Paul Robinson, President and Director, Sandia National Laboratories. “A White Paper: Pursuing a New Nuclear Weapons Policy for the 21st Century”. March 11, 2001 – “Nuclear weapons must never be considered as war fighting tools. Rather we should rely on the catastrophic nature of nuclear weapons to achieve war prevention, to prevent a conflict from escalating (e.g., to the use of weapons of mass destruction), or to help achieve war termination when it cannot be achieved by other means, e.g., if the enemy has already escalated the conflict through the use of weapons of mass destruction. Conventional armaments and forces will remain the backbone of U.S. defense forces, but the inherent threat to escalate to nuclear use can help to prevent conflicts from ever starting, can prevent their escalation, as well as bring these conflicts to a swift and certain end.”
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