Former Secretary of Defense William Perry is more scared about nuclear weapons than he has ever been before.
He served as Secretary of Defense during former President Bill Clinton’s first term, but he has been involved in government security and discussions about nuclear threats for decades. Now he is a professor at Stanford University and the co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, an academic endeavor. He is further away from the politics of defending the country, but he’s thinking about it just as much.
“The risk of a cold nuclear war never seemed academic to me,” he told a gathering of 40 students at the School of Law Tuesday. “I have never been as worried as I am now that a nuclear bomb will be detonated in a U.S. city.”
Perry recalled one 3 a.m. phone call in the 1970s when a report warned that thousands of Soviet missiles were heading for the United States. It was a false alarm, but he said he only had 10 minutes to discern the threat.
The small turnout for the lunchtime talk was a result of space restrictions and Perry’s own stipulations, several event organizers said.
Perry joked easily with the intimate group that attended as he explained the “carrots and sticks” concept of diplomacy and the need for nuclear disarmament. In North Korea, in particular, he said the George W. Bush administration was “not using either carrots or sticks and the problem continues to drift off.”
He said he was worried about the growing threat from religious fundamentalist groups, and he underscored a now-familiar sentiment that the next major wars will be fought against civilizations rather than states. Several students in attendance, however, had hoped he would concentrate more on the effect that American foreign policy has on the development of fundamentalist groups and their relationship to militant organizations.
Perry focused, instead, on explaining his policy position on the war in Iraq. He supported the original decision to appeal to the United Nations for more stringent inspections for long-range missiles and chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and materials. But he did not agree with the decision to go to war without a U.N. Security Council resolution.
He added that presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., holds a similar view. People accuse Kerry of wavering on Iraq because the situation is nuanced, he said.
Duke Law Democrats organized the event after officials from Kerry’s campaign contacted the group. Originally a constitutional law group planned to bring Perry to speak, but since the event had “some campaign involvement,” the Duke Law Dems hosted Perry by themselves, said Ian Millhiser, a second-year law student and chair of Duke Law Dems.
Courtney Crowder, political director for Kerry’s campaign in North Carolina, said no one from Duke paid to bring Perry to campus.
Students who heard the speech thought that despite the admittedly partisan slant, Perry balanced the issues well and supported his positions. “From what he said, I thought it was a very fair analysis of the last three years and our response to Sept. 11 and the threat of global terrorism,” said junior Jared Fish, who coordinated the undergraduate invitations for Duke Democrats.
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