A Quote by Chuck Hagel
Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.
Related Quotes
Realism in foreign policy is made up of a clear set of values, since difficult foreign policy decisions are often decided with the narrowest of majorities. Without any sense of what is right and wrong, one would drown in a flood of difficult and pragmatic decisions.
Parts of you die with every decision you have to make. It becomes about making decisions between bad decisions and worse decisions.
Most of us think that decisions such as where shall I live, with whom shall I partner, what shall I pick as a career for my life are the most important decisions that we make. But from the point of view of the universe these decisions are not that important. Within you, you have already made decisions about who you are, what the universe is and how you will relate to other people and how you will relate to the universe and these decisions are creating consequences in your life moment by moment.
In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.
Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.
The people who make policy decisions should damned well know what they are talking about before they make the decisions. There is nobody who is an expert on cloning who would be afraid after seeing Attack of the Clones.
I think all people's lives are controlled by their decisions. You look at people's lives - it's not their conditions, it's their decisions. So everybody has a choice and every moment in your life you're making decisions.
The media should probe and challenge candidates to help voters understand their views on foreign policy. Questions should include, 'What lessons have you learned from past foreign policy decisions? How will they shape your vision as commander in chief? What is America's role in the world?'
But, that’s the whole point of corporatization - to try to remove the public from making decisions over their own fate, to limit the public arena, to control opinion, to make sure that the fundamental decisions that determine how the world is going to be run - which includes production, commerce, distribution, thought, social policy, foreign policy, everything - are not in the hands of the public, but rather in the hands of highly concentrated private power. In effect, tyranny unaccountable to the public.
That's why I made decisions; they were tough decisions but we shouldn't feel bad at all - don't look back with any regrets, that's how I made decisions as governor.
As a policymaker, as a public servant, I come to Washington, D.C., and I make difficult decisions and I make difficult decisions every day. And sometimes those decisions upset people.
If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.
A woman does not have to make decisions based on the need to survive. She can cut through issues, call shots as she sees them....Many bad decisions are made by men in government because it is good for them personally to make bad public decisions.
If we decide rightly what to do, or use a correct procedure for making such decisions, that has to be because the decisions or the procedure rest on good reasons, and these reasons consist in the apprehension of truths about what we ought to do. Because these truths must constitute reasons for our decisions, and because in the rational order, reasons must always precede the decisions based on them, the truth conditions of claims about what we ought to cannot be reduced to, or constructed out of, decisions about what to do, or procedures for making such decisions.
While I'm on foreign soil, I - I just don't feel that I should be speaking about differences with regards to myself and President Obama on foreign policy, either foreign policy of the past, or for foreign policy prescriptions.
The human experience can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all decisions are of the past, all decisions are about the future. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior. The character and quality of the images of the future which prevail in a society is therefore the most important clue to its overall dynamics.
Related Authors
Alexander Hamilton Quotes
American
Politician
Benjamin Franklin Quotes
American
Politician
Bernie Sanders Quotes
American
Politician
David Brooks Quotes
American
Politician
Hillary Clinton Quotes
American
Politician
Jill Stein Quotes
American
Politician
John F. Kerry Quotes
American
Politician
John McCain Quotes
American
Politician
Marco Rubio Quotes
American
Politician
Mitt Romney Quotes
American
Politician
Narendra Modi Quotes
Indian
Politician
Newt Gingrich Quotes
American
Politician
Paul Ryan Quotes
American
Politician
Rand Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ron Paul Quotes
American
Politician
Ted Cruz Quotes
American
Politician