not respond with nuclear weapons, which is a crazy theory. they believe it. so that's the scenario of how we have not just one nuclear bomb in the city, a terror bomb, but a nuclear war break out between two major countries of the world. and this is what i learned from listening to the pakistani foreign defense minister. his fear that they were heading for that nuclear war. that got my attention very seriously. >> let's spend a few minutes talking about the threat of nuclear 9/11. quite a few of the questions from the audience deal with the question of nuclear terrorism. and to frame that discussion, i want to read an except from a letter that albert einstein wrote to franklin roosevelt in 1939. it was this letter that led to

the establishment of the manhattan project and the development of the first nuclear weapons by the united states. einstein wrote this letter when he became aware that nuclear physics reached a point where a weapon could be created of almost incomprehensible power. he wrote a letter to fdr. what is so striking to me about it is the threat that he describes in the letter is exactly one of the threats that the united states faces today in terms of nuclear terrorism. so here we are spanning many, many decades of the nuclear era and we are facing the same threat that albert einstein identified in 1939. here is what he said to president roosevelt. a single bomb of this type carried by boat and exploded in a port might very well destroy the whole port together with

some of the surrounding territory. so senator nunn, i know that the programs that you and senator luger put into place have played a major role in trying to secure vulnerable materials around the world. >> i might say that was a brilliant insight and piece of legislation that senators nunn and lugar. >> it was, indeed. >> senator nunn, why don't you talk a little bit about how you see the threat of nuclear terrorism. what exactly is the threat of nuclear terrorism? >> well, i consider it the most dangerous threat we face because a nuclear terrorist group, if they got the bomb or the material to make a bomb, some of them are suicidal, but they wouldn't have a return address. it's very hard. our whole principle in the cold war was to deter a country

knowing we would know if they shoot missiles at us where it came from and therefore, they have a return address and suffer retaliation. terrorist groups don't have that. some of them would like nothing more than basically cause conflict even to escalate between countries based on perceived terrorist attacks and attribution of a particular country. so what you have here is the ingredient of a perfect storm. you have nuclear weapon usable material around the globe. the threat initiative did an index rating of 32 countries around the globe and how they are securing their weapons and nuclear material. the most important thing is keeping the nuclear material out of the terrorists. they will not be able to make and enrich. if they get enrichment of

uranium or plutonium, they could make a bomb. you have terrorists who want to make it. you have the technology where a state could master 30 or 40 years ago and is now available in pretty much intelabligible fm on the internet. the good news is here, too. philip, you mentioned the lugar program. gloria was the lead in negotiating with three countries that were part of the countries in the former soviet union. that was in the '90s. it was huge. bill perry was secretary of defense. he did a wonderful job on that. there are good things going on. we have done some things. we have a stronger iaea.

we have a u.n. resolution 1540 that requires every nation to take care of their nuclear material. we have a lot going on. one thing that people don't know about and i also think in this grim subject that we need to have a bit of encouragement. one of the things that gloria and her team negotiated, ukra e ukrainians did not want to give up weapons without benefit. highly enriched uranium is worth money. you burn it into the nuclear power plants. the deal that was made in the 1990s was that we would work with russia to get the weapons back from those countries and russia. they would blend it down to lower-enriched uranium. we are about 15 years into that program. right now, 20% of our

electricity in america comes from nuclear power. 50% of that material that we burn today in america's nuclear power plants comes from highly-enriched uranium that was formed from bombs made in the cold war. about 10% of the electricity had been turned into plow shares. we worked with russia. we worked with other countries. countries do have a mutual stake. president obama deserves credit for this one. two years ago, he had a summit conference on nuclear material in washington d.c. over 40 heads of state came. some of those countries beginning to blend down and get rid of the uranium. there is a conference next month in seoul, south korea. they will get heads of state to get together and talk about

