Many of you know doctor parry was the nineteenth secretary of defense in the clinton administration, a world renowned expert on us foreign policy, National Security, defense policy, arms control and long and distinguished history at stanford. A senior fellow at fsi and the Hoover Institution and codirector of National Security cooperation from 19881993 and bachelors and masters degrees in mathematics at stanford which is impressive to me because i didnt get through as a graduate student. Michael and barbara, Professor Emeritus at stanford, great to reconnect with you, and we also are thrilled to have doctor parrys coauthor here, tom z. Collina. He has 30 years of washington dc experience in nonproliferation issues and senior position at the arms Patrol Association and institute for science and interNational Security. And nuclear testing, with the new start treaty and a degree in International Relations from cornell but we wont hold that against you. I am pleased to introduce my colleague and good friend rose mueller. A Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before coming to stanford was deputy secretarygeneral of nato 20162019 and prior to that served five years as undersecretary an arms control and National Security at the state department. Here is what we have planned. They will each offer some remarks for an overview and rose will join in conversation. At the end to do q and a from the audience, looks like we have 142 folks and climbing please do so by doing to the bottom of your zoom screen in the queue and a button and i will collect the question and feed them to our authors after rose completed her questioning. Without further delay, i will hand it to secretary parry. I will kick us off, thank you for those introductions, great to be with you as well. It is an honor and privilege to share this virtual stage with you and thank you for organizing, and honor to write this book with bill parry, the book comes out this month, the button thee new Nuclear Arms Race and president ial power from truman to trump. We plan the timing for three reasons which wont surprise anybody, july 16th marks the 70 fifth anniversary of the bomb, the First Nuclear test, trinity test. August marks the 72 anniversary of the hiroshima and nagasaki bombings and we will choose our next president. These events create a historic opportunity to debate the future of Us Nuclear Policy. Now that we have had the bomb for 75 years, lived with the bomb this long, what should the next president do to reduce the risk of nuclear war, that is what this book is about. I will run through the slides and if the Technology Gods are with me, okay, great. Let me put the book in the context of the current moment, we are in a National Crisis of 3 dimensions, public health, economy, Racial Injustice. We have a leadership vacuum in washington. To truly move beyond this crisis, the status quo and us policy must change specifically the coronavirus shows how us defense policy has been focused on the wrong threats. We are spending too much in outdated cold war scenarios like military conflict with russia and china and not enough on the true existential threat we face today, pandemics, Climate Change and nuclear war. Raging unemployment and systemic racial inequality show that we have been investing too much in traditional defense and not enough to build a Strong Economy in a just society, despite spending 700 billion a year on defense Many Americans simply do not feel safe. As Martin Luther king jr. Warned the nation that continues year after year to spend more on military defense than programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death and i would agree. Back to the issues at hand, Nuclear Weapons in particular have no role to play in addressing the most serious threat we face. In fact Nuclear Weapons, we find, make those threats even worse. So lets unpack this. We would like to start with this photo, here is donald trump the infamous football carried by the military aid right behind him. The briefcase contains everything the president needs to start a nuclear war. This is how close we are to nuclear war every day, every minute right now. Donald trump can start an attack, order an attack on his own authority with no Second Opinions, no input from congress or the secretary of defense i needed. We dont mean to single out donald trump here, of course his impulsiveness and disregard for Expert Opinion might highlight these concerns in the current moment but we want to be clear that all president s make mistakes, all are human and that is why we feel no single human should control the future of humanity yet we the American People choose to give president s of this absolute power. Why do we live so close to the brink of disaster . This is one of the main themes of the book because Us Nuclear Policy is focused on the wrong threat. 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. Us Nuclear Policy has been based on this threat for decades so the big problem here is this mistaken threat assessment undermines us security by driving policies that increase the risk of blundering into nuclear war by mistake. Starting a nuclear war in response to a false alarm. One of the greatest dangers, 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 deterrence only missions. So turning to you, bill, you had a front row seat to the arms race and met with soviet and russian officials many times. Some might challenge our key assertion here that a bolt from the blue from russia is not a realistic thread. What would you say . I would say they are wrong. When i was secretary of defense i met many times with key officials in the russian government, the minister of defense in the minister of state and several decades since i continued to meet with hundreds of russians. One thing i can say with great confidence. The russians