Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

The cold war is over; Japan won!

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

Since the attack on the United States on September 11 2001, and the US retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, there must be few people who have not felt a twinge of nostalgia for the cold war.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

The only thing that kept the Cold War cold was the mutual deterrence afforded by nuclear weapons.

So you're quite right that when... as the Cold War grew and expanded out of Europe, we ourselves had to take refuge behind the shield of the Monroe Doctrine.

For any rational political leader, war is indeed unthinkable, but two huge military bureaucracies in the two countries [Russia and America] are paid to think about it every day, to plan for it, and to develop scenarios for "winning." The madness of one bureaucracy sustains the other. The technological nightmare into which we have entered is an environment that chokes rational thought.

I don't think Russia could start a war by attacking any of the NATO member states.

I think NATO is a Cold War product. I think NATO historically should have shut up shop in 1990 along with the Warsaw Pact; unfortunately, it didn't.

The Cold War was a boring thing. Nobody gets better for it. Tremendous money is wasted. Our lives get more difficult. We look at each other as enemies. What's good in that? In any case, I will do anything in my power in order to stop another Cold War, with the U.S. or any other country in the world.

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military.

During the Cold War, America took sides not only in disputes between Arab countries, but also in debates within them.

The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.

What remains constant for me, during the last 15 years, has been the conviction that the cold war was a calamity for the entire world, and that it can be justified by no consideration of theory, nor by any supposed national interest.

The Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives.

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

The magnificent army that fought in Desert Storm is a great army, and it still is a magnificent army today. But it was one we designed for the Cold War, and the Cold War has been over for ten years now.

For all history up to the end of the Cold War, summit meetings were historic and dramatic occasions, when leaders who controlled the destiny of much of the world met to change the world.

The United States has dealt with the Middle East and surrounding regions for many decades in the context of the Cold War.

The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went.

The Cold War was wildly expensive and consumed the entire globe.

The United States has been unable to create a post-Cold War security architecture in which Russia feels it has a stake.

Now we are in a period which I can characterize as a cold peace.

A stable world may be one in which the United States can act to secure peace without fear of a nuclear attack.