A shadowy terror group smuggles a crude nuclear bomb into the United States, then detonates it right in the heart of Washington D.C., setting off a 15 kiloton explosion.

Eighty thousand Americans are killed instantly, including the president, vice president and most of the members of Congress, and more than a hundred thousand more are seriously wounded.

News outlets are soon broadcasting a message they’ve all received from a group claiming responsibility.

It says there are five more bombs hidden in five different cities across the America, and one bomb will be set off each week for the next five weeks unless all American troops based overseas are ordered to immediately return to the U.S. homeland.

The nation is thrown into chaos, as millions scramble to flee the cities, clogging roads and choking telecommunications systems.

The stock market crashes, before trading is halted altogether.

Martial law is declared, amid widespread looting and violence.

That was just one of the nightmare scenarios for a potential nuclear disaster that former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry vividly described as he delivered the Center for International Security and Cooperation’s annual Drell Lecture on Wednesday.

“My bottom line is that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War,” Perry said.

Most people were “blissfully unaware” of the danger that simmering conflicts in geopolitical flash points around the globe – including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan – could easily turn nuclear, Perry told the Stanford audience.

A new nuclear arms race with Russia

Perry said he had tried to foster closer cooperation between the U.S. and Russia when he headed the Pentagon during the mid ‘90s and helped oversee the joint dismantling of four thousand nuclear weapons.

“When I left the Pentagon, I believed we were well on the way to ending forever that Cold War enmity, but that was not to be,” he said.

William J. Perry shares a video depicting the threat of nuclear terrorism with a Stanford audience.

Since then, relations between the West and Russia have soured badly, prompting Russia to modernize its nuclear arsenal and assume a more aggressive nuclear posture.

“They’re well advanced in rebuilding their Cold War nuclear arsenal, and it is Putin’s stated first priority,” Perry said.

“And they have dropped their former policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, and replaced it with a policy that says nuclear weapons will be their weapon of choice if they are threatened.”

While Perry said he believed Russian president Vladimir Putin did not want to engage in a military conflict with NATO forces, he said he was concerned about the possibility of Russia making a strategic miscalculation and stumbling into a conflict where they might resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“If they did that there’s no way of predicting or controlling the escalation that would follow thereafter,” Perry said.

Chinese economic problems increasing tensions

In Asia, a slowing Chinese economy could exacerbate domestic political tensions over issues such as wealth inequality and pollution, and encourage Chinese leaders to divert attention from problems at home by focusing on enemies abroad.

“China has had more than 10 percent growth now for almost three decades, but I think there’s trouble ahead,” Perry said.

“The time-proven safety valve for any government that’s in trouble is ultra-nationalism, which in the case of China translates into anti-Americanism and anti-Japanese.”

China has seen a major growth in military expenditures over the last decade, and it has used that investment to build a blue water navy and develop effective anti-ship missiles designed to drive the U.S. Navy hundreds of miles back from the Chinese coastline.

One potential flash point for a conflict between China and the U.S. are the artificial islands that China has been building in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

“In a sense, China is regarding the South China Sea as a domestic lake, and we regard it and most other countries regard it as international waters, so their actions have been challenged by the U.S. Navy and will continue to be challenged,” Perry said.

North Korea’s growing nuclear threat

Meanwhile, China’s neighbor North Korea has continued to defy the international community and conducted another nuclear test in January.

“North Korea is today building a nuclear arsenal, and I would say clearly it’s of the highest priority in their government, and they have adopted outrageous rhetoric about how they might use those nuclear weapons,” Perry said.

William J. Perry delivers the Drell Lecture in an address entitled "A National Security Walk Around the World."

“These missiles today have only conventional warheads that are of no significant concern, but they are developing nuclear warheads,” Perry said.

“They already have developed a nuclear bomb, and the latest test, as well as tests to come, will be designed to perfect a bomb small enough and compact enough and durable enough to fit into a warhead. If they succeed in doing that, then the bluster will become a real threat.”

Perry said he hoped China and the United States could combine forces and adopt a “carrot and stick” diplomatic approach to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program – with the United States offering aid and international recognition, and China threatening to cut off supplies of food and aid.

