At 90, William J. Perry has seen a lot in this world.

Maybe, in fact, too much. When it comes to nuclear warfare and annihilation, few people alive have contemplated such tragic outcomes quite like Perry, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), a former U.S. secretary of defense, and one of the world’s top nuclear weapons experts.

Perry, who becomes a nonagenarian on Oct. 11, has been called America’s “nuclear conscience.” He has sometimes referred to himself as a “prophet of doom,” and certainly not in a congratulatory sense, but more as a scientist on a mission. A brilliant mathematician who's worked with nearly every administration since Eisenhower, Perry's been up-close to nuclear weapons and near-miss crises for the last several decades.

Today, Perry is devoted to education on the subject of nuclear weapons – he understands exactly how much horror they would wreak on humanity and beyond.

And while no one would call Perry a crusader type (he is pragmatic, modest and private), there’s no doubt he’s on an energetic crusade for a nuclear-free world. Reaching young minds – those who will inherit the leadership of this world – is his calculus in the formula of world peace.

So, Perry reaches out in ways that resonant with youth. Last year created a series of virtual lectures, "Living at the Nuclear Brink," known as a MOOC, or massive open online course. His new online course, "The Threat of Nuclear Terrorism," launches Oct. 17.  

“Nuclear weapons may seem like 20th century history, but the choices we make about these weapons in the 21st century will decide your future in truly fundamental ways,” Perry wrote in the earlier course's introduction.

Conversations with conscience

An engineer and policy maker, Perry has academic affiliations that range widely across the Stanford campus. He is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus), a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He's always in demand for a panel discussion or speaker event.

On Nov. 1, he's the featured subject of a CISAC event, "A Conversation with William J. Perry: Assessing Nuclear Risk in a New Era." That talk will include a Perry discussion with CISAC co-director Amy Zegart and another panel discussion, led by CISAC co-director Rod Ewing, with scholars Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway and Scott Sagan.

Perry's been known to participate in “Ask Me Anything” chats on Reddit, a place popular with youth. He connects with all types of audiences, conveying in direct encounters the exact nature of the nuclear dangers now facing civilization, and what can be done to reduce those dangers. This mission to educate led him to write a memoir, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, all the while giving countless media interviews and delivering major speeches before major think tanks, nongovernmental organizations and policymakers.

One core Perry message is that U.S. foreign policies do not reflect the existing danger of nuclear threats -- the reason is that this risk isn’t widely recognized across society. And young people need to understand this dynamic that creates a distorted, too complacent view of a very real nuclear weapons problem throughout the world.

Perry, with the help of both his daughter, Robin Perry, his son, David Perry, granddaughter, Lisa Perry, and grandson Patrick Allen, established the William J. Perry Project, which informs the public about the role of nuclear weapons in today's world, while urging the elimination of these weapons.

It’s a family on a mission, and the Perrys believe the only way to avoid nuclear war is by directly contemplating the scenario in a personal, direct sense through learning and education.

"We're really just out there trying to reach a generation that isn't engaged on this issue right now," said Lisa Perry in an article on the Perry Project web site. She is the digital media manager for the project. "It's something we learned in history class. There was no conversation about what's happening now."

As her grandfather explained, "The dangers will never go away as long as we have nuclear weapons. But we should take every action to lower the dangers, and I think it can be done."

Early entrepreneurship days

Perry was born in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, in 1927, the year that Charles Lindbergh completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic.

As a child, Perry fell in love with math. Math for him represented analytical discipline and the beauty of overcoming challenge. By solving math problems, one can master not only numerical problems, but other seemingly all-too difficult challenges. The key, as Perry discovered, was breaking down the larger problem into smaller parts. This evolved complexity into simplicity, which is more easily understood. Perry went on to cultivate this problem-solving mindset the rest of his life.

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After his military service, Perry received his B.S. (1949) and M.A. (1950) degrees from Stanford, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Pennsylvania State University in 1957. He chose a career in defense electronics, and became one of the Silicon Valley’s early entrepreneurs, founding a company that pioneered digital technologies to analyze the Soviet nuclear missile arsenal. And so, he was often asked to counsel the federal government on national security.

In October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, Perry received an urgent request from the U.S. government to help analyze U-2 photos of the Soviet installation of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. Perry later recollected that he thought the world could end during that crisis, and that those days might well be his last.

