Geopolitical Quotes:

When I went to war, I did not go making geopolitical calculations. I went to war with a lust.

- George Friedman

source: Source: www.psychologytoday.com

topic: War, Lust, Geopolitical

Iraq is a manufactured conflict for the sake of geopolitical dominance in the area.

- Janeane Garofalo

topic: Iraq, Sake, Dominance, Geopolitical

Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here.

- George Friedman

source: Source: www.businessinsider.com

topic: Simple, America, Goal, Geopolitical

Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

source: Zbigniew Brzezinski (2007). “The Grand Chessboard”, p.48, Basic Books

topic: Country, Independent, Ukraine, Independent Country, Geopolitical

First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas.

- Daniel Yergin

topic: Vocabulary, People, Firsts, Different Meanings, Energy Security

I believe it is still true that conflicts among major powers usually stem from geopolitical rivalries but rarely from economic competition.

- Robert Kagan

topic: Believe, Competition, Conflict, Economic Competition, Geopolitical

Although our eyes can not penetrate the darkness of the future, scientific geopolitical analysis enables us to make certain predictions.

- Karl Haushofer

topic: Eye, Darkness, Analysis, Geopolitical

We are living in a world where major states and large geopolitical projects have to prove their competitive edge. It is clear, as well, that with regard to the intensifying American-Chinese confrontation and the inert power of a united Europe, Russia has to make up its mind - because it is losing ground as an independent center of power.

- Garry Kasparov

source: Source: www.rferl.org

topic: Independent, Russia, Europe, Geopolitical

For future geopolitical stability and global prosperity, we need to build a culture of greater trust and understanding between China, America and the rest of the world.

- Stephen A. Schwarzman

source: "Wall Street tycoon creates $300M China scholarship". www.foxnews.com. April 21, 2013.

topic: America, Understanding, Needs, Geopolitical

It is a fact that many of the wars and conflicts happening all over the world are aggravated or fought strictly for geopolitical fossil fuel energy interests, and many of the world's most dangerous regimes are funded by fossil fuel dollars.

- Mark Ruffalo

source: "ORIGIN Interview: Mark Ruffalo on Climate Change, the Monopoly on Our Energy Systems, Fighting Fracking, the True Cost of Fossil Fuel Pollution, Showing Compassion, and Being Who You Say You Are". Interview with Leilani Münter, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 27, 2016.

topic: War, Fossils, Facts, Geopolitical, Aggravated

It follows that America's primary interest is to help ensure that no single power comes to control this geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: America, Space, Community, Geopolitical, Global Community

For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia - and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained.

- Zbigniew Brzezinski

topic: America, Long, Chiefs, Primacy, Geopolitical

The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

- Vladimir Putin

source: Speech on national TV, April 25, 2005.

topic: Demise, Unions, Provocative, Soviet Russia, Soviet Union

Geopolitical interests are behind the so-called war on drugs and terrorism.

- Evo Morales

source: Source: bigthink.com

topic: War, Drug, Terrorism, Geopolitical

As a scientist, I want to go to Mars and back to asteroids and the Moon because I'm a scientist. But I can tell you, I'm not so naive a scientist to think that the nation might not have geopolitical reasons for going into space.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

topic: Moon, Thinking, Space, Geopolitical

In this era of tightening world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new form of geopolitical leverage. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

- Lester R. Brown

topic: Land, Oil, Gold, Food Supply, Geopolitical

In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a director who's never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that you don't look at war as a geopolitical endeavor.

- Steven Spielberg

topic: War, Looks, Gone, Geopolitical

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating. [...] For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.

- Charles Krauthammer

source: "Moral clarity in Gaza" by Charles Krauthammer, www.jewishworldreview.com. January 2, 2009.

topic: War, Israel, Moral, Gaza, Hamas

Prophet just means intellectual. They were people giving geopolitical analysis, moral lessons, that sort of thing. We call them intellectuals today. There were the people we honor as prophets, there were the people we condemn as false prophets. But if you look at the biblical record, at the time, it was the other way around. The flatterers of the Court of King Ahab were the ones who were honored. The ones we call prophets were driven into the desert and imprisoned.

