David Ignatius Quotes

The ISI is above all a paramilitary organization. It doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. It's not a very good spy agency, but it's good at running covert action.

Saudi Arabia is a frightened monarchy. It's beset by Sunni extremists from the Islamic State and Shiite extremists backed by Iran.

2011 was a year in which events rarely turned out as predicted, and when much of the world seemed shrouded in turmoil and uncertainty. It was difficult for government analysts back in Washington to know just where they were on the map, let alone where they were heading.

Sometimes James Bond movies drive me crazy. They're fun to watch, but they don't have anything to do at all with what intelligence officers really do.

Images sometimes capture particular periods in history. The unreachable green light, beckoning from across the bay in 'The Great Gatsby,' has become a symbol of the yearning of America in the 1920s.

The Founding Fathers' instructions were clear: The right to free speech includes bad speech; it means tolerance of ideas that many find obnoxious.

The secret of any kind of reporting is to go with a guide. So if you, you're going to see Hezbollah in Beirut, you go with someone who knows the local people, and you'll be fine.

This experience of getting so lost in my writing that I lose track of time, or of anything outside the imagined world, is a release for me.

Journalists couldn't do their jobs overseas without taking risks, and the same is true for diplomats and intelligence officers.

If you want to hear arguments against deploying a big U.S. ground force in Syria, just ask a general.

The revival of the U.S. financial system after the crash of 2008 is arguably the Obama administration's biggest domestic policy success.

Luck is the residue of good planning.

Helping Wall Street regain confidence and stability was the last thing an angry public wanted in 2009 after the markets crashed. But without such support, markets can buckle and liquidity can disappear - often for decades, as has been the case in Japan.

2011 is one of those years that historians are likely to look back on as a 'hinge.' And the truth, at once frightening and exhilarating, is that we don't know yet which way the door will swing.

Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation.

Movies have a way of distilling moments in our culture, and 'Gravity' may be the defining film for the lost-in-space year of 2013: Nothing works.

Global warming ... may be a plaintiff lawyer's dream. And it's interesting, in a perverse way, to imagine how a jury in 2050 might react to some of the recent industry-backed studies minimizing the dangers of global warming. I suspect future jurors will not be amused.

Iran is also engaged in the fight against ISIL for reasons of its own that include a desire not to see a reasonably friendly government in Baghdad falling. But it also includes its desire not to have ISIL's ideology spread in the region where it lives

In a chaotic world, U.S. diplomats will probably have even less contact with the people they need to reach.

The truth is, as you know, people like us look at what's happening in the world, and then we project it forward. We think, 'If I know A and B, then I've got to know that C and D are coming,' and that's kind of the way it's been with my fiction.

The Chinese are planning a manned mission to the moon sometime after 2020, and subsequently, to Mars. The U.S. has abandoned that dream.

Donald Trump tests the limits of campaign speech. He makes false statements and refuses to correct them. He attacks other religions and ethnic groups, inflaming domestic tension and foreign terrorist rage.

Chinese experts noted that the U.S. economy has rebounded from the 2008 crash more strongly than some analysts here had expected, while China's own growth is slowing after several decades of rocket-ship acceleration.

Russia is emerging as an essential diplomatic and security partner for the U.S. in Syria, despite the Obama administration's opposition to Moscow's support for President Bashar al-Assad.

Big mistakes were made in Benghazi, and people should be held accountable. But the brave officers who staff American posts in crisis zones know how dangerous the work is.

Politicians need to rethink their reflexive invocations of the Second Amendment and the idea that the gun lobby is too powerful to challenge.

We're grappling with the same issue facing all advanced economies - how to revive growth and distribute its fruits more fairly. An America that can tackle that problem head-on can perhaps help revive a stagnant global economy.

Moscow and Washington have evolved a delicate process for 'de-confliction' in the tight Syrian airspace, where accidents or miscommunication could be disastrous.

Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That's the idea behind the best of the Obama administration's reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses.

The nation's chronic weakness is its political system, which is nearing dysfunction. If the U.S. can elect better political leadership, it should be able to manage problems better than most competitors.

Training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months.

At the center of President Obama's strategy for dealing with the Islamic State is an empty space. It's supposed be filled by a 'Sunni ground force,' but after more than a year of effort, it's still not there. Unless this gap is filled, Obama's plan won't work.

It's a genuine dilemma for governments, deciding how much information to share in this threat-filled era.

Things felt pretty crazy on earth in 1969, but the cosmos was friendly. Astronauts had round-trip tickets; they got home.

