Fellow for International Studies here at stanford. Going to discuss the brandnew booking see the title on their slide on your screen, the button the Nuclear Arms Race for president ial power which puts readers on the frontline of Nuclear History and offers policy prescription for a safer future. As many of you know he served as a 19th u. S. Secretary of defense nick Clinton Administration defense policy armscontrol and along undistinguished history at stanford he is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution as well part he was the codirector of the center for International Securities in 1998 to 1993 and completed both his bachelors and masters degree in mathematics here at stanford which is particular impressive to me because i did not get into stanford either as an undergraduate or graduate. Hes now the michael and barbara emerita at stanford. Its great we can see you today, we also are thrilled to have his coauthor here. So tom is a director is 30 years of washington d. C. Experiencing Nuclear Weapons, missiledefense and issues but he has senior position at the arts control and the institute for science and International Security. He has been directly involved with efforts to end nuclear testing, extending treaty tom also has a degree in International Relations from cornell. But tommy will not hold that against you. Cornell is a pretty good school too. Im also pleased to introduce my colleague and good friend rose is a distinguished lecturer and a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Before coming to stanford she was the deputy secretary general of nato from 2016 until 2019 and prior to that she surf nearly five years as the undersecretary for armscontrol International Security at the United States state department. So heres what we have planted secretary perry and tom will have remarks about an overview of the argument for the book and then roads will join them in conversation to ask a few questions part b will then save about 20 minutes or so at the end to do q a from the audience. It looks like we have about 142 folks and climbing. If you want to submit a question please do so by going to the bottom of your zoom screen and clicking on the q a button. And i will collect the questions and feed them to our authors after rose has completed her questioning of them. So without further delay, i will handed over to to secretary perry and to tom to gives a sense for their book. Thank you. I will kick us off colin for that introduction and rose its great to be here with you as well. It is an honor and privilege to share this virtual stage with you and thank you so much for organizing. Of course it is also been a great honor for me to it write this book with bill perry called, the button, which comes out this month. Just a little background, we plan is for three reasons that will be a surprise to any of you up course next month, july 16 marks the fifth anniversary of the bottom of the First Nuclear test, the trinity test. August marks the 75th anniversary of hiroshima and knossos sake bombings. This november will choose our next president. These events create historic opportunity to debate the foreign policy. Weve lived with a bomb for 75 years, what should the next president do to reduce the risk of nuclear war . That is what this book is really about. Im going to run through the slides if the Technology Gods are with me, it will all go smoothly. Okay great so far so good. So first, let me put book in the context of the current moment. We are of course in a National Crisis with these three dimensions, public health, economy, racial injustice. And on top of all that we have a leadership vacuum here in washington. Too truly move beyond this crisis we feel the status quo in u. S. Policy must change. Specifically the coronavirus shows how u. S. Defense policy has been focused on the wrong threats. We are spending way too much on outdated cold war scenarios great Power Military conflict with russia for example and not enough on the true existential threats we face today. Pandemics, climate change, nuclear war. Raging unemployment and systemic racial inequalities show we have been investing too much in traditional defense and not enough in building a Strong Economy and a just society. Despite spending 700 billion a year on defense, Many Americans simply do not feel safe. As Martin Luther king worn in 1967, quote, the nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. I would agree with that. So getting back to the issues at hand. Nuclear weapons in particular have no role to play in addressing the serious threats we face. In fact, Nuclear Weapons, we find, make those threats even worse. So lets unpack this a bit. We like to start with this photo because it tends to focus the mind. Here is President Trump with the infamous football carried by the military aid right behind him there. The briefcase contains everything the president needs to start a nuclear war. This is literally how close we are to nuclear war every day, every minute, right now. President trump can start an attack on his own authority with no Second Opinions. No input from congress or the secretary of defense are needed. Now, 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. We want to be clear all president s make mistakes. All are human. That is why we strongly feel that no single unit should control the future of humanity. Yet we, the American People, choose to give president s this absolute power, why . Why do we choose to live so close to the brink of disaster . This is one of the main themes of the book. We think it is because u. S. Policies focus on the wrong threat. So lets get to the central arguments. The central arguments we make in the book is that u. S. Policies focus 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. Yet Nuclear Policy has been based on this threat for decades. So the big problem here is this mistake in threat assessment undermines u. S. Security by driving policies that increase the risk of blundering into nuclear war by mistake. We could literally 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. So we must move away from quick launch policies and said give the president more decision time limiting nuclear used to second strike deterrence only missions. So, bill, turning to you, you of course have 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 but that is not a realistic threat from russia, would you say that . So i would say they are wrong. When i was secretary of defense i met many, many times with all of the key officials in the russian government, the president , and the ministry of defense, ministry of state and several decades since then ive continued to me of hundreds of russians to we called track to diplomacy, one thing i can say with great confidence, the russians are not stupid. The russians are not suicidal and therefore we are focused on the wrong thing. The first strike is not realistic. What is realistic however is we might blunder in a nuclear war. Thank you. And as we argue in the book, this perceived threat of a bolt from the blue, drives the military requirement we must be ready to launch Nuclear Requirements at all times within minutes that in turn drives these three dangerous policies. First, the president as we mention has Sole Authority to launch Nuclear Weapons within minutes with no Second Opinion or oversight. Second, the president can order a first strike it its 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. When the main things we do in the book is show how dangerous this combination of policies are, and bill please give us your sense of why these policies are so dangerous. Particularly standing out in the danger is the possibility of a false alarm. To me thats not us theoretical threat weve had six false alarms that i know of. One of them i personally experience it is graven in my memory when i was the under secretary of defense during the cold war i got a phone call at 3 00 oclock in the morning from then general of the