Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I have the responsibility and the privilege to be the chair of something called the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services. Strategic forces is a euphemism for nuclear weapons, and it is one of the most serious threats that we continue to face. We face threats all over the world from pandemics, from terrorism, from a rising China, from a belligerent Russia, but one of the most serious that sometimes gets lost in the discussion is the unthinkable catastrophe that would be a nuclear exchange. Throughout the last 70-plus years, our principle strategy for dealing with that threat has been deterrence, the idea that if you use nuclear weapons against the United States of America, you will pay the heaviest of prices, and that deterrence has worked. There hasn't been a use of nuclear weapon since 1945, and there are now several--I can't say the exact number for classification reasons--but there are a number of nuclear countries in the world, nuclear-armed countries, China and Russia among them. China is expanding its nuclear capability exponentially. Over the past several years, they have been embarked on an enormous buildup of their nuclear capability.…”