Martin Van Creveld Quotes
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Never' is too much of a word. Nothing lasts forever.
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A world without war is not in the cards.
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I want to put any number of assorted 'ists' - such as relativists, deconstructionists, destructivists, postmodernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists and feminists - firmly in their place.
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Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected.
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The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself.
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The enemy resembles us. Therefore, he needs to be approached not as an assembly of 'targets' to be destroyed one by one; but as a living, intelligent entity capable of acting and reacting.
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If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot.
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The combination of professionalism and technology may also result in narrow-minded specialization more suited to a debating society than to an organization whose task it is to cope with, and indeed live in, the dangerous and uncertain environment of war.
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As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide.
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It is simply not true that war is solely a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fight in order to obtain this objective or that. In fact, the opposite is true: people very often take up one objective or another precisely in order that they may fight.
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The problem is that you cannot prove yourself against someone who is much weaker than yourself. They are in a lose/lose situation. If you are strong and fighting the weak, then if you kill your opponent then you are a scoundrel... if you let him kill you, then you are an idiot. So here is a dilemma which others have suffered before us, and for which as far as I can see there is simply no escape.
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Assuming China does not become destabilized and continues to grow, it will no doubt develop a military program in proportion to its resources.
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In the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer.
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Our armed forces are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.
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Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy.
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Sun Tzu does not need my praise. His work has lived for over two thousand years, and will surely live for another two thousand without any help from me.
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War is the greatest fun man can have with his pants on.
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We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets of our air force.
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Related Authors
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Carl von Clausewitz Military Historian -
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Saharon Shelah Mathematician -
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