are not stupid. The russians are not suicidal and we are focused on a balls out of the blue, first strike is not realistic. What is realistic is we might blunder into a nuclear war. Thank you. As we argue in the book this perceived threat of a bolt from the blue drives the military requirements, we must be ready to launch Nuclear Weapons at all times within minutes and that drives these three dangerous policies. First the president has Sole Authority to launch Nuclear Weapons within minutes with 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. Third, the president can launch hundreds of landbased ballistic missiles, icbms on warning of attack and does not need to wait for proof of attack. One of the main things we do in the book is show how dangerous this combination of policies are, please give us your sense of why these policies are so dangerous . Particularly standing out is the possibility of a false alarm. That is not a theoretical did. Weve had 6 false alarms that i know of, one of them i personally experienced when i was the under secretary of defense during the cold war i got a phone call at 3 00 in the morning from generals of north american air command. The first thing he told me was his computers were showing 600 icbms on the way from the soviet union to the United States. Happily the general quickly added that he had concluded it was a false alarm. He was calling me to have me assess why his computers are gone wrong. It turned out it was a computer chip malfunction. Very simple very cheap chip. Other times we had false alarms could be technical failure or human failure but a realistic possibility that happened 6 times in the past and will happen again. Every time you tell that story i find it chilling so thank you very much. Lets expand on the dangers of Sole Authority. In 1963, this week in 1963 president kennedy gave a famous speech where he wants we could stumble into nuclear war due to accident or miscalculation or madness and spent a bit of time in the book going through those various scenarios. Walk us through how this might happen . The president might have bad information. A classic example is president kennedy on cuba where all his military advisors were recommending a military attack on cuba. Had our troops landed on the beach they would have been met and decimated by the tactical Nuclear Weapons. We did not know that while the russians did not yet have mediumrange missiles operational they did have tactical Nuclear Weapons that were operational and would have been used. In addition to that and unstable donald trump might be a classic example of that but hes not the only one. In the last few months of president nixons presidency he was a heavy drinker and not in full control of himself most of the time, the secretary of state was deeply concerned, the secretary of defense jim solicitor tried to intervene and tell him not to respond if they got a call from the president but that was an illegal order and unlikely the military would have followed it and then president reagan in the last few months of his presidency was in the early stages of alzheimers disease and finally as we talked about we can have a false alarm and as serious as the danger is it is greater today with the presence of cyber warfare. That we could start a nuclear war by blundering into nuclear war, that should drive us policy, how to prevent the possibility of blundering into nuclear war, not focus on the old cold war, unrealistic threat of the first strike. Thank you very much. Lets propose solutions. 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, primarily the 3 we now discussed. The recommendation is to end president ial authority. We believed it was necessary for the president to be able to respond in 5 or 6 minutes. As we discussed, that is leading us to a catastrophic war through false alarm. The bill that is in congress is for that purpose, no probability at all of being passed this year. Theres a good prospect for the next year and we should all get behind supporting that bill next year. Secondly, we should establish, the new president should establish no first use policy for the United States. Each president has come to the close to the brink of deciding it. This time lets push it through. There is a war and smith bill pending in Congress Today that will not pass but we could have an opportunity, another crack at it next year and finally we should phase out icbms they are accidents waiting to happen. Thank you very much. Im going to summarize and close this out to get to roses questions and audience questions, Nuclear Weapons are the president s weapons, every four years we have a chance to change Nuclear Policy. The current National Crisis is creating a once in a Generation Opportunity to rethink our approach to National Security. The weapons are so out of step with reality that is doing us more harm than good. Is 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. We are up against 75 years of outdated thinking of the 50 billion industry. History tells us major change can 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 interested in buying the book please go to beenbellabooks. Com and get 30 off. Thank you. Ive tried to do but and 50 and button 75 and it didnt give me 50 or 75 off the book, just 30. Rose, over to you. I have my own copyright here. It is a wonderful book. I spent a couple days trying to prepare for this session and it really grips you. Really good reading and learned a lot. I commend the authors for turning out something about Nuclear Weapons that is eminently readable. My job is to lead a fireside chat which seems strange in the middle of june but i will ask our authors tough questions and see what they have to say. I will ask you two if you both want to answer if one of you will take the lead. Does that sound okay . My first question is the