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Arms and Influence QUOTES

Arms and Influence QUOTES

1 " Against defenseless people there is not much that nuclear weapons can do that cannot be done with an ice pick. And it would not have strained our Gross National Product to do it with ice picks. "

― Thomas C. Schelling , Arms and Influence

2 " Nuclear weapons can do it quickly. That makes a difference. "

― Thomas C. Schelling , Arms and Influence

3 " This is a difference between nuclear weapons and bayonets. It is not in the number of people they can eventually kill but in the speed with which it can be done, in the centralization of decision, in the divorce of the war from political processes, and in computerized programs that threaten to take the war out of human hands once it begins. "

― Thomas C. Schelling , Arms and Influence

4 " 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

5 " Coercion depends more on the threat of what is yet to come than on damage already done. The pace of diplomacy, not the pace of battle, would govern the action; and while diplomacy may not require that it go slowly, it does require that an impressive unspent capacity for damage be kept in reserve. "

― Thomas C. Schelling , Arms and Influence