Should the United States seek so-called energy independence in an elusive effort to insulate this country from the impact of world events on the economy, or should Americans pursue the path of international engagement, seeking ways to better compete within the global market for energy? Like the Council's founders, I believe we must choose the course of greater international engagement ... The central reality is this: The global free market for energy provides the most effective means of achieving U. S. energy security by promoting resource development, enabling diversification, multiplying our supply channels, encouraging efficiency, and spurring innovation.
Rex TillersonRelated topics
believe central choose country course development diversification effort enabling encouraging free innovation international market path security seek seeking should means global channels States waysRelated quotes
In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term: preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
It is mutual fear and distrust that mostly generate world tensions and these can be traced in no small measure, like other root causes of worsening world conditions, to different people's conflicting and often intolerant, value-belief differences ... Whereas in the past science did little, if anything, to remedy this situation and in some ways made things worse, our reformed "macro-determinist" science that includes consciousness and subjective values ... provides common universal ethical foundations on which all nations could work to build a World Government or at least a World Security System to help control nuclear developments and other global threats that require international collaboration.
Roger Wolcott Sperry
Will the tax cut destroy America's prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there's a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies.
Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan.
Paul Krugman
Left to its own devices the market is capable of the most miraculous of inventions and the silliest of self-delusions. It is an extreme romantic. It also has a real purpose - the same one it has always had. That is to organize the supply and exchange of goods or to finance the production of goods - thus facilitating and financing the economy. But the market cannot achieve in a regular and lasting manner its own purpose because it is only an unconscious and abstract mechanism. The factor which must be added in order to create the restraint, balance, and consciousness necessary for long-term prosperity is human leadership. That leadership takes the form of effective regulation.
John Ralston Saul
The main lesson for Europe and the world is clear: as a matter of urgency, globalization must be fundamentally re-oriented. The main challenges of our times are the rise in inequality and global warming. We must therefore implement international treaties enabling us to respond to these challenges and to promote a model for fair and sustainable development. Agreements of a new type can, if necessary, include measures aimed at facilitating these exchanges. But the question of liberalizing trade should no longer be the main focus. Trade must once again become a means in the service of higher ends. It never should have become anything other than that.
Thomas Piketty