russians have put out a president ial decree a week ago, with their release policy resting on president ial decisionmaking authority, the president being president Vladimir Putin. As one rational analyst put it succinctly and i quote, new first, phone later. What would you say to the russians or Vladimir Putin based on what you learned . I would say they are making the same mistake we made, we are moving backwards and the russian analyst, a great statement but hes not considering they knew first and we nuke. What hes talking about so boldly is the destruction of civilization. Bill is exactly right, to say in my experience from what i read about this the russians situation is even more dire than ours. The russian president has less time to make a decision about retaliation once they get notice of an incoming attack so the situation is even more dire in russia than it is here and we need to help russia move away from Sole Authority first used to launch on warning. I can see that would be an extraordinarily interesting conversation, also a complex one. Let me move on to my second question. The book focuses on Us Russian Nuclear relationship which was long based on the notion of first strike capability. The policy you are recommending, has long been the basis of Chinese Nuclear doctrine. Now, however, they are shifting to capabilities like icbms that would appear to be moving them in the first strike direction rather than second use assured retaliation. 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 where they are, both countries having an active Modernization Program with the chinese building submarines and icbms in the russians monitoring their nuclear triad. What would you say . How to keep the chinese where they are with that approach and how do we get the us and russia incentivized to move in that direction . I will start on this and you can jump in. We need to be careful not to equate china and russia but us and russia have 20 times the Nuclear Arsenal so we need to keep that in mind. The way to incentivize china is to reduce the danger, to incentivize china, reduce the danger to us we need to reduce the danger to them. We should match chinas pledge on no first use his work with them by taking weapons off of their. That is where i would start. What do you think . I think trump did it just right. Very good. Both of you recommend the Nuclear Reduction talks with russia could start with the proposal president obama made in berlin in 2013 for one third further reduction in operationally deployed warheads below the new start treaty levels of 1550 deployed warheads. That is the easiest and fastest way to get Nuclear Reduction to the level of thousands warheads. I have heard some say that because the russians and chinese have Nuclear Weapons systems that are modernizing as i said a moment ago we cant readers and illuminate anymore. We need to build up and produce more warheads. What would you say to that . Test of our warheads come from Nuclear Weapons systems, is not whether we are able to or hit up the russians. The test is deterrence, not a numbers game. Interesting question. If we reduce our forces would it combine the incentive, we cannot be sure but during the cold war we increase, they increase, follow the leader approach. Interesting to see if we can reverse the trend. Now way of knowing that. This logic of always building more as we get into the arms race where we build 30,000 Nuclear Weapons and it is expensive and dangerous and as long as we have enough to deter russia and china then at is enough and any more is wasteful. The country has real needs on covid19 response on the economy in response to Racial Injustice so we dont have money to burn so we should do it. I cant resist asking, you are in eminent technologist, a fool career beginning as a mathematician at stanford but advancing through the pentagon before you stayed secretary focused on new technological development. I wonder if you could say a few words about how you think today about the implications of Technology Trends for Nuclear Forces in the future . Let me start by quoting mister jones who once said technology is a wonderful thing. With one hand we debate this and the other hand in the back. That is true. While technology is designed, look at our cyber technology, nuclear technology, opening up to all sorts of spamming. Every technology has these two sides. I dont know of any exceptions to that. Our job as people in a society is take advantage of the benefits without being stabbed in the back. Cant resist asking you, you spend time on capitol hill, i noticed theres a lot more interest in these issues on capitol hill despite we have a sharply divided system, bipartisanship seems like a distant concept, i will be interested in the current environment, how to leave all to Pay Attention to the new legislation under consideration, how is it going to go . How do you see the evolution in Congress Going forward. As i said in my remarks we are in a National Crisis. Interesting to see how that crisis affects defense policy and Nuclear Policy. If we have a new administration coming who has to deal with responding to the coronavirus and mount a real response deal with rebuilding an economy that is crumbling and how to deal with racial inequalities will take real money and the question is where does that money come from. The Defense Budget is larger than it needs to be. Of a president will look and take a fresh approach to all this, one aspect is reducing defense spending, that puts pressure on other aspects like Nuclear Weapons and the United States is now embarked on a 2 trillion program, and a big part of that is the new icbm program. All these things should be on the table and if we try to change the way we deal with federal priorities and budgets, there will be more opportunities in the years ahead if we