William Odom Quotes

I’ve decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can stand up there and resist it.

To say that you now trust the Russian military command and control system because some Russian general told you from the bottom of his heart that’s the case, strikes me as most unrealistic.

Military officers from different countries, when they meet each other, tend to sort of fall in love, become mutual admiration societies, at the expense of realities.

We’ve already seen proliferation. We started it with Britain, then France. Then we benignly let the Israelis do it. The Pakistanis and the Indians have recently done it. The Chinese have nuclear weapons.

Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes’ consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war.

I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should.