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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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[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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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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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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No great power is ever satisfied with its sphere of influence. They never are.
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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Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.
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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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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The United States comes in 1945 and we basically blow the whistle.
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'm one of the many people who has said that the Hillary Clinton we know in private was effective, strong, courageous, and funny. And the campaigner we saw was less so, more scripted. Many people have made that observation, and it was my observation, too, but I'm grateful for what she did.
Daniel Fried
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Both the Bush people and [Barack] Obama people had no problem working with the holdovers. They weren`t out to get them.
Daniel Fried
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Our mistakes, blunders, flaws, and shortcomings notwithstanding, the world America made after 1945 and 1989 has enjoyed the longest period of general peace in the west since Roman times, and decades of prosperity.
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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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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America's security and prosperity didn't work unless other nations were also secure, and prosperous. There had to be something in it for them, so we weren't looking simply to grab territory, or widen our sphere of influence, or anything like that. We wanted to make the world a better place, and get very rich in the process.
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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Diplomacy is not merely talking somebody into something it's talking to somebody from a position of strength. You put your power on the table to open up the conversation that's diplomacy.
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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Putinsim is not necessarily the end state for Russia. Russia has moved in many directions since the early 1980s.
Daniel Fried