Transcripts For CSPAN2 William Perry And Tom Collina The Button 20240712

Thanks for joining us today. I am tom called, director of the center for International Security and cooperation at stanford and am also a senior fellow at the institute for International Studies at stanford and we are honored to have William Perry and tom collina to discusstheir brandnew book. You can see the title on the slide at your screen. The button the new Nuclear Arms Race and president ial power which puts readers at the front row and offers policy descriptions for a safer future. As many know doctor perry served as the 19th us secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration and is a worldrenowned expert on national security, defense policy, arms control and has a long history here at stanford. He is a senior fellow at fsi and the Hoover Institution and was codirector of fsis center for International Security and cooperation from 1988 to 93 and completed his bachelors and masters degree at stanford which is impressive to me because i didnt get into stanford as an undergraduate or graduate and he is now the michael and barbara Professor Emeritus at stanford so its great to reconnect with you today mister secretary and we also are thrilled to have doctor perrys coauthor tom collina the director of policy at plowshares fund. He has 30 years of experience in Nuclear Weapons, missiledefense and nonproliferation issues and has held a senior position at the plowshares association and the center for science and International Security. Hes been involved in efforts to end nuclear testing, extend the nonnuclear proliferation treaty and the start treaty and tom has a degree in International Relations from cornell but we wont hold that against you. Now is a pretty good school too. Please im pleased to introduce my colleague and a good friendrose. He is fsis distinguished lecturer at seatac and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before coming to standard she was deputy secretary general of nato from 2016 to 2019 and prior to that he served five years in undersecretary for arms control and International Security at the Us Department so heres what we have planned. Secretary parry and tom will offer remarks giving an overview of the arguments in the book and then rose will join in conversation to ask a few questions. We will then save about 20 minutes or so at the end you do q a from the audience and it looks like we have about 140 folks and climbing so if you want to submit a question please do so by going to the bottom of your resume screen and clicking on the q abutton. And i will collect the questions and feed them to our authors after rose has completed her questioning of them so without further delay ill handed over to secretary parry and to tom to give us a sense for their book. I will kick us off and thank you for those introductions and rose, its great to be her with you as well. Its an honor and privilege to share this virtual stage with you and thank you for organizing and of course its also been a great honor for me to write this book with bill parry called the button which comes out this month and a little background, we plan the timing for three reasons which wont be a surprise any of you. Next month july 16 marks the 75th anniversary of the bomb, the First Nuclear test trinity test. August marks the 75th anniversary of the roche yuma nagasaki bombings and this november we will choose our next president. These events create a historic opportunity to debate the future of Us Nuclear Policy. Now that weve had the bomb for 75 years, what should the next president do to reduce the risk of nuclear war and thats what this book is really about. Im going to run through these slides and if the Technology Gods are with me it will all go smoothly. So far so good. Let me put the book in the context ofthe current moment. We are of course in a National Crisis with these three dimensions, public health, the economy, Racial Injustice and on top of that we have a leadership vacuum in washington. To truly move beyond this crisis we feel its the status quo in us policy must change. Specifically the coronavirus shows us defense policy is been focused on the wrong threats. Were spending too much on outdated cold war scenarios, rape our military conflict with russia and china and not enough on the true existential threats we face today. And then ask, im change and nuclear war. Raising unemployment and systemic racial inequalities show that weve been investing too much informational defense and not enough in building a Strong Economy and just society. Despite spending 700 billion a year on defense any americans simply do notfeel safe. As Martin Luther king junior warned in 1967, the nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of socialuplift is approaching spiritual death and i would agree with him. Getting back to the issues at hand Nuclear Weapons in particular have no role to play in addressing the more serious threats we face. In fact Nuclear Weapons we find make those threats even worse so lets unpack this a bit. Wed like to start with this photo because it tends to focus the mind. Here is President Trump with the infamous footballcarried by the military aid by their. A briefcase contains everything the president needs to start anuclear war. This isliterally how close we are to nuclear war every day , every minute right now. President trump can start an attack , order and attack on his own authority with no Second Opinions. No input from congress or the secretary of defense are needed. We dont mean to single out President Trump here. Of course his impulsiveness and disregard for Expert Opinion might highlight these concerns in the current moment but we want to be sure all president s make mistakes. All our human and that is why we strongly feel no single human should control the future ofhumanity. We the American People choose to give president s this absolute power. Why . Why do we choose to live so close to the brink ofdisaster . This is one of the main themes of the book and we think its because Us Nuclear Policy is focused on the wrong threats. So lets get to