New Cold Wars Quotes

“The fate of Crimea, Obama determined, was important but hardly a core U.S. security interest. In public, he sought to downplay both the geopolitical significance and the impact that U.S. involvement would have. “The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he later said.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Clearly, the “peace dividend” that dominated Washington rhetoric after the end of the Cold War—taking the money spent on the military and moving it to projects at home—is long gone. (Thanks to Afghanistan and Iraq, the dividend never paid out.) The money we hoped to spend on improving the climate, or education, or ending income inequality will get sucked into bolstering our forces in Europe, even as we “pivot” to concentrate more firepower in the Pacific.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“All of this was an important reminder that America’s adversaries were not ten feet tall. They had weaknesses, just as the United States does, though ours are often on more vivid display.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“was with Bill Clinton at Beijing University in 1998 when he told students that the internet would undercut the Communist Party by exposing young Chinese to democratic ideals and the corruption of the Chinese system and lay the groundwork for democratic rejuvenation.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Now the price of that distraction was clear to all. The man who had defeated virtually all opponents over the years by campaigning as the one leader who kept Israelis safe had clearly misread the threat gathering on Israel’s southern border. Netanyahu”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Biden and many of his aides were convinced it was also the result of the hubris of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the extremism of the right-wing coalition that he had assembled to cling to power.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“The Israel Defense Force was pitifully slow to respond. “On that fateful day, the country’s long-standing security doctrine crumbled in the face of a perfect storm,” wrote Amos Yadlin, the country’s former military intelligence chief, and Udi Evental, a retired colonel in the Israel Defense Force.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“In an instant, almost everything the world had come to take for granted about the omnipotence and competence of Israel’s security institutions seemed wrong.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Even as Sullivan’s essay was coming off the printing presses, thousands of militants from the Iran-backed terror group Hamas broke out from the Gaza Strip—the tiny, impoverished, occupied Palestinian enclave on the southern coast of Israel—in a long-planned attack that resulted in the bloodiest day for the world’s Jews since the Holocaust.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“The overarching lesson, perhaps, was that none of the three major powers had as much influence and control—over their own populations, their neighbors, or the world order—as they thought.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“In a December 2022 column for The Washington Post, David Ignatius described this as the “wizard war,” suggesting it was “a big reason David is beating Goliath” on the eastern plains of Ukraine.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“And, of course, they drew on their remarkable collaboration with the CIA, which, for years before the invasion, had been training Ukrainian operatives, including in the United States, in tradecraft and providing them with equipment. That investment proved critical once the war began, although the United States steered clear of the targeted killings of Russians that Ukraine was carrying out.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“At the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian military leadership might have been taken aback by the American capabilities. But their surprise didn’t last long. Even before the invasion, Ukraine was known as one of the most tech-savvy nations in Eastern Europe.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon,”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Maybe, one leading Taiwanese legislator told me, “China is just a paper tiger.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“the People’s Liberation Army was installing lasers designed to blind the optical sensors on American spy satellites.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“the United States was still trapped in the midst of a pandemic that had killed more Americans than World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined—and that would, inevitably, kill tens of thousands more.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“JANUARY 6 WAS an embarrassment for the United States and a stain on the country’s democratic ideals.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“As one senior official said to me when The New York Times was about to reveal one such operation, “we try not to trouble the president with too many details” about what the United States was doing to counter Russia. In short, they acted as if they had a Russian stooge—a “useful idiot”—presiding over the United States government.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“IN THE TRUMP YEARS, America’s capability to shape the world shrank.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Indeed, at times we have the impression that U.S. policy was so successful that many American officials have now concluded that our region is fixed once and for all…. That view is premature,” they warned. “Russia is back as a revisionist power pursuing a 19th-century agenda with 21st-century tactics and methods.” It was published in mid-2009—and would prove entirely prophetic.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“George Kennan, the famed Cold War diplomat, believed the West would come to regret NATO expansionism:”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Biden laid out two goals, in tension with each other: Do everything you can to help Ukraine, and don’t get sucked into World War III.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Milley had put his finger on one of the most unsettling features of the new geopolitical era: It is part 1914, part 1941, and part 2022. All at once.