north american air command in the first thing he told me was his computers were showing 600 icbms on their way from the soviet union to the United States. I immediately woke up. But happily the general quickly added he concluded it was a false alarm and he was calling me to have 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. The other times weve had false alarm has been human it can be a technical or human failure there is a realistic possibility to happen six times in the past, it will happen again. Smacked thank you. Every time you tell that story i find it chilling so thank you very much. Lets expand on the dangers of Sole Authority for a moment sprayed in 1963 in fact this week in 1963 president kennedy gave the famous speech where he warned we could stumble into nuclear war due to quote accident or miscalculation or madness. We spend quite a bit of time in the book going through those various scenarios. Bill, could you walk us through how this might happen. So first of all the president might have Bad Information in a classic example of that is president kennedy on cuba were all of his military advisers were recommending a military attack on cuba. Had our troops landed on the beachhead, they would have been met and decimated on the beachhead by the Nuclear Weapons. We did not know, we simply did not know that while the russians had medium weapons but they did have mediumrange label to use. In addition to that we could have an unstable, President Trump might be a classic example of that but is 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 to the extent that both the secretary of defense and secretary of state were deeply concerned secretary of defense james lessing or tried to intervene with the military to say not to respond if they got a call from the president. But of course that was an illegal order and its unlikely the military would have followed it. And then president reagan during the last few months of his presidency, we did not noted the time but he is in the early stages of alzheimers disease. Finally weve already talked about we can have a false alarm in it serious in that dangers has been the past its even greater today with the presence of cyber warfare. All of these say we can start a nuclear war by blundering into nuclear war. That is what should drive u. S. Policy, what we could do to prevent the policy of blundering into a nuclear war but focus on the old cold war of an unreal unrealistic threat of a first strike. So thank you very much. Lets move into what we propose for solutions. The next president can and must reorient Nuclear Policy away from a russian surprise attack to preventing accidental war. And we layout a number of recommendations in primarily the three we will now discuss. Bill if you can walk us through those. So the first recommendation is to end president ial Sole Authority. Theyve had Sole Authority because we believed it was necessary to be able to respond in five or six minutes as weve already discussed, that is susceptible to leading us into a catastrophic war false alarm. The bill now pending in congress is to that purpose. And theres no probability at all being passed this year. It is a very good prospect in the next year we should all get behind supporting that bill next year. Secondly, we should establish that shrink the new president should establish a policy. Some have come close to that event each they backed off. This time lets push it through. Again theres a bill pending in Congress Today that would come out of that. We can have the opportunity another crack at it next year. And finally, we should phase out icbms. They are accidents waiting to happen. Thank you very much. So im going to summarize enclosed so we can get to roses questions and the audience question. So Nuclear Weapons are clearly the president s weapons every four years we have a chance to change u. S. Nuclear policy. The current National Crisis we are in is creating, we feel, a once in a Generation Opportunity to rethink our fundamental approach to national security. Nuclear 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 threaten blundering into nuclear war by mistake. So the next president can and must bring u. S. Nuclear policy into the 21st century. Now, we are pretty realistically know this will be hard. We are up against 75 years of outdated thinking and a 50. Billiondollar industry. History tells us that major change like this can only happen if lead 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 you are at all interested in buying the book please go to then bella books. Com. Use the code button 30 you get 30 off thank you very much. I have already done button 50 in button 75 it did not give me 50 or 75 off the book. Just 30. Rose, over to you. Thank you very much call if i have my own copy of the book right here i have to tell you it is a wonderful book. I just read it over the last couple of days to prepare for this session. It really gets you its really good reading. You will learn a lot. I really commend of the authors for turning out something about Nuclear Weapons that is eminently readable. My job is to lead a fire side chat seems like strange in the middle of june to lead a fireside chat but in the spirit of that im going to ask our authors a couple of questions ensued they have to say about it. Right up front, bill and tom i will ask the two of you and you can decide whether you both want to answer for one of you will take the lead. Does that sound okay . Yes. So my first question is the russians have just put out a new president ial decree just over a week ago. Also outline a nuclear release policy resting solely on president ial decisionmaking authority. The president of course being president putin. As one russian analyst put it very simply, and i quote, new first, phone later. What would you say to the russians . And what would you say to president putin based on what you learned during your book . So i would say they are making the same mistake we have made. They are moving backwards not forward. In the russian analyst who said new first phone later but he is contemplating us after they nuke first then we know what hes talking about so boldly is the destruction of civilization. If i could just add i think bill is exactly right. And to say in my experience what i have read about this, the russian situation is even more dire than ours. In other words, the russian president has even less time to make a decision about retaliation once they get the notice of it incoming attack which could be a false alarm. So the situation is even more dire in russia than it is here. We need to help russia move away from Sole Authority, first use, and will launch on warning. So very good i could see that would be extraordinarily interesting conversation, discussion. But also very complex and difficult one. Now let me move on to my second question. Your book focuses on u. S. , Russian Nuclear relationship which has long been based on the notion of first strike ability. Interesting though the policy you are recommending, second use assured retaliation as you call in the book has long been the basis of chinese doctrine. Now, however, the chinese seem to be shifting to capabilities such as icbms and others that would appear to be moving them in a first strike direction rather than second use assured retaliation. So, my question to you is how would you incentivize the u. S. And russia to move to a second strike approach, secure second prices stroke will getting the chinese to stay right where they are . , both countries having an active Modernization Program going on the chinese building submarines and icms and the russians continuing to modernize their nuclear triad. What would you say about that . How do we keep chinese staying where they are with that particular approach and how do we get the u. S. And russia incentivize to move in that direction . So may be bill i will start on this when you can jump in. Rose great question, thank you. I think we need to be care