Political Quotes

“Many of our colleagues felt that this would endanger our relationship with Russia. I am at one and the same time Russia's strongest critic on proliferation, on transparency, on strategic relationships. But I also consider myself their best friend. The Russians believe in strength, consistency, and candor. When we are strong with them, when we are consistent, and when we are candid they want to work with us. Our relationship with the Russians has been built on that. And the reason why this is so critically important gets back to that first series of phone calls that were made to me. Our Russian friends, the pro-Western leaders, were pleading with me saying, ``Curt, you have to understand what is happening here. We have not seen the hostility toward America this bad since pre-1991. We are hearing people in the Duma who have been our friends say nasty things about America and are driving us to support the nationalists who are calling for more aggressive action on Russia's part.'' They said, ``You have to understand America. We are going to have our parliamentary elections this year. If this continues, you may well drive Russia into electing an entirely communist Duma and perhaps a reactionary leader of our country.”