securing nuclear material. while we have some avalanches coming down the mountain in the name of iran and north korea, we have made significant progress in the last 20 years. i think we ought to be encouraged by that while we are very alert to the huge, huge dangers. >> one of the things i realized as i was researching the book is during the cold war, the united states and soviet union both had programs to spread uranium around the world. president eisenhower called it atoms for peace. these were programs intended to give alliess research reactors and fuel to operate them. it was part of the rivalry between the united states and soviet union. by the time the two nations were done distributing the uranium, ten tons of it were distributed

round the world. we are trying to roll up the highly-enriched uranium to get it secured and blend it down as senator nunn just said. it does not take a lot of bomb grade highly-enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. i'm sorry not to read more specific questions. i will in a minute read one. quite a few of them deal with the question of our present nuclear arsenal and the russian nuclear arsenal. the whole question of nuclear deterrents, which is something these men have spent a lifetime thinking about, working on and continue to work on it today. and the question that kind of captures this, i think, comes from the audience. it goes as follows, "robert

mcnamara said 100 nuclear weapons is enough for u.s. deterrents." do you agree? if so, why do we still have thousands? so, secretary perry, do you want to tackle that first? >> yes, i do agree that 100 is enough for deterrents provided they are deployed in a safe and secure manner, which is not easy, but we can do that. it's seems to be very hard to come down from the absurd levels we had from the cold war of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. we have gotten down to 1,500 deployed nuclear weapons on each side now. that is still grossly more than is needed. at the moment, as we speak, the administration is going through a study of whether they could make a dramatic cut in those nuclear weapons. i think it is a very ominous and

unwelcome sign that somebody leaked that study. one of the options is going down to 300 as the low level. they leaked that because they thought they could provoke a negative response to that, which indeed happened. part of the negative response came from the fact it was suggested it was going down to 300 and it was going down laterally rather than negotiations. the study was set up to determine america's negotiating position for the next round with the russians. i think the big reason we are not going down to 100 is that we do want to go down arm-in-arm with the russians. they place a very high value with the nuclear weapons, beyond what we do, because that's all they have left. we believe we can defend our country adequately with our conventional forces. the russians today do not believe that.

so they think that their nuclear weapons and lots of them, allow them to maintain their security. the single biggest practical problem to getting down from where we are now, several thousand down to several hundred is overcoming the russian resistance. due to the symmetry. >> it is not simply the numbers. i think we pay sometimes too much to the numbers. we need to make nuclear weapons less relevant in our plans and so do the russians. we need to find ways to do that together. it is important whatever number you have is secure. bill said that. you don't want to put all your weapons in one pile and have them vulnerable. you need survivability. you don't want to tempt someone to go first. we need to find ways and broad

concepts so the russians and the united states are subject to a decapitation attack. we don't want anyone with the feeling of use your weapons or lose them. it is a very unstable world when you do. that you want to make sure that the other countries don't go up. so you don't want us coming down and other countries going up. so the other countries have to get involved at this next stage, in my opinion. i think we should concentrate on the themes that go beyond numbers. if you take away on both sides, on russia and the united states and other countries, a fear of the surprise warning decapitation attack, then you begin to have numbers that can come down because people have less fears and apprehensions. we need a warning in the

decision time in the powers not simply on nuclear weapons, but on conventional. fears and apparerehensions. particularly beginning in europe. >> i want to come back to that in a minute. a brief announcement for people who will be listening to this on the radio. you are listening to the common health club of california radio program. our speakers today are george schultz and william perry and former senator sam nunn. they are discussing how to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. i'm philip taubman. just to continue on the deterrents. this was a theme in a lot of your questions. secretary schultz, when you went

to reikeovich to meet with michail gorbechev, today, the united states has 5,000. the russians have more than that. when you were in reikeovich, you talked about eliminating nuclear weapons all together. a lot of people ask how can we risk giving up nuclear weapons. aren't they very important in preserving the peace? >> actually, they haven't been as good a deterrent as they seemed to be cracked up to be. think in the cold war of the things that nuclear weapons did not deter. didn't deter the sovietsing f f

going in and crushing hungary in 1956. did not squash them from prague. did not deter from the berlin air lift. did not deter them from encouraging the korean war. did not deter them from invading afghanistan. so an awful lot happened. why did it not deter? because there is a realization that it is very unlikely they will be used. so, that says to me, deterrance is a good concept. you want to create a situation where somebody doesn't attack you. it is better than having a war. so we don't want nuclear to steal the concept. it has sort of done that. we need to get our brains out and think of other ways to deter. it's a very widely used concept.

