Amitava Kumar Quotes

There is only one thing worse than one nation having the atomic bomb -- that's two nations having it.

In a nuclear age, each of us is threatened when peace is not secured everywhere.

We were able and we had a plan to launch nuclear test in 1984, but then President General Zia had opposed the move.

Long before the terrifying potential of the arms race was recognized, there was a widespread instinctive abhorrence of nuclear weapons, and a strong desire to get rid of them.

Nuclear weapons offer us nothing but a balance of terror, and a balance of terror is still terror.

We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons - in some cases even the testing of these weapons - is essential for national security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well.

It is not viable for one country to demand a right to increase and upgrade its nuclear weapons capabilities while asking others to eliminate theirs.

It's very certain that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons for offensive purposes. They don't need nuclear weapons to defend their own country.

Everyone knows that Israel has nuclear weapons, but no one is talking about it. The world doesn't want nuclear weapons - not in Israel, not in the Middle East and not anywhere in the world.

The other countries did not share the same concern the United States had in the early '90's - that North Korea actually had an ongoing nuclear weapons program.

This is a very important relationship we have with Russia, the relationship over the nuclear arsenal that they have obviously is important. They're a very powerful country.

The chief task was to stop the arms race before it brought utter disaster. However, after the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, any rationale for having nuclear weapons disappeared.

Nobody wants any country to have nuclear weapons.

In the real world of real political leaders a decision that would bring even one hydrogen bomb on one city of one's own country would be recognized as a catastrophic blunder.

There are two groups of people in the world, the Anglo Saxons and the Soviets who have been stockpiling nuclear weapons. France will not accept a position of permanent and massive inferiority.

I say in all sincerity that the nuclear arms race has no military purpose. Wars cannot be fought with nuclear weapons; their existence only adds to our perils because of the illusions which they have generated.

Dwight Eisenhower… supported the nuclearization of the military and the militarization of nuclear weapons as a cost saving way of deterring the Soviets. Under Eisenhower, custody or nuclear weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic Energy Commission to the military.

China, North Korea's last ally in the world has just voted agaisnt them [in the United Nations]. What would you do if you thought every country in the world was against you and you wanted to survive? You would buy insurance. And the best insurance you could get to prevent invasion would be nuclear weapons, and that is just what North Korea has done. So now, when the President [Trump] threatens them, what do they do? They go out and buymore insurance.

It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.

There was a general consensus to go for the nuclear test. The whole nation wanted it, and it was done properly.

We don't need another nuclear arms race to proceed a pace and then to encourage other countries to become very, to develop these kinds of capabilities also. This is not what we need.

Unlike some of our neighbours, India does not believe in dirty bombs. We take non-proliferation very seriously.

I remember some of the limited debate I did back in high school in the late '70s, early '80s: nuclear proliferation was always the big topic, and it's bad. We don't want to see it.

I think Donald Trump is very, very cautious about nuclear weapons, and he's seriously concerned. And this might be one of the reasons he wants to deal with Putin carefully, because he's aware of how many nuclear weapons Putin has, and that Russian doctrine is much more open about using nuclear weapons than is American doctrine.

The nightmare of the Cold War was nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person. I don't want to live through that nightmare.