the central arguments. The central arguments we make in the book is that us policy is focused on the wrong threat of a surprise attack from russia. Such an attack is highly unlikely for the simple reason such an attack would mean the utter destruction of both sides and yet Us Nuclear Policy has been based on this threat fordecades. So the problem here is that this is taken threat assessment undermines us security by driving policies that increase the risk of blundering into nuclear warby mistake. He could start a nuclear war in response to a false alarm. One of the greatest dangers in the world and we simply dont need to do this. We must move away from quick launch policies and instead give the president more decision time by limiting nuclear use to second strike deterrent only missions. So bill, turning to you. You of course had a front row seat to the arms race met with soviet and then russian officialsmany times. My challenge our key assertion here that a bowl from the blue from russia is not a realistic threat. What would you say to them . Id say they are wrong. When i was secretary of defense i met many times with all the key officials in the russian government. The president , minister of defense, minister of state and several decades since then ive continue to meet with hundreds of russians to what we call track two of diplomacy. Id say with great confidence the russians are not stupid. The russians are not suicidal. Therefore we are focused on the wrong threat. Both out of the blue first strike is not realistic but what is realistic is we might blunder into a nuclear war. Thank you. And as we are given the book, this perceived threat of a bolt from the blue drives military requirements that we must be able to launch Nuclear Weapons at all times within minutes and that in turn drives these three dangerouspolicies. The president as we mentioned has Sole Authority to launch Nuclear Weaponswithin minutes. He needs no Second Opinion or oversight. Second the president can order a first strike and is not limited to retaliation and most americans do not realize that. And third, the president can launch hundreds of landbased Ballistic Missiles on warning of attack and does not need to wait for proof of attack. And one of the main things we do in the book is to show how dangerous this domination of policies are and bill, please give us your sense of why these policies are so dangerous. Standing out in the danger is the possibility of a false alarm. To me thats not a theoretical threat. Weve had six false alarms that i know of. One of them i personally experienced and is graven in my memory. When i was undersecretary of defense during the cold war i got a phone call at 3 00 in the morning from the generals of north american air command and the first thing he told me was his computers were showing excellent icbms on the way from the soviet union to the United States. I immediately woke up. But happily the general quickly added he had concluded it was a false alarm and he was calling me to help me assess why his computers had gone wrong. As it turned out it took us several days to find out. It was a computer chip malfunction, very simple, very cheap chip and at other times, other times it can be either a testing failure or a human failure but there is a realistic possibility that happened six times in the past, it will happen again. Every time you tell that story i find it chilling so thank you very much. Expand on the dangers of Civil Authority for a minute. In 1963, this week in 1963 resident kennedy gave a feminist speech where he warned we could stumble into nuclear war due to accident or miscalculation or madness and we spent quite a bit of time in the book going through those various scenarios. Bill, could you walk us through how this might happen . First of all the president might have Bad Information and a classic example of that is president kennedy on cuba where all his military advisers are recommending a military attack on cuba. Had our troops landed on the beach head they would have been met and decimated on the beach head by the tactical Nuclear Weapons. We did not know, resident kennedy did not know that while the russians did not yet have the mediumrange missiles operational they did have tactical Nuclear Weapons there and they were operational and would have been used. In addition we can have an unstable climate. President trump might be a classic example but hes not the only one. During the last few months of nixons presidency he was a heavy drinker and not in full control of himself to much of the time to the extent that his secretary of defense and state were concerned and jims lessons are actually tried to intervene with the military to tell them not to respond if they got a call from the president but of course that was anillegal order and its unlikely the military would have followed it. And president reagan during the last few months of his presidency we did not know it at the time but he was in the early stages of alzheimers disease and weve already talked about we can have a false alarm and as serious as that danger has been in the past even greater today with thepresence of cyber warfare. All these say that we could start a nuclear war by blundering into nuclear war and that what should drive us policy and what we can do to prevent the possibility of blunderinginto a nuclear war , not focus on the old cold war under thethreat of the first strike. Thank you very much so lets move into what weve proposed forsolutions. The president can and must reorient Nuclear Policy away from a russian surprise attack to preventing accidental war. And we lay out a number of recommendations and primarily the three we will now discuss and bill, if you could walk usthrough those. The first recommendation is to end president ial Sole Authority. Weve had Sole Authority because we believe it was necessary that the president be able to respond in minutes , five or six minutes and as weve already discussed that is susceptible to leading us intocatastrophic war through a false alarm. The marquee moon bill tending in congress after that purpose and no probably probability