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About this quote

What does it mean?
Thatcher questions if military intervention would have occurred without a credible nuclear threat.
In plain terms
She doubts the Gulf War would happen without a direct nuclear threat.
What can you take from it?
Question the necessity of intervention based on threat levels.

Where it applies

  • strategic planning
  • historical review
  • policy analysis

Putting it to work

  • evaluate threat credibility
  • review intervention criteria

Questions to consider

  • What justifies military intervention?
  • How do we measure credible threats?

Another view

This assumes military action is solely reactive to nuclear threats.

More from Margaret Thatcher

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  2. For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defence in favour of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the o…

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  3. The West as a whole in the early 1990s became obsessed with a 'peace dividend' that would be spent over and over again on any number of soft-hearted and someti…

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