see that kind of shift. Do you see more interest, simple question but in my experience there is a small group of senators and congressmen interested in these issues but the wider interest in congress is not there and that is the issue that concerns many of us, how to get people engaged and involved in all these issues. A concern is how to maintain the leadership. In the central park, a lot of interest in this movement so many years ago and the reason we had that attention and dont have it now is we have a cold war, a raging cold war and once the cold war ended public concern dropped off sharply so one of the reasons bill and i wrote this book is to frame these issues to help people understand the stakes and bring attention to issues people can see front and center, donald trump with his finger on the Nuclear Button is something that is tangible, right in front of us and within our control. Last question to you, whether we have a new president in january of this year, what is your advice . Somewhat different to each . What is your first word of advice and i ask in the context of misunderstanding that there are a lot of things on the president s plate, trying to keep attention on these important matters is important and a big litany of what the next president or status quo president has to reckon with. What would be your word of advice to the president in january as to how to work these issues and keep his eye on that prize while these other agenda items are grabbing his attention. Thank you. I was eating. The president will be facing a huge huge economic problem and my advice looking at the recommendations we are making, and assets to him so i will look at that, point to the problem he is already facing and has a way of dealing with those problems at the same time, making the country safer from Nuclear Dangers are twofold. Excellent. We need to look at billiard shots. Thank you very much for answering my question. Back over to you. A lot of great questions. I tried to organize them somatically as opposed to how they came in. We have questions about blundering into nuclear war. Cheryl asks what other happenings could lead to a Nuclear Weapon being set off. Secretary parry elected a Nuclear Terrorism. Tell the audience how that could happen . I have another question about blundering into nuclear war that speaks more to the issue of cyber which is modernization occurring across many nonNuclear Domains that have serious consequences for escalation and nuclear deterrence. Cyber but also integration of additional intelligence, machine learning, hypersonic. In terms of developing outside the Nuclear Domain what keeps you up the most in terms of blundering across the nuclear threshold, what can catalyze it and outside the Nuclear Domain, what risks in terms of blundering into nuclear war . The question of Nuclear Terrorism there is one thing we can do to minimize the risk, understanding unless he is able to steal one which is unlikely, he needs to get uranium or plutonium and then make the bomb himself. One thing we could do and are doing to make it more difficult, one of the principal accomplishments of president obama is setting up the program to get all the nations of the world who have nuclear fissile material to take greater pains to secure that material. That is one thing we can do in the case of minimizing Nuclear Terrorism. The other question was . You mentioned cyber in your remarks but artificial intelligence, hypersonic and all these questions of whether the Nuclear Powers might stumble into nuclear war through another pathway what keeps you up at night the most . What does not are the hypersonics. All of the hoopla on hypersonic vehicles because they penetrate our defenses is just a joke. The icbms can and do so the hypersonics do not add to the threat we face. Space is a different question and if we are so foolish as to allow this technology race, to militarize, space, we are endangering the world. It is a high imperative to keep space from being militarized and we are moving in that direction. The next president , we urge to him to look carefully at the question of space militarization. The situation we are in right now. There were a number of questions related to know first use or Sole Authority. Ted daily from citizens for Global Solutions in los angeles asks i was perplexed by the sentence in the review of your book where he wrote the best way to resist stumbling into a nuclear war is to require the president to consult congress before launching a first strike, eliminate landbased systems and add the first clause logically suggests the United States might use Nuclear Weapons first as long as both ends of pennsylvania avenue sign off on it, please say it aint so. Would you support the recommendation the United States should engage in a first use policy as long as congress and the president agree . Can i jump into that . I might say our main concern is president ial authority for first use, there are two aspects, the first use peace and there are ways to go after that. Legislation in congress by senator marky and congressman lou to say Sole Authority must be shared between 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 allow for it but would be shared authority for first use. In addition to that we should have no first use policy, a blanket prohibition on first use. It is a belt and suspenders approach, a congressional ban on Sole Authority for first use in a ban on first use. I think we should add a no first use policy period. When i was secretary people often said what if somebody attacks with chemical weapons . When i was secretary, one of the north african countries, i think it was libya, was building a chemical weapon plant. I was asked should we use Nuclear Weapons against them . My answer is we dont need to use Nuclear Weapons to deal with this problem. That