One theory is that we will make war look so attractive that we undermine the deterrent. That's Never Never Land. What we have now would have been enough to deter Hitler. But we are talking in a different order of reality.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the dangers of romanticizing war, suggesting that it may diminish the effectiveness of deterrence.
Henry A. Kissinger's quote critiques the notion that making war seem appealing could erode its deterrent effect. He draws a comparison to historical contexts, arguing that the current situation is fundamentally different from past realities, such as the deterrence seen during Hitler's time, indicating that how society perceives war has significant implications for international relations and peace.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate on military strategy to emphasize the risks of glorifying war.
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, or aspirations that weren’t realized. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.
Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.
It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.
What political leaders decide, intelligence services tend to seek to justify.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.
The age of Chivalry is gone. An age of Humanity has come.
We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.
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