Sublime
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His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.
Henry Kissinger • Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy
Ben-Gurion insisted that his forces abandon no territory, even in the face of attack, and for the most part, the Yishuv held on.
Daniel Gordis • Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
Roosevelt didn’t so much distrust experts as lament their limited horizons. It irked him that his own agents—the diplomats and military attachés in the Moscow embassy, the Washington officials who read their reports, even his beloved navy—were close to considering Stalin worse than Hitler: they failed to see the larger possibilities that came with
... See moreJohn Lewis Gaddis • On Grand Strategy
the years of 2000 to 2004 turned Israelis into centrists. They agreed with the Left that creating a Palestinian state was critical for Israel, so that Israel would not continue to rule over millions of Palestinians. Yet they also agreed with the Right that creating a Palestinian state would put Israel in grave danger.21 They were stuck. ON NOVEMBER
... See moreDaniel Gordis • Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn
The president’s dramatic prosecution of Northern Securities immediately won him popular acclaim as a virile “trustbuster”; and, true enough, over the following seven years, his administration would launch forty-four more antitrust suits against other large corporate combinations, among them such giants as Standard Oil and American Tobacco. But TR w
... See moreMichael P. Malone • James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest (The Oklahoma Western Biographies Book 12)
Good governance includes the pursuit of national interest regardless of theories or ideologies. Good government is pragmatic government.
Kuan Yew Lee • The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew
Lee’s pragmatism and unwillingness to be influenced by external pressures characterized his leadership style: “I was never a prisoner of any theory. What guided me were reason and reality. The acid test I applied to every theory or scheme was, would it work?”
Kuan Yew Lee • The Wit and Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew
Where to intervene? Where to bring democracy? Where to nation-build? I propose a single criterion: where it counts. Call it democratic realism. And this is its axiom: We will support democracy everywhere, but we will commit blood and treasure only in places where there is a strategic necessity—meaning, places central to the larger war against the e
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