Notable Quotes

"CALL IT THE GREAT REPRESSION. The reality being repressed is that the western world is suffering a crisis of excessive indebtedness. Many governments are too highly leveraged, as are many corporations. More importantly, households are groaning under unprecedented debt burdens. Worst of all are the banks."
- Niall Ferguson, "Beyond the Age of Leverage: New Banks Must Arise," Financial Times (February 3, 2009)

"COULD PERSONAL OR NATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY for terrorist use of a nuclear weapon deter leaders from selling weapons to terrorists? To what extent could, or should, accountability apply in cases where proliferation is the result of negligence, not intent? Hard questions, yes, but questions 21st-century strategists must not only ask but also answer."
- Graham Allison, "How to Keep the Bomb from Terrorists," Newsweek International (March 23, 2009)

"ALTHOUGH THE TREASURY'S PLAN IS AIMED IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, it needs to be substantially expanded in three ways if it is to succeed. First, the Treasury must be prepared to inject capital into the banks that agree to sell mortgages. Without additional capital, the banks may not be willing to sell the mortgages that are causing their lack of confidence."
- Martin Feldstein, "Geithner's Bank Plan is a Good Start," Wall Street Journal (April 4, 2009)

"GIVEN THE PUBLIC'S WHITE-HOT ANGER over the financial sector's unwillingness or inability to ease credit since TARP I and seemingly tone-deaf acts by corporations receiving taxpayer dollars (indiscriminate use of corporate jets, for example), the forthcoming proposals on TARP II will likely be dead on arrival if they don't appear to be tough on executive compensation."
- Ben Heineman, "Executive Compensation: What Obama's Plan Means," BusinessWeek (February 7, 2009)

"AS FOR U.S. SANCTIONS AGAINST CUBA, in the past five decades Canada, Japan, Spain, Britain, France, and Italy have all played an active role in sanctions-busting on Cuba's behalf. One of the main reasons that these countries are even commercially competitive in Cuba is because of the absence of competition from U.S. businesses."
- Bryan Early, "To Lift the U.S. Economy, Lift Sanctions on America's Foes," Christian Science Monitor (March 25, 2009)

"CONSIDER A HYPOTHETICAL. Had the terrorist attacks of 9/11 been planned by al Qaeda from its current headquarters in ungoverned areas of Pakistan, is it conceivable that today the U.S. would find itself with 54,000 troops and $180 billion committed to transforming medieval Afghanistan into a stable, modern nation? For Afghanistan to become a unitary state ruled from Kabul, and to develop into a modern, prosperous, poppy-free and democratic country would be a worthy and desirable outcome. But it is not vital for American interests."
- Graham Allison and John Deutch, "The Real Afghan Issue is Pakistan," Wall Street Journal (March 30, 2009)

"MOST OF THE PAKISTANI ELITE are in denial. Too many authoritative figures simply refuse to face the extent to which the terrorist threat from Islamist radicals comes from within Pakistan."
- Azeem Ibrahim, "Pakistan in Denial is Its Biggest Security Challenge," Middle East Times (March 6, 2009)

"YET MANY ARGUE THAT THE WEST is just expressing wishful thinking when it contends that weaning itself off of fossil fuels will lead to energy security. If energy dynamics evolve along the present trajectory, the same geopolitical factors that pervaded the Oil Age may very well persist in the Renewable Energy Age, if one region remains the dominant producer."
- Justin Dargin, "Saudi Arabia, UAE Promote Energy from Sun and Wind," Oil and Gas Journal (March 2009)

"THE POTENTIAL HAZARDS OF RISING OCEANS because of climate change are not limited, of course, to small tropical islands. Such islands simply serve as a warning sign for vast coastal parts of the developing and industrialized world, from Bangladesh to Florida, where advancing ocean waters would also threaten areas with extensive shoreline development."
- Cristine Russell, "First Wave," Science News (February 26, 2009)

"EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS NEED TO WORK HARDER to convince their publics that they have as much of a stake in facing global threats as we do."
- Nicholas Burns, "Working With Our Friends in Europe," Boston Globe (April 3, 2009)

"RESTRAINING THE NUCLEAR AMBITIONS and capacity for mischief of the odious regime in Pyongyang is unlikely without China's support for a negotiated dismantling of fissile enrichment and missile launching facilities. Only China has the necessary leverage and influence with Kim Jong-il and his regime."
- Robert Rotberg, "China's Grand Bargain," Boston Globe (March 26, 2009)

"WITH THE NEW U.S. ADMINISTRATION IN PLACE, Pyongyang is once again probing to identify what additional concessions it might be able to extract -- hence the rocket launch. The North will try to lock the Obama administration into bilateral talks that marginalize Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang will want to talk missiles to distract from nuclear weapons issues."
- William Tobey, "What Kim Wants, Kim Gets," Foreign Policy online (April 8, 2009)

"IT GETS HARDER WITH EACH ADDITIONAL SETTLER and as Israeli opinion shifts rightward. Hamas' growing popularity is obviously another significant obstacle, and these two trends are reinforcing each other right now. Nothing is impossible in politics, I guess, but movement is in the wrong direction at present and it is hard for me to imagine it reversing in the absence of strong outside pressure."
- Stephen Walt, "What if the Two-State Solution Dies?" Foreign Policy online (February 12, 2009)

"THE PALESTINIANS CANNOT SURVIVE (even geographically) without access to Israel and the outside world. Israel cannot continue its imperial role in the West Bank (and the use of force in Gaza), nor can it withdraw. Autonomy and exclusion is not possible for two such inextricably related foes. They can exist only together."
- Ehud Eiran and Richard Rosecrance, "U.S., E.U. World Community Organizers," Providence Journal (March 3, 2009)

"I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT THE AMERICAN-IRANIAN BILATERAL RELATIONSHIP is the most important issue in the Middle East - and perhaps the world - in which there is room for progress..."
- Rami Khouri, "Building Relations with Iran and Syria," Agence Global (February 25, 2009)

"WHAT IS NOT CHANGING IS THAT THE WORLD LOOKS TO THE UNITED STATES to use its power for good, and that power depends in the first measure on the impressive quality of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who make up our military, but importantly also on the equipment and technology they have."
- Statement of Ashton B. Carter, under secretary for acquisition, technology, and logistics-designate, Department of Defense. Confirmation hearing, U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (March 26, 2009)

"OBAMA INHERITS A GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, two wars in which U.S. and allied troops are deployed, crises in the Middle East and South Asia, and a struggle against terrorism. He will have to deal with this legacy and chart a new course at the same time."
- Joseph Nye, "How Obama Leads," Daily Times (February 11, 2009)

"THE SHORTCOMINGS OF HOMELAND SECURITY efforts are well known. Among them the failure to instill a ‘culture of preparedness' in the public and accusations that guidance emanates from Washington without any consideration of local conditions. This stems from a federal point of view that considers homeland security an extension of national security dictated from inside the beltway. Change will require upending this perspective."
- Arnold Bogis, "Applying the ‘Obama Model' for Homeland Security," Huffington Post (February 11, 2009)

"THE LESSON FOR REFORMERS is not to despair; while some reforms fail, others succeed, and their task may not, after all, be a thankless one. This lesson is extremely important for the Obama Administration."
- Elaine Kamarck, "Reinventing Reform," Democracy Journal (Spring 2009)

"TRADITIONALLY, CIVIL WARS END when someone wins. We also know that today's identity-based civil conflicts are especially deadly. But governments no longer support military interventions as a credible means of securing negotiated settlements. Instead, they rely on good offices and bribes. This means that an increasing number of civil wars now reignite after a few years of troubled peace."
- Monica Toft, "Nasty, Brutish and Long," Prospect (April 2009)