Zim said almost gently, "You've got it all wrong, son. There's no such thing as a dangerous weapon."

"Huh? Sir?"

"There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We're trying to teach you to be dangerous to the enemy. Dangerous even without a knife. Deadly as long as you still have one hand or one foot and are still alive. If you don't know what I mean, go read HORATIUS AT THE BRIDGE or THE DEATH OF BON HOMME RICHARD; they're both in the Camp library. But take the case you first mentioned; I'm you and all you have is a knife. That target behind me -- the one you�'ve been missing, number three -- is a sentry, armed with everything but an H-bomb. You've got to get him . . . quietly, at once, and without letting him call for help." Zim turned slightly -- thunk! -- a knife he hadn't even had in his hand was quivering in the center of target number three. "You see? Best to carry two knives, but get him you must, even barehanded."

The recruit continues the line of questioning.

"You said the sentry didn't have any H-bomb. But he does have an H-bomb; that's just the point. Well, at least we have, if we're the sentry . . . and any sentry we're up against is likely to have them, too. I don't mean the sentry, I mean the side he's on."

"I understood you."

"Well . . . you see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb, and, as you said, it's no checker game; it's real, it's war and nobody is fooling around, isn't it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed . . . and even losing the war . . . when you've got a real weapon you can use to win? What�'s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?

And in the end, Zim explains the role of "hard power" in international politics.

"There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence.

The anime version:

"I have a question, Sergeant. Do throwing knives really have a place in today's battlefield?"

"If you're in a battle, what are you going to do if you only have a knife?"

"But if the enemy has all sorts of more dangerous weapons, then a throwing knife will--"

"You've got it wrong. There's no such thing as a 'dangerous weapon'. Only dangerous people."

"What?"

"If you've only got one leg and one arm left, you can still make the enemy afraid. It's my responsibility to train you like that."

"But, if we use nukes, the enemy will be incinerated in a flash. In a war like that, throwing knives are useless."

"Do you want to use nukes? That's my answer."

[Zim throws a knife at the human-shaped target, chopping off its head.]

I'm still annoyed at losing the post one time already, so I won't comment further. However, there was some interesting discussion at the time of the novel's release on a snail-mail discussion group for published SF writers that erupted into a flame war.