for intensintensstancinstance, became secretary. the administration came to me and he said we have the largest tax compliance system in the world. i said really. he said, yes, of course, we audit and watch. in other words, there is deterence. somebody may be watching. but it is a very widely-used concept. i don't think we want to have the word "nuclear" steal it. >> but senator nunn, if i may follow-up on that briefly with you. how do you reassure people that if nuclear weapons are eliminated, there won't be some kind of breakout country that will either secretly keep nuclear weapons or make them covertly and then we'll all wake up one day and instead of being

the world's greatest nuclear power, we will be threatened by a puny nuclear power with a handful of nuclear weapons. >> philip, i think that is a very good question. a lot of people thought through the end game. we are so far from the end game right now that it is hard to visu visualize how to get to the top of the mountain. we cannot see the mountain. it is fogged in. we have avalanches. we have to strive to get to base camp. going to base camp requires countries to come together. that requires a lot of steps. that requires dealing with north korea and require dealing with iran and securing nuclear material from all over the globe. it would be a test ratification from a lot of countries. the world will look a little

different then. it will require the ability to verify. verification is all important. it will require political will to enforce, which we will find out about with iran and north korea over the next couple of years. all of those things have to happen before we get to base camp. if we get to base camp at some point, it may not be in my lifetime, it will probably be in george's [ laughter ] >> if we get there, the world will look different. we are not talking about in this book we call "the partnership" and philip does a great job of explaining the concept in ways people understand. on page 140, he has a paragraph on my basketball career. it is short. if we get to base camp, then we really are going to be looking at a different kind of world. the way i visualize a world is

we have to change a lot of things in the world. we have to build trust with the russians. we have to have bridges built with discussions. a lot of military-to-military discussions with our friends in china. we have to have a lot of things happen. these things are goals. the way i view where we are heading is we have all sorts of steps we need to take now. pretex protect america today. we are not going to get cooperation without the world knowing that we're heading to the top of the mountain. we are not saying we are the only ones that will have nuclear weapons. we are not saying to the world, quit smoking while we chain smoke. that doesn't work any nmoranymo. when i say we, it has to be more than just the united states. we have to move up the mountain with other countries, too. this is not a unilateral exercise. the end game, there will be a

lot of things people have to consider. we always will have the ability to reconstruct nuclear weapons. you may have a period of years or decades where you have nuclear weapons in reserve. there are a lot of things we have to think about. it is not too soon to begin thinking about them now. we are not going to get to the stage where we let terrorist groups or a renegade country go out and get ten nuclear weapons and blackmail the world. that will not happen. we will find ways to make absolute sure that it cannot happen, but the whole world community would be united on that point. >> i know secretary schultz wants to make a comment. here is a factoid about senator nunn i'm sure none of you know. he led the high school team to the state championships in georgia. he scored 28 points in the

championship game. >> his real name is sam lynn. >> except i wasn't smart enough to go to harvard. that was back in the era where you could be short and slow and i was both. >> secretary shuchultz was a fa football player before he blew out his knee. >> having the vision is really important. it causes people to say how can we possibly get there? what are the things we have to do? then you start identifying things that are doable that you need to do and as you identify them, gradually that gives the vision a greater sense of

reality. so there is an interactive process. without the vision, i don't think you would get the attention to the steps that even we are getting today. >> here's an interesting question. by the way, many interesting questions here. i wish we could do justice to all of them. this opens the door about the conversation about the issues that concern these gentlemen today in terms of nuclear threats. this is a question from the audience. fukushima showed that complex systems can fail in unexpected ways. have we had any close calls, i assume on nuclear weapons issues, and can you discuss any of them? i think this is a subject dear to the heart of both secretary perry and senator nunn. >> we've had quite a few close calls during the cold war. some of them were close calls

