Richard N. Haass Quotes

Author Image

Richard N. Haass

Profession : Diplomat

Birth : July 28, 1951

Unrestrained zeal to make the world better could make it worse. Promoting democracy must be undertaken with humility, care, and wisdom.

Richard N. Haass

Success in foreign policy, as in carpentry, requires the right tools for the job.

Richard N. Haass

Diplomacy can and will matter; little is inevitable in international relations.

Richard N. Haass

Speaking truth to power is actually a form of loyalty.

Richard N. Haass

When great powers fade, as they inevitably must, it's normally for one of two reasons. Some powers exhaust themselves through overreach abroad, underinvestment at home, or a mixture of the two. This was the case for the Soviet Union. Other powers lose their privileged position with the emergence of new, stronger powers.

Richard N. Haass

Difficult choices, unlike red wine, rarely improve with age.

Richard N. Haass

Indeed, in foreign policymaking, inconsistency is often a virtue. I speak not of principles but of policy.

Richard N. Haass

Wars of necessity are essentially unavoidable. They involve the most important national interests, a lack of promising alternatives to the use of force, and a certain and considerable price to be paid if the status quo is allowed to stand. Examples include World War II and the Korean War.

Richard N. Haass

I believe in diplomacy; I don't believe in talking to... that talking to Iran somehow constitutes a concession or a favour.

Richard N. Haass

The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.

Richard N. Haass

Americans were happy to buy vast quantities of relatively inexpensive Chinese manufactured goods, demand for which provided jobs for the tens of millions of Chinese who moved from poor agricultural areas to new or rapidly expanding cities.

Richard N. Haass

The abolition of the presidential term limit and President Xi Jinping's concentration of power have come as an unwelcome surprise to many.

Richard N. Haass

The U.S. does not want to live under the shadow of a North Korea that possesses long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads to American cities. At the same time, the U.S. has no appetite for a war that would prove costly by every measure.

Richard N. Haass

Trump's foreign policy is not so much immoral as it is amoral.

Richard N. Haass

It is important to signal that opposition to the use of any weapon of mass destruction is both deep and broad.

Richard N. Haass

The vote in the United Kingdom in favor of leaving the E.U. attested to the loss of elite influence.

Richard N. Haass

The rise of populism is in part a response to stagnating incomes and job loss, owing mostly to new technologies but widely attributed to imports and immigrants.

Richard N. Haass

Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority, especially amid difficult economic and political conditions.

Richard N. Haass

Russia may well be willing to stop interfering in Eastern Ukraine in exchange for a degree of sanctions relief if it could be assured that ethnic Russians there would not face reprisals.

Richard N. Haass

If Trump, for whatever reason, continues to coddle Russia, then Congress, the media, foundations, and academics should publicly detail the corruption that characterizes Putin's rule.

Richard N. Haass