Prominent scientists have become increasingly convinced that the connection between carbon emissions and rising temperatures is real, but skeptics have whole truckloads of studies to demonstrate the opposite.

American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean.

Sometimes good countries are so traumatized by events that they lose their bearings and embrace bad leaders.

Thanksgiving is America's favorite holiday because it's a time when we put aside our cares, much as the struggling Pilgrims did nearly four centuries ago, and eat a gut-busting meal without worrying about the 'out years.'

Hedge-fund managers make too much money relative to their social utility. I wish their rewards were a bit closer to those of, say, schoolteachers.

Making economic policy isn't a popularity contest, especially when financial markets are in a panic.

When the big guys in Washington dream of transforming the world, it's the little guys who come home in body bags.

Well, I think the U.S. has been careful not to go too far in attacking Iran's allies, in particular in attacking Hezbollah forces in Syria, which have been propping up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails.

Russia isn't likely to have any more military success in Syria and Iraq than has the United States.

CIA officers aren't idiots. They knew they were heading into deep water - legally and morally - when they signed up for the interrogation program. That's part of the agency's ethos - doing the hard jobs that other departments prudently avoid.

Empty political space will be filled by extremists unless the United States and its allies build strong local forces that can suppress terrorist groups and warlords both. When the U.S. creates such local forces, it must be persistent. If it withdraws from these efforts, as America did in Iraq in 2011, it invites mayhem.

Paradoxically, the United States' determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults.

We have a complicated intelligence relationship with France. We have a complicated intelligence relationship with other - with other allies.

The CIA in real life, we know, is looking for new kinds of cover. It's looking for new platforms, as they like to say, and it's trying to use the revolution in communications technology, the ability to use all sorts of corporate entities in ways that are hard to detect to get our spies in the places where they need to be.

Maybe it's the spy novelist in me looking for a future plot, but I hope the U.S. and its allies are thinking how to operate 'unconventionally' in Iraq and Syria in ways that undermine the Islamic State.

I believe, that there is at least de facto cooperation between United States and Iran, at least in Iraq.

The American experiment has always depended on a measure of tolerance and good sense.

But the U.S. has to be careful. If our strategy depends on Sunnis doing the fighting to clear Mosul and Ramadi - and, as near as I can tell, that is the strategy - then you have to be careful that Sunnis don't perceive the U.S. to be operating arm in arm with Iran or with Iranian-backed Shiite militias that Abadi - Prime Minister Abadi is using in Iraq, so that, in effect, we're fronting for Iran.

Enter the candidates on horseback: While military leaders can sometimes be dangerous in politics, our best generals and admirals embody the democratic values and leadership skills for which the country is yearning.

'Cyber-security' is one of those hot topics that has launched a thousand seminars and strategy papers without producing much in the way of policy.

It is never too late to apply good sense as a corrective to stupidity.

It's easier for China to assert its maritime power by creating artificial islands in the South China Sea than by defying the U.S. Pacific Fleet with an aircraft carrier.

As Obama prepares to begin the last year of his presidency, he stands in an unusual position on the national stage: He is the rationalist, a creature of intellect rather than emotion.

As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around.

U.S. adversaries exploit power gaps. It's easier for Russia to invade Ukraine with irregular forces out of uniform, the so-called 'little green men,' than to send a conventional army that would challenge NATO.

Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies.

If you want better behavior from bankers, then make their financial incentives more like those in the hedge-fund world - where managers have 'skin in the game,' and their net worth is tied to their long-term performance.

European Muslims need to feel ownership of security, rather than viewing the police as an occupying army.

This is a universal human dream - that brains, not brawn, will rule - and the fact that America has the world's finest institutions of higher education may be our greatest single national asset.

U.S. has been trying to encourage Iraq to pass a law that would provide money and training and weapons for a Sunni national guard that could be effective in places like Ramadi, like Mosul

What frustrates U.S. officials is that China sometimes seems more comfortable accommodating a strong United States, as it did in past decades, than partnering with an America that's less dominant.

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address.

Misdirection. False signals. Spreading confusion. This is the Tao of deception.

U.S. power flows from our unmatched military might, yes. But in a deeper way, it's a product of the dominance of the U.S. economy.

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have.

Middle Eastern wars rarely end with outright victory and permanent stability, so the word 'settlement' may promise too much. At best, for many years, it may simply mean stable ceasefire lines, reduced bloodshed, fewer refugees, and less terrorism.

Experts say that Britain and France have strong spy agencies; Germany's is competent but afraid to level with its public; the rest are relatively weak, and there is no Europe-wide spy agency.

Foreign policy is about the execution of ideas as much as their formulation.