Alexander Haig Quotes

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

The notion of Armageddon has created a self-defeating prophecy: the more frightened decision makers are, the more careful they become and the less likely they are to initiate any action that might bring about the dreaded escalation to nuclear use. Armageddon is averted to the degree it is feared. As a result, nuclear deterrence has not only worked remarkably well in peacetime and served to limit the scope and intensity of conventional warfare, but it is likely to work surprisingly well in a large U.S.-Soviet conventional, and even a limited nuclear, war.

The professed function of the nuclear weapons on each side is to prevent the other side from using their nuclear weapons. If that's all it is, then we've gotta as: how many nuclear weapons do you need to do that?

You can distill deterrence down to two factors: capability and will.

When people know we are ready to use nuclear weapons, they're going to back off if we do something aggressive. So basically, nuclear weapons are always being used.

Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.

Thee are such horrible weapons. And so no sane leader would ever want to cross that line to using nuclear weapons. And, if you are not going to cross that line, then these things are basically useless.

Look, Israel doesn't intend to introduce nuclear weapons, but if people are afraid that we have them, why not? It's a deterrent.

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.

Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe.

U.S. nuclear weapons that are available for presidential use are targeted against broad ocean areas.

It would be our policy to use nuclear weapons wherever we felt it necessary to protect our forces and achieve our objectives.

Our nuclear weapons are meant purely as a deterrent against nuclear adventure by an adversary.

No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.

We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence.

If a nuclear power is willing to be bolder than another, it can take limited conventional actions without fear of major pushback.

It is essential that we maintain the capability at all times to inflict an unacceptable level of damage on the Soviet Union, including the destruction of 200 major Soviet cities.

We should get back to the ... doctrine of brinkmanship, where everybody knows we have the power and will use it.

We must not force an adversary into a choice between humiliating defeat and nuclear war.

Military capability, viewed in terms of the history of its own development, has constantly been found wanting. Renewal and regeneration of military capability seems to be an indispensable part of the military doctrine, conceived to address what turns out inevitably to be the insatiable need of fear. For every level of fear addressed through a military strategy or state of readiness, a further threat comes to be conceived for which further military capability is sought.

The aggressor too should know that the preemptive use of nuclear weapons would not insure victory. With modern detection systems and the combat readiness of the Soviet Union's strategic nuclear forces, the United States would not be able to deal a crippling blow to the socialist countries. The aggressor will not be able to evade an all-crushing retaliatory strike

In the Cuban missile crisis [1962] we had 5,000 nuclear strategic weapons and the Russians had only 300.... Even though we had a 17 to 1 advantage, we were deterred. Even if only ten percent of their missiles got through, tens of millions of Americans would have died. We could not use our nuclear superiority.

Instead of planning to deter would-be [nuclear] proliferators, U. S. policy makers have developed a preference for preventative war, They now seem to feel that deterrence is too weak to deal with radical regimes, forgetting that the precise purpose of deterrence is to counter dangerous enemies, not cautious ones.

Dwight Eisenhower… supported the nuclearization of the military and the militarization of nuclear weapons as a cost saving way of deterring the Soviets. Under Eisenhower, custody or nuclear weapons shifted from the civilian Atomic Energy Commission to the military.

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.