We are honored to have before us of course three distinguished guests. Secretary former Secretary of State George Shultz is known to you well. He is now at the Hoover Institution. But he served in is it, three or four cabinet positions, cabinet level positions, he were the Secretary of State, he were Secretary of the Treasury, he were Secretary of Labor, he were Head of the Council of Economic Advisors and were no Head of OMB. Because you could you keep out? Let's see if we can get this light because this one in particular is bad. Let's see if we can dim that down, oh thank you. I think all I think I actually think all the way off means that they can't see us. So don't go quite that far but find a middle ground and that would be great. George Shultz has also taught in three of the country's major universities, at Stanford, at University of Chicago and at MIT. And of course he was the only non family member to be CEO of Bechtel Corporation. Secretary William - Oh well, would like to break news here, so much Bechtel's corporate membership at the World Affairs Council. Secretary William Perry is also a Statesman with a distinguished carrier in government and academia and the private sector as well. He served as the 19th Secretary of Defense under in the Clinton administration and before that he was Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was Under Secretary of Defense for research and engineering in the Carter administration and in that position was responsible for a systematic series of investments that our country made in information technology leading to the ARPANET which of course is the precursor of the internet. He served for 10 years as Laboratory Director of General Telephone and Electronics. He founded or was a chief top executive of a number of other companies including ESL, Hambrecht and Quist where he was Vice President and Technology Strategies and Alliances. He is currently also a Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution and a Professor at Stanford University with a joint appointment in the School of Engineering and the Institute for International Studies where he co-directs the Center for the Prevention the Preventive Defense Project, got it right. Dr. Sidney Drell is a well known physicist and one of the nations various arms control experts. He is he too is a Senior Fellow at Hoovers. So this is a bit of a Hoover cabal. He is Professor Emeritus of theoretical physics at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford. He has been an active advisor to the Executive and Legislature branches of government when it comes to national security and and the defense technical issues. He is the founder he is a founder of JASON, which is a group of academic scientists who consult our government on issues of national importance. So please join me in welcoming these three outstanding guests. Now we have asked them each to make brief opening remarks on the question of how whether and how we can go about dramatically reducing the nuclear danger. And so we are going to start with Bill Perry and then move to George Shultz and then finally ask Sid Drell to make some remarks. Then I will ask them some questions and then will entertain your questions which you will be sending up on your question cards. Thank you so much. Bill. Thank you, Jane. At the peak of the Cold War, the Great Russian physicist Andre Sakharov wrote a letter to my colleague Sid Drell. It said among other things, reducing the risk of annihilating humanity and the nuclear war must carry an absolute priority over all other considerations. Reducing the risk of annihilating humanity must carry an absolute priority and so it did. The principle means of reducing that terrible risk was establishing a system of deterrence which came to be called Mutual Assured Deterrence and of course got the acronym MAD. I was one of the Americans who worked during the Cold War to strengthen that deterrence. But even if all of the system deterrence worked exactly as designed there were still we still faced two existential dangers. One of them was a nuclear war by miscalculation and the other was a nuclear war by accident. And I want to tell you of two incidents, that I personally experienced during the Cold War that demonstrates the very real danger of either a war by accident or the war by miscalculation. In 1962 I was working for a defense electronics company and occasionally served as a scientific consultant to the government on Soviet missile technology. In September that year I received a phone call from an old classmate of mine at Stanford, Bud Wheelon, who at that time was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. And he asked if I would come back and consult with him on a problem. And I said, sure I will rearrange my schedule and come back next Monday. He said no, you don't understand me. I want you to get back right now. So I boarded the red-eye that night, met with him at eight O'clock the next morning. He took me into the Analysis Center they had there and I was stunned when he showed me pictures of Soviet missiles being deployed in Cuba. And he asked me if I would stay on and help the small team he had assembled to analyze those missiles. So of course I did and everyday for the next 12 days I go in about noon and by that time we would have the pictures that the airplanes have taken, that was flowing over Cuba that morning. We spent all day you know, or evening analyzing those and by midnight we had our analysis of that day's pictures done and we would brief Bud Wheelon on our results. The next morning at seven O'clock he would then brief President Kennedy who would