Quotations relevant to the heartbreaking war now going on

"I pity America's enemies, but I pity her friends more". 

Henry Kissinger 

“But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” 

Henry Kissinger

"The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."

Professor John Mearsheimer, in a lecture in 2015.

“I think it (NATO expansion) is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.

“We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a lighthearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. What bothers me is how superficial and ill informed the whole Senate debate was. I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe.

“Don’t people understand? Our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime. And Russia’s democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we’ve just signed up to defend from Russia. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

From an interview dated May 2nd, 1998 with George F. Kennan, then 94, the US diplomat who in his 8,000 word Long Telegram in February 1946 recommended his government to adopt the policy of containing Communist Russia. 

“Soviet pressure against the free institutions of the western world, is something that can be contained by the adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy, but which cannot be charmed or talked out of existence.”

George Kennan, writing under the pseudonym “Mr. X” in a July 1947 article in Foreign Affairs. He opposed the Cold War and the arms race, hoped American and Russian troops would go home and in 1957 very sensibly favoured a united demilitarised Germany.