Non State Actors Quotes

We have to find ways in which, collectively, we agree there's some things that government needs to do to help protect us, that in this age of non-state actors who can amass great power, I want my government - and I think the German people should want their government - to be able to find out if a terrorist organization has access to a weapon of mass destruction that might go off in the middle of Berlin.

… adopt and enforce appropriate, effective laws which prohibit any non-state actor to manufacture, acquire, possess, develop, transport, transfer, ot use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their means of delivery …. develop and maintain appropriate, effective border controls and law enforcement efforts …

Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.

The United States learned a big lesson. Its greatest danger in the world came not from large nations but from failed states.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

Sure, we have an obstacle, ISIS. They can do great damage. They can do great damage and they scare the living hell out of everybody with good reason. But they are, instead of dealing with nation-states that are arranged against us, we're to deal with non-state actors that can do damage to us. But this is within our control. We are beginning to make genuine progress as to how we isolate them, how we take them out. We're in a situation - I mean, I just could go on. But I am - the only generic criticism I had is we're not talking about the possibilities.

Rogue states never turn out to be quite the pariahs they are deemed. They are only able to cause, or at least threaten to cause, mayhem because they enjoy the covert support - usually by means of technology transfers - of one or more major powers within the charmed circle of global 'good guys'.

Any cooperation that doesn't go through the Syrian government is not legal. If it's not legal, we cannot cooperate with, and we don't recognize and we don't accept.

You should expect everything. Not necessarily through the government, the governments are not the only player in [Middle East] region.

The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions: To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance; To carry arms openly; and To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war

Before there was the Soviet Union that could inflame matters. Now you have states not as powerful as the Soviet Union, but states like Iraq, like Iran, and to some extent Syria, having made it possible for some of these groups to operate. So it is a very difficult situation.

Air power and military are meant to fight the enemy and not your own citizens... How do you differentiate a Maoist?... It will create a civil war-like situation.

Who takes care of their people better? FEMA or Hezbollah?

The commonly accepted definition of terrorism is that it is politically motivated violence directed at civilians by entities other than a state. These kind of attacks can come from the far right, the far left, racists of every stripe, as well as jihadists.

From Kurdistan to Catalonia to Scotland, from Syria to Chechnya to South Sudan, from indigenous communities in the Andean nations to tribal communities in sub-Saharan Africa, many people are shifting their primary political identities away from the nation-states in which they lived for many generations.

How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?

One of the things that I've learned, and I think we've all learned, is that we are not going to get the kind of decisive, permanent victories in this fight against terrorism that we would get from fighting another country. We're not going to get that MacArthur/Emperor moment, because by definition, even after decimating Al Qaeda in the Fata, even after taking out [Osama] bin Laden there's still people there who have both the interest and the capacity if we don't maintain vigilance to strike against the United States.

In Iraq we are fighting against men with blind hatred and armed with lethal weapons who are capable of any atrocity. They wear no uniform; they respect no laws of warfare or morality. They take innocent lives to create chaos for the cameras.

The danger of terrorists and rogue states is compounded by the proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons.

A colonial war is a very dirty kind of war. You're not fighting armed forces. You're fighting mostly unarmed people. And to fight that kind of war requires professional killers, which means mercenaries.

Applying different standards to al Qaeda does not abandon Geneva, but only recognizes that the U.S. faces a stateless enemy never contemplated by the Conventions.

You can reach agreements with countries; you cannot reach agreements with gangs.

Force is the duty of the state, not Hizbullah.

We're facing a very different sort of threat now, a more amorphous threat, al Qaeda, terrorism, and so on. And so the military has abandoned the two-war strategy.

"Terrorism" is what we call the violence of the weak, and we condemn it; "war" is what we call the violence of the strong, and we glorify it.