From 1977 to 1981 during the Carter administration, Perry served as the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, where he oversaw weapon systems and research. After leaving the Pentagon in 1981 to work in the private sector, Perry became a Stanford engineering professor and a co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

He was the co-director of CISAC from 1988 to 1993. Today, he is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor emeritus at Stanford, with a joint appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Engineering. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton tapped Perry to become the 19th U.S. Secretary of Defense. However, it was not so easy for the White House to recruit him.

Perry treasured his privacy so much that he originally turned down the job of defense secretary. Only when Clinton and Al Gore assured him that his family’s privacy could be maintained, he finally accepted the offer. With the Cold War having ended a fear years earlier, he found it would become a historic time to serve as America’s defense secretary.

Years later he recalled standing with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts as their teams destroyed missile silos in the former Soviet Union. By the end of the 1980s, Perry thought the world had survived the horrific prospect of nuclear annihilation – and that it was behind everyone, left in the ashes of the Cold War.

Not so fast. Welcome to 2017.

Beyond doomsday

Today, Perry believes, the world is arguably more dangerous than ever before. His view is supported by The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which announced in January 2017 that the Doomsday clock now stands at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight, suggesting that existential threats now pose a greater danger to humanity than they have at any time since the height of the Cold War.

In fact, in 2016, Perry warned that the Doomsday clock should stand at five minutes to midnight for nuclear war – but only one minute to midnight for the threat of nuclear terrorism. He said during that press conference that the clock now issued a “more dangerous, more ominous forecast than two thirds of the years during the Cold War.”

As a result, Perry’s profile has risen higher than ever as the world confronts increasingly unsettling nuclear threats like a war between the U.S. and North Korea, reckless nuclear rhetoric by state leaders, and the possibility that terrorists may use nukes.

On North Korea in particular, Perry has urged a return to deterrence on the part of the United States:

“The threat to use nuclear weapons has always been tied to deterrence or extended deterrence; historical U.S. policy is that the use of nuclear weapons would only be in response to the first use of nuclear weapons against the United States or an ally covered by our extended deterrence,” he said in a statement.

With North Korea, Perry notes that the U.S. should not make empty threats, because empty threats weaken America’s credibility and reduce the ability to actually take strong action. “As Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘Speak softly but carry a big stick,’” he said.

During the early Cold War, he said, when the Soviets used “shrill” language, U.S. presidents like Eisenhower merely responded in tempered, moderate tones. “Just as in those tense times, today’s crisis also calls for measured language,” Perry said.

On top of this, Perry said the U.S. and Russians seem to be “sleepwalking into this new nuclear arms race,” and that while a new Cold War and arms race may look different than the prior one in U.S.-Soviet history, they are both dangerous and “totally unnecessary.”

Whether on the North Korean peninsula or elsewhere, a miscalculation could be catastrophic, Perry warns. That’s one reason he joined other former "Cold Warriors" like George Schulz, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2007. They argued that the goal of U.S. nuclear policy should be not merely the reduction and control of atomic arms, but the ultimate elimination of all nuclear weapons everywhere.

What type of world does Perry dream about in his brightest visions? One without nuclear weapons. He believes collective humanity must “delegitimize” nuclear war as an acceptable risk of modern civilization. A safer world, one that requires great purpose, persistence, and patience to make a reality, is possible, if people understand the threats and take action to reduce them, Perry has said.

“This global threat requires unified global action,” Perry wrote in July 2017 in support of a new United Nations treaty banning the use of nuclear weapons.

Education and knowledge – that’s how Perry believes humanity can safely evolve past its nuclear phase.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Sunday’s referendum vote in Catalonia, a northeast region of Spain seeking independence, was marred with violence as police forces from the Spanish government, which deemed the referendum illegal, clashed with Catalonians attempting to vote.

From 2011 to 2016, Francois Diaz-Maurin, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, lived and studied in Barcelona, Catalonia’s largest city. He offers his perspective on the events that unfolded over the weekend, why the Spanish government reacted so severely and what effects Catalonia’s quest for independence may have on Europe.

What are Catalonia’s motivations for independence?

The Catalonian pro-independence movement has historic, cultural and economic roots. Historically, pro-independence Catalans want to recover their sovereignty that was lost during the War of the Spanish Succession, a major European conflict of the early 18th century.

