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington.

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#87. One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.

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#88. The capture, taming, training and keeping of eagles is highly ritualized. Most of the birds, which have a life span of about 40 years, are caught when very young - either snatched from a nest or trapped in a baited net.

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#89. It is not far-fetched to draw a line from Operation Ajax through the Shah's repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the World Trade Center in New York.

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#90. As the United States shapes and carries out its policies toward Muslim countries, it should do so with Turkey at its side.

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#91. The dramatic rise of Turkey in the councils of world power was one of the main geopolitical developments of 2010.

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#92. Nebraska was home to indigenous peoples for centuries. It became a state in 1867, and has produced an important literary figure, Willa Cather, as well as an investor said to be the world's second richest man, Warren Buffett.

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#93. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers created the 'Fertile Crescent' where some of the first civilizations emerged. Today they are immensely important resources, politically as well as geographically.

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#94. Israel deserves special treatment from the United States, both for historical reasons and because there can be no regional peace without a secure Israel.

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#95. One of the most perplexing political questions of the late 20th century is how new democracies should punish deposed dictators and their associates. Victims cry for justice, but leaders of new regimes must decide to what extent it is possible, moral or prudent to pursue evildoers of the past.

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#96. No offense to Iceland, but Latin America is where the fugitive leaker Edward Snowden should settle.

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#97. King Frederick I of Prussia conceived the Amber Chamber in 1701 as a magnificent gift to the Russian royal family that would seal the alliance between the two powers.

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#98. Israel is thirsting for water, and Turkey is overflowing with it.

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#99. More than half of Guatemalans are pureblooded Indians, descendants of the proud Maya-Quiche tribes. In their mist-shrouded villages, the Indians worship the corn god and the rain god, only vaguely concerned with the political entity known as Guatemala.

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#100. What the United States wanted in Guatemala - and in Iran, where the C.I.A. also deposed a government in the early 1950s - was pro-American stability.

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