He said he expected to see “more acting out” from the North Korean regime in the coming months, in the form of further nuclear and rocket tests.

Like it or not, the Iran deal is the only deal we’ll get

The landmark deal reached last year, where Iran agree to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, was a better resolution than Perry had expected to the negotiations, but it has met with significant resistance from groups he described as “strange bedfellows.”

“The opposition in Israel and the United States opposed the deal because they fear it will allow Iran to get a bomb,” Perry said.

“Whereas the opposition in Iran opposed the deal because they fear it will prevent Iran from getting a bomb. Both cannot be right.”

Many Republican presidential hopefuls have publicly stated on the campaign trail that they would withdraw from the deal if they got elected to the White House, but Perry said that would be a strategic mistake.

“The opposition in the United States has a simple formula – we should withdraw from the deal, we should reinstate sanctions, and we should renegotiate a better deal,” Perry said.

“Let me be as blunt as I can, this is a pure fantasy. There is not the remotest possibility that the sanction could be reapplied if the United States withdraws from this deal, because the day we withdraw from the deal, our allies are gone, the sanctions are gone, there will be no renegotiations without sanctions, so this deal, like it or not, is the only deal we will ever get.”

Another “Mumbai” attack could spark regional nuclear war

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have more than a hundred nuclear weapons on each side, as well as the missiles to deliver them, and a conventional military conflict between them could quickly escalate into a regional nuclear war, Perry said.

Another large-scale terror attack, like the coordinated assault in Mumbai that killed more than 163 people in 2008, could lead India to retaliate militarily against Pakistan (which India blames for encouraging the terror groups operating in Pakistani territory).

Perry said he was concerned that Pakistan would then use tactical nuclear weapons against invading Indian troops, and that India might then respond with a nuclear attack of its own on Pakistan.

“So this is the nightmare scenario of how a regional nuclear war could start,” Perry said.

“A nightmare that would involve literally tens of millions of deaths, along with the possibility of stimulating a nuclear winter that would cause widespread tragedies all over the planet.”

A ray of hope

Despite all the potential for nuclear disaster in the current geopolitical environment, Perry said he was still hopeful that nuclear catastrophe could be avoided.

"While much of my talk today has a doomsday ring to it, that truly is not who I am,” Perry said.

“I’m basically an optimist. When I see a cloud, I look for a ray to shine through that cloud.”

One important step toward reducing the nuclear threat would be improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, he said.

“My ray of sunshine, my hope, is I believe we can still reverse the slide in U.S. Russia relations, he said.

“We must begin that by restoring civil dialog. We must restore cooperation between the United States and Russia in areas where we have mutual interest…If we succeed in doing that, then we can work to stop and reverse the drift to a greater and greater dependence on nuclear weapons.”

Perry ended his speech by urging the audience to keep striving to rid the world of the threat of nuclear weapons.

“We must pursue our ideals in order to keep alive our hope – hope for a safer world for our children and for our grandchildren,” he said.

Why did Iran agree to send the bulk of its low-enriched uranium out of the country and remove the core of its Arak reactor? Those actions significantly lengthen the time it would take to build up a nuclear weapon program.

Siegfried Hecker, CISAC senior fellow and former Los Alamost National Laboratory director, shares his personal view in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: http://thebulletin.org/iran-nuclear-option-more-trouble-it-was-worth9064

Can the U.S. find the right balance between cooperation and containment, so it can realize the long-term benefits of the nuclear deal with Iran? CISAC visiting fellow Nicholas Burns, who helped to negotiate sanctions against Iran for the Bush administration a decade ago, offers his opinion in this piece for The New York Times.

Stanford nuclear experts said they were skeptical of North Korea’s claim that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb this week.

However, they said the test was an important step forward for North Korea’s nuclear program and would have a destabilizing effect on the entire region.

“I don’t believe it was a real hydrogen bomb, but my greatest concern is not so much whether or not they actually tested a hydrogen bomb, but rather that they tested at all,” said Siegfried Hecker, former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has “a track record of exaggerated statements, hyperbole and outright lies,” according to Scott Sagan, Caroline S.G. Munro professor of Political Science.

