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R. Nicholas Burns Quotes
born 1956 United States
Robert Nicholas Burns (born January 28, 1956) is an American diplomat and academic who has served as the United States ambassador to China from 2022 to 2025. Burns has had a 25-year career in the State Department, and served as United States Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and the United States ambassador to Greece.
Random R. Nicholas Burns quote
14 quotes
I think there’s a lot of concern around the world that China has now become an agent of instability in the Taiwan Strait and that’s not in anyone’s interest.
The people of China are not our enemy. We do want to live in peace with China. No person in their right mind should want this relationship to end up in conflict or in war.
A Conversation With Us Ambassador To China R. Nicholas Burns on US-China Relations (2023)
We certainly cannot trust the Chinese. Our responsibility is to make Taiwan a tough nut to crack.
We ought not to exaggerate their [ China ] strengths or underestimate the strengths of the United States. What we need is self confidence that the United States is a strong country.
Some people are saying, 'Well, we're so competitive with China, we should end the economic relationship'. Well, the consequence of that would be 750,000 American families wouldn't be able to put dinner on the table.
The United States is, in many ways, the linchpin of NATO. It’s true, NATO is an alliance of equals, a collective defense alliance, and a political organization. But the United States, by virtue of its size and power, has always been the leader of the alliance.
One of the reasons I really love teaching is it allows an older person like myself to be inspired by the optimism of younger people. Don’t lose that optimism, and don’t lose that conviction that you can change things—you can!
China and the US have a joint interest as well as a global responsibility, to work together on transnational challenges – such as climate change, global macroeconomic stability including debt relief, health security, and global food security.
I defended the speaker [ Nancy Pelosi ]. I defended her right to travel to Taiwan. I defended the peace and stability that we’ve had in the Taiwan Strait for nearly six decades.
China has a very different view of global governance and the future of the liberal order. And of course, we are attached to a liberal order because it speaks to our values and our interests, and we think this is the best order of the world.
I became interested in international politics from my experience living as an exchange student in Europe, both in high school and in college, and I wanted to contribute to a restoration of wise and effective American leadership in the world.
I was an American diplomat for twenty-seven years and I wouldn’t trade a day of that career for anything. It was an extraordinary experience to serve our country and to live overseas with my family in five different diplomatic posts.
We have competing interests here, and balancing those interests is the reality in the U.S.-China relationship. We're going to compete. We have to compete responsibly and keep the peace between our countries. But we also have to engage.
America has never been perfectly bipartisan. But for that generation of congressional leaders and American presidents from Ford to H.W. Bush, there was a consensus in both political parties that American engagement in the world mattered, that it was in our interest, that we had obligations and that we should fulfill them, and that our alliances mattered.