use that as the basis for his decisions on what to do that particular day. Everyday, during those 12 days that I was in at that Center I believed it was going to be my last day on earth. Because I really believed we were about to go into a nuclear exchange. And to this day I believe that the principle way that nuclear war was avoided, was more by good luck than by good management. That was a war than an example of nuclear war that could have happen to a miscalculation. Now fast forward about 15-16 years, to 1978. This time I was in the government. I was the Under Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering. In one morning at three O'clock I got a phone call from the General who is the Watch Officer at North American Air Defense command. And he told me that his computers were showing 200 missiles on the way from the Soviet Union to United States. I immediately woke up. This was of course a false alarm. But he had had only 15 minutes to make that determination. He was calling me and hopes that I could get him help him figure out what had gone wrong. So that he would able to answer the questions that the President was going to ask him the next morning. Again I believe we avoided a nuclear war as much from good luck as we did from good management. Well of course, as these stories make absolutely clear, the risk that humanity could be annihilated in a nuclear war was never academic to me. Indeed I lived face to face with that risk in the entire duration of the Cold War. And it made profound impression on me which lasts to this very day. Well now the Cold War is over. And the whole world breathes easier. The ending of the Cold War brought about enormous geopolitical changes. Most of them for the good, some of them not so good. But it did bring about one positive change of enormous importance. It did reduce to essentially zero risk of a nuclear war resulting from miscalculation. There still exists however the danger of a nuclear war occurring by accident. Both American and Russian missiles are still configured to launch with as little as 15 minutes warning. And the inherent danger of this status is aggravated by the fact the Russian warning system has deteriorated considerably since the end of the Cold War. But the greatest danger today is that a terror group will detonate a nuclear bomb in one of our cities. Graham Allison in his seminal book Nuclear Terrorism describes this as the greatest danger facing the world today. He gives compelling evidence that Al-Qaeda and other terror groups are tying to get nuclear weapons and he argues that if they get one they will use it, and with devastating results. Of course, a nuclear detonation in one of our cities would not be equivalent to a nuclear exchange during the Cold War which could have led to the extinction of civilization. But it still would be the worse catastrophe of our time, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and with devastating economic and social dislocation. Allison drives his arguments home by saying that he believes there is a 50-50 chance that the terrorists would set up a nuclear bomb in one of our cities this decade. I cannot validate that number, but I do not believe that Allison is being alarmist. Indeed I believe that if we stay on our present course we are headed for disaster of unprecedented magnitude. So it is imperative we make a fund in manual change of course. And Secretary Shultz and Dr. Drell who follow me would describe to you the Stanford meeting held a few months ago that energized us to move forward towards such a fundamental change of course. Of course that envisioned an elimination of nuclear weapons. Well I opened my comments by quoting Andre Sakharov on the existential danger of a nuclear war. I am going to close my comment by quoting Elie Wiesel, on who has the responsibility for ending that danger. Mankind must remember, he wrote, that peace is not god's gift to his children; peace is our gift to each other. That is if we want to end the existential threat that nuclear weapons post to a civilization we should not we should not be waiting for divine intervention. We ourselves must take the necessary actions. Thank you. Some years ago Michael Gorbachev was visiting in Stanford. And he and I were sitting by ourselves in the backyard of our home there talking and as he had left office by that time, and I said to him, when you and I entered office, the Cold War was about as cold as it could get. And when we left it was all over with the sharing. So what do you think was the turning point? And he didn't reflect, he answered instantly, he said, Reykjavik. He said, and what do you think was the turning point? I said well, Reykjavik was important but I thought when the NATO alliance was cohesive enough to deploy ballistic missiles, Pershing they were called in Germany, that you thought could reach Moscow, that really got your attention. And he said, well that got our attention but Reykjavik was still the most important. And why? He said because for the first time the leaders sat together over an extended period of time and discussed all the issues. And my mind could flashback to that little room in a place called Höfdi, House. The table we sat around was like two card tables coupled together. The room was about the size of this platform. So it was a very kind of close setting. And we did sit there for two days and we discussed all of the issues, particularly of course the control of nuclear weapons and the possibility of ending them, of having a world free of nuclear weapons. It was a very exciting meeting. In the end we couldn't come to agreement and all of the