Where civil society is welcomed, communities are more safe, more secure, and more prosperous.
Ben Rhodes
All over the world, independent and strong civil society - NGOs, faith leaders, and other community advocates - help governments solve problems and better serve their people better by shining a light on the issues that matter most - like education standards, access to healthcare, the rule of law, and economic opportunity.
'Make America great again,' is not that different from Putin's nostalgia for the Soviet Union or tsarist Russia.
To be sure, the United States will be eternally proud of our civilian leaders and the men and women of our armed forces who served in World War II for their sacrifice at a time of maximum peril to our country and our world.
Following one of the most violent conflicts in human history, the United States and Japan built a deep and abiding friendship - an alliance that has underwritten unprecedented economic growth and security in the Asia Pacific for half a century. It is an alliance based on mutual interests and shared values and the ties between our people.
Where civil society thrives, governments operate with more transparency and accountability. This creates a tangible impact on the lives of everyday citizens.
In China, you just don't have the space for civil society and independent discourse and free media that you do in India. That's why India's success is so important as the world's largest democracy.
In addition to deep divisions on issues such as trade, climate change, Middle East peace and nuclear weapons, Trump's attacks on leaders such as Trudeau and Merkel and disrespect for NATO and other institutions are prompting a reassessment by allied governments and publics.
By heralding President Xi Jinping's accession to permanent leadership, soliciting Vladimir Putin's reentry into the Group of Seven, and declaring that Kim Jong Un is 'beloved by his people,' Trump legitimizes the very behavior that U.S. presidents opposed for decades.
Downturns in migration almost always prove temporary, as people adjust to changes in American enforcement. What doesn't change is the basic human impulse to pursue a better life in a place where they believe it's still possible.
What's interesting about the foreign policy establishment critique is, you know, I think the Blob and I have more in common in some ways than people might think, but also, what I was saying can be misread.
When it comes to Israel's security, our military and intelligence cooperation, that's off limits. That's protected. That's sacrosanct.
When I first went to work in the West Wing, the most daunting thing was how small this place was... You walk in: it's three floors, and there's a few offices on each floor, and that's it.
If you are a speechwriter, you have to know what the person you're writing for thinks. A lot of foreign policy advisers are thinking, 'How can I get my proposal into this guy's speech?' I was just thinking, 'What does he want to say?'
For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.
The world order and American actions in the world have deep wiring.
We don't have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other ways to resolve these issues. We can do things that challenge the conventional thinking that, you know, 'AIPAC doesn't like this,' or 'the Israeli government doesn't like this,' or 'the Gulf countries don't like it.' It's the possibility of improved relations with adversaries.
If we're going to play a role in shaping a future that is more secure, more prosperous, and more connected, we need to make sure that young people have the tools they need to succeed.
While the TPP - like any trade deal - is a subject of vigorous debate, its benefits are clear. The TPP will open markets and bring down barriers for American businesses in the world's largest emerging market, creating jobs at home.
Japan hosts more forward-deployed U.S. troops than any other country and serves as home port for our only forward-deployed aircraft carrier. In 2011, when a tsunami devastated Japan and created the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear facility, the United States stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our Japanese allies to respond and rebuild.
No matter what people may think about American foreign policy, there is broad and overwhelming interest in engaging with the United States on issues related to entrepreneurship. People associate this promise with America, and that's an extraordinary asset for our country.
For more than fifty years, our policy towards Cuba was not making life better for Cubans. In many ways, it was making it worse.
There are a very limited number of people in senior roles at the White House, and time is their most precious asset.
We have enormous interests in the Asia Pacific. In addition to our economy, we need to secure our allies, protect our environment, promote peace and stability, ensure the free-flow of commerce, and stand up for human rights.
The Catholic Church played an integral role in supporting the opening between the U.S. and Cuban governments.
While President Obama raised the hopes of Americans and Cubans alike with a forward-looking opening in diplomatic, commercial and people-to-people ties, President Trump is turning back the clock to a tragically failed Cold War mindset by reimposing restrictions on those activities.
