Top 57 Deterrence Quotes & Sayings

The purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter. The mission of deterrence to make all parties in possession of nuclear weapons never, ever use them.

The nature of nuclear weapons makes it impossible to either ban the bomb or wipe out an enemy's arsenal. Nuclear deterrence was unavoidable.

I don't believe in war, I believe in the principle of deterrence.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

Strategies that do show evidence of effectiveness include policing that's focused on high-risk individuals or geographic areas, and/or deterrence-based approaches that hold entire gangs accountable should individual members engage in criminal behavior.

A proper criminal justice system exacts justice - that is, punishes criminals for their crimes. Rehabilitation and deterrence are worthy goals, but they are secondary to retribution.

We welcome the Obama administration's policy called the 'pivot to Asia' because it is a contributing factor to the safety and peace of the region. I think this pivot policy is playing an indispensable role in enhancing the deterrence of the U.S.-Japan alliance as well as ensuring peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region.

When you talk about peace through strength, what you're talking about is the concept of deterrence.

Some amount of fear of nuclear weapons is necessary for nuclear deterrence to work.

There is some rationale backing Kim Jong-un's actions, which are survival - survival for his regime, survival for his country. And he has watched, I think, what has happened around the world relative to nations that possess nuclear capabilities and the leverage they have, and seen that having the nuclear card in your pocket results in a lot of deterrence capability. The lessons that we learned out of Libya giving up its nukes and Ukraine giving up its nukes is, unfortunately, if you have nukes, never give them up.

The triad is our ability of the United States to conduct nuclear attacks using airplanes, using missiles launched from silos or from the ground, and also from our nuclear subs' ability to attack. And it's important - all three of them are critical. It gives us the ability at deterrence.

Deterrence is the art of producing, in the mind of the enemy, the fear to attack.

When you have a regime that would be happier in the afterlife than in this life, this is not a regime that is subject to classic theories of deterrence.

The only peace that can be made with a dictator is once that must be based on deterrence. For today, the dictator may be your friend, but tomorrow he will need you as an enemy.

Our nuclear free status means that we decline to acquiesce in the strategies of nuclear deterrence. We will not turn a blind eye to them, and pretend that the weapons are no longer a threat. We will not in any way tolerate the testing of nuclear weapons, or their manufacture, or their deployment.

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.

Getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe.

Democrats always assure us that deterrence will work, but when the time comes to deter, they're against it.

Obviously, the Philippines or any regional state can never match Chinese defense spending, but we will have to develop minimum deterrence capabilities that allow us to resist and inflict sufficient retaliation if China continues to undermine Philippine territorial integrity.

I repeat what I suggest in my book [ Strategie de la deception]. The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies.

The enduring responsibility of the United States Air Force is to provide strategic deterrence for the Nation and fly, fight and win as an integral part of the Joint Team. Together with our brothers and sisters in arms, we underwrite the national strategy of defending the Homeland and assuring allies, while dissuading, deterring and defeating enemies.

What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.

Deterrence itself is not a preeminent value; the primary values are safety and morality.

We are deploying battle groups, battalions, which we consider necessary to convey a message of deterrence, credible deterrence, that if one NATO ally is attacked, it will trigger a whole response from the whole alliance.

Deterrence failed completely as a guide in setting rational limits on the size and composition of military forces, spurring an insatiable arms race with a reckless proliferation of the most destructive power ever unleashed, tailored for delivery by a vast array of vehicles to a stupefying array of targets.

Obviously, the US does not want a shooting war with North Korea. But there has to be some path out of this situation that is also presented that is peaceful. We have sanctions, we have deterrence, but the third leg of any resolution to this problem has to be dialogue. It seems prudent for the US to not only threaten North Korea, but to also offer a way forward.

The way that one feels about the story line of 'Deterrence' can tell us, I believe, about each person's conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.

The present basic philosophy is nuclear deterrence.

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.

Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents since the cold war have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace, and I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.

Japan's alliance with the U.S. will only grow in importance amid the increasingly difficult security situation surrounding our country, thus I think it is necessary to keep the marines in Okinawa, a geographically strategic location from the standpoint of maintaining deterrence.

