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International Politics Quotes

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International Politics Quotes

“Near the end of his life, Franklin Roosevelt said, "We have learned we cannot live alone, in peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations, far away. We have learned that we must live as men, and not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger. We have learned to be citizens of the world, members of the human community." The American people, in general, had learned no such things. They had learned that the oceans were shrinking, and that demons who had seemed far away in 1941 could be dangerous. It was not a sense of responsibility, but the shock of fPearl Harbor that brought the United States out into the world. If Americans had suddenly become the watchmen on the walls of freedom, it had been caused by necessity, never by choice.”

“Today, most countries fail to comply with the 1951 Convention. Signatory states in the developed world find ever more elaborate ways to disregard or bypass the principle of non-refoulement, adopting a suite of deterrence or non-entrée policies that make it difficut and dangerous for refugees to access their territory: carrier sanctions, razor wire fences, interception en route. Signatory states in the developing world do tend to admit refugees more because of geoghraphical necessity and international pressure than law, and when they do, they still almost universally fail to implement the socio-economic rights in the Convention. And, yet, paradoxically, many of the most generous host countries in the world are not even full signatories: Jordan, Lebanon, Thailand, Nepal, and Turkey, for instance.”

“This was my time at the MUN; not just a symbol of international cooperation, but a dark and mysterious nexus of conspiracy and intrigue. Indeed, a place where the forces of chaos and order collide in an endless struggle for dominance. But let's not kid ourselves, behind the facade of diplomatic protocols and bureaucratic banalities lurks a dark underbelly. A shadow world of secret meetings and covert operations, where the true rulers of the world pull the strings of fate like puppeteers in a grand cosmic theater. Here, in the labyrinthine corridors and dimly lit backrooms, the fate of nations is not decided by the will of the people, but by the whims of those who dwell in the shadows.”

“The aspiration to security is thus misguided and certainly unachievable. As Foucault (2007) has remarked, security is not a state to be realised; it is always elusive, an absolute end that cannot be attained. But it is also through this pervasive sense of insecurity that populations are governed, from the scale of the body to the realms of international politics.”