at all of being passed this year but its a good prospect the next year and we should all get behind supporting that. Secondly we should establish a no first use policy for the United States. Each president has considered that and somehow come to the brink of deciding it but in each case they backed off. This time lets push it through and again theres a war and smith bill pending in the congress that will not pass but we can have an opportunity, another crack at it next year and finally we should phase out icbms. They are accidents waiting to happen. Iq. Im going to summarize and close this out so we can get to roses questions and audiencequestions. So Nuclear Weapons clearly are the president s weapon and every four years he have a chance to change Us Nuclear Policy. The current National Crisis we are in is creating we feel all once in a Generation Opportunity to rethink our fundamental approach to national security. These weapons are so out of step with reality that it is doing us more harm than good. As currently configured our atomic arsenal magnifies the dangers we face from the most likely threat, blundering into nuclear war by mistake so the next president can and must bring Us Nuclear Policy into the 21stcentury. We are pretty realistic. We know this will be hard. Up against 75 years of validating thinking and 50 billion industry. History tells us major change like this and only happen if led from the top by the president. But importantly with public support and public pressure to deliver on promises made. So we are looking to educate the next president and the public like you so thank you very much. For listening and if youre at all interested in buying the book please go to ben bella books. Com and if you use the code button 30 we get 30 percent off. Thanks tom and ive already tried to do button 50 and button 75 and it didnt give me 50 or 75 percent off. Rose, over to you. Thank you very much colin, i have my own copy of thebook right here and i have to tell you its a wonderful book. I read it over the last couple of days to prepare for this question and it really is good reading so youll learn a lot. So i really commend the authors for turning out something about Nuclear Weapons that is eminently readable. My job is to lead a classified chat and it seems strange in the middle of june to lead a fireside chat but im going to ask our authors a couple of tough questions and see what they have to say about. Right up front, bill and tom ill ask the two of you and you too can decide whether you both want to answer or whether one of you will take the lead so does that sound okay . Okay. My first question is the russians have just put out a new president ial decree over a week ago. Also outline the release policy resting solely on president ial decisionmaking authority, the president of course being president putin. As one analyst put it successfully and i quote, new first, so later and what did you say to president putin based on what you learned in your book. I would say theyre making the same mistake that we have made. Were moving backwards, not forward and the russian analyst who says new first and calm later, great statement. What hes contemplating is that they knew and then we knew and what hes talking about so boldly is the destruction ofcivilization. If i could just add i think bill is exactly right. And to say that my experience from what ive read about this, the russian situation is even more dire than ours. Russian president has even less time to make a decision about retaliation once they get notice of an incoming attack which could be a false alarm so the situation is even more dire in russia and it is here and we need to help russia away from Sole Authority and launch on warrants. I can see that would be an extraordinarilyinteresting conversation ,discussion , negotiation and also a complex and difficult one. Let me move on to my second question. Your book focuses on Us Russian Nuclear relationships which has long been based on the notion of first strike facility. Interestingly there was a policy that youre recommending second use retaliation as you call it the book as has long been the basis ofchinese Nuclear Doctrine. Now however the chinese team to be shifting to capabilities such as icbms and sl bms that would appear to be moving them in a first strike direction rather than use a short retaliation. So my question is how would you incentivize the us and russia to move to a second strike approach, secure second strike approach while getting the chinese to stay right where they are. Both countries of course having an active Modernization Program going on but chinese building submarines and icbms and the russians continuing to modernize their nuclear tryouts so what would you say about that . How do we keep the chinese staying where they are that approach and how do we get the us and russia incentivized to move in that direction . Maybe bill ill start on this one. And rose, great question. I think we need to be careful not to equate china and russia, not say youre doing that but us and russia have 20 times the Nuclear Arsenal of china so we need to keep that in mind. And i think the way to incentivize china is to reduce the danger, to incentivize china to reduce the danger closest to us. We need to reduce the danger we posted them so we should match chinas pledge on overseas for example and work with them to make it verifiable on both sides for example by taking weapons off so thats where i would start. Bill, what do you think. I think tom said it just right. Very good. Both of you recommend that renewed Nuclear Reduction policy with russia could start with the proposal that president obama made in berlin in 2013 for an up to one third further reduction in deployed warheads before the new treaty levels of 1550 deployed warheads. I agree that the easiest and fastest way to get new Nuclear Reductions to a level of about 1000 warheads. However ive heard some saying today that because the russians and chinese are both building new Nuclear Weapon systems, theyre both modernizing as i said just a moment ago we cant reduce and eliminate any more. We need