You can act like a policeman or a soldier, but not both.
Jack Ryan said, “Benjamin Franklin put it like this: ‘Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
You just had to apply judgment to your action, and such judgment came with experience – but experience often came from bad decisions.
They loved their country largely because they controlled it.
He’d just crossed a great river. His entire country had no permanent rivers, just wadis that flooded briefly with a rare passing shower and soon went dry again. America was such a rich country. That was probably the source of their arrogance, but his mission, and that of his three colleagues, was to take that arrogance down a few pegs. And that, Insh’Allah, they would do, in less than two more days.
You have to know the things you don’t know. You have to figure out what the questions are before you can start looking for answers.
Clifford Rutledge II was the perfect diplomat. He believed in little beyond his own career, some vague notions of international amity, and his personal ability to make it come about and to avoid war through the sheer force of his brilliance.
Ryan asked, “Is there any economist in the world who correlates Russia’s increased authoritarianism with their increased economic growth?” Helen Glass thought for a moment. “Sure, you can find some who will say just that, but remember, there were economists predicting the fall of capitalism and the rise of world communism, even in the eighties.” Jack laughed. “Good point. You can always find an expert to confirm your belief, no matter how ridiculous.
Biryukov continued, “Roman Talanov, my counterpart in the FSB, is leading this charge. I suppose with complete control over Russian intelligence activity abroad, he can expand his influence and begin destabilizing nations beyond the near abroad. Russia will invade Ukraine, probably within the next few weeks. They will annex the Crimea. From there, if they meet no resistance from the West, they will take more of the country, all the way to the Dnieper River.
Your Highness, what do you call it when a high-ranking person lies right in your face?” the President asked with a wry smile. “Diplomacy.
A commander’s pride got his soldiers dead.
Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics – most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect.
Either people were trustworthy or they were not.
That’s up to you, Jack, but part of doing this kind of work is the willingness to put on blinders. Deal with what’s in front of you. Every terrorist has a mother and father. Maybe kids, maybe people that love him. Hell, six days out of seven he might be a decent citizen, but on that one day he decides to pick up a gun or plant a bomb, he’s a threat. And if you’re the guy standing between him and innocent lives, the threat is all you can afford to worry about. You get what I’m saying?
The pinnacle of power in China is the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, the tiny body that sets policy for the nation’s 1.4 billion citizens.
Comrade, you can deceive us. Anyone can – for a time. But not a very long time.
Like many weak men, he made a great ceremony of personal strength and power.
The arts and soldiering took time to acquire – time and discipline and desire. No, he was up against bullies. And bullies were cowards. These were mercenaries who acted for money. Shot as, on the other hand, took great pride that he performed his DUTIES for love of country and, though he didn’t quite think of it in those terms, for love of his fellow soldiers.
A bureaucrat who said no to everything rarely got in trouble.
What backed the money was not gold or something of intrinsic value, but rather the collective belief that money had value because it had to have such value.