Why would someone who spent so many years negotiating with the Soviet Union about the size of our nuclear arsenal now say we no longer need it? I kno… - Paul Nitze

In our view, all-out war promises the least success in achieving the objectives we have outlined. First, it would not necessarily discourage other potential aggressors. Defeating Saddam Hussein promptly in an all-out war would send an unequivocal signal that this aggression had not been tolerated. But if casualties were high, U.S. sentiment probably would be driven toward a more isolationist posture. Many Americans would be dismayed by the carnage and resentful that our allies were not paying a similar price. (The seeds of such resentment already exist.) They could be expected to oppose any comparable U.S. role in the future. The message would be that the United States had neither the inclination to work in concert with other nations nor the stomach to repeat the anti-Iraq action. Many of our current collaborators, who are ambivalent at best about the war option, might also lose interest in future cooperation with us. A world of growing brutality and chaos would become a likely prospect.

Early in life, as a witness to the limitless tragedy of World War I, I felt grow in me a determination to act, to work with others to influence the course of history and not supinely to accept what, in the absence of will and action, might be the world's fate. I came to Washington in the summer of 1940 with Jim Forrestal. I have been here, with short exceptions, ever since. For almost five decades I have played some role in the affairs of state, working with others to bend what otherwise might have been called the "inevitable trends of history." Some of the outcomes were wholly satisfactory, some marginally successful, and some were failures-but, on the whole, they were better, I think, than would otherwise have come about. On balance, we were fortunate in the opportunities for significant action the fortune of history opened up for us. It cannot be the good fortune of all mankind to live in Athens under the leadership of a Pericles, in Florence under the Medici, in the United States under a Washington or a Lincoln. Nor is it the usual fate of mankind to live under a Cleon, a Nero, a Stalin or a Hitler and thus have an unambiguous case for withdrawal from government or opposition to it. The usual case is a mixed one in which the task of the man of general wisdom and with a taste for politics is to manage, to deal with, to nudge the existing situation toward the best that is within the realm of the politically possible, to find such scope as he can for his courage, his fortitude, and his willingness to view facts with an open mind. When given half a chance, the combination of courage and an open mind can do wonders.

Our main goal should be to establish a precedent for a new post-Cold War era, in which the community of nations, working through the United Nations and other organizations, can insure that would-be aggressors do not profit from invasion, coercion and force.