to build up and even produce more warheads so what would you say to them . The test of our warheads come out of Nuclear Policy is not whether we are equal to or head of the russians and chinese. The test of our Nuclear Force is deterrence, not a numbers game. We are not trying to keep up with the joneses with the russians. Its an interesting question, if we reduce our forces would that provide any incentive . We cannot be sure what the answer is that we know during the cold war we increase, they increase and it was a follow theleader approach. It will be interesting to see if we reverse the trend whether we can promote a follow the leader approach in russia as well. Theres no way of knowing that. Id add this logic of always building more how we got into the arms race in the first place where we both wound up building over 30,000 Nuclear Weapons each and as you learned beforeits crazy, expensive and dangerous. And as long as we have enough to deter russia and china that is a few hundred or so, then thats enough. And any more than that is wasteful and i make the additional point the country has real needs. We have needs on the covid19 response and on responses to Racial Injustice. We dont havemoney to burn so we shouldnt do it. I cant resist before i turn the floor back over to colin again asking you bill, you are an eminent technologist as well. Your whole career beginning as a mathematician at stanford but back to your time in the pentagon and before you became secretary were focused on the implications of new Technological Development and i wonder if you could say a few words about how you think today about the implications of new Technology Trends for our Nuclear Forces in the future. Me start off by quoting ms. Jones who once said technology is a wonderful thing. With the other hand, stand you in the back. And that is true of all technology that i know of area take a look at our cyber technology. Our Nuclear Technology which has given us youd advantages in positive ways but its also opened us up to all sort of cyber threats. It is every technology has these two sides to it. And i dont know of any exceptions to that and therefore its our job as people and a society to find a way of taking advantage of the benefits without being stabbed in theback. Terry good. Tom, i cant resist asking you area you are spending time in washington as you have throughout your career, a lot of time on capitol hill. Ive noticed theres a lot more interest in these issues in recent times on capitol hill despite the fact that we have a sharply divided system and a notion of bipartisanship seems like a distant concept. Maybe even a distant dream at this point but id be interested in how you see both the current environment and how youre expecting the environment to evolve. Bill perry in his opening remarks call for us all to Pay Attention to the new legislation that under consideration for example on president s use of authority. Hows it going togo . Say a few words about how you see the evolution in Congress Going forward. Thanks for the question and my answer a year ago would have been different than my answer today. We as i said in my remarks are at a national emergency, a National Crisis and it will be interesting to see how that affects defense policy broadly and also Nuclear Policy so if we imagine you have a new administration coming next year, the bike and administration who has to deal with responding to the coronavirus and hopefully would not for real response has to deal with rebuilding an economy that is crumbling as a result and has to deal with fixing racial inequalities every decade. Thats going to take money and the question is where does that money come from. In my opinion the Defense Budget is way larger than it needs to be. And if a president is going to look and take afresh approach to all this , one aspect of that is reducing defense spending reedit if you do that course that puts pressure on other aspects of the Defense Budget like Nuclear Weapons and as you know the United States has now embarked on a 2 trillion program to rebuild the arsenal over the next few decades and a big part of that is the new 100 billion icbm program so i think all these things to be on the table and if we truly do try to change the way we deal with federal priorities and the budget priorities, and nuclear has to be on the table and i think there will be real opportunities and it years ahead if we see that shift. You see more interest, thats a super simple question but my experience theres a small group of senators and congressmen are very interested in these issues and focused on them but a wider interest in the congress is not there and that is the issue that i think concerns many of us. How to get people engaged and involved on these issues so that they buy into those debates themselves. For sure and certainly a concern of ours is how do you maintain the leadership among members of congress who care about this and i forgot to mention of course that today is the 38th anniversary of the central park rally that really sparks a lot of peoples interest in this movement so many years ago. And the reason why we have that kind of attention then and we dont have it now is we have a cold war. We had a raging cold war and once the cold war ended public concern dropped off quite sharply. So i think one of the reasons that bill and i wrote this book is to try and frame these issues in a new way. To help people understand the stakes bring attention more on issues that people can see front and center. For example President Trump with his finger on the nuclear button. This is something that is tangible, its right in front of us and with it within our control if we choose to do something. Thank you for that and bill, last question to you before i turned back to colin and that is whether we have a new president in january of this year or whether the status quo continues, what would be your advice might be somewhat different to each but what would your advice and i asked this question in your context of deep understanding that there are a lot of things on the president s plate as he attention on these important