Can too much restraint endanger peace?

So we trap the poor imbecile, our opponent, into thinking we're not going to do anything. That's our classic way of getting into war. And that's exactly how we got into the Gulf War.

It never occurred to us there would be a problem with Saddam. We backed him because we were worried about the Iranians. And then when he was beginning to look scary and people were warning us about him, our position was, we don't want to give this guy any grief. Our ambassador continued to stroke him.

My son has this wonderful analogy. In [the 1944 movie] "To Have or Have Not," Bacall and Bogie are in this scene together up in the hotel room. And at one point she says, "I know, Steve. You don't give a hoop what I do. But when I do it, you get mad." There it is.

On the importance of coalitions:

It's always better to act in coalition with other states that share your views. It's better materially, but it's also very much better spiritually. We should always aim for that. However, we can't thoroughly control that. There's no way to conduct your foreign policy based on gaining the friendliness of other states.

This action [with Iraq] in one way or another is typical of what happened all through the cold war. Time and again, our allies dragged their feet and were frightened by things that we did or wanted to do. And the only way things worked was when we listened to them, I hope courteously, and then went ahead and said OK, we hear you, but now this is what we feel we have to do; we welcome your help if you feel you can give it to us. And they usually did.

Imagine the situation in the '30s: The United States is not what it was, but [suppose] it has the power and has the will to see to it that Hitler doesn't conquer Europe. Boy, we would have run into a lot of trouble from the British and French governments, which were so decadent and so appeasement-minded. And yet that would have been the thing to do.

On the possibility of successful regime change:

It is instructive to look to the fate of Nazi Germany and militaristic Japan after World War II. It took, first of all, an occupation and the clear demonstration that they'd been defeated. That's a very important first step to [implementing] change in an ugly regime.

Then it took the United States fundamentally insisting that there should be democratic regimes in their place.... It seems to me some such outcome is possible [with Iraq]. But it will require the same kind of serious commitment.

On the United States using too much restraint:

Over and over again [the US has erred on the side of restraint.] There's a case to be made that we were late in World War I – that the world would have been a better place if we had come in the first time they started sinking our ships. Then World War II is a classic. Korea is another classic. Iraq is another case where we did that. I think we could have avoided war in every one of those cases.

On how to preserve peace:

Peace does not keep itself. That simple truth has not been digested by most people. They think of peace as kind of a negative thing – if you don't make war, you have peace. Wrong.

War is one of your most common experiences in the history of human beings. Periods of extended peace are very rare. They happen when the states with the greatest interest in peace also have the preponderant power, and the willingness to use it to preserve peace.

That means you have to be just as active and just as involved and just as willing to make sacrifices in peacetime as you are in war.

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