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[Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don`t mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.

Daniel Fried

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Daniel Fried
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: January 1
Diplomat
Washington
District of Columbia
Bigs
Notches
Better
Russians
Feel
Collapse
Feels
Soviet
Mean
Union
Way
Unions
Make
Failure
Bring
Notch

More quotes by Daniel Fried

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America's grand strategy did not come from nowhere. It followed from our deeper conception of ourselves, and our American identity. Who are we, Americans? What is our nation? We are not an ethnostate with identity rooted in shared blood. The option of a white man's republic ended at Appomattox.
Daniel Fried
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Don't mistake the Russia you want to exist for the Russia that there actually is. Be realistic.
Daniel Fried
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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.
Daniel Fried
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I think the West is in a low point we haven`t seen since the 1930s.
Daniel Fried
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We should not assume that Russia is doomed to live according to its worst traditions. In fact, in Russian history, failed efforts at external aggression, when they fail, usually bring on areas of internal reform.
Daniel Fried
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Remember, the American grand strategy works when other countries feel secure. But it doesn't work if we acquiesce in the aggression of other countries.
Daniel Fried
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Nothing can be taken for granted and this great achievement is now under assault by Russia. But what we did in my time is no less honorable. It is for the present generation to defend.
Daniel Fried
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We Americans are focused on Russia`s attacks with our electoral system and we`re consumed with that. But Russia is pushing against the West generally.
Daniel Fried
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Diminish us across the board. They [Russians] do not wish us well.
Daniel Fried
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The United States comes in 1945 and we basically blow the whistle.
Daniel Fried
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[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.
Daniel Fried
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Russia committed an act of aggression in Ukraine, and that's the first time since 1945 a European country has seized the territory of another European country. That's serious business. They started a war with their neighbor. Their troops as well as the separatists funded and controlled by Russia are killing people just about every day.
Daniel Fried
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We have a deep sense of American equality and opportunity, and that informs the way in which we brought our American power to the world, because we thought that other nations were entitled to that same opportunity in a rules-based system.
Daniel Fried
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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.
Daniel Fried
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The European Union, ok, right, it has a bureaucracy, right. It`s sometimes difficult to deal with but so what? You hire a couple of people like me to work the European Union, and it can be done. It`s pretty good.
Daniel Fried
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At least in my country, we have come to accept the flags burning, but what we cannot accept is violence, burning of embassies and intimidations, and there is no excuse for that.
Daniel Fried
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[Donald Trump administration] didn`t ask me to stay and 40 years seemed like enough.
Daniel Fried
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My 40 years in the foreign service and the careers of many of my friends became associated with the fall of the Soviet Empire and the putting in order of what came after - the building of a Europe whole, free, and at peace. It`s hard to recall today how improbable victory in the Cold War appeared.
Daniel Fried
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The Civil War was fought, in a sense, over whether that sentence - all men are created equal - is to be taken literally. And the southerners in the 1850s argued that it was not.
Daniel Fried
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I am not one of these people that believes that Russia is doomed, or somehow, you know, inevitably disposed to act according to its worst traditions. But all the more reason, therefore, to resist their aggression and take it seriously.
Daniel Fried