Quotes on Foreign Relations

I'm currently reading a compilation of essays by Ezra T. Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower administration, and also former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Among the essays, one entitled United States Foreign Policy includes many quotes from former presidents and other leaders that I don't want to lose or forget.

The Virginia Bill of Rights (Article 15, drafted by George Mason and adopted by the Virginia Convention on June 12, 1776):
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Senator Robert A. Taft:
We cannot clean up the mess in Washington, balance the budget, reduce taxes, check creeping Socialism, tell what is muscle or fat in our sprawling rearmament programs, purge subversives from our State Department, unless we come to grips with our foreign policy, upon which all other policies depend.

George Washington:
I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation has a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that every one had a right to form and adopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that, if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration.

Thomas Jefferson [in his First Inaugural Address]:
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship, with all nations -- entangling alliances with none....

James Madison:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for brining the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunites of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No national could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

James Madison:
The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Goverment because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views; and because the body of the people are less capable of judging, and are more under the influence of prejudices, on that branch of their afairs, than of any other. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Herbert Hoover:
We must realize the vitality of the great spiritual force which we call nationalism. The fuzzy-minded intellectuals have sought to brand nationalism as a sin against mankind. They seem to think that infamy is attached to the word "nationalist". But that force cannot be obscured by denunciation of its greed or selfishness -- as it sometimes is. The spirit of nationalism springs from the deepest of human emotions. It rises from the yearning of men to be free of foreign domination, to govern themselves. It springs from a thousand rills of race, of history, of sacrifice and pride in national achievement.

Senator Robert A Taft. [in his book, Foreign Policy for Americans]:
No one can think intelligently on the many complicated problems of American foreign policy unless he decides first what he considers the real purpose and object of that policy.... There has been no consistent purpose in our foreign policy for a good many years past.... Fundamentally, I believe the ultimate purpose of our foreign policy must be to protect the liberty of the people of the United States.

J. Reuben Clark [on the United Nations Charter]:
There seems no reason to doubt that such real approval as the Charter has among the people is based upon the belief that if the Charter is put into effect, wars will end.... The Charter will not certainly end war. Some will ask -- why not? In the first placce, there is no provision in ther Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war.... It is true the Charter is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace.... The Charter is a war document, not a peace document.

Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it make it practically certain that we will have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.

General Thomas S. Power [with regard to maintaining a defensive force of sufficient magnitude to deter aggressors]:
Deterrence is more than bombs and missles and tanks and armies. Deterrence is a sound economy and prosperous industry. Deterrence is scientific progress and good schools. Deterrence is effective civil defence and the maintenance of laws and order. Detterence is the practice of religion and respect for the rights and convictions of others. Deterrence is a high standard of morals and wholesome family life. Deterrence is honesty in public office and freedom of the press. Deterrence is all these things and many more, for only a nation that is healthy and strong in every respect has the power and will to deter the forces from within and without that threatens its survival.

Senator Robert Taft:
I do not believe it is a selfish goal for us to insist that the over-riding purpose of all American foreign policy should be the maintenance of liberty and the peace of the people of the United States, so that they may achieve that intellectual and material improvement which is their genius and in which they can set an example for all peoples. By that example we can do an even greater service to mankind than we can by billions of material assistance -- and more than we can ever do by war.