is true then and it was true now. Do you agree with the point that when we might need to use Nuclear Weapons for this purpose for nonnuclear contingencies, actors that might be considering building Nuclear Weapons or more of them, the most powerful conventional military in the history of the world think they might need Nuclear Weapons, they do too bad . It is bad for the reason you stays, encourages people to think they need Nuclear Weapons to deal with conventional problems and the conventional military forces we have, we think we need Nuclear Weapons why dont they need them, exactly right. I want to continue the thread on congress, jeff knox asks please state what you see as alternative Sole Authority even as in the past some people propose a requirement that congress to declare war but congress is completely dysfunctional so what might work instead . How confident are you that congress could be a mature and active partner in this type of decision when they are infrequently willing to dive into other questions . You step up to the bat, and you think a president would be willing to give congress the authority in this issue and not simultaneously, therefore, are to give authority on a whole bunch of other issues. Ill jump into that. In terms of whether president s, you know, president s never want to give up authorities that theyre 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, right . As you mentioned, i mean, congress has the power to declare war, should have the power to declare war by the constitution. And certainly, using Nuclear Weapons the ultimate declaration of war. So under the constitution, the president should not have the authority to use Nuclear Weapons on his 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 over time seeped to the white house away from congress. In terms of whether congress can get their act together, you know, i trust and believe that if Congress Talks this Authority Takes this authority, they could use it responsibly. And people crypt size this by saying, well, you could never do it fast enough. Congress could never make a quick decision to launch Nuclear Weapons if were under attack. But thats part of what were saying, you should never make a decision to launch nuke hard weapons under Nuclear Weapons under risk of attack because its probably a false alarm. We need to take our time, not be in a situation where we are prepared to do things quickly because 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 certainly say is theres no need to rush into it. Theres no need to rush into ending civilization. Lets talk our time and think about it lets take our time and think about it. Just a great an ec dote, we had an interview with former president bill clinton in the book, 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 . If we can, were not weak. I think we have to remember that. If we can respond later, then theres really no reason to respond quickly. The deterrent still holds. Great. So we had a couple questions as it relates to the impact of your proposal on american allies. So ian lee asks, a large concern over a u. S. No first u. S. Policy is strong opposition from allies, i would add allies in the asia and japan, how should first question on allies. The second which is related by taylor, and apologies if i butchered your last name. How can the u. S. Continue to provide extended deterrence and reassure allies, should deterrence and reassurance continue to rely on capabilities such as the proposed Nuclear Launch Cruise Missile or are there other mets . So how nervous are our allies going to be and how can we maintain the viability of extended deterrence. Let me address the second one. When i was the secretary, we were considering a no first use. And during the debating period to that, i was besieged by representatives of european and asian countries, particularly japan was very, very strong on this. They had the belief that no first use would somehow weak withen our extended deterrence. All i can say is i never understood their argument at the time, and i dont understanding it now. But i can assure you, i can confirm what youre saying, they were concerned about that. The problem with time and attack, actually go ahead, wrongly go ahead with the no first use. Tom in. I would just add that this is a serious problem because, as bill just with said, 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 Biden 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 u. S. Commitment to extend its terms. And that process has to start on day one, and it has to be concerted and ongoing. And all the allies, the important allies need to be touched and reassured x then i think this policy can be a discuss. I think you have the pulse of our allies, what do you say about this . Well, thanks for the opportunity to come back on briefly. Absolutely great questions. My view that the allies have been whip sawed by the Current Administration and particularly theyre very concerned about lack of consultation on issues such as withdrawal from the open skies treaty, as a good example. Now, to give credit, the Current Administration is [inaudible] on the imf treaty and the russian violation, so were able to bring the allies along on that. But theres a lot of concern among the allies that they are simply not getting true con alation from washington at this 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 a negotiation. So that, of course, directly involves the allies. So my bottom line is i think this actually might be a good moment if a new president does a arrive in office to to actually talk seriously and directly to the allies about that its time for some needed change, that Nuclear Doctrine should get ad good, hard look, and we want to talk to them about it. I cant tell you whether the views of this matter will have changed, and certainly i 