World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation.
From Richard Holbrooke
Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.
As countries grapple with modernization, people who are left behind tend to hold firmer and firmer to their view of the evil of modernity.
If a country denies it has AIDS, that country will inevitably become an even greater victim.
The male elites that run most countries are exceedingly uncomfortable with the subject of AIDS because it's a sexually transmitted disease.
You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the system, unless you stop its growth. And the only way to stop its growth is prevention.
United Nations peacekeepers are going all over the world spreading AIDS even while they're trying to bring peace. What a supreme irony.
People in uniform are not sacrosanct. They don't have all the answers. The use of force is a political decision at its core, in terms of its objectives; then the military, as the experts, must be brought in to tell you how to do it.
I'm not a wide-eyed imperialist who wants to see Americans manning outposts all over the world. Not outposts to freedom in the cold war cliche, but islands of stability and seas of ethnic strife. That is not what anyone should feel comfortable seeing Americans doing.
Pakistani politics is complicated, and I think it's not something a foreigner can easily assimilate and understand.
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