matters is for and prompts them through a big litany of what the next president or the status quo president is going to have to wrestle with so what would be your word of advice to the president in january as you how to work these issues and keep his eye on that prize while all of these other agenda items are also going to be grabbing at his attention. The president undoubtedly is going to be facing a huge, huge economic bubble. And therefore my advice to him would be taking a look at the recommendations were making in the Nuclear Field and as a way of funding. So i would try to use a little jujitsu on that. Pointing to the problem hes already facing, heres a way of dealing with those problems while at the same time making our country safer from nuclear dangers. So its a two for. Very good. Well we need to look for to first or maybe even two and threequarter billion shots, i recognize that throughout my career. Thank you for answering my questions now back over to you. So we got a lot of Great Questions in the queue. Ive tried to organize them pneumatically as opposed to how they came in so we have a couple questions related to scenarios from wandering into nuclear war. Cheryl spencer asks what other happenings could lead to a Nuclear Weapon being set off, secretary perry has lectured on Nuclear Terrorism and can you tell this audience briefly how that could happen to that kind of a catalytic escalation scenario. I have another question related to blundering into nuclear war that speaks more to the issue mister secretary you mentioned on cyber which is of course modernization is occurring across many nonNuclear Domains that nevertheless have serious consequences forcross domain escalationnuclear deterrence. Cyber guest but also space , Machine Learning , advanced conventional munitions. In terms of developing outside the Nuclear Domain what keeps you up at night the most in terms of blundering across the Nuclear Threshold so what could catalyze it, and outside the Nuclear Domain what risks should we be worried about in terms of blundering into nuclear war. On the question of Nuclear Terrorism i think theres one thing we can doto greatly minimize that risk. Understanding that for Nuclear Terrorists to get a bomb and if hes able to steal one which i think is unlikely, what he needs is to be able to get the uranium and plutonium and then he can make the bombs himself. So the one thing we could do and the one thing in fact we are doing is making it more difficult to get the highly enriched uranium and one of the principal accomplishments i think of president obama in this field is setting up the program to try to get all the nations of the world around nuclear fissile material to take much greater pains to secure that material so secure the material is one very important thing we can do in the case of minimizing Nuclear Terrorism and the other question was. On cross domain ex escalation you mentioned cyber in your remarks but their developments in space, Artificial Intelligence and advanced munitions like hypersonic policies raise questions of whether the Nuclear Powers might stumble into nuclear war through some other pathway. Which of those keeps you up at night the most. Ill tell you one thatis not does cite hypersonics. All this blondes hypersonic vehicles because they can penetrate our defenses is a joke. The icbms can and do penetrateour defenses so the hypersonics do not really add to the threats we face. Space on the other hand is a different question and if we are so foolish as to allow this Technology Race to militarize space and we are endangering both of our countries and indeed endangering the whole world so its i think a very high imperative to keep space from being militarized and yet we are moving in that direction right now and for the next president one of the things i would urge is you look carefully at the question of space militarization and find it as an objective decreasing the likelihood space will be militarized, not increasing it which is the question were in right now. There were a number of questions related to know first used in the Sole Authority and im going to love a couple questions together for you to answer. Daily for citizens for Global Solutions asks i was a little bit perplexed by this sentence in bills review of your book in Forbes Magazine where he wrote quote, the best way to dramatically reduce the risk of stumbling into a nuclear war is to require the president to consult congress before launching a first strike, adopt a policy of no first use and eliminate landbased Ballistic Missiles and then adds that first clause logically suggests the United States might indeed use Nuclear Weapons first as long as both ends of pennsylvania avenue sign off on it and then concludes please say it isnt so. Would you support, are you are recommendations that the United States should be able to engage in afirst use policy as long as congress and the president cant agree . And i jump into that one . I might say that our main concern is president ial Sole Authority for first use. So the two aspects of that, theres the Sole Authority piece and the first use piece and theres two ways to go after those things. One is theres legislation in congress by senator marty and congressman lou to say that Sole Authority for first use must be shared tween the white house and congress and that would slow down and delay any decision on first use which we think would be a great idea. It could potentially still allow first use thats why i would, of course it would be a shared authority so thats why i would say in addition to that we should have no first use policy that is a blanket prohibition on first use so its kind of a belt and suspenders approach if you will. You would have a congressional ban on the Sole Authority for first use, shared authority and you would have a ban on first use. Let me add to that, i think we should have a no first use policy period. When i was secretary it was often said what if somebody attacked us with chemical weapons and when i was secretary one of the north african countries i think it was lidia wasbuilding a chemical weapons