Culturally, there is a popular slogan: “Catalonia is not Spain.” Catalonia really has a very different culture from Spain. It has its own language, celebrations, traditions and historic references – which were all prohibited under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship (1939-1975). After the Catalan self-determination referendum was shockingly repressed by the Spanish police, it seems that Catalonia and Spain do not even share the same definition of democracy.

The independence of Catalonia also has some pragmatic motivations. Catalonia, one of the wealthiest regions in Spain, wants to be able to take full control of its economy. Indeed, after almost a decade of political gridlock – Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy still does not have a majority at the Parliament after two elections. With a wave of austerity measures and multiple cases of corruption affecting Spain’s ruling party, the right-wing Partido Popular, Catalonia is looking for a way out of the economic and political crises.

Why was the reaction from the Spanish government so severe?

Although the Catalan independence referendum was considered anticonstitutional under Spanish law, what happened was an absolute shock. It gives a very sad image of a so-called advanced democracy. We should have been counting the ballots, not the numbers of people having received urgent care at hospitals – about 1,000 people, according to the Catalan government.

Yet, what is behind the Spanish brutality is much more trivial than it appears. In a situation of stalled political process, Rajoy, who has long lost legitimacy in Catalonia where the Partido Popular is not well-represented, could risk his seat if Catalonia becomes an independent state. So, in my view, the harsh reaction of the Spanish government is at the crossroad between a long tradition of brutality and the fear of one to lose power.

Rajoy said that the rule of law was still reigning in Spain, which remained unified, and called for opening negotiations. But negotiating was never an option for the Spanish government, which refused to discuss the possibility of a referendum. That is no longer an option for the Catalan government after this violation of its sovereignty and fundamental rights of its people.

Despite all the troubles, yesterday’s Catalan referendum resulted in more than 2.2 million citizens – out of 5.3 million voters – voting at 90 percent in favor of the independence, although 770,000 ballots could not be counted due to the Spanish police operations, which seized and destroyed ballot boxes, according to news reports. Catalonia government’s President Carles Puigdemont said in a communiqué that an independent state in the form of a republic will be proclaimed after approval of the referendum’s results by the Catalonian Parliament.

What impacts could these events have on Europe in terms of other regions following Catalonia’s actions?

The situation of Catalonia has always been intertwined with the history of Europe, and there is no surprise that the current situation in Catalonia is getting much attention from outside of Spain. So, one can expect that the referendum in Catalonia will certainly reinforce the pro-independence movements in other regions of Europe, such as Scotland, Basque Country, Flanders, Belgium, and Veneto, Italy. Yet, the repression of the Spanish government also poses some dilemma.

The Catalan referendum has some deeper implications as far as the definition of democracy. The Catalans’ fundamental rights were violated by the same institutions that should be protecting their fellow citizens. Of course, this happens in numerous countries every day with some complacency. But those countries do not pretend to be the flagships of democracy. That makes a big difference.

What happened in Catalonia clearly does not show the best image of Europe as a unified community. Only very few state officials and foreign observers from Europe condemned the repression of the Spanish government, despite the fact that it clearly violated the European charter of fundamental rights. What we are seeing is clearly the end of the European model as we know it. In days like the one we just have witnessed we clearly see that democracy is much more fragile than it seems. What we take for granted such as the right to deliberate over a political project can encounter the brutality of dictatorial regimes.

Milenko Martinovich is the deputy director for social science communications in the Stanford News Service. He wrote this story for the Stanford News Service.

Francois Diaz-Maurin also wrote this story on Catalonia for the Freeman Spogli Institute's Medium site. 

CISAC senior research scholar Herb Lin writes in this Washington Post op-ed about the Equifax hacking and how to prevent such future incidents. He urges Congress "to go beyond proposed legislation on free freezing of credit reports to require that individual reports be frozen by default, 'thaw-able' only with the individual’s consent."

As the new deputy director for the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Harold Trinkunas will assume more day-to-day management duties of the center in addition to his research scholarship.

Trinkunas, who starts his new role Oct. 1, will provide additional oversight over CISAC’s core operations, from research and fellowships to administration and finance. He was previously CISAC’s associate director for research; he will continue to be a senior research scholar affiliated with the center.