“The propaganda machine in North Korea has made all sorts of claims about Kim Jong-un’s personal prowess and his history, and it is totally unsurprising that he might make exaggerated claims about North Korea’s military prowess,” Sagan said.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry said he also doubted that North Korea had detonated a two-stage hydrogen bomb.

“Whether it’s a hydrogen bomb or not, it’s very dangerous, destabilizing development,” said Perry.

“It’s obvious they’re working to increase the capability and size of their nuclear arsenal and that represents a huge danger to the region and creates major instability and major concerns on the part of South Korea and Japan.”

Many North Korea watchers had been anticipating another nuclear test.

“We’ve thought that the North Koreans could test at any time – that the tunnels were ready, that they could do this at any time – so it would be a political decision, not a technical decision,” said Thomas Fingar, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Hecker said North Korea’s latest nuclear test would move the country closer to being able to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and mount it on a missile, extending the reach of their nuclear weapons.

“They will have achieved greater sophistication in their bomb design – that is the most worrisome aspect,” Hecker said.

“At this point, what makes their nuclear arsenal more dangerous is not so much explosive power of the bomb, but its size, weight and the ability to deliver it with missiles.”

On the diplomatic agenda, the U.S. and its allies will likely push for stronger sanctions in the wake of the tests, according to Kathleen Stephens, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and William J. Perry fellow at Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC).

“In the UN the U.S., Japan and South Korea will likely look for another, and stronger, UN Security Council resolution, presumably with some efforts to attach to it some teeth and strengthen sanctions,” Stephens said.

The U.S. Congress is currently considering financial sanctions that would cut of all access to U.S. banks for any banks dealing with the North Koreans.

But financial sanctions would likely be less effective in dealing with North Korea than they had been with Iran, according to Fingar.

“It’s like hitting a masochist,” said Fingar.

“North Korea is relatively insulated from the external economy, where Iran wasn’t. Iran had a middle class, you could make sanctions hurt, they could have a real effect. You could make it hard for the North Koreans to buy luxury goods, but at the end of the day, is that going to bring down the regime?”

Financial sanctions against North Korea could have the unintended consequence of also hurting China, said David Straub, associate director of the Korea program at APARC.

“This could be problematic for China because many of the transactions that North Korea conducts would be going thorough Chinese banks, and the Chinese, understandably might not be happy about the US financial sanctions on them, in effect,” Straub said.

Perry recommended that the U.S. reinvigorate diplomatic talks with North Korea in collaboration with China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

“I would not give up on negotiations with North Korea yet,” Perry said.

“What could have been done many years ago was following through on negotiations with North Korea at the turn of the Century, which were proceeding robustly in the last years of Clinton’s second term, but were abandoned by the Bush Administration...That was a geo-strategic error.”

But Hecker said those negotiations would be harder now.

“I have previously argued that we should focus on three “No’s” for three “Yes’s” – that is no more bombs, no better bombs (meaning no testing) and no export – in return for addressing the North’s security concerns, its energy shortage and its economic woes,” said Hecker.

“This could have worked when I first proposed it 2008 after one of my seven visits to North Korea. It will be more difficult now."

Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker assesses North Korea’s claim to have detonated a hydrogen bomb in an underground nuclear test this week. Hecker is one of the world’s top experts on the North Korean nuclear program. He has visited North Korea seven times since 2004, and is the only Western scientist known to have ever been inside a North Korean uranium enrichment facility. He is currently a senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a research professor of Management Science and Engineering.

Do you believe that North Korea actually detonated a hydrogen bomb in its latest nuclear test?

I don’t believe it was a real hydrogen bomb, but my greatest concern is not so much whether or not they actually tested a hydrogen bomb, but rather that they tested at all. Since this test worked, they will have achieved greater sophistication in their bomb design – that is the most worrisome aspect. This is their fourth test – with each test they can learn a lot.

What makes a hydrogen bomb a more threatening weapon than a conventional atomic bomb?

A hydrogen bomb can be a hundred or a thousand-fold more powerful than a fission bomb. Certainly a blast of a megaton will be much more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb, but the more important part is the ability to deliver at long range and to do it accurately. That is what would threaten the United States and its allies most; even with the size of nuclear blasts they have already demonstrated.

