Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, it's a good question you raised, and one that I pointed to earlier, new international constructs that might be using templates of old international constructs, but that are revitalized so that we can have collective operations, if necessary, to engage in this type of stopping mass violence. The NATO allocations for many countries, they don't meet them year after year. In other words, the money they're supposed to contribute, they just don't do it. So who has to pick up the pieces? We do. There's a ``free rider problem'' as we call it here. And you deal in a lot of international diplomatic circles and you constantly hear it. Oh, the United States is the only one who has the ability. You're the only superpower. You must act, and it is your--you must be compelled morally, based upon who you are, to do something here. All of those are fine points. But in the 21st century, you have a shift of the global framework for international stability occurring. We have expended ourselves, as a country, for nearly 70 years, providing that framework for global stability, economically and politically protecting human rights, as I said earlier, not always perfectly.…”