Adam B

“A sort of protection racket arose around the firefighters. After all, it was far better if the tobi sacrificed a neighbor’s house to the firebreak rather than your own. Naturally, the Edo firemen became a tough lot—drinking, brawling, and covered in tattoos. Indeed, the distinctive tattoos that mark the Yakuza, today’s Japanese gangsters, are a relic of the Edo fire brigades.”
― Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States

“Elite diplomats have explained that their goal at a bargaining table isn’t seizing victory, but rather convincing the other side to become collaborators in uncovering new solutions that no one thought of before. Negotiation, among its top practitioners, isn’t a battle. It’s an act of creativity.”
― Charles Duhigg, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection

“It was nothing more than a Leninist idea that war is decided not by weapons but by the will of the soldiers and their leaders. “If war is a test of weapons, then you Americans would always win,” Choe explained. “But you lost in Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s because war is a test of will.”
― Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States

“The loss of life had been catastrophic. Kim Jong Un had precipitated the bloodiest day in human history. And yet, as Mattis laid out for the president a massive air campaign against North Korea that would be followed in short order by ground troops flowing into the region and then into the hermit kingdom, he did not mention nuclear weapons. Only at the end, with the question lingering unasked, did Mattis mention in the most offhand way that this would all be done with conventional forces. “We’re going to win either way, with or without nukes,” Mattis explained. “Kim [Jong Un] is the guy wearing the black hat. We’re wearing the white hat. We’re there to liberate the North Koreans, not murder them.”
― Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States