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 theyll be relieved to have a good, serious and wild conversation about and wide conversation about these matters. Thanks, rose. And one thing and, tom, i also want to get to you if you have anything more on extended deterrence. But just for people, if 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 essentially was supposed to be kind of a scorecard for how the Obama Administration had done on the Nuclear Agenda that obama had outline ared at the beginning. It was a good record but a mixed one, i think, is fair. Of note to the no first use debate, biden made it clear in that speech that it was his view and president obamas view that there was no contingency in which the United States would use Nuclear Weapons first, and that in their view, the sole purpose of Nuclear Weapons was to deter and, if necessary, retaliate against nuclear strike. So is i think his views on the issue have been around for a while, and i know that both he and president obama wanted to make sure that they had those views on on the record before. But, tom, ive got some other questions, but i wantedded to make sure there wasnt anything you wanted to add on this extended deterrence question. No, just to say that was a great statement that vice President Biden had just before President Trump came in. I think its essentially supportive of a no first use policy and, certainly, many of us hope that a Biden Administration would move quickly to get on to no first use and make that a reality. Okay. So a couple questions as it relates to the icbs. Essentially, your argument boils down from moving to a trust add to a dyad. Terrific discussion, ordering the book right now, could you say more about why and how the icbms should be retired . And i might add do you envision immediate retirement . A Life Extension Program . Give us a flavor for how that happens. And then byron king says so you dont like icbms, which are elderly systems on the best days, do you support the b21 new bomber or the columbia class submarine . In other words, do you if we move towards the dyad, should we modernize it, or should we not make any of those investments either . In our book we ask that question. We say specifically that we should modernize the dyad in terms of why age out icbms, because theyre the most dangerous weapons we have, the ones most likely to lead us into nuclear war. Tom, what do you want to add to that . Well, just on the question of, you know, how you would do it, the first thing you would do is cancel the new icbm program. This is a program to rebuilding the icbm, its going to cost upwards of 15 is 0 billion. It would be better to take that money and put it in a barrel and burn it, right . Because we would be less safe if we build it. I would pay not to have that weapon built. So cancel that system is. Then you want to retire the minuteman three icbms that we have, and the argument is. The sooner you retiahrt, the best. We tire it, the better. Politically, thats not going to happen. I think politically if you cancel the new missile, youre probably going to have to balance it with the life extension of the existing missile. And you can do that. Itll cost some money, but we can extend the life of the minuteman three, and thats probably the political compromise thats coming. But the important first step, an sell the new program and cancel the new program and save that money for something else. So the other piece of the modernization, obviously, this relates to a question by Steven Schwartz who says launching first and fast is not only or even primarily driven by fear of a surprise attack, since 1950 military officials have been aware that just a handful of military weapons could prevent our ability to retaliate by killing or inwhats tating top military leaders and destroying their mobile command posts and inherently Vulnerable Communications networks link aring them together with our Nuclear Forces. Do you, especially dr. Perry, concur with that fear, and if so, do you recommend investing additional billions of dollars to further harden our mc3 network . Yes. In the book, in fact, we make that specific recommendation, that some of the money that we were saving from that program could be used for hardening the system is. We think thats a good thing to do. Just to add to that, you know, certainly if were getting away from icbms and launch on warning, then theres a greater chance that we would be retaliating after a Nuclear Attack and, therefore, that puts a huge amount of pressure on the command and control system to survive that. At the same time, there would be no ability for the russians to expect that a first strike would work, would take out our command and control primarily because the subs will be out there at sea. And as has been said by people smarter than me, a failure to communicate does not mean a failure to retaliate. Just because we cant communicate with the subs doesnt mean they wont find a way to realuate, and the russians realuate, and the russians could never be confident that the u. S. Subs floating at sea would not find a way to respond. So we have a couple of questions about other roles and dynamics of Nuclear Weapons, so ill ask two, two questions in this category. So herb asks a question about the parity conversation. Herb says your argument implies the u. S. Could have x number of nuclear warheads, and deterrence would not be harmed even if the russians had 2x of those weapons. Many people would argue for power few for the psychology of it. That the argument is Something Like if they have 2x, theyll feel they have the upper hand and not be deterred. How do you respond to that argument for parity which has obviously been around for a long time, the first question. And then Hans Christianson asks about damage limitation. He says under your model, the