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History demonstrates that previous military drawdowns invited aggression by our enemies. After World War I, America drew down forces until the U.S. Army had fewer than 100,000 men in uniform. That weakness invited Nazi aggression in Europe and the imperial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America's hegemony lasted exactly five years.

History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

Are there really good wars and bad wars? We thought so during World War II, and in retrospect, we were right. But in Vietnam, and Iraq we were wrong.

If there is anything worse than international warfare, is civil warfare, and the United States was destined to experience it in the extreme of bitterness.

The World War II generation believed the United States could do anything - anything... And Vietnam was a shattering experience for everyone.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

I don't go around trying to stir up foreign wars.