energy use. the department of energy is exploring all avenuavenues for nuclear energy. it's in the whole range of options they're looking into. small modular reactors are a big deal a develop those. so that's not really in my direct line of what i cover, though. >> thanks for taking it on. todd jacobson is a senior reporter at nuclear weapons and materials monitor. thanks for being here this morning. >> thank you. >> earnest hemingway is considered one of the great american writers and his work still influences readers today. but not many people know of his work as a spy during world war ii. >> there was a couple instances of german submarines approaching fishing boats saying we'll take your catch and fresh food. earnest says i'll wait for them

to come alongside and my players are going to lob grenades down the open hatches and the other members of the crew are going to machine gun the germans on deck. >> nicholas reynolds on hemingway the spy, sunday night at 8:30, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. congratulations to all this year's winners of c-span student cam video documentary. a record number of students entered a video on the theme the constitution and you, showing which part of the constitution is important to them and why. watch all the winning videos at our website, studentcam.org, and join us in april as we show the top 27 videos and we'll talk with the winners during "washington journal. qupts next, william perry, former secretary of state george schultz, and former u.s. senator sam nunn discuss the current

threats posed by nuclear weapons. it's just over an hour. >> 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 online video viewers. and invite everyone to visit us on the internet at commonwealthclub.org. we are pleased to hold this evening's program together with stanford university for cooperation and the institute for international studies at stanford. as we debate about the recovery of the u.s. economy and follow the presidential primary race, it is sometimes easy to forget that the greatest danger facing human kind 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. the nuclear arms situation faded into the background with the end of the cold war. it became the province of nuclear policy wonks and academic institutions. but should it fade into the background? with us on the stage are three men who emphatically say no to this question. and one man who has chronicled the quest, who continue to point out the great dangers associated with nuclear weapons. perhaps the probability of the use of these weapons is low. but the consequences of that low probability event are unimaginably horrible. so these courageous men, who have built their credibility through a lifetime of public service, have sought to bring the nuclear danger back to the forefront of attention from government officials and the public. through their credibility, they in fact move 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 pacific region, including china, japan, and the asean countries. secretary schultz also served during the nixon administration as secretary of labor, director of the office of management and budget, and secretary of the treasury. he's been a professor at m.i.t., at the university of chicago, and currently at stanford university where he teaches at the graduate school of business. secretary schultz is also a distinguished fellow at the hoover institution. he holds a b.a. in economics from princeton university and ph.d. from m.i.t.

we're so pleased to have with us this evening the wonderful charlotte shut >>, chief of protocol from the city of san francisco, who brings people together in such lovely and meaningful ways. william perry was the 19th united states secretary of defense, serving from february of 1994 through january of 1997 in the clinton administration. he was instrumental in winding down the cold war and forming new and more productive relationships with countries including the former soviet states, eastern europe, china and japan and served as deputy secretary of defense and undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. one of the early pioneers in silicon valley, he served as a principal of a firm. he's currently senior fellow at the hoover institution, and the

michael and barbara professor ameritas. he's co-director of the preventative defense project, a research collaboration of stanford and harvard universities. dr. perry received his b.s. and m.s. degrees from stanford university and his ph.d. from penn state, all in mathematics. we're delighted to welcome the wonderful lee perry, who is here. sam nunn is co-chairman and chief executive officer of the nuclear threat initiative. a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to reduce the global threats from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. he served as a united states senator from georgia for 24 years, from 1972 through 1996. now he's retired from the law firm king and spalding. senator nun served as chairman of the senate armed services committee and the permanent subcommittee on investigations.

he also served on the intelligence and small business committees. senator nun's legislative achievements include a program which provides assistance to russia for securing and destroying their excess nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. he attended emery law school where he graduated with honors in 1962. and we're delighted to welcome colleen nunn, as well. they have all been involved in the making of a documentary film. together with plow shares fund and it's called the nuclear tipping point, which profiles their efforts to reduce nuclear weapons and available through the stanford program on international and cross cultural education at

spice.stanford.efrspice.stanfor. and our moderator, consulting professor at stanford university for international security and cooperation, and previously spent 30 years as a "new york times" correspondent specializing in national security issues. his positions at the times included serving as both washington and moscow bureau chiefs. he's the author of "the partnership, five cold warriors and their quest to ban the bomb," which profiles the work of today's panelists. we are also pleased to welcome fa lessty barringer, who is with us this evening. please welcome our guests. [ 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 hearten iing to see to ma people come out and 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 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 a physicist at stanford, to raise the visibility of nuclear weapons issues, to call for a series of important steps to be taken to reduce nuclear threats, and ultimately to eliminate nuclear weapons all together.

