War

The very heart of the darkness is the Soviet Union and from that heart comes a different sound. It is the whirring sound of machinery and the whisper of the computer technology we ourselves have sold them. —Ronald Reagan. Speech to the Fourth Annual Conservative...

Executions The tyrant who started the war should be tried and executed. His henchmen who committed murder should be dealt with likewise. This precedent, set by the Nuremburg trials, should be followed whenever a tyranny is defeated in war. National punishment In 1982...

The Geneva Conventions are contracts between sovereign peoples stipulating how they will treat each other’s people during war. They accord with natural justice because they are entirely reciprocal. Accordingly any attempt to convert them from a contract between...

Collective responsibility The person who, for his own purposes, brings on his land and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it at his peril; and … is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence...

Tyrants are responsible for wars and should be the foremost target for lethal attack. The story of Wellington prohibiting his artillery from targeting Bonaparte at Waterloo, if true, demonstrates misguided chivalry. Indeed, had Bonaparte been executed in 1814 instead...

The barracks occupy the top and brow of a very high hill. They are free from bog, have four springs which seem to be plentiful, one within twenty yards of the picket, two within fifty yards, and another within two hundred and fifty, and they propose to sink wells...

We have found it necessary to take measures of increasing stringency, not only against enemy aliens and suspicious characters of other nationalities, but also against British subjects who may become a danger or a nuisance should the war be transported to the United...

The killing of the innocent ought to be avoided when possible. This applies equally to a mother and daughter huddling in the basement of their home as it does to a conscript father and son huddling in a bunker on the frontline. Deliberate killing can only be justified...

It was the Turnip Winter of 1916 which precipitated the German defeat in World War I. Civilian misery is lamentable, but it is preferable to wholesale slaughter. People recover from malnutrition and go on to procreate and prosper in happier times, but death is...

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war. —Basil Liddell Hart. The Real War, 1930. All humanity being a giant extended family, fratricide must be kept to the absolute minimum....

Since humanity obliges us to prefer the gentlest methods in the prosecution of our rights, if, by a stratagem, by a feint void of perfidy, we can make ourselves masters of a strong place, surprise the enemy, and overcome him, it is much better, it is really more...

One other lesson stands out. The American Intelligence system succeeded in penetrating the enemy’s most closely guarded secrets well in advance of events. Thus Admiral Nimitz, albeit the weaker, was twice able to concentrate all the forces he had in sufficient...

Total war Wars should be earnestly prosecuted by the entire citizenry. Not only does this bring about a swift conclusion to hostilities, it is also the only way faith can be kept with the men and women of the armed forces whose lives are in jeopardy. Accordingly war...

Just as issuing an ultimatum is an essential obligation to humanity, so too is having in place a standing offer of settlement. Even where unconditional surrender is demanded, so long as this is coupled with a solemn undertaking that only justice will be done, such...

During war, power tends to concentrate in the executive at the expense of the legislature. Within the executive, power then tends to concentrate in a three- or four-man war cabinet. Within the war cabinet, power tends to concentrate in a single man. Such...

We owe this further regard to humanity, and especially to the lives and peace of the subjects, to declare to that unjust nation, or its chief, that we are at length going to have recourse to the last remedy, and make use of open force, for the purpose of bringing him...

War should … only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits. —James Madison. Universal Peace, Philadelphia, January 31, 1792. The decision to go to war causes...

For conquest Wars of conquest are unjust and he is chargeable with all the evils, all the horrors of the war: all the effusion of blood, the desolation of families, the guilt of rapine, the acts of violence, the ravages, the conflagrations, are his works and his...

In self-defense Not all the treasures of the world, so far as I believe, could have induced me to support an offensive war, for I think it murder; but if a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are...

A well-governed state ought to set aside as the first article of its expense a regular sum for contingent cases. It is with the public as with individuals, they are ruined when they live up exactly to their income. —Montesquieu. The Spirit of the Laws, 1748. When a...

For the truth is that families and governments have a great deal more in common than most politicians and economists like to accept. Although the consequences of flouting fundamental rules are somewhat different for states than for households, they are still ruinous....

Inflation does not add anything to a nation’s power of resistance, either to its material resources or to its spiritual and moral strength. Whether there is inflation or not, the material equipment required by the armed forces must be provided out of the available...

Small wars Wars will continue to be entered into impulsively unless the people are accustomed to paying for them as they go along. Borrowing buffers the people from the realities of what is being done in their name and prevents the connection being made between high...

There are steps the Chinese can take to ensure peace and prosperity, while simultaneously putting the rest of the world at ease. Let Tibet go The first thing China should do is to release the Tibetans and remove all Chinese settled on Tibetan soil. As long as China...

It is in our Western interest that China should be open, stable and prosperous, and a full partner in the international community. That is the only rational policy for the West to pursue with a country which has the world’s largest population … nuclear weapons and is...

The danger, though, lies in the fact that these Asian countries, which are making such rapid economic advances, generally lack the liberal traditions which we in the West take for granted. America is worthy of its superpower status because it has been not only...

In warfare, discipline and training always prevails. Roman exercises were said to be ‘bloodless battles’ so that their battles could be ‘bloody exercises.’ (Bellum Iudaicum Titus Flavius Josephus 75.) It was constant drill and repetition that allowed soldiers to react...

The armed forces should be imbued with the military culture of obeying orders and killing the enemy. No one questions that strict rules of engagement and honorable standards of behavior are necessary. However, the military is not a laboratory for social experiments....

In war the unexpected happens, and thus the unexpected should be planned for. Treacherous attacks such as those on Pearl Harbor, the USS Stark, and the USS Cole ought to be prevented by wartime states of readiness around all commissioned military assets. Disastrous...

Forces must be configured to perform lightning-fast operations when called upon. The use of part-timers and reservists should be rejected in favor of full-time professionals and contractors wielding highly automated fighting machines. History shows that aggressors—for...

Autonomous airplanes, tanks, patrol vehicles, foot soldiers, sentries, logistics vehicles and intelligence-gathering devices give great promise as means for reducing the casualties and costs of war, especially in relation to occupation and counter-insurgency work. One...

Arms races do not cause wars The springs of war lie in the readiness to resort to force against other nations, and not in ‘arms races’, whether real or imaginary. Aggressors do not start wars because an adversary has built up his own strength. They start wars because...

All is over, silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant. She has...

No doubt as a whole His Majesty’s Government were very slow in accepting the unwelcome fact of German rearmament. They still clung to the policy of one-sided disarmament. It was one of those experiments, we are told, which had to be … “tried out”, just as the...

Unless we were prepared to unleash a full-scale nuclear war as soon as some local incident occurs in some distant country, we must have conventional forces in readiness to deal with such situations as they arise. —Winston Churchill. Speech to the House of Commons,...

Nuclear weapons are vital to our defense. Conventional weapons have not succeeded in deterring war. Nuclear weapons have prevented not only nuclear war, but conventional war as well. They have kept the peace in Europe for over forty years. —Margaret Thatcher. Speech...

Our task is to see that potential aggressors, from whatever quarter, understand plainly that the capacity and the resolve of the West would deny them victory in war, and that the price they would pay would be intolerable. That is the basis of deterrence. —Margaret...

Therefore, those who desire peace should prepare for war. —Vegetius. Epitome de re militari. The best way to avoid war is to prepare for it. Aggressors are not guided by common decency—they appreciate only force. Being prepared to fight is no guarantee of peace. There...

War is comprehensive of most, if not all the mischiefs which do or ever can afflict men: It depopulates nations; lays waste the finest countries; destroys arts, sciences, and learning; butchers innocents; ruins the best men and advances the worst; effaces every trace...