"This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim"
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Foreign policy flatters a nation into thinking it can run the world the way it runs a committee meeting. Reston’s line punctures that fantasy with a dry, almost parental impatience: the “devilish thing” isn’t that foreign affairs are complicated, but that they stubbornly belong to other people. The joke is embedded in the repetition. “Foreign” sounds like a category we can master; Reston turns it into an accusation. They are foreign - meaning they come with their own histories, incentives, humiliations, and domestic politics that don’t care what Washington wants this quarter.
The intent is corrective. Reston, a mid-century journalist who spent decades watching American confidence collide with international reality, is warning against the recurring U.S. habit of treating diplomacy like a lever: pull hard enough and outcomes comply. The subtext is about limits and ego. “Our whim” is doing heavy lifting, suggesting not just preference but caprice - the tendency of powerful states to confuse desire with strategy and moral certainty with control.
Contextually, the remark fits the postwar era Reston chronicled: the Cold War’s proxy conflicts, decolonization, Vietnam, and the periodic belief that superior resources or righteous narratives could force foreign societies into alignment. Reston’s cynicism is practical, not nihilistic. He’s not arguing for retreat; he’s arguing for literacy - an acceptance that the “other” is not a backdrop. Foreign affairs are “devilish” because they expose the difference between power and omnipotence, and because they make every domestic political slogan pay rent in the real world.
The intent is corrective. Reston, a mid-century journalist who spent decades watching American confidence collide with international reality, is warning against the recurring U.S. habit of treating diplomacy like a lever: pull hard enough and outcomes comply. The subtext is about limits and ego. “Our whim” is doing heavy lifting, suggesting not just preference but caprice - the tendency of powerful states to confuse desire with strategy and moral certainty with control.
Contextually, the remark fits the postwar era Reston chronicled: the Cold War’s proxy conflicts, decolonization, Vietnam, and the periodic belief that superior resources or righteous narratives could force foreign societies into alignment. Reston’s cynicism is practical, not nihilistic. He’s not arguing for retreat; he’s arguing for literacy - an acceptance that the “other” is not a backdrop. Foreign affairs are “devilish” because they expose the difference between power and omnipotence, and because they make every domestic political slogan pay rent in the real world.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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