things that we had talked about and sort of agreed out and we were not able to agree because we thought what they were proposing was basically an end to the research on the strategic defense initiative. But in any case all of these subjects got into the air and in a very prominent way. I remember when we came back people thought we had been crazy. One of your predecessor James Slazenger, said we have dodged an awful bullet. And it turned out people loved their nuclear weapons. Margaret Thatcher came over from Britain immediately and first she took brought me to the British Embassy and I got a woodshedding and then - she got it out her system with me and she then told President Reagan up in Camp David some of the same. But it was interesting to see how people were attached to these weapons. But the arguments for taking a different course and seeing if we can't find our way to a world free of nuclear weapons are there very much so. And Bill I think, brought out very forcefully the reasons why. So we saw the coming of the 20th anniversary of the Reykjavik meeting. And Sid and I were discussing it. We thought we should have a meeting and get some really good people and talk about the implications of what went on at Reykjavik. And Bill joined us and we put this together with a very formidable, high powered group of people and we had about two days of pretty intense discussion. One of the people there was a man named Max Kampelman. And I can't he is very eloquent and I can't I can't imitate that. But I will tell you what he said. He said, just because we are here doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about where we ought to be. Because the "ought" can be a motivator. He said, look at the people who framed our Declaration of Independence, all men are created equal. Are you kidding, slaves, all of them were slave owners, women had a substantially lower role in society, to vote you had to have property. So the idea of all men are created equal was an odd. It was a long way from the years. But over the years the fact that we had that "ought" there has gradually changed the years and we have moved much more toward what the Declaration of Independence says. And so Max argued, we should see the "ought." We ought to try to find a world without nuclear weapons. And let's try to find our way to the years. And there are some powerful voices and let me read. Bill read some points from Andre Sakharov; let me read what President Eisenhower said. He pledged America's determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma. To devote its entire heart and mind, to find the way by which the miraculous invention of man should not be dedicated to his death or consecrated but consecrated to his life. President Kennedy, may be reflecting on the incident that you described, said the world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution. Rajiv Gandhi, addressing the UN General Assembly back in 1988, nuclear war will not mean the death of a 100 million people or even a 1000 million; it will mean the extinction extinction of 4000 million, the end of life as we know it on our planet earth. We come to the United Nations, where he spoke, to seek your support. We seek your support to put a stop to this Madness. Ronald Reagan was very clear before he was president, but he saw it about nuclear weapons he thought the MAD doctrine was immoral and sought something else that was a motivation for the strategic defense initiative. But he called for the abolition of all nuclear weapons which he considered to be totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly disruptive of life on earth and civilization. Well Mikhail Gorbachev, as it turned out, shared those views and so when we had this intense discussion at Reykjavik, this came forward and when we talked at our meeting at Stanford's Hoover institution, this idea took hold. And then we gradually put together the op ed that you may have seen in the Wall Street Journal last January. And we got Sam Nunn involved, Henry Kissinger involved and others who are listed there. And put forward the argument that we should be clear about the importance of the "ought", a world free of nuclear weapons. But we should identify the steps that you need to take if you are going to get there. And in a sense it's an interactive process, the vision cause for you to consider and take steps. I might say each I think worth while in and of itself. And the steps in turn, gives substance and achievability to the vision. So there is an interactive process there that we think is the key in moving forward and Sid is going to tell you about the steps. Thank you. So we developed in our minds what we thought were 10 major steps, each of a value in and of itself as George said. And we listed them in the letter. I want to go over them. Let me start by saying we are now engaged in a process growing out of the Reykjavik meeting of last October of putting more substance into what these steps really imply. So we can get to what the world ought to be from what it is. For starters we looked at the posture of our missile forces that Bill Perry mentioned and we said that has to be changed. It's time to face the fact that in today's world this danger of having the mid ballistic missiles on a posture of prompt alert is very dangerous. That means right now sitting here we are 30 minutes away from a weapon launch now that would land here from the Soviet Union from Russia. And so the issue of how can we alter the Cold War posture of these missiles? And going on, with the Cold War over with the Soviet Union now on the dustbin of history and with our relations