Michael Scheuer Quotes

We still live in a world where if you have nuclear weapons, you are buying power; you are buying insurance against attack.

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 world should be very clear about making sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, period.

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.

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.

Barack Obama has injected fresh momentum into efforts - stalled for a decade - to bring about nuclear disarmament.

We must eliminate all nuclear weapons in order to eliminate the grave risk they pose to our world. This will require persistent efforts by all countries and peoples. A nuclear war would affect everyone, and all have a stake in preventing this nightmare.

For the United States to recommit itself to the obligation that we undertook in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that many other states undertook, which was to work towards disarmament and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, is something that manifestly serves our national security interests.

But the nuclear powers still cling tenaciously to their weapons.

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 Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be infinitely more costly than any scenario you can imagine to stop it.

We've already seen proliferation. We started it with Britain, then France. Then we benignly let the Israelis do it. The Pakistanis and the Indians have recently done it. The Chinese have nuclear weapons.

We can do better than condone a world in which nuclear weapons are accepted as commonplace.

Why should every country of the world not develop nuclear weapons now that America may nuke anyone at any time? … Those of us in Pakistan and India who have long fought against nuclearization of the subcontinent have been temporarily rendered speechless

If we wish to convince countries like Iran that the development of nuclear weapons is not in their best interest, we need to demonstrate that maintaining or enhancing our own arsenal is not in our interest.

You've got the North Koreans building weapons; you got the Iranians building weapons. You've got - the Pakistanis already have at least 100 nuclear weapons. Do you think there's any serious effort in this country to come to grips with that?

Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons.

I agree that a nuclear Iran is extremely dangerous, and I believe that it must be prevented.

Nuclear proliferation has never entirely been brought under control, and the arsenals of nuclear powers contain bombs far more powerful than those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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.

If Iran gains a nuclear weapon, we will need a new calendar in the world - it would change humanity that much. Iran will give these weapons to terrorists the world over, and your children and mine will step into the shadow of nuclear terrorism.

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.

I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this earth if someday-and this is what I have-my hope, way in the back of my head-is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, 'Why not all the way? Let's get rid of all these things'.

I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over. At the same time, we have to be prepared.

When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn't care less.