The only thing that kept the Cold War cold was the mutual deterrence afforded by nuclear weapons.

Even in the most peaceful communities, an appetite for violence shows up in dreams, fantasies, sports, play, literature, movies and television. And, so long as we don't transform into angels, violence and the threat of violence - as in punishment and deterrence - is needed to rein in our worst instincts.

That's a point that Dan Ellsberg has made for years. He said it's kind of like if you and I go into a grocery store to rob it, and I have a gun. The guy may give you the money in the cash register. I'm using the gun even if I don't shoot. Well that's nuclear weapons - essential to post-war deterrence - they cast a shadow over everything.

We have got thousands of nuclear weapons in order to achieve deterrence.

I think the President's decision to withdraw the United States, to keep a campaign promise in Iraq, without leaving a stay-behind force was a mistake, and I hear that from veterans in Wyoming and from parents who lost children fighting in Iraq. We're seeing it, though, around the world. When we, the United States leads a vacuum anywhere, that emboldens others to go in, when there is no sense of deterrence by the United States that lets bad actors move and fill the void.

You can distill deterrence down to two factors: capability and will.

Of course it can be said of jails, too, that they try - by punishing the troublesome - to deter others. No doubt, in certain instances this deterrence actually works. But generally speaking it fails conspicuously.

New Zealand’s nuclear free movement is a broad-based and popular movement. Our nuclear free status is a challenge to much that is accepted as orthodox in international relations. It was formally adopted in the cold war era as a form of resistance to the dismal doctrines of nuclear deterrence. It is still a rebuke to the unprincipled exercise of economic power and military might.

Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, works only as long as it works; it does not know what to do if deterrence fails, for it envisions no defensive capabilities. A deterrent works until it is needed; then one needs defenses.

Since most cyberwar is conducted covertly, governments avoid any public acknowledgment of their own abilities and shy away from engaging in any sort of 'cyber diplomacy.' Statecraft conducted in secret fails to create public norms for deterrence.

It is deterrence that has prevented the use of nuclear weapons by all states that possess them since 1945.

Deterrence is still fundamentally about influencing an actor's decisions. It is about a solid policy foundation. It is about credible capabilities. It is about what the U.S. and our allies as a whole can bring to bear in both a military and a nonmilitary sense.

A great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of 'balance' and 'deterrence'.

NATO's deterrence has always been adequate, and I'm not worried about the physical security of my country. Not at all.

We defended our allies in Europe for 40 years during the worst days of the Cold War - very threatening days of the Cold War - and nothing happened. So deterrence does work.

All American and Israeli goods and products should be boycotted in a way that undermines American and Israeli interests so as to act as deterrence to their war against Muslims and Islam that is being waged under the pretence of fighting terrorism. This boycott should become an overwhelming trend that makes these two states feel that their economies are in a real and actual danger.

The whole idea of deterrence is to convince your enemy that you are willing and able to make it so painful for them to continue on a threatening or bellicose course that they change their behavior.

The American people have determined that the good to be derived from capital punishment - in deterrence, and perhaps most of all in the meting out of condign justice for horrible crimes - outweighs the risk of error.

The problem with deterrence - apparently sometimes forgotten by our former presidents - is that it is not static, but a creature of the moment, captive to impression, and nursed on action, not talk. It must be maintained hourly and can erode or be lost with a single act of failed nerve, despite all the braggadocio of threatened measures. And, once gone, the remedies needed for its restoration are always more expensive, deadly - and controversial - than would have been its simple maintenance.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

Of the three official objects of our prison system: vengeance, deterrence, and reformation of the criminal, only one is achieved; and that is the one which is nakedly abominable.

A great amount has been talked and written about what constitutes a sufficient balance and what really is meant by the concepts of "balance" and "deterrence".

Preemption is a kind of pre-deterrence that stops the threat at an earlier, safer stage.

So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing... meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence.

The Blue and White government, led by me, will assemble the strongest security cabinet against terrorism and restore deterrence.