A Quote by Daniel Fried
[Russians would like to] undermine the West and its institutions, create doubts about NATO, create doubts about the European Union, support nationalists on the right just as the Soviet communists supported communists on the left. Weaken the West in general and create an atmosphere in which we`re uncertain about ourselves.
Related Quotes
The Soviet Union was brought down by a strange global coalition of Western European conservatives, Eastern European nationalists, Russian liberals, Chinese communists, and Afghan Islamic reactionaries, to name only a few. Many of these discordant groups disliked the United States intensely. But Americans were able to mobilize them to direct their ire at the Soviet Union first.
Characters who are absolutely sure about what they do, who plunge ahead without fear, are not that interesting. We don’t go through life that way. In reality, we have doubts just like everyone else.
Bringing your Lead’s doubts to the surface in your plot pulls the reader deeper into the story, and this is an excellent way to coax the reader to lose himself in the story world you’re about to create.
Both the nationalists and the communists disapproved of jazz and feared it. They thought it would weaken people's resolve to fight off the invasion. And most Americans know, China did ban all Western music for about 30 years, starting in 1949. This is where it started.
I'm not very enthusiastic about smaller nations forming their own states, particularly those in the West, where they would, after gaining 'independence', remain in the alliances that are oppressing and plundering the entire world: like NATO or the European Union. The breaking of the great country of Yugoslavia into small pieces was a hostile, evil design by the West. The dissolution of Czechoslovakia after the so-called "Velvet Revolution" was a total idiocy. But Catalonia, if it became independent, would become one of the richest parts of Europe.
The Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939, a traumatic shock to me, ended any ambivalence I had about the Soviet Union, and all cooperation with Communists in united fronts.
The Russians are using the tools at their disposal to weaken Western solidarity, to create doubt, to support nationalist parties, just as the old Soviets supported leftist parties. We need a united Western response to this multi-pronged threat.
Where have we come as a country, when loving the Constitution, being a patriot, loving Jesus is extremist? Let me tell you what I think is extreme, is a president who was raised by communists, taught by communists, who was supported by communists, and whose self-appointed, self-admitted heroes are communists. And that, I think, is un-American.
I believe the liberal international order is under assault from Russia, and from other authoritarian regimes, and it is being questioned from within the West by nationalists, by nativists, and by people who doubt our - doubt the values of the West. We've gone through periods like this before; in the '70s, after Vietnam and Watergate, and certainly in the '30s, when people thought liberal democracy was dead, and the future belonged either to the fascists or the communists.
I create doubt in the reader's mind. That is what literature is for: to provoke, to raise doubts, to talk about things that are not obvious.
I create music; I create painting; I create whatever I want to create. I create, what you say, clothes. I create, I don't know, dance move. I create anything.
What most surprises me about Brazil is the extent of the difficulties that we create for ourselves. We create a lot of legislation to control the Brazilian state itself, that this ends up meaning that things don't go with the speed any head of government would like.
I think, Russia is pushing against the West in general, not just the United States but the institutions of the West, the key governments in the West using a variety of tools, as well as military assault on Ukraine.
American Communists have the opportunity to preach freely their ideas. It would be absolutely wrong to hold the Soviet government responsible for activities of the American Communists.
Was the Soviet Union reformable? I would say no. They said, 'Okay, the Soviet Union isn't working.' They would say, 'No, it's great. We just need democracy, political pluralism, private property.' And then there was no Soviet Union. The European Union is the same.
Albania, Macedonia and Greece have managed to create a good partnership in the south of the Continent and are making progress in blocking the spread of the conflict. But any spillover could destroy this European-oriented partnership and create problems for the European Union countries themselves.
Conservatives recognize there's gonna be winners and losers. The communists say that's not right. There shouldn't be any losers, and they set about trying to create circumstances where people think nobody will lose. But everybody loses under communism. They eventually have to build walls around countries to keep people in, as in the Berlin Wall.
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