where the weapons themselves were the issue. we used to carry nuclear bombs around in bombers that flew patrols. more than once, one would crash. we never had a nuclear nation, but it was a risky business. that was one kind of a risk. secondly, we had and you document it in your book, several false alarms. two of which i was personally familiar with where i get calls in the middle of the night telling me that the computers are showing 200 missiles on the way from the soviet union on the way to the united states. this really gets your attention [ laughter ] false alarms like that make you a

believer. to me, the danger was never an academic consideration. i lived with it and it is very real. today, those dangers are reduced. new dangers are developing as we have been talking about. the danger of nuclear terrorism being number one on the list today. >> we've had several close calls that i know about. bill knows about more than i do. you wonder what scenario is it that would require the u.s. or russia to have 1,500 to 2,000 warheads on what amounts to two or three minutes alert. what is it today in a period 20 years after the end of the cold war that prevents us from assuring the president of the united states and russia for that matter and i would include other countries in that, too, that they have at least an hour or two hours to make up their mind whether to basically pull the trigger or give the order to

pull the trigger to blow up a great portion of god's universe? we shouldn't be in that posture. to those who say these are tough problems. one of the things you realize when you get into the discussions is basically, no matter how dangerous the status quo is, if you have been living with it a long time, anything that talks about changing it, looks like to some people that it may be creating a difficulty. we have to think through these things. are we on the posture forever? are we on a nuclear tiger that we cannot dismount? i don't think so. i don't think man is bound to that kind of fate. one example that i heard about from a russian friend was back in belgrade. this shows you why warning time is important. this was when we were bombing belgrade and the russians were furious about it. my friend was standing at the

cocktail party next to the russian president at that stage. obviously, he was reporting to occasionally to have a few libations, to say the least. his generals came in and told him americans were bombing belgrade. he told the general to go on full nuclear alert. when you go on full nuclear alert, that doesn't mean you fire your weapons, but everybody in the world will be focused on that. the united states will go on ale alert. you get a flock of geese on the radar screen and who knows what will happen. those are not the things you want to have happen. we can do better than that. we don't want to get down to the situation where you have -- we need to increase the warning time. let's hypothetically say it is 30 minutes now and it is now down to 20 minutes.

we need to increase that to an hour. we need to do it for the russians, too. we need military-to-military discussions about how we give the presidents more warning time and decision time. once we get to an hour, we should get to two hours on both sides. then we should get to 12 hours and a week and month. then at some point, nuclear weapons become less relevant. that is how we should aim. is it easy? no. will it take a lot of discussions? yes. will it take a lot of imagination and thought? yes. can it be done unilaterally? no. it has to be done together. that is the direction we should be moving in. we shouldn't plague our children and grandchildren with mounting this nuclear tiger 30 or 40 years from now. >> secretary schultz, you had a comment? >> we are dealing with a very peculiar kind of risk. whether we are talking about nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons.

of course, a weapon presents much more catastrophic-type problems. it is a peculiar risk because it says here is a risk with a very, very low probability of occurrence. if it occurs, the consequences are horrendous. how do you handle risks like that? i think you must impose the highest imaginable standards of safety. and that sounds easy, but it isn't. because there are pressures all the time. i think i'm just surmising from what i heard about, particularly in the early stages of our weapons program. people want to get their weapons out. so there was a tendency to cut corners. that's a natural thing. when you have such high consequence problems, it is not the thing to do. in the case of nuclear power

plants, obviously people are trying to keep their costs under control. there is a tension there. at least as i see it, the tension has always got to be resolved in favor of safety. because the consequences are so high when something goes wrong. >> philip, one part of the end of my story. the russian general who was told to go on alert ignored it. we have generals many times that are smarter than the civilian leadership. >> and the general that called me on the 200 missiles on the way had already decided when he called me this was a false alarm. he made the judgment. we do not have the system. we did not then and we do not now. it has human intervention and human judgment. in all of the cases i have been aware of were false alarms. a human being made the right judgment. that's the kind of a thread we are hanging