Quotes by Graham Allison

“Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,”

“We are seeing the most intense bargaining among big states that we have seen since the end of the Cold War, with war in the offing and no certainty about the outcome,”

“There is going to be lots of twists and turns here, and I think both the U.S. and Iraq will end up making some compromises, accommodations, as we get towards endgame.”

“You dont find people of integrity who operate in that zone.”

“My bottom line is that if the U.S. government just stands on the autopilot, just on the current trim line ... I think that it is more likely than not that we will see a nuclear bomb exploding in one of our cities in less than a decade.”

“The danger is that a terrorist like Osama bin Laden who is very motivated ... gets a bomb out of a place like Russia. [Say] some crook steals it, he sells it to Osama bin Laden, Osama bin Laden brings it to Cleveland, or Boston, or L.A., and blows it up.”

“Explosive material plus radioactive material equals dirty bomb.”

“They could bring the weapon today inside a cargo container that comes to one of our ports, and the technologies that we have deployed would have a low chance of finding it.”

“The North Koreans have every intention to lie, steal and cheat as much as they can get away with and as they have been doing for decades. But they would also say weve been cheating them through the whole process or acting in bad faith.”

“That means no new national production of highly enriched uranium from which a bomb could be made, and thats the issue over Iran.”

I am a congenital optimist about America, but I worry that American democracy is exhibiting fatal symptoms. DC has become an acronym for Dysfunctional Capital: a swamp in which partisanship has grown poisonous, relations between the White House and Congress have paralyzed basic functions like budgets and foreign agreements, and public trust in government has all but disappeared. These symptoms are rooted in the decline of a public ethic, legalized and institutionalized corruption, a poorly educated and attention-deficit-driven electorate, and a gotcha press - all exacerbated by digital devices and platforms that reward sensationalism and degrade deliberation. Without stronger and more determined leadership from the president and a recovery of a sense of civic responsibility among the governing class, the United States may follow Europe down the road of decline.