William Perry: a person view of nuclear weapons

At a Ploughshares Fund-University of Maryland forum on Monday, former Secretary of Defense William Perry told the audience about receiving a telephone call from NORAD at 3:00 a.m., telling him that 200 ICBMs were heading toward the U.S.  It was, of course, a false alarm, but the incident shaped his views on our “hair trigger” alert system. “The threat of nuclear attack was never, ever academic to me.”

Ploughshares Fund's Washington, D.C. staff travelled to College Park, MD to hear Secretary Perry lay out the history of his personal involvement in arms control and the future of nonproliferation, including his participation in the dismantlement of over 10,000 nuclear weapons.  Leaving office, he assumed that the world would continue to embrace nonproliferation and disarmament, but over the last 8 years, he saw the direction change for the worse.  Secretary Perry suggested that the next president focus on some immediate steps, such as engaging Russia and extending the START Treaty, securing the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and strengthening support for the International Atomic Energy Agency.  He acknowledged the difficult international proliferation problems that the next President will have to address, such as the nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran.  Despite the challenges ahead, Perry did see possibilities for positive change in the next administration and he, along with former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Senate Armed Services Chair Sam Nunn, will continue their campaign for a nuclear weapon-free world.   

Steve Fetter, Dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, said that he hoped the successful event was just the beginning of collaborations between his school and the Ploughshares Fund.