A world without war is not in the cards.
Category Archive: Martin Van Creveld
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.
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.
‘Never’ is too much of a word. Nothing lasts forever.
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.
Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or ‘the people,’ constitute the great majority of those affected.
If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward, then you are going to become cowardly – it’s only a question of time.