with the Soviet Union codified formally in document signed by Presidents Bush and Putin as being allied against terrorists, why do we still have each deployed of the order of 5000 weapons. Of which 2000 on ready alert in missiles that are 30 minutes away. Can we make more progress in reducing this number? What are their targets? If the United States and Russia which agree we after all deploy more than 90 percent of the weapons in the world, if we could agree on the measures to mutually pull down that number. What are the targets? Can we get down to another let me . What would happen if there were a nuclear exchange with say 500 going in each direction? What would be left at the United States? What would be left in Russia? If just one of them landed on San Francisco that's the end of San Francisco, one of the modern arms we call it Megatons, equivalent of a million tons of TNT. I think people have forgotten the power of nuclear weapons someway or other. I remember when I served in the Eisenhower administration back in 1955 we had drills you know, you will go to some place and I will go to some place and so on. And we watch these tests and you had a feeling for how powerful they are, but we - it gotten out of people's minds but it's nevertheless true. So, the next step was how to get on with serious reductions. There was also the need to pull back from the battlefield areas, the tactical nuclear weapons which exist in Europe. They should be eliminated. They are they are right there on the front. Many of them were brought back by the first President Bush, in dealings with both Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But some remain there. There is the question of an important issue that was that was raised already, what about ratifying a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Non Proliferation regime is built up on a treaty which says that, we will not continue underground explosive testing to improve our arsenal. But we have yet to sign to ratify, we have signed, to ratify a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, although we have not tested weapons for 15 years now and although Russia and all NATO countries have ratified that treaty. That's another important step. How come we do better to bring the vast quantities of nuclear fuel that fuel bombs, when I say fuel, I don't mean for reactors, I mean fuel for bombs. There is there are stores of those mostly the larger stores in the former Soviet Union, but there are around the world, there are enough with almost a 100,000 weapons that materially exists in the world today. We'll talk about one. George raised a question of 500. These is that material. The Nunn-Lugar Program created by Senators Nunn and Lugar have started us out and for the last, since 1992 we have provided better controls for more than half the material in the in the former Soviet Union. And now the countries around the world have begun to expand this globally. These are the kinds of measures. What about cutting off the production of fissile material and doing it in a verifiable way. What about the I mean these are the kinds of steps. What about the the providing, as the Non Proliferation Treaty guarantees fuel for countries that are not nuclear weapon states; so that they can have the benefits of nuclear energy, either for electrical power or for research or for medicine. But not letting them become societies with technologies that can make this material for themselves. With modern technology if you can operate a reactor for power and and you have the fuel for it and make that fuel, you can make a bomb. That's the big problem that has made proliferation, such a great concern that that we all talked about. Technology spread has increased this problem and so there are efforts underway for the nuclear supplier nations, for the International Atomic Energy Agency to try and control this material but guarantee at the same time that the fuel will be available, under control, for countries that sign on. These are measures that, each one of which, we are making progress on slowly. But the question is how do we accelerate that progress? How do we move ahead, so we don't just control a nuclear threat which, as we see in the world today with concerns about North Korea and Iran, is looking very dangerous. How do we get rid of that? And there are verification issues for compliance that have to be worked out. And then there are the political sides of the question. More intense efforts, diplomatic, to solve resolve some of the tensions in regional areas that it lead and encourage aspirations for nuclear weapons. And then finally, the really major one, how can we develop a consensus among the leaders of all the nuclear countries, eight eight of them now plus North Korea as the ninth one, which is by the way a very low number compared to you know, what were the dangers and worries of of back in the times of Presidents Kennedy and his successors. What can we do to bring this issue of achieving Max Kampelman's "ought" from the "is" into reality by having the leaders of the countries get together, see this vision as a way of of importance so that they will make this a joint effort. It's not a United States effort, it's an international effort. Just like it's a non partisan effort, it's an international effort to get free the world of nuclear weapons. With this vision the steps I have talked about are more compelling. And without those steps the vision has very little meaning. That's the challenge we face now that we have just started as to address these steps, accomplish them and work toward realizing a very powerful vision. Thank you.