White House officials say that initial data from nearby monitoring stations are not consistent with a hydrogen bomb test. How will we know for sure whether it was a hydrogen bomb or not?

The short answer is that we may never know. The telltale signs of a hydrogen bomb are very difficult to pick up in a deeply buried test. Typically hydrogen bombs have greater explosive power or yield. This test is currently believed to have resulted in a seismic tremor of 5.1 on the Richter earthquake scale. That would make it roughly equivalent to the third nuclear test in February 2013. At that time, North Korea claimed it tested a miniaturized atomic bomb – there was no mention of a hydrogen bomb. My estimate of the yield for the 2013 test is roughly 7 to 16 kilotons – which is in the range of the 13-kiloton Hiroshima blast. As far as destructiveness, a Hiroshima-scale explosion is bad enough. Detonated in Manhattan, it may kill as many as a quarter million people. The power of the 2013 and the current explosion is more consistent with fission bombs than hydrogen bombs.

Can you rule out the possibility that it was a hydrogen bomb?

I find it highly unlikely that the North tested a real hydrogen fusion bomb, but we know so little about North Korea’s nuclear weapons design and test results that we cannot completely rule it out. A modern hydrogen bomb is a two-stage device that uses a fission bomb to drive the second stage fusion device. A two-stage device is very difficult to design and construct, and is likely still beyond the reach of North Korea today. However, by comparison, China’s early nuclear weapon program progressed rapidly. It tested its first fission bomb in 1964 and less than three years later demonstrated a hydrogen bomb – and that was 50 years ago. North Korea has now been in the nuclear testing business for almost 10 years, so we can’t rule anything out for certain.

If it wasn’t a hydrogen bomb, what kind of bomb might it have been?

What may be more likely than a two-stage hydrogen bomb is that they took an intermediate step that utilizes hydrogen (actually hydrogen isotopes) fuel to boost the explosive yield of the fission bomb, a sort of turbocharging. Such a device has a fusion or “hydrogen” component, but is not a real hydrogen bomb. It allows miniaturization – that is making the bomb smaller and lighter. Moreover, it would be the first step toward eventually mastering a two-stage hydrogen bomb.

The most important aspect then is to miniaturize, whether it is a fission bomb, a boosted fission bomb, or a hydrogen bomb. The Nagasaki bomb weighed 5,000 kilograms. It was delivered in a specially equipped B-29 bomber. North Korea wants to demonstrate it has a deterrent. To do so, it needs to be able to credibly threaten the U.S. mainland or our overseas assets. For that, you have to make the bomb (more correctly, the warhead) small enough to mount on a missile. The smaller and lighter, the greater the reach. At this point, what makes their nuclear arsenal more dangerous is not so much explosive power of the bomb, but its size, weight and the ability to deliver it with missiles.

How close is North Korea to being able to credibly threaten a nuclear strike against the mainland United States?

North Korea is still a long way off from being able to strike the US mainland. It has only had one successful space launch. It needs a lot more, but it has a large effort in that direction.

Do you think North Korea conducted this test for political or technical reasons?

North Korea had very strong technical and military drivers for this test, as well as follow-on tests. The political environment is mostly what has constrained it from testing earlier and more often. However, this test demonstrates that Pyongyang is willing to weather the political storm this test will bring. It has done so for all previous tests.

What are your current estimates on the size of North Korea's stockpile of nuclear weapons and materials?

Much like in the area of sophistication of the bomb, we have little information of what North Korea actually possesses. The best we can do is to estimate how much bomb fuel, plutonium and highly enriched uranium, they may have produced and estimate how many bombs they can produce from that stockpile. My best estimate at this time is that they may have enough bomb fuel for 18 bombs with a capacity to make 6 to 7 more annually. That, combined with the increased sophistication they surely achieved with this test, paints a troublesome picture.

How should the U.S. respond?

