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.
Martin Van CreveldAs 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.
Martin Van CreveldThe 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.
Martin Van CreveldExcept when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected.
Martin Van CreveldIn the future as in the past, both Clausewitz and Sun Tzu will undoubtedly have a lot to offer.
Martin Van CreveldThe 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.
Martin Van Creveld