My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose.

In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it.

This book traces his thought process as he journeys from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to crafting a defense strategy in the Carter Administration to offset the Soviets' numeric superiority in conventional forces, to presiding over the dismantling of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons in the Clinton Administration, and to his creation in 2007, with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, of the Nuclear Security Project to articulate their vision of a world free from nuclear weapons and to lay out the urgent steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers.

Auteur

William J. Perry was the 19th Secretary of Defense for the United States from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as Deputy Secretary of Defense (1993-1994) and as Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (1977-1981). He is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University.

Contenu

Contents and Abstracts1The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Nuclear Nightmare chapter abstractThis chapter underscores the enormous danger of nuclear weapons, especially in conditions of hostility and noncooperation among nuclear powers, by recounting the Cuban Missile Crisis. It shows that the world neared a nuclear holocaust, threatening civilization itself. A member of the analysis team providing daily crisis reports to President Kennedy and his advisors, Perry, contrary to public post mortems on the crisis, reflects that catastrophe was averted as much by luck as by successful crisis management. US decision makers' knowledge was imperfect and sometimes wrong. Some local commanders had discretion to begin armed conflict and nearly did. Operational mistakes as well as normal military activities elsewhere in the world could have been interpreted as a nuclear attack. It is shown that there was no precedent for resolving the risk of history's gravest war. Perry decides to pursue a career mitigating the nuclear threat. 2A Fire in the Sky chapter abstract This chapter recounts Perry's experiences as a young soldier in the Army of Occupation in Japan just after the end of World War II, and shows how he began to change his thinking about national security in the era of nuclear weapons as well as his thinking about his own calling. The devastation he witnesses in Tokyo and Naha, together with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, "changed everything" and demands new modes of thinking about national security. After discharge from the Army, Perry marries, begins a family, and pursues degrees in mathematics, possibly as a prelude to an academic career, but the Korean War and the onset of the Cold War with its nuclear arsenals and "overkill" in increasingly destructive nuclear weapons lead him into defense work, specifically the pioneering of a powerful new reconnaissance capability to curtail miscalculations of Soviet nuclear weapons and catastrophic decisions. 3The Rise of the Soviet Missile Threat and the Race for Data to Understand It chapter abstract This chapter dramatizes the development of a sophisticated US reconnaissance capability to monitor the secretive Soviet missile and space program during the nuclear arms build-up in the Cold War. Although it could not guarantee deterrence of a catastrophic war, knowledge of the size, deployment, and performance characteristics of the USSR nuclear weapons lent perspective and lessened the danger of miscalculation in an era of concern over the threat of a Soviet nuclear first-strike. Perry begins work at a defense company and studies countermeasures against Soviet missiles, assesses that defense against an attacking nuclear force is ineffective, and becomes a member of the high-ranking government Telemetry and Beacon Analysis Committee (TEBAC) charged with determining the overall Soviet nuclear threat and decides to start a new company, ESL, devoted exclusively to the Cold War reconnaissance mission. 4An Original Silicon Valley Entrepreneur and the Advance of Spy Technology chapter abstract This chapter describes the formation and strong growth of ESL, Inc. beginning in the 1960s in Silicon Valley, Perry's pioneering company in developing sophisticated Cold War reconnaissance capabilities exploiting new digital technology. Special lessons Perry learned about management and cooperation in a successful enterprise of mitigating the danger from nuclear weapons are analyzed, lessons that carried over to his later career beyond the corporate in pursuing that quest. Of ESL's large base of projects, emphasis is placed on intercepting telemetry of Soviet ICBM tests and obtaining signals intelligence on Soviet ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems together with data interpretation, including the often highly innovative measures needed to intercept the data. The chapter also describes Perry's involvement with the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in its foundational work at the dawn of the crucial period of arms reduction agreements with the Soviets. 5A Call to Serve chapter abstract This chapter chronicles Perry's move from corporate life to government service in his journey at the nuclear brink. As undersecretary of defense for research and engineering in the Carter administration, Perry now found himself charged with revolutionizing US tactical battlefield capabilities to offset the Soviet numerical advantage in conventional forces, an advantage threatening nuclear deterrence now that the Soviets had reached nuclear parity with the US. Perry's expertise in digital technology brought him to this role, and he proceeded to assemble a powerful team, most notably Air Force Lt. Col Paul Kaminski as his personal assistant, to meet the immense challenge of upgrading US systems, a challenge that meant exploiting state-of-the-art technology, performing innovations much more quickly than ordinarily done in military weapon development, and "getting things right the first time." Perry gained his initial experience in international diplomacy, an experience crucial in his later career. 6Implementing the Offset Strategy and the Emergence of Stealth Technology chapter abstract This chapter describes implementation of the Offset Strategy to shore-up and strengthen nuclear deterrence. A crucial US accomplishment in the age of nuclear weapons, this development of the "system of systems"-stealth, smart sensors, smart weapons-made the US battlefield performance superior and remains the foundation of our premiere military forces, with the later Desert Storm campaign serving as a convincing proving ground for its success. The "force multiplier" effects of the new technology are immensely efficient and economical: even when numerically inferior, US forces can prevail by striking targets with great accuracy while experiencing exceedingly low losses in their own forces and equipment. The Offset Strategy showed the power of revolutionary technology to create conditions of enhanced nuclear deterrence and to point the way to mitigating future dangers, as well as the ability of smart and talented people to respond to the issue of deterrence. 7Buildup of the US Nuclear Force chapter abstract This chapter recounts the buildup of US nuclear forces-bombers, SLBMs and ICBMs-led by Perry as undersecretary of defense. Soviet nuclear forces had improved, raising concerns of weakening deterren…