In his new capacity, Trinkunas will work to ensure that CISAC remains on a sustainable footing as its faculty, scholars and fellows generate knowledge to build a safer world and educate the next generation of security experts. This will contribute to maintaining CISAC’s position as a global thought leader on meeting the most pressing challenges for international security and international cooperation.

CISAC’s associate director position for administration and finance will report to Trinkunas, who joined CISAC in September 2016. Previously, that position (under recruitment now) reported to CISAC’s co-directors.  

The new organizational structure brings CISAC into alignment with other centers at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. It will also allow co-directors Amy Zegart and Rod Ewing  to focus more time on CISAC’s external relationships – with CISAC supporters, policy makers and media. These are key audiences for the Center’s scholarly findings and education programs.

Zegart, CISAC co-director for the social sciences, said, "I couldn't be more delighted that Harold has agreed to become CISAC's deputy director. Creating this deputy director position will enable us to bring together longer-range strategic planning and day-to-day operations -- and Harold is ideally suited to the task, with deep experience in university administration at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brookings, and Stanford as well as an active and exciting scholarly research agenda."

Ewing, CISAC co-director for the sciences, said, “Harold’s expanded role in CISAC will allow for a better coordination of administrative and budgetary decisions on a day-to-day basis.  I certainly look forward to working with Harold as we continue to expand the impact of CISAC scholarship on policy issues.”

Management, research

Trinkunas joined CISAC last year from the Brookings Institution, where he was the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow as well as director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program.

“This is a great opportunity to work in collaborative ways with exceptional scholars around some very important international security challenges facing today’s world,” Trinkunas said then.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Trinkunas earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford in 1999; he was also a predoctoral fellow and later a visiting professor at CISAC.  His first exposure to CISAC took place when he served as a teaching assistant to Scott Sagan in 1992.

Through the years, CISAC has evolved and adjusted its focus to reflect the global security realities, Trinkunas said. Research at CISAC spans biosecurity and global health, terrorism, cybersecurity, governance, and nuclear risk and cooperation, among others.

Trinkunas said he enjoys the mentoring aspect of working with emerging scholars in the CISAC fellowship program, which he oversees.

Security, governance

Trinkunas’ most recent book, Aspirational Power: Brazil's Long Road to Global Influence, co-authored with David Mares of UC San Digo, was published last year by the Brookings Institution Press.  Aspirational Power was chosen as one of Foreign Affair’s “best books of 2016.”

Trinkunas studies the intersection of security and governance. In his research, he has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Harold Trinkunas, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8035, antanas@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

A new biosecurity initiative at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) aims to identify and mitigate biological risks, both natural and man-made, and safeguard the future of the life sciences and associated technologies.

The initiative will be led by David A. Relman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and FSI. Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and Microbiology & Immunology, has served as the science co-director at CISAC for the past four years. He will leave this position on Aug. 31 to lead the new initiative.

Michael McFaul, director and senior fellow at FSI, said, “With exceptional leadership skills, valuable experience and abundant energy, David Relman is ideally positioned to work with scholars from across campus who offer critical expertise in biosecurity. This is an exciting, challenging and important new initiative for FSI that is designed to protect public health from the many new risks now accelerating.”

Relman said the biosecurity initiative will seek to advance the beneficial applications of the life sciences while reducing the risks of misuse by promoting research, education and policy outreach in biological security. His CISAC leadership gives him the know-how to lead such a wide-ranging effort across diverse disciplines and communities.

Relman said, “The opportunity to serve as co-director at CISAC has been a wonderful experience, one that has afforded me the chance to get to know outstanding faculty and staff, their scholarship, and critical policy-relevant work, all of which I had not fully appreciated sitting across campus. This experience has made clear the unusual qualities of Stanford University, and the great people that work here. I am now greatly looking forward to this new opportunity at FSI.”

Biosecurity collaborations

During Relman’s term as CISAC’s science co-director from 2013-2017, he led an expansion of the transdisciplinary work in science and security to include biology, biological and other areas of engineering, medicine, and earth and environmental sciences.

The foundations for work in biological science, technology and security were established at CISAC, especially in the hiring of Megan Palmer, a senior research scholar at CISAC and FSI. Both Relman and Palmer worked together on engagements and discussions with a growing network of more than 20 faculty involved in biosecurity across Stanford.

