We stand today, I believe, in greater danger of a nuclear catastrophe than we faced during the Cold War. And I can explain why I believe that, but the first point I want to make, though, is that hardly anybody understands that. And because we don’t understand it, our policies are not responsive to those dangers. During the Cold War, at least we had, we understood the danger and were taking action to try to deal with it; we had very serious arms control discussions, for example. Today, it’s so far in the background that people don’t understand it at all, particularly the new generation of people who didn’t live through the Cold War. But it’s a very dangerous situation today. And the headlines, which are about North Korea, just emphasize the danger; but the greater danger, really, is–the ultimate danger–is some sort of an exchange between the United States and Russia today. That would lead not just to a great catastrophe, it would basically lead to the end of civilization. So that’s what’s at stake here: ending our civilization, and the nuclear weapons have the power to do that.

If the race of armaments continues it will lead to the third world war and to the destruction of our civilization.

Washington and its NATO partners more and more often resort in international relations to the policy of blackmail and crude pressure. They try to impudently force their will on other countries and nations. Imperialist bigwigs put forward adventurist doctrines of either a "limited" nuclear war or a war with the use of only conventional, non-nuclear weapons.

It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.

Our foolish policy in Iraq invites terrorist attacks against U.S. territory and incites the Islamic fundamentalists against us.

Germ warfare against the United States would escalate to war against all humanity.

Nuclear disarmament is being replaced by nuclear proliferation, raising the stakes of existential risks to humanity.

The biggest threat is nuclear warming.

Each of the great conflicts of this century has begun when nations wrongly thought others would shrink before their might. As I and my predecessors have said, we may have to use nuclear weapons to defend American freedom, but I will never let slip the engines of destruction because of a reckless and rash miscalculation about our adversaries. We have worked consistently to bring nuclear weapons under careful control, and to lessen the danger of nuclear conflict. And this policy has been the policy of the United States of America for more than 19 years now, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. And this will continue to be the policy of the United States of America.

When politics degrades itself to political adventurism the nation would be on the calamitous road to inevitable disaster and ruination.

Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.

Eighteen years ago the advent of nuclear weapons changed the course of the world as well as the war. Since that time, all mankind has been struggling to escape from the darkening prospect of mass destruction on earth. In an age when both sides have come to possess enough nuclear power to destroy the human race several times over, the world of communism and the world of free choice have been caught up in a vicious circle of conflicting ideology and interest. Each increase of tension has produced an increase of arms; each increase of arms has produced an increase of tension.

For the continuing worldwide oppression of class, nation and race, the incalculable waste and untold misery, the unending destruction and preparation for destruction and the permanent threat to democratic order that characterize the rule of capitalism in this, its most technically advanced, most "enlightened" and most materially wealthy era now threaten human survival itself. In the age of atomic weapons and intercontinental missiles, the predatory system of imperialist rivalry and global exploitation, of military intervention and counterrevolutionary war, faces mankind with the prospect of the ultimate barbarism.

It would mean the end of civilization. As innumerable studies have shown, it would be exceptionally difficult in those circumstances to avoid escalation to total nuclear war... Humanity as such would survive in extremely poor shape. America, Russia, Europe would not.