Ivo Daalder Quotations

NATO's future is very much at stake. NATO may in fact no longer be the instrument of European security and will become increasingly marginal in the foreign polices of its major members.

NATO's future is very much at stake, ... NATO may in fact no longer be the instrument of European security and will become increasingly marginal in the foreign polices of its major members.

One of the remarkable things about Macedonia is that it is the only republic that has emerged out of Yugoslavia in which there is a multi-ethnic government.

He has become a symbol of our inability to solve the problems in the Balkans. We would like to get rid of him but at the same time we are not willing to take the kind of military and other measures it probably would take to get rid of him.

I think she's proving the adage that where you stand depends on where you sit. It's moved her to a situation where the only tools are talk and travel. She can't send military in. Her role now is to talk and to travel, and she's doing it reasonably well.

The overt message is that preventing nuclear proliferation is important.

The whole reason for a threat is to show there is a line. And show that the U.S. will respond if he crosses it.

The Russians want to be an indispensable player in the Balkans. But they know they can only do that if they use their power wisely. They know that calling on Milosevic to cancel the second round is pointless, so they are holding fire until they can be more productive.

It is the Serb army right now -- the Yugoslav national army -- that is ethnically cleansing whole sectors of Kosovo in the south, in a manner very much reminiscent of Bosnia. The question is, can we stand by and let it happen?

The interesting question is why the Bush administration has decided to reverse course. Part of the answer, surely, lies in the fact that reality demonstrated the limits of its revolutionary foreign policy.

In some notable ways, the new strategy document represents a return to the foreign policy of Bill Clinton.

Clearly it would have been much better if (NATO) didn't have to bomb Montenegro because we would have made the distinction between Montenegro as the kind of power (western countries) would like to see ... and that Mr. Milosevic was really the problem,

The trust Europeans, and the rest of the world in general, had placed in America's foreign policy is gone. And it is the lack of trust that now marks relations between the US and Europe.

This has the makings of classic conflict, ... The American view is to lean towards independence; the European Union will say, 'Let's figure out a way not to make that decision'; and the Russians on the opposite side saying, 'Over my dead body.'

The easiest way for Milosevic to have a face-saving way to change his mind is for the Russians to be the messenger, for the Russians to say, 'We're willing to participate in this force, and therefore we will guarantee to you that this force is going to be neutral,'

The clearest losers are the Serb people who withstood an 11- week bombing campaign in order to overcome the policies of their leader. Clearly the Kosovar Albanians are big losers. Thousands, if not tens of thousands were killed.

The long and short of it is that when Bush was reelected he realized he had alienated our friends in Europe and that many of the costs of engaging abroad were just too large for the US to carry alone.