Quotes About Warfare

The barriers placed in his path (working his way through the Cryptonomicon, breaking the Nipponese Air Force Meteorological Code, breaking the Coral naval attache machine cipher, breaking Unnamed Nipponese Army Water Transport Code 3A, breaking the Greater East Asia Ministry Code) present about as much resistance as successive decks of a worm-eaten wooden frigate.

would draw P-38s as the scent of human flesh draws mosquitoes.

Even high-tech weapons systems cannot defeat organized small-arms fire on a massive scale.

Trying to improve on anthrax is like trying to improve on gunpowder. Anthrax is easy to propagate, easy to handle, it diffuses nicely into the air, kills slowly enough for the infected population to spread it around, and cripples as many victims as it kills, causing a collapse of the enemy's health care system.

carrying their Yemeni walking sticks, a.k.a. AK-47s.

The convenient thing about biological warfare has always been easy deniability, and its untraceable origins.

Some [surrendering Germans] would crawl on their knees,' recalled one British soldier, 'holding a picture of a woman or a child in their hands above their heads but everyone was killed. The excitement was gone. We killed in cold blood because it was our duty to kill as much as we could.

Japan in the 1930s became a garrison state.43 But it was one which carried within it the promise of a 'warfare-welfare state', offered social security in return for military sacrifice.

The final National Strategic Target List specified 1,050 Designated Ground Zeros (DGZs) for nuclear weapons, including 151 urban-industrial assets. Even the minimal version of the plan envisioned 650 DGZs being hit by over 1,400 weapons with a total yield of 2,100 megatons.

The Russian commander whose ship was torpedoed by SMS Emden off Penang on October 28, 1914, was certainly unprepared for the new age of global conflict. Only twelve rounds of ammunition were ready on deck; but there were sixty Chinese prostitutes below.

Since no country has had any experience with the tactical use of nuclear weapons, the possibility of miscalculation is considerable. The temptation to use the same target system as for conventional war and thereby produce vast casualties will be overwhelming. The pace of operations may out strip the possibilities of negotiation. Both sides would be operating in the dark with no precedents to guide them.119

World War I saw the birth of total war, in the sense that it was fought between societies as much as armies.

Niall Ferguson

The popular view was that (as in the 1790s) the blood tax – l'impôt du sang – should be borne by all

Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed.

you ought never to suffer your designs to be crossed in order to avoid war, since war is not so to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage.

Though fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution. Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered. Few men are brave by nature, but good discipline and experience make many so.

For on Cardinal Rohan saying to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied that the French did not understand politics.

No proceeding is better than that which you have concealed from the enemy until the time you have executed it. To know how to recognize an opportunity in war, and take it, benefits you more than anything else. Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many. Discipline in war counts more than fury.

And it will always happen that he who is not your friend will invite you to neutrality, while he who is your friend will call on you to declare yourself openly in arms.

When Princes devote themselves rather to pleasure than to arms, they lose their dominions.

for when religion is once established you may readily bring in arms; but where you have arms without religion it is not easy afterwards to bring in religion. We

no es victoria verdadera la que se obtiene con armas ajenas.