Palmer said, “Stanford has an opportunity and imperative to advance security strategies for biological science and technology in a global age. Our faculty bring together expertise in areas including technology, policy, and ethics, and are deeply engaged in shaping future of biotechnology policy and practices.”

New insights, new risks

In his new post, Relman said he intends to build on this foundation by creating an initiative that consolidates and focuses activity in biosecurity, develops research and educational programs, attracts new resources, and looks outward at opportunities for policy impact and changing practices across the globe.

Relman said that “new capabilities and insights are reshaping important aspects of the life sciences and associated technologies, and are accompanied by a host of new risks.” If misused, whether by malice or accident, “they pose the potential for large-scale harm,” he noted.

Relman added that the initiative will bring together interest and expertise across the centers and programs of FSI in partnership with Schools and Departments across the university.

At FSI, CISAC will co-sponsor the biological security initiative, which will leverage Stanford expertise in the life sciences, engineering, law and policy.  Key partners will include Tim Stearns (biology), Drew Endy (bioengineering), Mildred Cho (bioethics), and Hank Greely (law), according to Relman. The biosecurity group will also partner with another new program at FSI in global health and conflict, which is led by Paul Wise, Frank Fukuyama, Steve Stedman, Steve Krasner, and others, he added.

Stanford’s School of Medicine and Department of Medicine will also co-sponsor the initiative, thanks to leadership from Lloyd Minor, Michele Barry and Robert Harrington. Relman looks forward to establishing similar relationships with other schools and departments, he said.

 “These partnerships are critical. I’m excited to work with a growing community both within and beyond Stanford towards the goal of a peaceful and prosperous world in the century of biology,” he said.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

David Relman, Center for International Security and Cooperation: relman@stanford.edu

Megan Palmer, Center for International Security and Cooperation:  mjpalmer@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Siegfried S. Hecker wrote the following essay for Politico Magazine on the subject of the Trump administration's approach to North Korea:

Now that the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula has been at least temporarily defused thanks to Kim Jong Un’s announcement that he would wait and see before launching missiles toward Guam—despite ominous North Korean propaganda as the U.S. and South Korea launch their latest joint military exercises—it’s time to step back and ask ourselves the big questions about just how useful our approach to North Korea’s nuclear program has been so far. 

My answer: Not very useful at all. During the past 15 years, North Korea first built the bomb and then expanded it to a nuclear arsenal that threatens the region, while Washington has continued to deny reality with its call for complete denuclearization. Which is why it’s time to take a long and serious look at the next option: talking with North Korea.

Although a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Secretaries Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson earlier this month served to lower tensions by stating that the United States was still pursuing peaceful denuclearization, it does not introduce any new elements that could bring the two sides closer to ending the nuclear crisis. The op-ed, which reassured Kim that “the U.S. has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea,” is a welcome relief from Mr. Trump’s “fire and fury” warning to Kim. But this approach is likely to fare no better in compelling Pyongyang give up its nuclear weapons than the Obama administration’s “strategic patience.”

So—how can we make real progress?

Washington should drop its preoccupation with North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threat. It is misplaced and dangerous. Instead, Trump administration officials should talk with Pyongyang, face to face, without any preconditions, to avert what I consider the greatest North Korean nuclear threat—that of stumbling into an inadvertent nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula, which may lead to hundreds of thousands deaths including thousands of American citizens.

It’s important to understand why Kim is so obsessed with these weapons: to deter the United States from attacking North Korea and what Pyongyang calls “hostile policies.” Striking the U.S. with a nuclear-tipped missile would be suicide, and there’s no evidence that Kim is suicidal.

What’s more, there’s a lot to indicate that North Korea isn’t close enough to developing ICBM-capable missiles to strike the United States even if it wanted to. The panic over North Korea’s missiles was elevated recently when leaked classified U.S. intelligence estimates were reported to indicate that Pyongyang has already achieved such capabilities, in addition to possessing as many as 60 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But I don’t concur with those estimates.

