C. Robert Kehler Quotes

It is hard to seriously suggest that from a national-security standpoint, 1,000 warheads are not enough to protect the United States. Such an arsenal is literally overkill, sufficient to destroy every major population center on the planet outside of our borders.

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

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.

It is not unimaginable to have military options to respond to North Korean nuclear capability. What's unimaginable to me is allowing a capability that would allow a nuclear weapon to land in Denver, Colorado. That's unimaginable to me. So my job will be to develop military options to make sure that doesn't happen.

We are told that the possession of nuclear weapons - in some cases even the testing of these weapons - is essential for national security. But this argument can be made by other countries as well.

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.

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?

The decision to use the atom bomb on Japanese cities, and the consequent buildup of enormous nuclear arsenals, was made by governments, on the basis of political and military perceptions.

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

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

This means that the only function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, is to deter a nuclear attack.

If an SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) system were to keep out ninety percent of incoming nuclear missiles, it would be a ninety percent success and most Americans would be dead.

The first use of the nuclear weapon gives a great advantage to the user.

Every thinking person fears nuclear war, and every technological nation plans for it.

The dangers of atomic war are overrated. It would be hard on little, concentrated countries like England. In the United States we have lots of space.

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 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

The lesson of history is when a war starts every nation will ultimately use whatever weapon it has available. ... Therefore, we must expect that if another war — a serious war — breaks out, we will use nuclear energy in some form.

We will use nuclear weapons whenever it serves our vital interests.

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.

Maintaining a U. S. Nuclear Arsenal presents only one benefit today: deterring the use of nuclear weapons by others. Thus, there is simply no reason for nuclear weapons to play a central role in U. S. Defense Policy any longer.

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.

Deterrence is part objective and part subjective. The objective part is that adequate military preparedness could be critical in some important circumstances. The subjective is, in part, the perception by the potential enemy of the other side’s power, determination, and courage, as well as its estimate of the wartime effectiveness of the other side’s relative nuclear capability. If the aggressor believes that his opponent has the weapons and will use them, deterrence is likely to be effective. Therefore, a nation’s defense lies, in part, in the credibility of its threat to use nuclear force as a last resort, which means that the need remains for coherent and plausible policies for the use of nuclear weapons.

It's very difficult to convince other countries that they shouldn't pursue nuclear weapons programs if we ourselves are actively developing a component of a strategic defense system.