Admirals and Generals always want more ships and more weapons and they take the arguments where they can find them.

President [Ronald] Reagan never has tried to become an expert on military matters. He never has endeavored to learn the most important details in that field, which lead to a situation in which his aides played a much greater roles than aides would have played under President Ford or let us say in the whole Nixon-Ford-Kissinger era.

In those years,'80 was the, at the turn of '79/'80 you had the invasion of Afghanistan. It was the period in which the Americans attempt to liberate, to, to liberate the hostages in Iran and all these, all these things, the atmosphere was freezing - boycott of the Olympic Games and all that.

I have had and still do have every confidence in Paul Nitze, a man whom I have known for decades, one of the wisest servants of the American nation but always willing and capable of taking into account the interests of their allies, whoever: the British, or the French or the Germans or others.

Politicians and journalists share the same fate in that they often understand tomorrow the things they talk about today.

If somewhere is a deficiency the normal American answer would have been well then, let's spend some more money, build some more weapons and deploy them. That's the normal way of thinking of the military, in America not only but also all over the place, but America or Russia or other countries.

I think that the solution of the question of numerical superiority of Russian conventional forces has to be solved.

Population growth and the proliferation of mega-cities around the world redefines the entire global security agenda.

I've never been a classic Gaulist! Not a Gaulist at all.

I hate the idea that someone think the destruction of Chicago as strategic affair, the destruction of Hamburg as a tactical one.

Some of the American military obviously were thinking in terms of fighting a nuclear war. I was opposed to that.

Leonid Breznev was an old man and despite his own military experience in World War II, he on the other hand was not very close to the military.