US Presidency
1963

We can not enact their laws, nor can we operate their governments or dictate our policies. Second, we must recognize that every tion determines its policies in terms of its own interests. No nation, George Washington wrote, is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will depart from it. National interest is more powerful than ideology, and the recent developments within the Communist empire show this very clearly. Friendship, as Palmerston said, may rise or wane, but interests endure. The United States has rightly determined, in the years since 1945 under three different administrations, that our interest, our national security, the interest of the United States of America, is best served by preserving and protecting a world of diversity in which no one power or no one combination of powers can threaten the security of the United States.