u. S. Presumably should also not plan damage limitation scenarios; that is, if it fails, retaliation could be used to reduce the extent of damage to the u. S. , the United States or our allies or how do you view the deterrent role of Nuclear Weapons. So the parity, psychology course of diplomacy,ing i guess, deterrence question and then the question from Hans Christianson on damage mitigation. Ill take the first question, lee the second one for tom leave the second one for tom because i dont have a very satisfactory answer for herb which is ive never been able to understand why people believe that if you have you have 2x missiles, 1x miss is sills and the other pseudohas 2x, somehow you lose your ability for deterrence. Deterrence is your ability to have assured realuation. Its hindered more by where your weapons are based. So its hard to answer because i dont understand it at all. I dont think theres any saw v. A. Lilledty to it. Validity to it. Tom, over to you. Just to agree, parity is a political construct. It makes people feel better, but its not required for the terms. On the issue of damage limitation, i think its a myth. You know, the fact that we can believe we can reduce damage in a nuclear war is simply a myth. So the key thing to avoid is nuclear war itself. And if youre sort of getting ready to preempt and taken that the you can limit damage that withdraw, youre simply increasing the chance of nuclear war to begin with, so its tremendously dangerous and should not be considered. Something about [inaudible] is running in my brain here for the strangelove fans out there. All right, were coming up on time, but there were two other questions related to the rogue state bucket. So Rose Mcdermott cans im curious about your [inaudible] in particular do you have any ad vice on how best to prevent or respond. And then a reporter for voice of america, the korean service, asks whether, dr. Per true, you feel that dr. Per true, you feel the perry process during the clinton add administration or a step by step approach for dealing with north korea is still viable given north koreas advances on the nuclear and icbm front. Ill take the second question e and leave the first for tom. On the korean question, we had socalled perry process in 1999, 2000, we had an agreement with the North Koreans by which they would agree not to build a Nuclear Arsenal, and for reasons i wont go into in detail, when the administration changed, they simply crop dropped that idea on the theory they had a better a approach. Their better approach ended up having a Nuclear Arsenal, so it couldnt have been that good. Well never know whether the folks we had would have suck can succeeded. The question could it be used today, and the answer is no. Well, the goal we had then expect negotiating objective we had then was to get north korea not to to build a Nuclear Arsenal. Now theyve built one, and now [inaudible] they had a much different and harder objective to give up a Nuclear Arsenal they already have. Thats much harder to achieve. Im not sure its even possible. We lost that opportunity. Tom . I interpret the rogue state question as really a question about how do we stop proliferation. And i would just remark that we got lucky that the npt, you know, this is the 50th anniversary of the nonproliferation treaty. I think we dodged a bullet. One of the one benefits of coronavirus is that were not having that can conference this year. Because i think if we did, it would have been a train wreck where the nonweapon states party to the npt are really quite frustrated at the Nuclear Powers, particularly the United States and russia, tearing up arms control treaties rather than building them up. And so i think thats or we need to fix that, and itll probably take a new u. S. Administration to fix that, and thatll go a long way towards reducing threats of proliferation in other states. Great. Well, we are right at time. I want to do a couple things here. First, i want to thank all of you for joining us. I want to thank secretary perry and tom for a fascinating discussion and rose for teeing up some, starting off that discussion with some great questions. We are really blessed to have so many talented people here but also coming to vicinity us even if it is remotely, so thanks to all of you, and i will just conclude by saying, you know, there were undoubted hi some questions and issues that were left on the table, and the presentation just scratched the surface of the depth of the book, so i really encourage you to go out and get the book. Its a great read, and were thankful that you shared some of the ideas, and i hope folks will dig deeper into the book. This morning the House Rules Committee meets to discuss and debate legislation related to the impact of the coronavirus on the u. S. Postal service. Live coverage starts at 11 eastern on cspan2, online at cspan. Org or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Weeknights this month were featuring booktv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight beginning at 8 p. M. Eastern, a look at books about democratic president ial nominee joe biden and the upcoming president ial election. Enjoy booktv on cspan2. Binge watch booktv. Saturday evenings at 8 eastern set until and watch several hours of your favorite authors. Saturday were featuring programs with awardwinning biographer robert caro e whose books includes working and the multivolume biography of lyndon johnson. Binge watch booktv on cspan2. Up next, its booktvs monthly in Depth Program with retired admiral stavridis. His books include sea power and sailing true north which was published late last year. Host admiral james staph dis, why do you are to yourself as the accidental add . Irl. [laughter] are. Guest what a great question. First of all, because in certain levels, all of our lives are