- Noam Chomsky

source: "The U.S. Role in the World". Interview with Harry Kreisler, globetrotter.berkeley.edu. March 22, 2002.

topic: Kings, Mean, Biblical, Moral Lessons, Ahab

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

- Vladimir Putin

source: "Prince Charles is right: Similarites between Putin and Hitler are uncanny" Rep. Trent Franks, www.foxnews.com. May 23, 2014.

topic: Drama, Russia, Epidemics, Geopolitical

Foreign policy is all about a universe of bad decisions, imperfect decisions; every situation is different. The dynamics, the atmospherics, the people, the pressures, the geopolitical realities shift.

- Chuck Hagel

topic: Reality, People, Decision, Bad Decision, Geopolitical

I suspect millions of people from my generation probably have comparable stories to tell: if not of sports simulations then of Dungeons & Dragons, or the geopolitical strategy of games like Diplomacy, a kind of chess superimposed onto actual history.

- Steven Johnson

topic: Sports, Dragons, Games, My Generation, Geopolitical

The industrial civilisation is based on the consumption of energy resources that are inherently limited in quantity and that are about to become scarce. When they do, competition for what remains will trigger dramatic economic and geopolitical events; in the end, it may be impossible for even a single nation to sustain industrialism as we have know it in the twentieth century.

- Richard Heinberg

source: Richard Heinberg (2003). “The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies”, New Society Pub

topic: Competition, Environmental, Events, Geopolitical

I think Syria is in a particularly sensitive geopolitical position in terms of the politics of the Middle East.

- Edward Luck

source: "Interview with Edward Luck, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General". UN News Centre Interview, www.un.org. August 1, 2011.

topic: Thinking, Middle East, Sensitive, Geopolitical

Liberia is not at the center of a massive geopolitical game. Afghanistan is and has always been. The history is dramatic, the politics are dramatic, the landscape is incredibly dramatic.

- Tim Hetherington

source: Source: www.thewrap.com

topic: Games, Landscape, Dramatic, Geopolitical

Obviously Pakistan and the U.S. are very different countries, but we have common geopolitical interests in preventing communist take over in Afghanistan and hence, now that Pakistan has a government that we can cooperate with, even though it is a military government, we are working together with them in order to promote our common interests. But obviously we also differ with Pakistan on a number of issues.

- Samuel P. Huntington

source: Interview With Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. June 17, 2012.

topic: Country, Military, Government, Geopolitical

Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there's something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think - I believe - it has to do with geopolitical interests and also has a moral component.

- Vladimir Putin

source: "Putin Q&A". "TIME" Interview, content.time.com. 2007.

topic: War, Believe, Thinking, War Of The Worlds, Geopolitical

As matters now stand, the veto seems inappropriate, given the absence of any deep ideological split between major states, and definitely constrains the war-prevention mission of the UN. Similarly, the present permanent five are out of touch with geopolitical realities, and constitute a remnant of a West-centric world order, casting a shadow of illegitimacy across the activities of the most important organ of global policymaking in the UN System.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: War, Reality, Order, Veto, Geopolitical

Today's meeting was extremely important and brought exceptional results, ... The talks have shown that the long-term national and geopolitical interests of Russia and India coincide.

- Vladimir Putin

topic: Russia, Long, Important, Geopolitical

A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001... It has been called a secret blueprint for US global domination. ... A small group of people with a plan to remove Saddam Hussein long before George W. Bush was elected president. ... And 9/11 provided the opportunity to set it in motion. Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed years ahead of the blow.