plant. And i was asked the question as secretary of defense shouldwe use Nuclear Weapons against them . My answer was we dont need to use Nuclear Weapons to deal with this problem. We dont need to use Nuclear Weapons. That was true then and its true now. Do you agree with the point that when we communicate we might need to use Nuclear Weapons for this purpose or nonnuclear contingencies it communicates to actors that might be considering building Nuclear Weapons or more of them that its the most powerful conventional military thinks they might need Nuclear Weapons for war fighting purposes maybe they do to. Its all bad for the reasons you state. It encourages people who think they need Nuclear Weapons todeal with conventional problems and if we set the lead in that regard , if it were the conventional military forces we have, why dont they need them so thats exactly right. I want to continue this thread on congress. So jeff knox asks please say more about what you see as an alternative toSole Authority. He then adds in the past some people propose a requirement to have Congress Declare War but congress has become dysfunctional so whatmight work instead . One way to think about this is how confident are you that congress can be a mature partner in this decision when theyre in frequently willing to dive into other questions about the use of force and rollie brown asks how can president s accept limitations on Authority Without accepting the broader terms of the war powers resolution so we have to have some the equation. You think congress is willing to step up to bat and do you think of president would be willing to give congress the authority in this issue and not simultaneously authority in all bunch of other issues . Ill jump into that. In terms of whether, president s never want to give up authorities they are given so i think this is something that has to be demanded by the American People and by congress on the basis that its undemocratic. As you mentioned, congress has the power to declare war, should have the power to declare war by the constitution and using Nuclear Weapons is the ultimate declaration of war so president s under the constitution should not have the authority to use Nuclear Weapons on a sole discretion. So congress is going to have to step in and reassert that responsibility , that authority by clawing back as we say some of the authorities that have overtime seat to the white house away from congress. In terms of whether congress can gettheir act together , i trust and believe that if Congress Takes this authority , they could use it responsibly. And people criticize this by saying but you could never do it fast enough. Congress could never make a quick decision to launch Nuclear Weapons if we are under attack but thats part of what we are saying. We should never make a decision to launch Nuclear Weapons under risk of attack because that attack is probably a false alarm so what were saying is we need to take our time. Not be in a situation where we are prepared quickly cause that just increases the risk of blundering into nuclear war and by requiring congressional involvement you slow the process down which is exactly what we need. When you consider the consequences of a nuclear war one thing you can say is that there is no need to rush into it. Theres no need to rush into ending civilization. Lets take our time and think about it. Its just a great anecdote. We had an interview with former president bill clinton and he had this great story where he said when people pressured him into trying to take military action or a tough response quickly, he would tell his aides can we kill them tomorrow because if we can kill them tomorrow we are not weak. So we have to remember that. If we can respond later then theres really no reason to respond quickly area the deterrent still holds. So we have a couple questions as it relates to the impact of your proposal on american allies. So ethan lee asks a large concern over a us no first use policy is strong opposition from nato allies and i would add also from allies in japan are such concerns overblown and how should the us reconcile a potential no first use policy while trying to improve relations with nato and other treaty allies though second which is related by taylor lamoreaux and apologies if i butchered your last name area the option to use Nuclear Weapons first continues to be a important aspect of extended deterrence and how can the us provide extended deterrence and reassure allies while taking the steps the authors have outlined. Should they continue to rely on capabilities that has the proposed nuclear key launched Cruise Missile or are there other methods independent of new capability so how nervous are our alliesgoing to be and what can we do to reassure them and how can we maintain the viability of extended deterrence . Let me address the second one, when i was secretary we were considering no first use. And during the debating of that i was this seized by representatives of european and Asian Countries particularly japan was very strong on this. They had the belief that the belief is no first use was somehow weaken our extended deterrence and all i can say color as i never understood their argument at the time and i dont understand it now. I dont see the connection between these two at all but i can confirm what youre saying, there were very concerned about that so the problem at the time and in fact its probably more than anything to not go ahead with the first, no first use i would add this is a serious problem because ally concerns can get in the way of a president doing the right thing on this issue so i would strongly urge in a forthcoming administration for example that President Biden, a possible President Biden come out strong supporting no first use as a logical extension of his position in the Obama Administration. And know that hes going to have to do a Charm Offensive with the allies and bring the allies along and convince them that no first use does not in any way affect the us commitment to extended deterrence and that process has to start on day one and it has to be concerted