Theodore C. Sorensen Quotes

Containment was merely appeasement on the installment plan.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

To Moscow, it must seem that the Cold War is only half over, since the West’s deterrence posture, although muted, lives on.

And, gentlemen, they have not yet done so, and it is quite clear that no Americans, no people in the world probably, are going to war with the Soviet Union.

People were really interested in what was going on because of the international context of the Cold War.

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

In 1945, at the beginning of the Cold War, our leaders led us astray. We need to think of the Cold War as an aberration, a wrong turn. As such, we need to go back to where we were in 1945 - before we took the road to a permanent war economy, a national security state and a foreign policy based on unilateralism and cowboy triumphalism.

Containment, as everyone will recall, was a rough plan for stopping the Communists any time they crossed a certain line dividing our half of the world from theirs.

The Cold War is Over

The Mutual Security Act was intended not to fight a war but to prevent a war.

The way that Soviet intelligence tried to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East is essential to understand the developments that led to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.

We created NATO. It was a United States invention for the collective security of Europe. It has been a Russian desire since 1947 to break up NATO.

The trouble with the First World War, for example, is that people think war was inevitable, but I don't agree. If you look at the Cold War, you could argue that a war was bound to happen between the Soviet Union and its allies and the United States and its allies, but it didn't.

We won the Cold War because we showed nuclear vigilance and diligence.

And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.

It is not in the interest of the German people or in the interest of world peace that Germany should become a pawn or a partner in a military struggle for power between the East and the West.

Nobody should have any illusion about the possibility of gaining military superiority over Russia. We will never allow this to happen.

During the Cold War, we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.

I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.

There's a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, 'Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don't have to worry about these guys again.' We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.

The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished.

Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.

The Cold War is over but Cold War thinking survives.

Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.

I know that military alliances and armament have been the reliance for peace for centuries, but they do not produce peace; and when war comes, as it inevitably does under such conditions, these armaments and alliances but intensify and broaden the conflict.