Michael Scheuer Quotes

I know that military alliances and armament have been the reliance for peace for centuries, but they do not produce peace; and when war comes, as it inevitably does under such conditions, these armaments and alliances but intensify and broaden the conflict.

It is easy to get into war, not so easy to get out.

However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.

There are a lot of starry eyed State Department boys busting to raise the standard of living of Arabs who should be all killed off… no State Department people should be permitted in a theater of war, nor at the peace treaty

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent …

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

It’s damn easy to get into a war, but damned harder to extricate yourself once you get in.

Right now, the choice isn't between war and peace. It is between war and endless war.

The United States will never take part in an aggressive war.

If this phrase of “the balance of power” is to be always an argument for war, the pretext for war will never be wanting …

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

Moreover, war has become a thing potentially so terrible and destructive that it should have been the common aim of statesmen to put an end to it forever.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

Let us recollect that peace or war will not always be left to our option; that however moderate or unambitious we may be, we cannot count upon the moderation, or hope to extinguish the ambition of others.

I'm sure it is, I'm not for any kind of war, we've been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.

I think most Americans believe that although it's better not to use military force if you can avoid it, that the world simply doesn't provide us the luxury of giving away military force as an important tool of foreign policy.

I fought for peace in the fifties.

It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.

The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.

I think that war is diplomacy by other means, for sure, and there have been wars that have been fought for righteous reasons. There are wars that have had to be fought, and there will probably continue to be.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.

Once you start a war, you have to win.

War is failure of diplomacy.