and ongoing. And all of the allies, the important allies need to be reassured and i think this policy could be a success. I think you have the pulse of our allies in europe better than anyone, what do you say about this . Thanks for the opportunity to come back on and its agreat question. My view is that the allies have been whipsawed by the Current Administration and particularly they are concerned about the lack of confrontation on issues such as withdrawal from the bursae treaty. To give him credit the Current Administration it a good consultation on the imf treaty and a lot of information about the russian violation and were able to bring the allies along on that but theres a lot of concern among the allies that they are simply not getting through consultation from washington at this point, certainly not on the future of Nuclear Arms Reduction at a time when the Current Administration says they want to have a negotiation on strategic Nuclear Weapons construction so my bottom line is i think this actually might be a good moment if a new president does arrive in office to actually talk seriously and directly to the allies about that its time for some needed change, that Nuclear Doctrine should get a good hard look and we want to talk to them about it. I cant tell you whether their views will have changed and i certainly dont have any direct evidence of how the chinese would jump into the discussion but i do think this is a time where they have felt a bit bruised and bleeding frankly and their relieved to have a good serious and wise conversation about these matters. Thanks rose and one thing and tom i wanted to get to you on if youre taking more on extended deterrence, just for people are interested, vice President Biden gave a speech to the Carnegie Endowment about a week before the end of the Obama Administration and it was officially supposed to be a scorecard for how the Obama Administration had done on the nuclear and as obama outlined at the beginning and it was a good record but a mixed one is there but of note to the no first use debate , biden made it clear it was his view and the president you at the time that there was no realistic contingency inwhich the United States would use Nuclear Weapons first and that in their view , the sole purpose of Nuclear Weapons was to deter if necessary and retaliate against nuclear strikes so i think his views on this issue have been around for a while and i know that both he and president obama wanted to make sure they had those views on the record before but tom, ive got other questions but i wanted to make sure there wasnt anything else you wanted to add on this budget. Just to say that was a great Statement Vice President Biden had just before President Trump came in. I think its essentially supportive of a no first use policy and that many of us hope that a Biden Administration would move quickly to get onto no first use and make that a reality. So a couple questions as it relates to icbms. Essentially your argument boils down from moving to a triad to a dyad and Michael Mcfall some of you may have heard of him runs at the side, decent guy and he says terrific discussion, ordering the book right now. Did you say more about why and how the icbms should be retired and i might add do you envisionilife extension or immediate retirement . Give us a flavor for how that happens and byron king says so you dont like icbms which are elderly systems on the best days. Do you support other forms of modernization like bb 21 bomber or the columbia class submarine. In other words if we move towards a dyad should we modernize the dyad or should we not make any of those investments either . I believe we answer that question. We say specifically weshould modernize the dyad. In terms of phase out the icbms because theyre the most dangerous weapons we have and the ones most likely to lead us to blunder into nuclear war. What do you want to add to that . Just on the question of how you would do it, the first thing we would do is cancel the new icbm program. Its going to cost upwards of 150 billion. It would be better to take that money and put it in a barrel and burn it because we would be less safe with that weapon if we built it. I would pay not to have that weapon built so cancel that system and then retire the minutemen three icbms that we have an argument is the sooner the retirement the better because its dangerous and it increasesthe risk of blundering into war during a false alarm. Politically thats not going to happen though i think politically if you cancel the new missile youre probably going to have to balance that with a light extension of the existing systems and you can do that. It will cost money but we can extend the life of the minuteman three and thats probably a political compromise thats coming but the important first step , cancel the new program and save that money forsomething else. So ill ask about the other piece of the modernization act in which is Nuclear Plant control and medication. Obviously this relates to a question by Stephen Schwartz who says launching first and fast is not only or even primarily driven by fear of a surprise attack. He says since 1950 officials have been aware just a handful of Nuclear Weapons could disrupt or prevent our ability to retaliate by telling or incapacitating top political leaders and military leaders and destroying their command post and inherently Vertical Communications networks linking them together with our Nuclear Forces. Would you concur with that fear and if so your i recommend investing additional billions to harden our network . In the book we make that specific recommendation that some of the plans we were saving could be used for hardening are command and control systems. We think its a good thing to do. To add to that , certainly if were getting away from launch on warning, then theres a greater chance that we would be retaliating after a Nuclear Attack and therefore that puts an intense amount of pressure on thecommandandcontrol system to survive that. At the same time, there would be no ability for the russians to expect that a first strike would work. It would