War Dynamics Quotes

In media coverage of the war, Afghans are often characterized as corrupt and deceitful. There has certainly been plenty of corruption and deceit in this conflict, but why? What inspires these behaviors? In 'Green on Blue,' I wanted to render a world that is often overlooked: that of the average Afghans who are helping America wage its war.

The cause of war is preparation for war.

It started partly as a sectarian war in some areas, but now it's not, because when you talk about sectarian war or religious war, you should have a very clear line between the sects and religions in Syria according to the geography and the demography in Syria, something we don't have.

The step from one degree of violence to the next is imperceptibly taken and cannot be easily taken back.... Wars have a way of getting out of hand.

Small wars are always teetering on the brink of becoming big ones.

At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.

A strategic plan based on the over-all situation of both belligerents is ... more stable, but it too is applicable only in a given strategic stage and has to be changed when the war moves towards a new stage. ... [Conversely, tactical plans may] ... have to be changed several times a day.

Anyone who has ever studied the history of American diplomacy, especially military diplomacy, knows that you might start in a war with certain things on your mind as a purpose of what you are doing, but in the end, you found yourself fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before ... In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

War triggers unforeseeable military dynamics and sets off massive political shocks, creating new problems as well as new opportunities.

However and wherever war begins, it persists, it spreads, it propagates itself through time and across space with the terrifying tenacity of a beast attached to the neck of living prey. This is not an idly chosen figure of speech. War spreads and perpetuates itself through a dynamic that often seems independent of human will. It has, as we like to say of things we do not fully understand, 'a life of its own.

I think that if you believe in regime change, you're mistaken. In 2013, we put 600 tons of weapons - us, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar - into the war against [Bashar] Assad. By pushing Assad back, we did create a safe space.

Global war is a clash of systems, not just battalions biffing one another in some godforsaken forest.

war is, in some not yet entirely defined sense, a self-replicating pattern of behavior, possessed of a dynamism not unlike that of living things.

War then, is a relation - not between man and man but between state and state and individuals are enemies only accidentally not as men, nor even as citizens but as soldiers not as members of their country, but as its defenders

Throughout history, countries have sought to expand ….Today, the goal of most wars is too make countries smaller rather than larger.

Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war, it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results.

Since Sept. 11, many of the wars of our generation are in the Muslim world. So as a woman, I have access to 50 percent of the population that my male colleagues don't.

It is not armaments that cause war, but war that causes armaments.

An Army is still a crowd, though a highly organized one. It is governed by the same laws, and under the stress of war is ever tending to revert to its crowd form. Our object in peace is so to train it that the reversion will become very slow.

US wars are going to be against much weaker enemies. And they have to be won quickly and decisively before a popular reaction develops.

The great error of nearly all studies of war... has been to consider war as an episode in foreign policies, when it is an act of interior politics.

So, the thing we’re all not talking about,” he says. He gestures to me. “You almost died, a sadistic pansycake saved you, and now we’re all waging some serious war with the factionless as allies.” “Pansycake?” says Christina. “Dauntless slang.” Lynn smirks. “Supposed to be a huge insult, only no one uses it anymore.” “Because it’s so offensive,” says Uriah, nodding. “No. Because it’s so stupid no Dauntless with any sense would speak it, let alone think it. Pansycake. What are you, twelve?” “And a half,” he says.

In any symmetrical war in today's world, it is necessary to have regional support.

Japan cannot conquer China with America in her rear, Soviet Russia on her right and England on her left - her most powerful enemies in the South Sea all flanking her. It is this international situation that constitutes one of Japan's great weaknesses.

That Germany was so immensely strong and Austria so dependent upon German strength that the word and will of Germany would at the critical moment be decisive with Austria.