William J. Perry was only 18 when he found himself surrounded by death, a young U.S. Army mapping specialist in Japan during the Army of Occupation. The atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and World War II had just come to an end. 

“The vast ruins that once had been the great city of Tokyo – nothing, nothing had prepared me for such utter devastation that was wrought by massive waves of firebombing rained down by American bomber attacks,” said Perry, who was then shipped off to the island of Okinawa in the aftermath of the last great battle of WWII.

More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in that closing battle of 1945, codenamed Operation Iceberg. 

“Not a single building was left standing; the island was a moonscape denuded of trees and vegetation,” Perry told a rapt audience during a recent speech. “The smell of death was still lingering.” 

The young man quickly understood the staggering magnitude of difference in the destruction caused by traditional firepower and these new atomic bombs.

 “It had taken multiple strikes by thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of high explosive bombs to lay waste to Tokyo,” he recalls. “The same had been done to Hiroshima and then to Nagasaki with just one plane – and just one bomb. Just one bomb. 

“The unleashing of this colossal force indelibly shaped my life in ways that I have now come to see more clearly,” said Perry, who would go on to become the 19^th secretary of defense. “It was a transforming experience. In many ways – I grew up from it.” 

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.  Photo Credit: U.S. Army

Now, nearly seven decades later, the 86-year-old Perry has come full circle. His new winter course will take students back to his fateful days in Japan after the United States became the first – and last – nation to use atomic weapons. He’ll go through the Cold War, the arms race and expanding nuclear arsenals, and today’s potential threats of nuclear terrorism and regional wars provoked by North Korea, Iran or South Asia. 

Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday & Today (IPS 249) – to serve as the backdrop for an online course at Stanford next year – concludes with the declaration Perry made in 2007: The world must rid itself entirely of nuclear weapons. And students will get a primer on how to get involved in organizations that are working on just that. 

“They did not live through the Cold War, so they were never exposed to the dangers and therefore it doesn’t exist to them; it’s just not in their world,” Perry said of millennial and younger students. “I want to make them aware of what the dangers were and how those dangers have evolved.”

Perry and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, both Democrats, joined former Republican Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger in launching a series of OpEds in The Wall Street Journal (the first in 2007) that went viral. Together they outlined how nations could work together toward a world without nuclear weapons.

“I think I have some responsibility since I helped build those weapons – and I think that time is running out,” Perry said in an interview. 

Perry helped shore up the U.S. nuclear arsenal as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, procuring nuclear weapons delivery systems for the Carter administration. Later, as secretary of defense for President Bill Clinton, his priority became the dismantling of nuclear weapons around the world. 

Today, he works on the Nuclear Security Project along with Shultz, Kissinger and Nunn. Former New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman documents their bipartisan alliance in the book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.” That fifth cold warrior is Sidney Drell, the renowned Stanford physicist and co-founder of CISAC. 

Taubman, a consulting professor at CISAC, will guest lecturer in Perry’s class, along with CISAC’s Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway, Martha Crenshaw and Scott Sagan. Other speakers are expected to include Shultz, a distinguished fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution; Andrei Kokoshin, deputy of the Russian State Duma; Ashton B. Carter, who just stepped down as deputy secretary of defense; Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Joeseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.

The world is far from banning the bomb. According to the Ploughshares Fund, an estimated 17,300 nuclear weapons remain in the global stockpile, the majority of which are in Russia and the United States.

                                                                                                CyperusMedia.com

President Barack Obama declared shortly after taking office in his first foreign policy speech in Prague that because the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons, Washington “has a moral responsibility to act.” 

“So today, I state clearly and with conviction, America’s commitment to seek the peace

and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama said back in May 2009. 

Perry – a senior fellow at CISAC who received his BS and MS from Stanford and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics – laments the regression of the movement to dismantle the nuclear legacy of the Cold War. 

Obama has so far not acted on his pledge in his contentious second term, as China and Russia expand their stockpiles. North Korea and Iran are attempting to build nuclear weapons and India and Pakistan are building more fissile material. The U.S. Senate still has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the U.S. and Russia have not moved forward on a follow-up to the New START Treaty. 

Perry recognizes that the issue is slipping from the public conscience, particularly among young people. So he’s putting his name and experience behind a Stanford Online course slated to go live next year. It will correspond with the release of his memoir, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink” and will take a more documentary approach, weaving together key moments in Perry’s career with lectures, archival footage and interviews and conversations between Perry and his colleagues and counterparts. 