Jose Marti, known as 'the Apostle of Cuban Independence,' was an influential poet, journalist, and political theorist who became a symbol for the Cuban people's bid for independence. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and self-determination feature prominently in his work.
The fact of the matter is the West Wing never gets fully renovated because nobody wants to vacate it. And so you have basically patch-up jobs that are being done, but it's a tight and cramped environment.
The fact that there were discreet channels of communication established with Iran in 2012 is something that we confirmed publicly. However, we did not have any serious prospect of reaching a nuclear deal until after the election of Hassan Rouhani in 2013. Yes, we had discussions with the Iranians before that, but they did not get anywhere.
In the Arab Spring, that obviously came to a head in Syria. I found myself arguing for intervention, mainly just because I wanted things to get better, and I had this germ of liberal humanitarian interventionism.
As people who know me know, probably to a fault, I am usually not without thoughts and words.
Laos is a deeply Buddhist country, and my visit included a traditional Tak Bat ceremony, in which you get up at sunrise and make offerings to Buddhist monks.
President Obama has made the Asia Pacific region a focus of his foreign policy, and Vietnam - a large, growing economy in the heart of Southeast Asia - is critical to those efforts.
There is no question that our security and prosperity will be increasingly tied to the Asia Pacific. If America doesn't set the rules of the road for trade in this region, other nations will.
We've supported the development of Cuba's private sector. This is a human rights issue - people should have the right to live with dignity and to control their livelihoods.
Havana is a source of great pride to the Cuban people.
Faith leaders, young people, American companies, human rights advocates, and many others have demonstrated a unique interest in our Cuba policy. But no community cares more deeply about these issues than Cuban Americans - young and old - who have maintained a profound interest in Cuba and an abiding faith in the Cuban people.
President Obama started in public life not as an elected official but as a community organizer. He worked with churches and other groups on the south side of Chicago to push public leaders to fight poverty, improve the local school system and make housing more affordable, and to bring about the change the community needed and deserved.
Talking and diplomacy is often seen as a concession in America, in a way that it is not in other places.
People make a mistake when they think that if you just accumulate a set number of things on your resume, it's going to lead you to a particular place - the pattern of essentially compiling credentials to climb your way up a ladder. That may work, but that's not at all what happened to me.
For many Americans, 'Vietnam' is a word associated with war and the extraordinarily complex history between our countries. But since normalization began, the U.S. and Vietnam have steadily built bonds of partnership, demonstrating that we can recognize history without being imprisoned by it.
U.S. leadership has been rooted not just in our own belief in American exceptionalism but in the faith of others around the world. By so wantonly discarding that principle, the Trump Administration has done incredible harm to the families they have separated through the state-sponsored child abuse that has been carried out in our name.
After the separation of children from families seeking to join the United States was embraced as the official policy of our government, we should ask ourselves what story we will tell. President Trump's story is one of cruelty - that we may do something unfathomable to deter families from coming to America.
Americans will forever be proud of the brave men and women of our armed forces who served in World War II, and we will never forget those who paid the last full measure of devotion for our country. Their service protected our freedom and changed the course of history around the world.
The complete lack of governance in huge swaths of the Middle East - that is the project of the American establishment.
Billions of people around the globe had come to know Barack Obama, had heard his words, had watched his speeches, and, in some unknowable but irreducible way, had come to see the world as a place that could - in some incremental way - change.
What I do miss is foreign travel, because there really is no substitute for showing up somewhere and representing the United States.
Our basic assessment was that if America keeps going down these rabbit holes in the Middle East, we're just going to put ourselves out of business as the world leader because we're just draining resources and diplomatic bandwidth, and we're not producing outcomes.
We are proud of the role our military plays in Japan: defending our allies, ensuring regional peace and stability, and responding to humanitarian catastrophes.
The TPP will be good for the American economy, the Vietnamese economy, and the labor and environmental standards that make life better for our people.