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“when Google and others turned to the U.S. government as well—it wasn’t simply to notify the authorities. It was to coordinate the rollout of protections and defenses, starting with moving the operations of the Ukraine government to the cloud so that Russia could not take out the government by bombing Ukraine’s servers.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“In the shock of the invasion, it was a bit lost on the world what a remarkable, dangerous change was under way. Not only was the leader of one of the original nuclear powers threatening to use his arsenal, he was threatening to use it against a non-nuclear state. In fact, he was threatening to use it against a state that had given up the nuclear weapons on its territory nearly thirty years before and turned the missiles over to Moscow in accordance with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine thought that in return, it was receiving an assurance of protection. Instead, it got a threat of annihilation.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Soon, the problems of depleted stockpiles and slow production reached well beyond Ukraine. In the summer of 2022, the CIA was circulating an analysis that China could be moving up the target date for attacking Taiwan out of fear that the United States would move quickly to bolster its defenses. The reality was that the United States was so stressed keeping up with Ukraine’s demands and commitments to other allies, like Saudi Arabia, that it couldn’t supply Taiwan with everything it needed. And Biden knew that the American support for Ukraine could begin to erode. He was already facing a tricky political situation at home, with voters understandably more focused on gas prices and inflation.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Over the next year, a pattern emerged. Ukraine’s request for a specific type of arms would at first get a frosty reception in Washington, perhaps an outright no, a one-word answer Biden delivered himself to reporters who asked about sending the F-16s, which could strike Moscow. After saying absolutely not, the Biden White House would then say it was “studying” each request, trying to line up Ukraine’s capabilities with weapons that could do the job. Situation Room meetings would be devoted to the question of whether a specific weapon was truly “escalatory.” Leaks to the press assured that the debate played out in public, creating new pressures. And then, as Biden discovered that Russia’s “red lines” were not as bright as first feared, he would relent, noting that Ukraine’s defense demands had changed—from defending Kyiv to defending vast sections of Ukraine’s industrial east. Eventually, a commitment to deliver weapons previously off-limits would follow. At one point, Zelensky’s representatives argued that the cycle from “no” to “studying it” to “yes” was so well trod that the United States could save itself a lot of time and money by just saying yes from the get-go—or at least begin training Ukrainians on how to fly an F-16 or drive an Abrams tank months before actually agreeing to send the weapons. It would save time, the advisor said to me, “and maybe scare the shit out of the Russians.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“To some degree, though, the tension was inevitable. Biden’s national interests—and his global responsibilities—ran headlong into Zelensky’s urgent need to survive another day, another month, another year. Biden feared feeding Putin’s narrative—or his paranoia—but Zelensky saw it differently. As that shell fragment near Zelensky’s residence made clear, Putin was out to kill him and eradicate his country. Zelensky was in a war for the survival of his nation, a war he would never win if Putin could fire on Ukraine from Russian territory and he could not fire back. Biden’s preoccupation was avoiding escalation.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

“Zelensky wanted—he needed—air defenses. F-16 fighter jets, to maintain air supremacy against the far larger Russian Air Force. A no-fly zone. Tanks. Advanced drones. Most important, long-range missile launchers. There was one in particular that the Pentagon, with its penchant for completely unintelligible acronyms, called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Zelensky wanted to arm these launchers with one of the crown jewels of the U.S. Army, a missile known as ATACMS that could strike targets nearly two hundred miles away with precision accuracy. That, of course, would give him the capability to fire right into command-and-control centers deep inside Russian territory—exactly Biden’s worst fear. In time, Zelensky added to his list of requests another weapon that raised enormous moral issues: He sought “cluster munitions,” a weapon many of the arms control advocates in the Biden administration had spent decades trying to limit or ban. Cluster bombs are devastating weapons that release scores of tiny bomblets, ripping apart people and personnel carriers and power lines and often mowing through civilians unlucky enough to be living in the area where they are dropped. Worse yet, unexploded bomblets can remain on the ground for years; from past American battlefields—from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq—there were stories of children killed or maimed after picking one up years later. Blinken told colleagues he had spent much of his professional life getting weapons like this banned. Yet the Pentagon stored them across Europe because they were cruelly effective in wiping out an advancing army. And anyway, they said, the Russians were using cluster munitions in Ukraine. With each proposal it was Biden who was most reluctant: F-16s were simply too provocative, he told his staff, because they could strike deep into Russia. The cluster munitions were simply too dangerous to civilians. Conversations with Zelensky were heated. “The first few calls they had turned pretty tense,” one senior administration official told me. Part of the issue was style. Zelensky, in Biden’s view, was simply not grateful for the aid he was getting—a cardinal sin in Biden’s world. By mid-May 2022, his administration had poured nearly $4 billion to the Ukrainian defenses, including some fifty million rounds of small ammunition, tens of thousands of artillery rounds, major antiaircraft and anti-tank systems, intelligence, medical equipment, and more. Zelensky had offered at best perfunctory thanks before pushing for more.”
― David E. Sanger, New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West