Based on my 50 years of experience with nuclear technologies and nuclear weapons, combined with what I saw and learned during my seven visits to North Korea beginning in 2004, I don’t believe Pyongyang has yet mastered the key elements of delivering a nuclear-tipped ICBM to the continental United States. Although North Korea demonstrated significant progress in the missile field with two launches in July, experts have raised serious questions about whether it has demonstrated all the missile and re-entry vehicle technologies that will protect the nuclear warheads during the fiery plunge into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Moreover, the nuclear warhead that must be mounted on the missile is the least developed and least tested part of North Korea’s nuclear ICBM ambitions. It must survive the extreme temperatures and mechanical stresses involved during launch, flight and re-entry into the atmosphere. It must detonate above the target by design, not accidentally explode on launch or burn up during reentry. More missile tests are needed that mirror real ICBM conditions to permit measurements that more accurately define the extreme conditions that the delicate materials such as plutonium, highly enriched uranium and chemical high explosives experience inside the warheads. It is much simpler to detonate a nuclear device in an underground tunnel under controlled conditions than to simulate all of the conditions a warhead experiences on the way to its target. 

What makes matters even more challenging for Pyongyang is that it has very little plutonium and highly enriched uranium. I have estimated that North Korea has 20 to 40 kilograms plutonium and 200 to 450 kilograms highly enriched uranium. My analysis is based on what I saw during my visits to the Yongbyon nuclear complex and on extensive discussions with their nuclear experts. These stocks have to serve multiple uses: They must be shared between experiments required to understand the world’s most complex elements, nuclear tests to certify the design of the weapons and stock for the arsenal. My best estimate, albeit with considerable uncertainty, is that the North’s combined inventories of plutonium and highly enriched uranium suffice for perhaps 20 to 25 nuclear weapons, not the 60 reported in the leaked intelligence estimate.

North Korea will need a few more nuclear tests because its experience with either material, plutonium or highly enriched uranium, for warheads is too limited for ICBM use. Nuclear test site preparations appear complete, but Pyongyang is most likely weighing the technical benefits against the political risks of conducting such tests. Whereas I believe North Korea has insufficient test data for ICBM warheads, we must assume it has already learned enough to mount a warhead on its shorter-range missiles that can reach all of South Korea and Japan because these missiles are able to accommodate bigger nuclear warheads and these would experience less stringent operational conditions.

In other words, the North still has a ways to go to pose a serious ICBM threat, but it is clearly working in that direction. The danger is that in his drive to achieve a greater balance with the United States by perfecting a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the continental U.S., Kim could miscalculate where Trump’s red line actually is, triggering a retaliatory action by Trump that could escalate to a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. Our problem is that we know nothing about Kim and the military leaders who control his nuclear arsenal and drive the missile and nuclear development programs. It’s time to talk and find out.

And we have to talk now, without demanding that North Korea agree to any preconditions, such as those suggested by Mattis and Tillerson – namely, an immediate cessation of its provocative threats, nuclear tests, missile launches and other weapons tests. Pyongyang is not about to make unilateral concessions before talks. One should read Kim’s announcement that he will wait with the missile launches as a positive signal, although he added that the U.S. must stop its “arrogant provocations.”

The diplomatic opening created last week on both sides makes such talks possible. President Trump should send a small team of senior military and diplomatic leaders to talk to Pyongyang. These talks would not be negotiations—not yet. Importantly, these talks would not be a reward or a concession to Pyongyang and should not be construed as signaling acceptance of a nuclear-armed North Korea. Talking would, however, be a necessary step toward re-establishing critical links of communication to avoid a nuclear catastrophe. The dialogue should stress the need for mechanisms to avoid misunderstanding, miscalculation or misinterpretation of actions that could quickly bring us over the cliff into a nuclear war.

The talks would provide an opportunity to convey Secretary Tillerson’s message that Washington does not seek regime change face to face in Pyongyang. In simplest terms, the team could underline the message that Washington is deterred from attacking the North, but not from defending the United States and its allies. It should reiterate that any attack on South Korea or Japan, be it with conventional, chemical or nuclear weapons, would bring a devastating retaliatory response upon North Korea.

The team can also impress upon Pyongyang that ensuring the safety and security of nuclear weapons is an awesome responsibility. These two issues are becoming more challenging as North Korea strives to make its nuclear arsenal more combat-ready. A nuclear-weapon accident in the North would be disastrous, as would a struggle to control the North’s nuclear weapons in the case of attempted regime change from within or without. All indications are that such talks would be strongly supported by the North’s two most important neighbors, South Korea and China, particularly if Washington consults them before.