so the comment by henry kissinger speaks to what the world might think if there were to be a 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. 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 the 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 energyicly for the last 10 to 15 years of developing a nuke weapon and they're probably within a few years of achieving that goal.

this despite the fact that they have denied they're doing that. i also believe that the government of israel believes that a nuclear weapon in iran poses 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 world and the united states has tried to provide reasons for israel of not taking that strike and the only reasons that hold up is that we are taking actions in concert with other nations of the world to stop iran from getting a nuclear weapon. our best chance of doing that is

through what i would call coercive diplomacy. i think the most effective threat against iran is shutting down their financial transactions, which indeed we have been doing for the last few months. i believe if we can continue that pressure and increase that pressure, we could be successful in putting enough pressure on 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 serious consequences, not only for iran and united states and israel, but russia and china also, and therefore to get behind this program to put real pressure on iran. >> secretary schultz, as the

diplomat here, you've dealt with a lot of difficult issues over the years. 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 and 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 are 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 would have move

energetically. i would say look, you say you're generating your nuclear capacity for peaceful purposes. the volume of enrichment that you're doing far exceeds any domestic use you might have in a nuclear power plant. you've only got one plant. the russians are supplying the fuel for it as it is. so if you mean it, that this is for civilian purposes, you must be wanting to sell your enriched uranium on the international 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 knowledge of people in your plant so we know what's going on, so you're not enriching to weapons grade. but this would have to be done rapidly, because people use negotiations just as a stall to gain time.

i might say that senator nunn and his organization have really done yomen work in developing the nuclear fuel cycle idea and have had a lot to do with creating a fuel bank that can be used by countries so they don't have to enrich uranium themselves. but if you're going to wait to see what sanctions do, then you have to have some sort of a proposal, and i wouldn't sit around. you say it's for civilian purposes. i'm calling that card. >> senator nunn, how worried should we be about pakistan's nuclear arsenal, both its weapons and fissile materials? >> i any we should put pakistan right close to the top of the

list in terms of our concerns. they live in a dangerous neighborhood. they've had several wars with india. they have a lot of terrorists on their own territory. some with considerable evidence believe that 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 after at stanford, we had an interesting exercise with a hypothetical of a terrorist taking out most of mumbai with a nuclear weapon and we played the game of what would india do and how would pakistan respond? so it's a very difficult situation and when we think about iran, and i agree with bill and george on their analysis there, it's extremely dangerous. but so is pakistan. when you look at proliferation, we saw what happened with the

network, one individual in pakistan with the help of a lot of others, basically had a nuclear arms bazaar all over the world, enabling countries like north korea and others, libya to gain a great number of components of nuclear weapons. so it's a great concern, one of the toughest problems we face. but 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 in i don't know whether it's completely valid, but it was in american scientific magazine. and it postulated with the help of super computers a hypothetical of 100 bombs going off between india and pack stan and it basically said, based on the computer models, a couple hundred million people killed quickly and the consequences of the global cooling that would take place over the next five or six years, there would be 1

billion to 2 billion people start to death. do two nations have the right to do that in the name of sovereignty? i don't think so. i don't think so. so we all have to think about this a lot more seriously than we have. and in the case of iran, i might just say that it's a difficult scenario. if they do get nuclear weapons, there are going to be several other countries in that part of the world that will have a very active quest for nuclear weapons. if we have a conflict that has all sorts of implications, it would not be an over and out type conflict. you would have to take out the defensive missiles. if you were serious about it, you would have to take out their nuclear sites, and there's certainly not one or two, there are a lot more than that. as our physicist partner that's portrayed in this book reminded us yesterday afternoon, you need to take out the electrical grid also. that would have huge implications to their nuclear program.

