" We want to deter an enemy decision to attack us—not only a cool-headed, premeditated decision that might be taken in the normal course of the Cold War, at a time when the enemy does not consider an attack by us to be imminent, but also a nervous, hot-headed, frightened, desperate decision that might be precipitated at the peak of a crisis, that might result from a false alarm or be engineered by somebody’ s mischief—a decision taken at a moment when sudden attack by the United States is believed a live possibility. "

― Thomas C. Schelling , Arms and Influence