Credible Threat Quotes

A credible threat of force is only as good as the political will to use it.

National security rests on the credible threat of a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages, the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants.

One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action.

Here's the reality: There is always a credible threat, and terror can strike at any time, anywhere, especially as lone wolf attacks backed up by Islamic ideology become more prevalent.

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.

You can have villains like the Penguin, who strut around in a tuxedo with an umbrella, and Poison Ivy and all of the fantastic stuff she does, but unless there's a bit of a human in there, and unless there's a credible threat, then Batman himself doesn't work.

I'm from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, if you say, 'I'm dangerous', you'd better be dangerous.

We do want people to know if in fact we learn of an incident that's focused on a particular city.If we learn of long-term planning, that's focused on a particular industry or infrastructure. And so we feel we have an obligation to let people know if we have information of a credible threat or not.

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