- Ted Koppel

topic: Blow, Opportunity, Years, Small Groups, Regime Change

I think it is less the limited amount of information than the filters that information about the Middle East must pass through before being fairly addressed in the mainstream media. In more intellectual and geopolitical terms, the perceptions of the region are distorted by a combination of Orientalism and the priorities of the state of Israel, including the refusal to discuss the relevance of Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal in the context of addressing Iran on its nuclear program.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.truth-out.org

topic: Thinking, Israel, Media, Mainstream Media, Orientalism

After going to war against the U.N.'s expressed wishes, the U.S. is now admitting it needs the U.N.'s help. It's the geopolitical equivalent of the 2 a.m. phone call ever parent dreads: 'Mom, I'm not saying I wrecked the car, but I need a ride home.'

- Jon Stewart

topic: Mom, War, Home, Going To War, Geopolitical

There was a deliberate decision after the failure of the League of Nations to make the next attempt to establish a global political actor sensitive to geopolitical realities. The underlying idea was to provide major states, defined in 1945 by reference to the winners in the Second World War (now an anachronism), with assurance that they could take part in the UN without jeopardising their national interests. In this regard, the UN has succeeded, as none of the big countries has withdrawn, and the Organisation has managed to achieve virtually universal membership of all sovereign states.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Country, War, Reality, Anachronism, Geopolitical

Maybe we need to start with the rethinking of what is "west" and what is "non-west." It seems to me that there are any number of populations who already cross that divide, and we could probably point to several existing states that belong exclusively neither to one category nor to the other. Do we use these terms to designate geographical realities, geopolitical ones, or perhaps sites of power, exploitation, orientalism that move through space and time in ways that have to be tracked historically.

- Judith Butler

source: Interview with Cihan Aksan and Jon Bailes, www.counterpunch.org. October 11, 2013.

topic: Moving, Reality, Numbers, Orientalism, Rethinking

When we strengthen our relations with the Gulf states, when we cooperate with the Arabs, everybody asks if we are looking for a new geopolitical place. But in the Middle East and the Gulf, you can find German, French and British goods everywhere. German relations to these states are very good, as are English and French relations. Does this make them Arab-oriented?

- Recep Tayyip Erdogan

source: "If the EU Doesn't Want Us, They Should Say it Now". DER SPIEGEL interview, www.nytimes.com. April 16, 2007.

topic: Middle East, Doe, States, Geopolitical

The potential of Mexico, Canada and the United States is enormous. We have a combined population of half a billion people; peaceful trade-friendly borders that are the envy of the world; the prospect of energy independence is within reach and will change the geopolitical situation of United States; we do a trillion dollars in trade among the three countries; more than 18,000 American companies are involved in foreign direct investment in Mexico and Canada; an increasing number of Mexican companies are creating jobs in the United States.

- Alan Bersin

source: Source: www.salon.com

topic: Country, Jobs, Numbers, Creating Jobs, Canada And The United States

There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.

- Van Jones

source: Source: pen.org

topic: Russia, Blood, Europe, Assad, Geopolitical

Okay, NATO expanded to East Berlin and East Germany. Under [Bill] Clinton NATO expanded further, to the former Russian satellites. In 2008 NATO formally made an offer to Ukraine to join NATO. That's unbelievable. I mean, Ukraine is the geopolitical heartland of Russian concern, quite aside from historical connections, population and so on.

- Noam Chomsky

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Mean, East Germany, East Berlin, Geopolitical, Nato

This issue of expanding the reach of international criminal law by reliance on the use of Universal Jurisdiction by domestic courts needs to be balanced against the injustice of according impunity to those with strong geopolitical backing. It is notable that several western European countries backtracked on UJ after threats of retaliatory moves by the United States and Israel. There is no doubt that the domain of UJ is a geopolitical battleground.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Country, Strong, Moving, Jurisdiction, European Countries

For a combination of reasons, and despite evident fondness for American products and individuals, my impression is that most Pakistanis have extremely negative views of the U.S. as a geopolitical player.

