Frank B. Kellogg Quotes

The preemptive use of force has always been part of international law.

If you recognize the right of every nation to construe for itself what is aggressive war and what is defensive war, you have not accomplished much by agreeing to renounce war.

What is the 'noble cause' for which you sent our country to war?

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

War itself is justifiable only on principles of self-preservation:

We draw the sword with a clear conscious and clean hands! Our invasion of Belgium is contrary to International Law, but this wrong – I speak openly – that we are committing – that we are committing – we will make right as soon as our military objective has been attained.

Pre-emptive war might fall within the framework of international law.

Wars of necessity are essentially unavoidable. They involve the most important national interests, a lack of promising alternatives to the use of force, and a certain and considerable price to be paid if the status quo is allowed to stand. Examples include World War II and the Korean War.

An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.

That is because the conflict with al Qaeda is not governed by the Geneva Conventions, which applies only to international conflicts between states that have signed them.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

What I've learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country's credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war.

Some in my party threaten to send a message that they don't know a just war when they see it, and more broadly that they're not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.

The argument that someone is a bad man is an inadequate argument for war and certainly an inadequate and unacceptable argument for regime change.

War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.

Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Korea, Vietnam and the current war in Iraq.

I don't believe America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.

I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily, when we engage militarily, and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?

The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis for our War on Terrorism.

Do we really want a world in which every country feels entitled to attack any other that might someday threaten it?

Governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate self defense once every means of peaceful settlement has been exhausted.

It is not every cause of war that should lead to war.

Israel does not start wars.

You just don't, in the 21st century, behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pre-text.