"Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let's say, over western Europe. You just can't use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan"
About this Quote
Nuclear weapons hover in this line like the ultimate bureaucratic overreaction: a “huge” force designed for the grand chessboard of Western Europe, suddenly rendered absurd by the messy, granular reality of Afghanistan. Lloyd Cutler, a lawyer and consummate Washington insider, is doing what policy veterans often do best: puncturing the fantasy that power automatically translates into usable leverage. The phrasing “ultimate confrontation, let’s say” carries a telltale legalistic shrug, as if even the Cold War’s central script is being footnoted in real time. He’s not celebrating deterrence; he’s quarantining it.
The intent is quietly corrective. Cutler is reminding his audience that the United States built a tool for one kind of conflict - symmetrical, state-to-state, legible, and geographically bounded - then found itself facing a war that refused those categories. Afghanistan becomes shorthand for insurgency, terrain, local politics, and endurance: the stuff that cannot be coerced by existential threats without moral, strategic, and practical self-destruction. “You just can’t use them” is less technical than ethical; it acknowledges that the credible use of nukes is precisely what collapses in limited wars.
The subtext is a critique of superpower habit: mistaking possession for applicability. Cutler is also defending a sobering idea that still stings: American dominance has hard limits, and the most terrifying instruments in the arsenal are often the least relevant to the conflicts the U.S. actually ends up fighting.
The intent is quietly corrective. Cutler is reminding his audience that the United States built a tool for one kind of conflict - symmetrical, state-to-state, legible, and geographically bounded - then found itself facing a war that refused those categories. Afghanistan becomes shorthand for insurgency, terrain, local politics, and endurance: the stuff that cannot be coerced by existential threats without moral, strategic, and practical self-destruction. “You just can’t use them” is less technical than ethical; it acknowledges that the credible use of nukes is precisely what collapses in limited wars.
The subtext is a critique of superpower habit: mistaking possession for applicability. Cutler is also defending a sobering idea that still stings: American dominance has hard limits, and the most terrifying instruments in the arsenal are often the least relevant to the conflicts the U.S. actually ends up fighting.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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