Lawrence Eagleburger Quotes

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.

I don't like the fact that North Korea is testing nuclear weapons, and I don't like the fact that they're testing missiles and shooting them out in the sea in kind of an antagonistic fashion.

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

We need to make it very clear to the Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China, that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of their nation.

The North Koreas of the world are trying very hard to acquire the material they need to acquire nuclear weapons, as is the case with Iran.

We were fortunate to have the Russians as our childhood enemies. We practiced hiding under our desks in case they had the temerity to drop a nuclear weapon.

And it raises a fundamental question: How long can we move the world in one direction while we move in another direction, and do we want to backslide into an era that we finally emerged from where we had a nuclear weapon for every tactical mission?

When I was in the White House, I was confronted with the challenge of the Cold War. Both the Soviet Union and I had 30,000 nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire earth and I had to maintain the peace.

We probably could more successfully resolve the North Korean nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning. We could successfully resolve what American leaders seem to perceive as an Iranian nuclear threat through game-theoretic reasoning.

If we had made it clear from the very beginning that we were not going to tolerate another nuclear power on the face of the earth, and had done it in Korea, where we could have accomplished it militarily, if necessary, I would put a stop to it and would have put a stop to it there.

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

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.

The president's decision yesterday to set into motion the development of the hydrogen bomb... has placed us on the knife-edge of history.

We still need to be conscious of the fact that Russia has intercontinental ballistic missiles.

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

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.

The Soviet Union prepared to test [nuclear weapons] while we were at the table negotiating with them. If they fooled us once it is their fault; if they fool us twice, it is our fault.

Disarmament has become the urgent imperative of our time. I do not say this because I equate the absence of arms to peace, or because I believe that bringing an end to the nuclear arms race automatically guarantees the peace, or because the elimination of nuclear warheads from the arsenals of the world will bring in its wake that change in attitude requisite to the peaceful settlement of disputes between nations. Disarmament is vital today, quite simply, because of the immense destructive capacity of which men dispose.

One significant indication of the effectiveness of deterrence is that the Soviet Union and the United States share the belief that a nuclear war would begin only out of desperation or inadvertence. A weakening of deterrence could increase the possibility of a calculated “voluntary” war or worse.

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.

The decision to withdraw our missile defense sites from Poland put us in greater jeopardy, in my view.

The IAEA should be worried, as I am worried about it, because North Korea is now a nuclear power state with a ballistic missile program.

If we can deter the Soviet Union, if we can deter North Korea, why on earth can't we deter Iran?

The sole purpose of nuclear weapons must be to deter their use by others.

I remember when John Cameron Swayze over the television told me personally that the Russians now had the atomic bomb; then I knew that we were goners.