Quote For The Day

“On the foreign policy front … I find myself wondering why we cannot regard another country, in this case, Iran, as just that, one more country which we would regard as neither friend nor foe, with whom we are prepared to deal on a day-to-day basis, neither idealizing it nor running it down, keeping to ourselves (here, of course, I am speaking about our government) our views about its domestic political institutions and practices, and interesting ourselves only in those aspects of its official behavior which touched our interests – maintaining in other words, a relationship of mutual respect and courtesy, but distant,” – George Kennan, intellectual architect of containment of the Soviet Union, in his diary, March 8, 1998 (via TNR).