"Bill Perry has had a remarkable career and this project draws on his unparalleled experience over a pivotal period in history," said John Mitchell, vice provost for online learning. "We hope his brilliant reflections will be useful to everyone with an interest in the topic, and to teachers and students everywhere." 

At the heart of his winter course, online class and memoir are what Perry calls the five great lessons he learned in the nuclear age. The first four are grim remnants of what he witnessed over the years: the destructive nature of the atomic bombs on Japan; his mathematical calculations about the number of deaths from nuclear warfare; his work for the CIA during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and one pre-dawn call in 1978 from the North American Aerospace Defense Command saying there were 200 missiles headed toward the United States from the Soviet Union. That turned out to be a false, but terrifying alarm. 

His fifth final lesson is hopeful, if not cautionary. It goes like this: 

As secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, Perry oversaw the dismantling of 8,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and the United States and helped the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to go entirely non-nuclear. In that mission, he often visited Pervomaysk in the Ukraine, which was once the Soviet Union’s largest ICBM site, with 700 nuclear warheads all aimed at targets in the United States. 

On his final trip to Pervomaysk in 1996, he joined the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministers to plant sunflowers where those missiles had once stood. 

“So reducing the danger of nuclear weapons is not a fantasy; it has been done,” Perry said. “I will not accept that it cannot be done. I shall do everything I can to ensure nuclear weapons will never again be used – because I believe time is not on our side.”

Iran has struck a historic deal with the United States and five other world powers (known as the P5+1), agreeing to temporarily halt its nuclear program for six months in exchange for limited and gradual relief of sanctions. Iran agreed to halt its uranium enrichment above 5 percent and the foreign powers agreed to give Iran access to $4.2 billion from oil sales. The six-month period will now give diplomats time to negotiate a more sweeping agreement.

We ask three Stanford scholars to weigh in on the technical and political merits of the agreement. CISAC Senior Fellow, Siegfried Hecker, has been working on Track II diplomacy with Tehran in recent years and was one of a number of Americans who met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his delegation of diplomats and nuclear scientists after the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in September. Iranian-American Abbas Milani is director of Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford and a contributing editor at The New Republic. Ivanka Barzashka is a CISAC affiliate and a research associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King’s College, London, who specializes in Iran’s nuclear capability.

Just how close did Iran come to being able to build a bomb?

Hecker: Very close, possibly weeks away from making sufficient highly enriched uranium bomb fuel, and six months or so away from building a nuclear weapon. Iran developed the nuclear weapon option under the umbrella of the pursuit of civilian reactor fuel. The technologies for developing reactor fuel and bomb fuel are the same, the difference is in the level of enrichment in Uranium-235: 3 to 5 percent for commercial reactors, as much as 20 percent for research and medical isotope production reactors, compared to roughly 90 percent for weapons. The IAEA reports that Iran has not satisfactorily explained nor given access to work and sites suspected of past nuclear weapons-related activities.

This leads me to conclude that Iran had likely previously done most of the work necessary to build nuclear weapons once it obtained the capacity to produce bomb fuel. Iran’s extensive missile development and testing program also points to Tehran pursuing the option of missile deliverable nuclear weapons.

Does the agreement make it more difficult for Iran to pursue the bomb?

Hecker: Yes, the agreement places temporary limits on the level of enrichment of nuclear material and provides for the conversion or dilution of the highest enriched material (20 percent). It will also temporarily halt Iran installing more or better centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at an increasing rate. Iran has also agreed to temporarily halt construction of the heavy-water reactor in Arak. These steps modestly increase the amount of time it would take Iran to obtain nuclear bomb fuel in a breakout scenario. In addition, increased monitoring of facilities as called for in the agreement will provide us with a better understanding of existing capabilities in known facilities and what may exist in potential covert facilities.

They were very close ... six months or so away from building a nuclear weapon."    - Hecker

Why is Iran’s heavy-water reactor in Arak of such concern?

Hecker: It provides a potential second path to the bomb. Iranian nuclear specialists recently told me in New York that they began to design that reactor 20 years ago to replace the old, small American-provided reactor in Tehran that was being used for medical isotope production and research. Construction is several years behind schedule, but I was told it is close to completion. When complete, it would allow Iran to produce badly needed medical isotopes. But concurrently, the choice of reactor design and power level also means that it will produce enough plutonium to fuel one or two bombs per year if Iran decided to extract the plutonium from the spent reactor fuel. The Iranian specialists told me that they are very keen to find a solution that provides them with the means to make medical isotopes and alleviates international concerns about plutonium production. That’s a worthy goal, but a tall order that was left for the long-term agreement.

What prevented Iran from building the bomb?

Hecker: I believe Iran’s leadership settled for developing the option for the bomb, but has not yet decided to build or demonstrate the bomb. Until recently, it is also likely that Iran did not have sufficient bomb fuel to build the bomb. I believe they now have that capacity; therefore our focus should be on convincing them not to flip the bomb production switch.

Can you envision a long-term agreement that will prevent Iran from building the bomb?

Hecker: Completely getting rid of the bomb option is not possible through military action or sanctions with political pressure. The only chance is through diplomatic means. We need to make it clear to the Iranian regime that they are better off without pursuing the bomb. This will take time. Iran Foreign Minister Zarif told me that even appearing to pursue the bomb is bad for Iran’s nuclear security. Now if we can only get the Iranian leadership to believe that. If Iran wants nuclear energy and relations with the West, I believe we need nuclear integration, not isolation, such as those peaceful programs in South Korea and Japan.

Kerry's video message about the Geneva Talks 

Stepping aside from the leaders and countries involved, what do you think this six-month agreement means to the Iranian people themselves?

Milani: I think in the short run, it has brought them a double sense of joy and relief: joy that war might be averted, and relief that dire days of economic hardships might begin to end and that maybe the country will no longer be a pariah and join the community of nations. But I think there is also some trepidation: Will the interim agreements turn into an enduring policy or will the radicals use the interim sanction relief to get out of the current jam and then resume their policies?

Are you hopeful this is a significant step forward or is it too early to tell?

Milani: I think it is too early to be definitive but my sense is that momentum is building for the successful continuation of the thaw. Policies of the regime in the last years brought the country to the verge of the abyss. One could put a bit of Biblical touch to what President Rouhani himself says: men and women do not live by centrifuges alone. They need bread and freedom.

This is a win for Obama but it also appears to be a huge win for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Do you believe he is sincere in his commitment to negotiate and keep the talks on track?

Milani: I think Rouhani is one of the cleverest, most cunning and brutality pragmatic leaders the Islamic Republic has seen. He understands that the status quo is untenable and fashions himself as its potential reforming savior. He needs to make this deal work – one that is acceptable to the West, and the international community and sellable domestically as at least a win-win agreement – if he is to politically accomplish his goals as a disciplined man of great ambitions.

The Israelis are up in arms and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deal “a historic mistake” that gives too much to the Iranians. But shouldn’t they be pleased that Iran has stepped back?

Milani: Many in Israel are up in arms, yet others are confident that the U.S. and EU will pursue their interests while never making a deal that threatens Israel's security. In time I think the second narrative might even dominate Israeli discourse.

Is the deal nothing more than a successful confidence-building exercise?

Barzashka (As told to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Nov. 25): The agreement, the first in nearly a decade of confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, is a win for diplomacy and proof that Obama’s strategy of direct engagement with Iran works. Enabled by high-level, face-to-face meetings between Tehran and Washington, the deal was struck despite significant opposition by hardliners in the United States, Iran and Israel.

The P5+1 and Iran adopted tangible, though modest, confidence-building measures that demonstrate both sides are serious about negotiations. The deal reflects reasonable compromises. For example, the P5+1 initially demanded that stockpiled, 20 percent-enriched uranium be shipped out of Iran, but exporting uranium was unacceptable for Tehran. Instead, the two sides agreed that Iran would convert 20-percent enriched uranium hexafluoride to uranium oxide or downblend it to below 5 percent—measures that still buy threat reduction without crossing Iran’s red line.

Finally, the agreement succeeds in building trust by leaving out the hard questions, such as Iran’s right to enrichment, which would be addressed during the next phase of negotiations.

The U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke, was surrounded by attendees at the China 2.0 conference.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, opened the conference with a keynote discussing Tencent's business model, international partnership strategies, and the social impact of internet on Chinese society.

In the second keynote address by Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, he shared his insights into China's recent advances in the technology sector, the Chinese government’s approach to managing the internet, and the risks and opportunities U.S. companies should consider before entering the Chinese market.

Charles Chao, CEO and Chairman of the Board of SINA, closed the conference with a keynote on how Weibo, one of SINA's most popular services, has made an unprecedented impact on Chinese society.