I am concerned about we haven’t done to date. Washington has lost many opportunities we have had since North Korea began its nuclear weapon production in earnest in 2003. One thing that’s clear is that doing what we and the rest of the world have done so far – half-hearted diplomacy, ultimatums, and sanctions – have failed, so these are not the answer. I have previously argued that we should focus on three “No’s” for three “Yes’s” – that is no more bombs, no better bombs (meaning no testing) and no export – in return for addressing the North’s security concerns, its energy shortage and its economic woes. This could have worked when I first proposed it 2008 after one of my seven visits to North Korea. It will be more difficult now.

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This book is a counter to the conventional wisdom that the United States can and should do more to reduce both the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategies and the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal.  That conventional wisdom, argues Brad Roberts in The Case for Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, has not been informed by the experience of the United States since the Cold War in trying to adapt deterrence to a changed world or of the Obama administration to create the conditions that would allow further significant changes to U.S. nuclear policy and posture.  A CISAC affiliate, Roberts served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy during the first Obama administration. He wrote the book, which draws heavily on his experience in government, during his time as a consulting professor and William J. Perry fellow at CISAC in 2014. To purchase the book, please visit: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=26137

Why did you write this book?

My main purpose was to reclaim the middle in the U.S. nuclear policy debate.  As in so much of the rest of our national political life, the middle has disappeared from this particular debate, leaving two deeply antagonistic camps to dominate it. One favors more disarmament now, while the other sees many enduring roles for U.S. nuclear weapons. The division didn’t matter so long as the United States could live off the investments of the Cold War.  It can no longer do so, as old weapons and delivery systems age out and expensive decisions must be made.  A coherent and centrist approach is needed to guide national choices, and this book attempts to fill that gap.

What is your main argument?

That the conditions do not now exist for the United States to safely take additional steps to further reduce the number and role of U.S. nuclear weapons. The Obama administration set out a strategy for creating those conditions in 2009, and the results have been disappointing. Russia has rejected further arms control. China has rejected further transparency.  Others have refused to join an international consensus against nuclear weapons. This experience must temper enthusiasm for the disarmament project. The conditions do not exist and are not proximate.

What is the case against nuclear weapons? And why do you think the case for nuclear weapons is more compelling?

The case against nuclear weapons has been made on many grounds:  historical (‘these are nothing more than cold war relics’), moral (‘their use in war would violate the laws of war so deterrence is immoral as well’), and prudential (‘we can’t prove that deterrence works but we can prove that these are dangerous weapons’). The case for nuclear weapons derives first and foremost from the role the United States wants to play in the world—as a security guarantor to others and a projector of power to promote stability and our values. In today’s world, without nuclear weapons, the United States could not play that role.

Can you ever imagine a scenario where the U.S. would need to use nuclear weapons again?

We don't have nuclear weapons to fight and win wars with them; we have nuclear weapons to ensure they are never used against us or our allies—in other words, for deterrence.  The President would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances when the vital interests of the United States or an ally are at risk. Though extreme, such circumstances are not implausible. The cold-war vintage bolt-from-the-blue major strike isn’t the potential problem today; rather, the problem is a regional conflict that goes badly for an adversary who then tries to escalate his way out of failed aggression against a U.S. ally. At least three nuclear-armed potential adversaries have now long studied the common problem they face:  deterring and defeating a conventionally-superior nuclear-armed major power and its allies. They have developed theories of victory built around nuclear coercion, blackmail, and brinksmanship, aimed at breaking the will of the United States and its allies, including with limited nuclear strikes to demonstrate their resolve. Our deterrence strategy requires that we have an effective ability to respond and that the threat to employ it in the circumstances they create is credible. Moreover, let us distinguish the verb “employ” from “use.” U.S. nuclear weapons are used every day to cast a shadow of doubt over the thinking of potential challengers to U.S. interests and to assure our allies. 

President Obama set out a vision for a world free of nuclear weapons at a speech in Prague in April, 2009. Does your book contradict the President’s strategic vision?

President Obama is a pragmatist and this was reflected in the Prague speech. In 2009, we took some steps to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons and set out a plan for working with others to create the conditions for further reductions. But so long as nuclear weapons remain, the President is committed to ensuring that nuclear deterrence remains effective. Toward that end, the administration has expended considerable time, energy, and money.  This is the story of that effort and a distillation of key lessons.