- Mohsin Hamid

topic: Player, Views, Negative, Fondness, Geopolitical

In the Goldstone Report, Israeli perpetrators of possible crimes against humanity were made subject to prosecution and punishment, although the geopolitical leverage of the United States within the UN prevents implementation. At the same time, several African leaders are being prosecuted for their crimes against humanity and participation in genocide: a double standard of sorts, given the impunity accorded to the West and Israel.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Punishment, Israel, Leader, Crimes Against Humanity, Geopolitical

On the one side, I welcome prosecutions of individuals such as Pinochet, and would welcome the indictment, prosecution, and punishment of Kissinger. On the other side is the geopolitical reality that only those in the global South are likely to experience the impact of Universal Jurisdiction.

- Richard A. Falk

source: Source: www.counterpunch.org

topic: Reality, Impact, Punishment, Kissinger, Jurisdiction

The "prophets" were what we would call dissident intellectuals. They provided critical geopolitical analysis, condemned the crimes of the powerful, called for justice and mercy for those who needed help, etc. I wouldn't personally endorse everything they said, any more than I would for critics of power and its crimes today. But rather generally I think they played an honorable role - and suffered accordingly.

- Noam Chomsky

source: Source: chomsky.info

topic: Powerful, Thinking, Justice, Justice And Mercy, Needed Help

There is a principle of human affairs that goes back millennia, which is that you don't look in the mirror. You can trace this principle back to the Bible. The designated intellectuals of that time are called prophets, which is a mistranslation of a Hebrew word, but they were basically intellectuals, giving geopolitical analysis, criticizing the moral practice of leadership, etc. Now, these people were not treated very nicely. There were other intellectuals who were treated nicely, namely those who centuries later came to be called false prophets. These were the flatterers of the court.

- Noam Chomsky

source: Source: www.madre.org

topic: Mirrors, Practice, People, False Prophets, Geopolitical

Go back to the Bible, the Old Testament. I mean there were people who we would call intelectuals, there, they were called prophets, but they were basically intelectuals: they were people who were doing critical, geopolitical analysis, talking about the decisions of the king were going to lead to destruction; condemning inmorality, calling for justice for widows and orphans. What we would call dissident intelectuals. Were they nicely treated? No, they were driven into the desert, they were imprisoned, they were denounced. They were intelectuals who conformed.

- Noam Chomsky

source: Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

topic: Kings, Mean, Talking, Testament, Geopolitical

A meme (rhymes with dream) is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain. Memes compete with one another for replication, and are passed down through a population much the same way genes pass through a species. Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts and transform cultures. Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age. Whoever has the memes has the power.

- Kalle Lasn

topic: Dream, Fashion, Philosophy, Information Age, Memes

The stakes are geopolitical in nature and I believe that democracies are - people want to live in free societies, democracies are the best way to do that, and that if people see democracies in the neighborhood, they'll demand the same thing.

- George W. Bush

topic: Believe, People, Democracy, Geopolitical

President Nixon in his inaugural address indicated that he wanted an era of negotiation. Our reasoning was that whatever our ideological differences, whatever our geopolitical differences, we were condemned to coexistence by nuclear weapons.

- Henry A. Kissinger

topic: Differences, President, Nuclear, President Nixon, Coexistence

The global financial crisis - missed by most analysts - shows that most forecasters are poor at pricing in economic/financial risks, let alone geopolitical ones.

- Nouriel Roubini

topic: Risk, Financial, Economic, Financial Risk, Pricing

We all accuse Vladimir Putin of Cold War nostalgia, but Washington's elites - politicians and intellectuals - miss the old days as well. They wish for the world in which the United States was utterly dominant over its friends, its foes were to be shunned entirely, and the challenges were stark, moral, and vital. Today's world is messy and complicated. China is one of our biggest trading partners and our looming geopolitical rival. Russia is a surly spoiler, but it has a globalized middle class and has created ties in Europe.

- Fareed Zakaria

topic: Leadership, Money, War, Surly, Spoilers