Daily Inspiration Quote by Lawrence Eagleburger

There is a salesman’s cadence hiding inside this diplomat’s sentence, and that’s the point. Eagleburger isn’t describing foreign policy as grand strategy; he’s recasting it as reputation management for an audience that matters: U.S. business. “We must advertise” borrows the language of markets, not alliances. It implies a belief that power follows investment flows, and that governments win influence by signaling stability, access, and responsiveness the way a company signals a turnaround to skittish shareholders.

The subtext is admission-by-euphemism. “Our attitude has changed” quietly concedes that the previous attitude was a problem: aloofness, obstruction, unpredictability, maybe even hostility to private capital. The line doesn’t name the sins because naming would trigger accountability. Instead, it offers a rebrand: “we care.” It’s emotional language deployed for a transactional purpose, meant to reassure decision-makers who read risk through tone as much as through policy.

Then comes the conditional: “When we are asked to help.” Aid here isn’t paternal charity; it’s customer support. The burden shifts from lofty promises to operational competence: “perform,” “provide the right advice.” In other words, don’t just open the door to investors; build the administrative muscle to keep them there.

Contextually, this fits a late-Cold War/early post-Cold War realist sensibility, when Washington increasingly treated markets as instruments of statecraft and diplomats as brokers between capital and political transition. Eagleburger is sketching a doctrine of credibility: show up, signal change, then deliver. The irony is that the pitch to business also reveals anxiety about dependence on business’s approval.