For too long, America’s policy toward North Korea has been based on impractical goals. Complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization was a hallmark of the George W. Bush administration’s approach to North Korea and was also pursued by the Obama administration. Whereas complete and verifiable denuclearization might be realistic long-term goals, irreversible is impossible short of the total loss of human memory. The U.S. Manhattan Project produced the bomb in 27 months more than 70 years ago, and that was without knowing with certainty at the outset that it was even possible.

It was under Bush that North Korea first built the bomb and under Obama that it expanded to a threatening nuclear arsenal. Both presidents failed to address the root cause of Pyongyang’s determined effort to build a nuclear weapons arsenal—assuring the Kim regime’s security. Now, Trump faces a North Korea with the ability to inflict unacceptable damage to U.S. allies and U.S. assets in the region, while it also continues its drive to threaten the continental U.S. Perhaps, much as Dwight Eisenhower talked to Nikita Khrushchev, Richard Nixon to China’s Mao Zedong, and Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, Trump can take the next step with North Korea, and talk now to avert a nuclear catastrophe.

Rod Ewing will serve as co-director of the sciences for Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist, is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He begins his new position on Sept. 1, following David Relman, the previous co-director for the sciences. Amy Zegart is the CISAC co-director for the social sciences.

Ewing, whose research is focused on the properties of nuclear materials, leads the Reset Nuclear Waste Policy program at CISAC. He describes the center as a unique organization that “explicitly acknowledges” the role of science and the social sciences in formulating policy. 

“CISAC is a rare opportunity for political and social scientists, historians and scientists and engineers to work together on solving pressing problems. The fact that we have two co-directors reflects a serious intent to integrate knowledge from the widest range of perspectives in order to find policy solutions to important problems,” he said.

Scholarship, research

Ewing is the author or co-author of more than 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in more than 100 different journals. Ewing was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He is also a founding editor of the magazine, Elements. In 2015, he won the Roebling Medal, the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America for scientific eminence.

“My work on nuclear waste started out with a focus on technical issues, but over several decades, I realized that technical solutions were not enough.  I now focus on trying to understand why institutions – universities, national laboratories and federal agencies – fail to arrive at the technical solutions. I have been surprised to learn how little science has been applied to the nuclear waste problem – and how social issues have dominated the outcome,” Ewing said.

Expertise, policy

In particular, Ewing seeks to understand why so little information from experts rise through an organization and change accepted ‘truths.’

“I first saw this when I was a soldier in Vietnam and continue to see the same problem in many other areas, that a disconnect exists between the on-the-ground reality and policy,” said Ewing who served in the U.S. Army as an interpreter of Vietnamese attached to the 25th Infantry Division from 1969 to 1970.

“At the very highest levels, policies seem to be based on a hunch or a bias rather than an analysis of the problem. I have always wondered why this is so common – as it often leads a country or organization down a wrong and often dangerous path,” he added.

Born in Abilene, Texas, Ewing attended Texas Christian University (B.S., 1968, summa cum laude) and graduate school at Stanford University (M.S., 1972; Ph.D., 1974). He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico (1974) rising to the rank of Regents’ Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences in 1993.

From 1997 to 2013, Ewing was a professor at the University of Michigan, and in 2014, he joined Stanford.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Rod Ewing, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8641, rewing1@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

When it comes to cybersecurity, Stanford is the hot spot, especially if you work in national security.

On Aug. 18, officials from the U.S. military, National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from countries known as the “Five Eyes,” attended cybersecurity discussions on campus. Most attendees were chief information officers. John Zangardi, the principal deputy chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Defense, led the group.

The "Five Eyes" refers to an alliance comprising the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. These countries abide by an agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence.

The event was held at the Hoover Institution, a co-sponsor along with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations. Participants took part in two roundtables – the first one, “Geopolitical Perspectives,” provided a strategic overview of international security with Stanford’s William J. Perry (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Michael McFaul (FSI and the Hoover Institution), Toomas Henrik Ilves (Hoover Institution), and Francis Fukuyama (the Hoover Institution and FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law).

The second discussion, the “Cyber Information Warfare Panel,” focused on cyber challenges with Amy Zegart (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Herb Lin (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), John Villasenor (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), and Jay Healey (CISAC).