Russia committed an act of aggression in Ukraine, and that's the first time since 1945 a European country has seized the territory of another European country. That's serious business. They started a war with their neighbor. Their troops as well as the separatists funded and controlled by Russia are killing people just about every day.
Daniel FriedI am not against working with Russia in areas of common interests at the same time. We're smart enough, or we should be smart enough to have a dual track policy. You know, walk and chew gum at the same time.
Daniel FriedFor two generations up through the mid-1980s, many thought we were losing the Cold War, even in early 1989, few believed that Poland`s solidarity movement could win, that the Iron Curtain would come down, that the Baltic states could be free, that the second of the 20th century`s great evils, communism, could be vanquished without war, but it happened and the West`s great institutions, NATO and the E.U., grew to embrace 100 million liberated Europeans.
Daniel FriedThe Civil War was fought, in a sense, over whether that sentence - all men are created equal - is to be taken literally. And the southerners in the 1850s argued that it was not.
Daniel FriedRussia is an aggressive revisionist power. And they are working - there's evidence they're working to interfere not just in our electoral process, but the electoral processes of Europeans with the same toolkit - money, fake news, propaganda, and what those Soviets used to call aktivniye meropriyatiya, active measures. This is serious.
Daniel Fried