since they have threatened to close the persian gulf, you would really need to take out their navy and probably a lot of their air force. so this is not a raid like we've seen before on iraq and syria. it's a big deal, has a lot of consequences. to think through . but i do believe there is some hope, because the iranians are in a real economic squeeze now. first of all, they've got a bad economic system. and second, the embargoes are having some effect. they're evaluation of their currency has gone down about 30% in the last six months. so they are feeling the pain. unfortunately, a lot of innocent people suffer, and that's something you always are concerned about. but the alternatives are pretty grim. and of course, we had a war that would be even more suffering. so the embargo has got to be tightened, we've got to do everything we can to persuade ussia to participate in it. the europeans are beginning to be very assertive, talking about

cutting off the import of iranian oil. all that may have an effect. the only other -- there's anything regarding iran these days that's a bright spot is a dark bright spot. i would say the one dark bright spot here is that they contend over and over again, though we don't believe them, suspect shouldn't believe them, that they don't have a weapon program. and they're not going to have a weapon program. and the ayatollah just said it would be a sin to develop weapons. now, do i believe that? no. but do i think that is important? yes. because it's a face-saving place to come down if we can come up with a concept like george talked about with some type of international enrichment centers under 24/7 iea camera and control. so that's the dark bright spot in a very difficult situation. >> secretary schultz, you wanted to add something? >> i wanted to add something on pakistan, because bill and i

over the last six months had two lengthy meetings, one with a group of former military and foreign minister types in india and pakistan. and then after that one with pakistani high officials and some u.s. and just one point on the latter. one of the sessions was devoted to a couple of economists, one from hoover, michael boss kin, and another from pakistan. and the net of that discussion -- it was the only real high point in the whole thing. the net of that discussion was that the pakistanis are foregoing tremendous economic opportunities by virtue of the tension that pervades the country and the unease that pervades the country. and if they could do something about it, they could have almost an explosive economic situation. so our thought is to hold that up to people and say come on,

why don't you get real and pay attention to your best interests and allow yourself to develop. 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 that what led to that meeting is the first meeting we had, i met with the -- off line with the former pakistani defense minister, and asked him why he was willing to go to so much trouble to come to these meetings and discuss these issues. and he said because i think we are heading for a nuclear war. not just terrorism, but a nuclear war. he said, i think it's likely somebody in pakistan now is plotting a mumbai ii. he said, if that happens, the indian government this time will not show restraint. they will send military force into pakistan to punish them.

the pakistani army will be humiliated, defeated, and then the pakistani military 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 within pakistan that the indians would not respond with nuclear weapons, which is a crazy theory, but they believe it. so that's a scenario of how we have not just one nuclear bomb in the city, a terror bomb, but we could have a nuclear war break out between two major countries in the world. and this is what i learned from listening to the pakistani former defense minister, his fear that they're heading for that kind of a nuclear war. that caught my attention very seriously. >> let's spend a few minutes talking about the threat of a

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 excerpt 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. and einstein wrote this letter when he became aware that nuclear physics had reached a point where a weapon could be created of almost incomprehensible power. so he wrote a letter to fdr. and what's so striking to me about it is the threat 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're facing the same threat today that albert einstein identified in 1939. and here's 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 nun, i know the programs that you and senator luger put into place have played a major role in trying to secure vulnerable physel material around the world. thanchs was an incredible insight. >> it was indeed. so senator nun, 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 if they got 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 if they would shoot missiles at us, where it came from, and therefore they have a return address and would suffer retaliation. terrorist groups don't have that, and some of them would like nothing more than to basically cause conflict to even escalate up between countries based on perceived terrorist attack and attribution of a particular country. so i think what you've got here is the ingredients of a perfect storm. you've got nuclear weapon usable material around the globe, our

organization and nuclear threat initiative just did an index rating the 32 countries around the globe in about 18 different aspects on how they are securing their weapon nuclear material. so the most important thing is keeping that nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists. they're not going to be able to make -- enrich themselves. they're not going to be able to do that. but if they get enrichment or plutonium, they can make a bomb. so material, terrorists who would like to use it. you've got the technology we thought only a state could basically master. 30, 40 years ago, now is available in pretty much intelligible form on the internet. and you've got a real growing possibility that that could happen. now, the good news -- there's good news here too. phillip, you've already mentioned the nunn/luger

program. gloria was a lead in negotiating in three countries that were part of the countries in the former soviet union to give up their nuclear weapons. ukraine, belarus and kazakhstan. not many knew about it, but it was huge. bill perry, secretary of defense, did a wonderful job on that. so there are good things going on. we've done some things. we now have a stronger iea, though not nearly strong enough. we have a u.n. resolution 1540 that requires every nation to take care of their nuclear material. so we have a lot going on. one they think that people don't know about, and i always think -- in this grim subject, we need to have a little bit of encouragement. one of the things that gloria and her team helped negotiate, we hope with the help of the nunn/luger program, ukrainians didn't want to give up their weapons without giving some economic benefit, and highly enriched uranium is worth money. you can convert it into nuclear