take out arecommand and control. Primarily because the subs will be out there at sea and it has been said by people smarter than me, failure to communicate does not mean a failure to retaliate. Just because we communicate with the sobs doesnt mean they wont find a way to retaliate and the russians could never be confident that us submarines that are out there floating at sea and are invulnerable would not find a way to respond. We have a couple of questions about the other roles and dynamics of Nuclear Weapons will al ask two questions in this category. Bill herbal and asked a question about the parity conversation and herbs says your argument implies that the us could have asked number of Nuclear Warheads and deterrence would not be harmed if even if the russians had to ask of those warheads. Many people would argue for parity not on the basis of military for the psychology of it. That argument is Something Like if they have to ask it will feellike they have the upper hand and will not be deterred. How do you respond to that argument for parity which has obviously been around for a long time and the first question in this category and hudson asks about damage limitations. If under your model the us presumablyshould also not plan damage limitations scenarios , that is if the turn fails retaliation could be used reduce the extent of damage to the United States and our allies or how do you view the afterdeterrent role of Nuclear Weapons . So parity, psychology, of course diplomacy i guess. The deterrence question and then this question fromhans christiansen on damage limitation. Ill take the first question and leave the technical to thomas. I dont have a satisfactory answer which is ive never been able to understand why people leave that if you have to ask missiles and the other side has even 1x missile, that somehow you lose your ability for deterrence. Deterrence is your ability to have assured retaliationno matter how many missiles you have. It seems its more on the way your weapons are based, not how many you have on them so ive heard that argument and its hard to answer because i dont understand it at all. I dont think theres any validity to it. Just agree, parity is a political construct and it makes people feel better its not required for returns. On the issue of damage limitation i think its amyth. The fact that the belief that we can limit damage in a nuclear war issimply a myth. So the key thing to avoid is nuclear war itself. And if youre sort of getting ready to preempt and thinking that you can limit damage that way, youre simply increasing the chance of nuclear war to begin with so its tremendously dangerous andshould not be considered. Paramount is running in my brain out there. Coming up on timebut there were two other questions that related to the rogue state bucket. So road ask im serious about your perspective on rogue and terrorist actors acquiring Nuclear Weapons and in particular do you have any advice on how to respond to such a threat and then son young kim and reporter for voice of america the Korean Service asks whether doctor perry you feel that the perry process during the Clinton Administration or a stepbystep approach to dealing with north korea is still viable given north koreas advances on the nuclear and icbm front. Ill take the second question and take a second to talk. On the korean question we had the socalled perry processin 1999, 2000. We had an agreement from the north koreans which they had agreed not to build a Nuclear Arsenal. And for reasons i wont go into in detail when the administration changedthey drop that idea. On the theory they had a better approach. There better approach and it up with the north having Nuclear Arsenals. Well never know whetherthe approach we had would have succeeded. So that was, that was what we are trying to do that but the question is could be used today and the answer is no. The goal we had then and the negotiating objective we had been was to get north korea to agree not to build a Nuclear Arsenal. Now theyve built one. Now they might want to negotiate and they had a harder objective to get them to give up aNuclear Arsenal they already have. Im not sure if it would even be possible. We lost that opportunity. I interpret the rogue state question is really a question about how do we stop proliferation and i would just remark that we got lucky that the npp,this is the 50th anniversary of the nonproliferation treaty and i think we dodged a bullet. The one benefit of coronavirus is were not having that conference this year because i think if we did it would have been a train wreck where the nonweapon states are really quite frustrated at the Nuclear Powers particularly the United States and russia tearing up arms control treaties rather than building them up so i think we need to fix that. And then it will probably take a new Us Administration to fix that and that will go a long way towards reducing the threatsof proliferation to other states. We are right at time and i want to do a couple of things. Thank all of you for joining us. I want to thank secretary perry and tom for a fascinating discussion and rose for starting off that discussion with Great Questions. We are blessed at stanford to have so many talented people here but also coming to visit us even if it is remotely so thanks to all of you and i would conclude by saying there were undoubtedly some questions and issues left on the table. And the presentation just scratched the surface of the depth of the book so i encourage you to go out and get the button. Its a great read and we are thankful that you shared some of the ideas and i hope folks will dig deeperinto the book. Join us again next saturday beginning at 8 am eastern forthe best in nonfiction books. Cspan has unfiltered coverage of the white house and the Public Policy events. Watch all of our Public Affairs programming on Television Online or listen on our free radio app and be part of the National Conversation through cspans daily washington journal programs or throughour social media feed. Cspan created by americas Cable Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider