is home when. this is a question about whether retirees will have enough money to pay for gas to go see their grandkids from time to time. this is a campaign ou coming ho war can find a job when they get here, or people graduating from high school or college can find a good job comiserate with the skills they've developed. turn us into something more european in some respects. i don't think europe is working in europe. i don't want a sociodemocratic state. i want to have a nation where people are convinced the future will be brigreem and opportunity. i grew up at a time when there was a promise in america that we all knew that the future was brighter than the past. that if you worked hard and you had the right values and got as much education as your home would be prosperous and secure and that you could kids.a good life for yourself

people question today whether that promise is still there in it is with the right leadership. we're going to have to get rid of a failed president and get someone in there that understands this economy and will go tohelp the american people have good jobs. [ cheers and applause ] >> i believe in i believe in america. i believe in the principles upon which tfound. i believe they changed our lives and they changed the world. when the founders wrote those words that we were endowed by our creator with our right, they didn't say we were endowed by the state or the king or whoever, we were with our creator and among them were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. we would be free in this nation, we are free in this nation, free to vote for who we chotor to li want to and free to pursue happiness as we choose. no one tells us what we have to do with our life.

this is up to us. and by virtue of those freedoms, people from all over the world wanted to come here over the last couple hundred years, and come here they did. they built a nation of opportunity, dreamers, achie achievers. it's what made us who we are. their successes didn't make us poorer, they made us better off. we cherish and value the principles upon which this nation was founded. my aim is to reclaim those principles for this country, to pass them along to our kids, to provide an america that's strong and free, to make sure this country has leaders that understand how our economy works and respected. have leaders who understand how the people of america worked and respected. understand how many people in this country were faekd, were in touch enough to understand that they need leadership to get the.

i can get out there, and together, we can helpof the ear. thank you, everybody. thank ♪ ♪ i was born free ♪ i was born free ♪ born free ♪

i know in washington it's very possible to want to create a cybersecurity organization to oversee this. >> the adversaries we're dealing with today are more committed, better resourced and becoming more sophisticated. we talk about the advance of persistent threat, i worry about that. >> how real is the threat? cybersecurity with bill connor

and robert dix on how to handle the threat of business networks. the communicators tonight on 8:00 eastern on cspan-2. >> this crazy world of ours, we have atom bombs. the question is not how to use them, the question is how do you restrain yourself from using them? that's particularly when you're commander in chief, any fool can get this country into trouble. it takes a wiseman to get it out. >> as candidates campaign for back at 14 men who ran for the office and lost. go to our web site cspan.org/contenders to see a video of the contenders who had a lasting impact. >> should your president have widely ethical standards and be an example to children in this country? ask yourself that question, please. shouldn't his life make him a role model for your future children? should anyone you elect to this

office always keep his promise? >> cspan doi.org/contenders. with politics and public affairs programming throughout the week and on the weekend, people and events telling the story on american history tv. get our schedules and see past programs on our web site. you can join the conversation on social media sites. good owning and welcome to tonight's meeting of the commonwealth club of california. i'm gloria duffy, president and ceo of the club and the chair for tonight's program. we also welcome our listeners on radio and television, our podcasters and on-line video viewers and invite everyone to visit us on the commonwealthclub.org. we are very pleased to hold this

evening's program together with university's center for international security and cooperation, and the friedman moglie institute. as we debate about the economy and follow the presidential primary race, it is sometimes easy to forget that the greatest danger facing humankind is still the presence of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of several countries and the continuing quest by countries like north korea and iran and terrorist groups to obtain atomic weapons. with the end of the cold war, the nuclear arms situation faded into the background. it became the province of nuclear policywonks and academic institutions. but should it fade into the background? with us on the stage here tonight are three men who emphatically say no to this question, and one man who has chronicled the quest of the four

oc at t octeganiarians and continue to point out the danger of atomic weapons. perhaps the use of these weapons is low, but the consequences of that low probability event are unimaginably horrible. so these three courageous men who have built their credibility through years of service have sought to bring the danger back to the forefront of the public. they, in fact, moved president obama two years ago to take a number of initiatives to reduce the nuclear danger. now let me introduce these courageous individuals. george schultz was president reagan's secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. he played a key role in implementing a foreign policy that led to the successful conclusion of the cold war and the development of strong relationships between the united states and countries of the asia

ixon ic region including china,. administration as secretary of labor, director of the office of management and budget and secretary of the he has been a professor at m.i.t., at the university of chicago, and currently at stanford university where he teaches at the graduate scol of business. secretary schultz is also a distinguished fellow at the conomics stitut from princeton university and a phd in industrial economics from m.i.t. and we are so pleased to have with us this evening the wonderful meyers schultz, chief of san francisco who brings people of san francisco together in suchws. william perry was the 19thited defense serving from february of 1994 through january of 1997 in the clinton was instrumental i

down the cold war and forming new and more productive relationships with countries, including the former soviet sta and japan. secretary perry previously undersecretary of ecretary of defense for research and engineering. silicon valley, dr. perry cofounded esl corporation and served as an an perry emeritus at stanford university. he is co-director of the preventative defense project, a and harbor laboration of universities. he received his b.s. degree from stanford university and phd from penn state, all in mathematics.

we also are delighted to introduce the wonderful lee perry who is here. sam nunn is co-chairman and officer of the initiative, a non partisan the global threats from nuclear weapons, which he was instrumental in founding. he served as thesenator of geor from 1972 to 1996. now he is retired from the law firm king & spalding. senator nunn served as chairman of the arms committee and permanent subcommittee on investigations. he also served on the intelligence and small business committees. senator nunn's legislative achievements include the non-luger productive program which provides assistance which secures destroying biological weapons. senator nunntt tech, emery university and emery

law school where he graduated with honors in 1962. we are delighted to welcome the lovely colleen nunn who is with us this evening as well. secretary schultz, secretary perry and senator nunn have all been involved in the making of a documentary film, together with ploushers fund, and it's called the nuclear tipping point which profiles their efforts to reduce nuclear weapons and is available on the stanford program on international and cross-cultural education at spice.stanford.edu. we are also so pleased this evening to welcome phillip taubman. he previously spent 30 years as a "new york times" correspondent specializing in national security issues. his positions at the times bureau serving as both

chiefs. mr. taubman is the author of the new book "the partnership by cold warriors and their threat to profile the bomb" which profiles the work of today's panelists. we are also pleased to welcomfe who is with us this evenglcome combination with phil [ applause ] >> thank you very much, gloria. it's a real privilege to be here tonight in the company of these distinguished statesmen, and it is so heartening, i can't tell you, to see so many people come out to hear a discussion about this really critically important issue. so thank you all for coming tonight. let me begin by reading you a

quotation from the book that i've done. it's actually the last paragraph in the book, and it's a comment that was made by henry kissinger who, of course, was richard nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state, and has joined with these three men and the assistant at stanford to raise the ability of nuclear weapons, to raise the steps that can be taken to reduce nuclear threats and also to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. so the comment by henry kissinger speaks to what the world might think if there were to be use of a nuclear weapon, either by a terrorist group in an american city or a foreign city or perhaps a nuclear exchange somewhere in the world

between india and pakistan. there are a lot of different scenarios out there that could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. and i think this sets the stage for the discussion that we're going to have. and this is what dr. kissinger said. once nuclear weapons are used, we will be driven to take global measures to prevent it. some of us have said, let's ask ourselves, if we have to do it afterwards, why don't we do it now? so let me begin the conversation by talking about and asking the gentlemen here questions about some contemporary nuclear threats and then we'll move through the evening to talk about their efforts to reduce nuclear threats. so let me start with secretary perry.

and let's discuss iran for a moment. what is your sense of a nuclear threat that is posed by iran today, and if you were secretary of defense today, what advice would you give president obama about how to respond to it? >> i believe that iran has been moving seriously and energetically for the last 10 to 15 years to develop a nuclear weapon. i think they're probably within a few years of achieving that goal. this in spite of the fact that they have consistently denied that they're doing that. i also believe that the government of israel believes that a nuclear weapon in iran poses an existential threat to their country and is determined to prevent that from happening,

possibly with a military strike. a military strike, even if successful, would have a whole host of unintended consequences, nearly all of them bad. so i think our role in the united states is to try to provide reasons for israel for not taking that strike, and the only reasons that hold up are that we are taking actions in nations of the world to stop iran from getting nuclear weapons. our best chance of doing that is through what i would call coercive diplomacy, diplomacy but with a very heavy threat behind it. i think the most effective threat for iran is shutting down transactions, which i believe we have started doing in the last few months. i believe if we continue that

pressure and increase that pressure, i think we could be successful with iran to stop the program. the weakness of that today is that russia is only partially cooperating and china not at all. and our diplomatic role is to convince russia and china that a military attack on iran would have devastating consequences, not only for iran and the united states and israel, but for russia and china also. in other words, to get behind this program to put real pressure on iran. that's what i would recommend. >> secretary schultz, as the diplomat here, you've dealt with a lot of difficult issues what would you do about iran, and what advice would you not only give president obama but what advice would you give prime minister netanyahu in israel? >> i subscribe to what bill said completely. however, if we have a situation

where sanctions are beginning to really work in iran and it looks to me as though they probably are, the financial pressures ar great. that is the real pressure point. it seems to me we can't allow iran to draw out a long diplomatic process which they simply use to gain time to develop their weapons. so, i think we have to move energetically.our enrichment capacity for peaceful purposes. the volume of the enrichment that you're doing far exceeds any domestic use you might have in a nuclear power plant. you've only got one plant and the russians are supplying the fuel for it as it is. if you mean it, this is for

civilian purposes, you must be wanting to sell enriched uranium on the market. so we'll help you do that. and that means that you have to be part of some international nuclear fuel cycle regime that includes having knowledgeable people and quite a few of them in your plant that knows what is going on so you are not enriching to weapons grade. this would have to be done rapidly. people use negotiations just as a stall to gain time. i might say that senator nunn and his organization have really done yeoman work in developing the nuclear fuel cycle idea and have had a lot to do with the fuel bank that can be used by countries so they don't have to

enrich uranium themselves. there is a making of an international regime here. if you are going to wait to see what sanctions do, then i think you need to have some sort of a proposal and i wouldn't just sit mamby-pamby around. you say it is for civilian purposes? i'm calling that card. >> senator nunn, how worried should we be about pakistan's nuclear arsenal, both the weapons and materials? >> i think we should put pakistan right close to the top of the list in terms of our concerns. they live in a dangerous neighborhood. they had several wars with india. they have a lot of terrorists on their territory. some believe parts of their military or parts of their intelligence, not necessarily with the approval of government, have basically enabled, and in some cases, encouraged

terrorism. certainly the indians believe that. you had the attack on mumbai. just yesterday afternoon at stanford, we had an interesting exercise of a terrorist taking out most of mumbai with a nuclear weapon. we played the game of what would india do and how would pakistan respond. so it's a very difficult situation. when we think about iran and i agree with bill and george on the analysis. it is extremely dangerous. so is pakistan. when you look at proliferation, we saw what happened with the network. one individual in pakistan, probably with help of others with the nuclear arms all over the world in enabling countries like libya to gain a great number of components of nuclear weapons. it is of great concern and one of the toughest problems we face. when you think about it, the

world has a stake here. you have an interesting question about sovereignty. all of us believe in national sovereignty and so forth. there was a recent article and i don't know if it was valid. it was in the american scientific magazine. it is postulated with the computers of 100 bombs going off between indian and pakistan. based on the computer models, a couple hundred people killed very quickly. the consequences of the global cooling that take place over the next five or six years, there would be 1 billion to 2 billion people starved to death around the world. do two nations have

if we have a conflict with im y implicatio implications, it would not be an over and out conflict. you have to take out the defensive missiles. if you were serious about it, you have to take out the nuclear sites and certainly not one or two. there are a lot more than that. sid dlr sidrel reminded us you need to take out the electrical grid, also. it would have implications to the nuclear program. since they threatened to close the persian gulf, you need to take out the navy and a lot of their air force. this is not a raid like we have seen before on iraq and syria. this is a big deal. has a lot of consequences. we have to think through it. i do believe there is some hope because the iranians are in a real economic squeeze now.

first of all, they have a bad economic system. second, the embargoes are having some effect. the evaluation of the currency has gone down 30% in the last six months. so they are feeling the pain. unfortunately, a lot of innocent people suffer. that is something you are always concerned about. the alternatives are grim. if we had a war, there would be more suffering. the embargo has to be tightened. we have to do everything we can to persuade china and russia to be in it. we are talking about cutting off the import of iranian oil. all that may have an effect. there is anything regarding iran these days that is a bright spot is a dark bright spot. the one dark bright spot here is that they intend over and over again, although we don't believe

them, they don't have a weapons program. they will not have a weapons program. it would be a sin to develop weapons. now do i believe that? no. do i think that is important? yes. because it is a face-saving place to come down if we can come up with a concept that george talked about with some type of international enrichment centers that are run 24/7 by an iaea camera. that is the dark bright spot in a difficult situation. >> secretary schultz? >> i wanted to add something on pakistan. bill and i over the last six months had two lengthy meetings. one with a group of foreign military in india and pakistan. after that one with pakistani and u.s. officials.

one of the sessions was devoted to a couple of economists. one from hoover, michael baskin and one from pakistan. the net of that discussion, it was the only really high point. the net of the discussion was the pakistanis are foregoing tremendous economic opportunities by virtue of the tension that pervades the country. if they can do something about it, they could have almost an explosive economic situation. so, our thought is hold that up to people and say, come on, why don't you get real and pay all. whether how much of an impact that made, i have no idea, but it was a dramatic moment, wouldn't you say, bill? >> very dramatic.

i would also say the first meeting we had, i met with the foreign defense minister of pakistan. i asked why he was going to so much trouble to come to the meetings and discuss these issues. he said because i think we are heading for a nuclear war. not just terrorism, but nuclear war. he said i think it is likely somebody in pakistan is now plotting a mumbai ii. if that happens, the indian government will not show restraint. it will send a force into pakistan to punish them. the pakistani army will be humiliated and defeated and the pakistani leaders will go to the president and say we can solve this problem by using nuclear weapons on the indian army. they have the theory that they use nuclear weapons only