Under the sponsorship of Stanford University, we designed a massive open online course (MOOC) to raise public consciousness about the past, present, and future dangers of nuclear weapons. Most individuals—and many policymakers—remain blissfully unaware that risks such as nuclear terrorism, a regional nuclear war, or a nuclear conflict started by accident are higher today than during the Cold War. Our course, Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday and Today, successfully appealed to a broad audience and increased discourse about this existential threat facing humankind.
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.
CISAC and FSI Senior Fellows Siegfried Hecker and Bill Perry write in this OpEd in The New York Times that Iran has little to show for its 50-year pursuit of a nuclear program. They argue Iran should forego the bomb and concentrate on learning how to build nuclear power plants that would aid their country's economy and promote international cooperation.
CISAC Faculty Member and former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry tells the story of how he became a nuclear weapons abolitionist. He recounts six personal experiences that led him to turn away from his lifelong career of developing and managing nuclear weapons, and pursue the goal of eliminating them.
Statement of William J. Perry regarding submission of the New START for consent and ratification
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
April 29, 2010
Chairman Kerry and Ranking Member Lugar, thank you for this opportunity to appear before you and other members of this distinguished Committee to discuss ratification for the New START Treaty.
All U.S. agencies with counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data -- such as phone records or Web sites visited -- should be required to evaluate the programs' effectiveness, lawfulness, and impacts on privacy. A framework is offered that agencies can use to evaluate such information-based programs, both classified and unclassified. The book urges Congress to re-examine existing privacy law to assess how privacy can be protected in current and future programs and recommends that any individuals harmed by violations of
Through efforts like the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. government and many of the Day After Workshop participants, including us, have long sought to prevent nuclear weapons and fissile materials from falling into new and threatening hands, especially terrorists.
Testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 27, 2007, on the situation in Iraq and the Bush administration's strategy. The full committee heard testimony from William Perry, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at CISAC and former secretary of defense; Ambassador Dennis B. Ross, counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, former director for policy planning in the Department of State, and former special Middle East coordinator; and General John M. Keane (retired, U.S. Army), former Army vice chief of staff.
Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee on alternative perspectives on the president's strategy for Iraq. The full committee heard from the following witnesses: William J. Perry, CISAC; Lawrence J. Korb, Center for American Progress; and Frederick W. Kagan, American Enterprise Institute.
The Iraq Study Group, convened at the urging of Congress with White House agreement, made a forward-looking, independent assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq and how it affects the surrounding region as well as U.S. interests. The study group examined four broad topics:
To reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, we must prevent terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons or materials. This will require, among other things, a sustained effort to keep dangerous nations from going nuclear--in particular North Korea. This article reviews the efforts the United States has undertaken through the years to keep North Korea from building a nuclear arsenal, arguing that the history of proliferation on the Korean Peninsula is marked by five nuclear crises.
The end of the Cold War left the United States in the fortunate position of facing no imminent threat of global war. But it also left the United States in a strategic vacuum, with no organizing principle for its national security. This book proposes a security strategy for the 21st century based on preventing new major threats to U.S. security from emerging.
This report and the conference it is based on are motivated by the sharp debate stemming from NATO's decision at Madrid to invite three new members to join its ranks. This debate is not partisan: it cleaves parties. It is profound because it has kindled the first truly geostrategic inquiry among Americans in the post-Cold War era. This inquiry has led Americans to advance from celebrating the end of the Cold War to confronting the design of Eurasia's future security system and America's role in it.
Late last year, we noted the tenth anniversary of what was probably the most remarkable of all the meetings between an American president and his Soviet counterpart, the Reykjavik Summit of October 1986. History has shown that Reykjavik was a true turning point. Three major treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union were negotiated by the end of 1992; they resulted in substantially reduced levels of nuclear weapons. That happened as the Cold War was ending and, as the Russians say, it was no coincidence.
In August 1991, the people of Moscow and Leningrad demonstrated to the world that democracy is an idea whose time had come for the Soviet Union. As a result, the Soviet
government received a mandate for political reform. This reform, if successful, will result in a political system that will be very different from any that the people in the Soviet Union have ever known-a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.