Growth and Innovation in Firms

Tencent started out in 1998 when China had four million internet users. Since then the market has grown 150 times to today’s 600 million users. Tencent’s equity market capitalization recently surpassed the $100 billion mark, and the company generates significantly more revenues than its higher-valued peer Facebook. In his speech, Lau modestly described the company’s “secret sauce number one” as “luck.”

We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.

Martin Lau
President, Tencent

Lau also elaborated how Tencent has created a supportive environment for startups to grow and develop. “…[O]ur approach is actually to back the founders, to say the founders will be the driving force of the company, so unlike Jack [Ma], who said ‘Yahoo is in my pocket,’ we don’t put any company in our pocket. We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.”

In partnership with Innovation Works, Tencent invested another $1 million in August 2013 in a San Francisco startup Kamcord, which allows users to record and share mobile gameplays. While Tencent has been investing in startups in Silicon Valley, Chao gave an example of SINA Weibo’s recent experimental collaboration with a local home appliance manufacturer in China, Hisense. Weibo users can link their accounts to the Hisense air-conditioner, which can then be switched on and off remotely.

Charles Chao, CEO of SINA, talked to participants at the China 2.0 conference.

Charles predicted that internet companies will continue to disrupt other areas, including finance (with micro-loans) and commerce. SINA’s valuation was boosted earlier in 2013 by Alibaba’s acquisition of an 18% stake in SINA Weibo. Today SINA is valued at over $6 billion.

Social Impact of Internet

It [Weibo] basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better.

Charles Chao
CEO, SINA

SINA Weibo, launched in 2009, has over 500 million registered users, and over 56 million unique daily active users. It continues to dominate the market as China’s leading micro-blogging platform. It would be no exaggeration to say that Weibo has transformed social interaction in China by bringing the public square to everyone’s smartphone. “[Weibo] allows every user in China to report, to publish, to share the content, the information directly, and also not only create content but also distribute content themselves through social relations and through the follower relationship… It basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better,” Chao argued.

The message was echoed by Lau in his keynote. “...[A]ll these internet companies, a lot of them are making an impact on society in an incredible way, bringing people closer together, changing businesses, and also making society more transparent… I think together we are really making a lot of changes and impact on Chinese society and I think we are ready to make more,” Lau said.

Ambassador Locke also emphasized the importance of a free and open internet to China’s economy and society in his address. “Attempts to unleash the economic power of the internet while controlling the political and cultural content are ultimately counterproductive, and indeed at odds with each other,” commented Locke. “Restrictions on communications that limit the free flow of ideas, whether political, economic, or personal, will only serve to prevent countries from moving forward. Frankly speaking, the United States and China’s government have different views on these issues but we are constantly, consistently, and candidly discussing them.”

Sino-U.S. Links

During a recent meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the White House, Biden said that he believed China’s development was not only in the interest of the United States, but for the rest of the world as well.

Ambassador Locke also highlighted the importance of how the two countries handle global issues. “Whether it’s finding a cure to some of the most dreaded diseases of the world, or ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons, whether in North Korea or Iran and elsewhere, China and the United States have to be involved together. Indeed, the world is looking for leadership from both the United States and China to solve some of the toughest challenges and problems facing the universe.”

Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.

Gary Locke
U.S. Ambassador to China

Despite finding agreement on some issues, China and United States still hold many differing views. The intellectual property (IP) challenge is one of them. "Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.” Locke added that some companies conclude that “the best way to avoid being ripped off in China it is to stay out of China—but besides missing a tremendous opportunity, companies that never set foot in China are not immune from having their IP infringed upon in China, and may later find infringing products making their way back to the United States or to third-world markets.”

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, and Marguerite Gong Hancock, director of China 2.0 at the China 2.0 conference.

The annual China 2.0 conference, now in its fourth year, attracted over 600 Stanford students and faculty along with current and rising leaders from China and Silicon Valley's tech, entrepreneur, and investor communities.

The panel and interactive discussions were focused on topics including Big Data, venture capital’s outlook on internet and digital media, China’s role in the global innovation network, cross-border venture finance, and Chinese mobile firms going global. These sessions brought together 20 founders, senior executives and leaders from: Asia Society, Baidu, Bertelsmann, DCM, Foursquare, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, FunPlus Game, GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, LinkedIn, Queen's Road Capital, Riverwood Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and WestSummit Capital.