Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. A fellow at the Hoover Institution, former
Secretary of State George Schultz has now joined former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,
former Secretary of Defense William Perry, and former Senator Sam Nunn in directing the
Nuclear Security Project. The aim of the Nuclear Security Project, to quote George Schultz
and his fellow directors, quote, to galvanize global action ending nuclear weapons as a
threat to the world. Secretary Schultz, welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. Nuclear Weapons, Then
and Now, let me quote you, writing with Henry Kissinger and others in the Wall Street Journal
late last year, nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during
the Cold War. But reliance on nuclear weapons is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly
effective. The world is now on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era. Well,
that's an arresting formulation. We've got to do something about nuclear weapons now,
but back then, we needed them. What, draw the distinction for me, why were they all
right, indeed necessary, during the Cold War but have become dangerous today.
During the Cold War, we had the Doctrine of Deterrence. And there were two countries,
the Soviet Union and the United States and we both had massive nuclear forces. And if
there were a nuclear exchange, everybody knew that it would wipe out both countries. And
so, the notion was, that threat kept the peace. It was an uneasy situation. I think everybody
was worried about it. And those of us who were involved, the people's names you read
off, all would say there were more than enough close calls where things almost got out of
control, but didn't. So that the rationale. President Reagan never subscribed to the Doctrine
of Mutual Assured Destruction. He said it was immoral, that we keep the peace by being
willing to wipe each other out. There's got to be a better way. And so, he advocated the
elimination of nuclear weapons, publicly, right from the start. And so, he didn't agree
with, I mean, he agreed with the concept of deterrence and that's what we were doing,
but, he wanted to push things in a different direction.
Did you, back during the Cold War, Soviet Union, United States, and France and Britain
had their own deterrence but they were so closely integrated, their military and intelligence
structures with ours, that fundamentally, it's a balance between two super powers. I've
Sid Drell, also your colleague in this Nuclear Security Project, say that during the Cuban
Missile Crisis, he was genuinely worried that there might be a nuclear exchange but that
that was really the only moment during all the Cold War when he felt things might genuinely
get out of control. Would you agree with that? Or did you feel that there, you mentioned
that there were more close calls. I have the feeling that you were aware of more than,
perhaps, the general public was. Well, Bill Perry, if he were here, would tell you that
when he was, before he was Secretary of Defense, when he was, I think, Under Secretary.
Yes.
He was awakened in the middle of the night by somebody who had warnings and was deciding
they were not real but was worried. So, the problem is, you don't have much time.
Right.
And these weapons are on very short time spreads between when you get a warning and when you
fire. Because, if you fire, the first strike hits, you're, among other things, trying to
take out the other side's weaponry.
Right.
So you've got to fire it before they can take it out.
Before it lands, essentially, right?
So you're sitting there and you've got about thirty minutes and is this threat real or
isn't it real and all kinds of things can constitute threats.
So that when you say the nuclear deterrent worked during the Cold War, but that it was
uneasy, heavy emphasis on uneasy.
It was uneasy; it worked. So be it. However, this situation now is rather different. In
the first place, there are more and it looks like maybe increasing numbers of countries
that have nuclear weapons. It's interesting that as Iran's program is going along now,
Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt, Jordan all want a nuclear power plant and willing
to agree that they want to produce nuclear power. But it's also the case that if you
can enrich the uranium to use in a nuclear power plant, you can enrich it to weapon's
grade. And when the fuel is spent, the spent fuel can be reprocessed into plutonium and
physicists tell us that it's harder to make a bomb out of plutonium but we have to remember
that the Nagasaki bomb was a plutonium bomb, so it's not impossible.
Right.
And then you have the problem of terrorists who are trying to get a hold of a nuclear
weapon or fissile material to make one out of. And there's a lot of fissile material
around the world. So, I think, and my colleagues think, that we should take a deep breath and
say, we're on the wrong track. The non-proliferation regime is kind of unraveling and we've got
to get it back together. And the way to do it is to put an objective up there of having
the world free of nuclear weapons.
Right.
And once you've done that, you are impelled to ask yourself, what would it take to get
there? What kind of steps, if you're a serious person that wants to preserve security as
you go along and so on, what are the steps you would take and what has to come first
and what second, what can be consecutive, and so on.
A quarter of a century after the Cold War ended, the United States still deploys some
six thousand nuclear weapons and stockpiles another four thousand. Does that strike you
as appropriate given the circumstances? A sheer inertial hangover from the conflict
we were fighting twenty-five years ago? How do you begin with the United States itself?
If you want to live in a world free of nuclear weapons, what do you say to Americans?
Well, in the first place, I think your six thousand number's a little high.
Is it?
But.
You've been at work on this for a year so maybe it's come down.
It's well in the thousands.
Yes, it is.
So, if a modern nuclear weapon is exploded over Manhattan Island, it incinerates Manhattan
Island. That's how powerful these things are.
A single warhead.
A single warhead. So what's gonna happen with two thousand warheads? What conceivable use
do you have? Henry Kissinger said something very poignant on this when he and Sam Nunn
and I were having a little program in Washington, DC about a year ago. And he said, the thing
that gnawed at me the most when I was in office was what would I say if the President ever
asked me my advise on whether to use a nuclear weapon, knowing that hundreds of thousands
of people are gonna be killed? And if you have a nuclear exchange, it's way up in the
millions. So, a terrorist wants to get one of these bombs to use it, not to deter.
Right.
So we have a problem.
Should the United States move first by eliminating half its arsenal, two-thirds of its arsenal?
Should we begin building down right now? Should there be some unilateral component to the
American effort in pursuing this goal of eliminating nuclear weapons?
I'm not a big proponent of the unilateral disarmament and I think that what we should
aspire to is to put this goal forward to other countries and develop an international consensus
that this is where we should go. Then, of course, between Russia and the United States,
we have over 90% of the nuclear weapons in existence. So, obviously, we're gonna have
to do a lot right at the beginning.
Can you, I'm still, even if that number is high as six thousand, I'm brilliant researcher,
I just Goggled around on nuclear weapons plus the United States and I come up with that
we have some, whatever it is, it's thousands.
We have thousands.
But if you were making, explain to me as a layman, I am talking to George Schultz who
has spent his career being tough on every threat to the United States that the United
States ever faced, who is as hardheaded a diplomat as we have ever had in American history,
and he is sitting across the table from me, saying in effect, I can't imagine why we still
have thousands of these nuclear weapons. What is the, is it just because they're in stock
piles and nobody's gotten around to unscrewing, what is the argument? There must be some rationale
for these things as they exist right now.
Well, people are still stuck in the old concept of deterrents.
All right.
But I don't know what we're gonna, I can't imagine any dispute with Russia. We're gonna
use nuclear weapons because we're mad about and disagree with them about Kosovo?
No.
No. Are we gonna use nuclear weapons because we're having an argument about the deployment
of our strategic defense in Poland? No. We're not, there isn't any dispute that you can
imagine. Not that there aren't hard issues to argue with them about, but, is there anything
that justifies the use of a nuclear weapon? There isn't.
Now, if you're Vladimir Putin or this new, Putin is now Prime Minister and this new man
whose name I can almost pronounce.
Medvedev.
You're better than I am. You know, you should think about diplomacy. Could be good for you,
could work out. They've got thousands of them, too. It's much harder for me to find a good
number for Russia but they have thousands. Can't, why should it be a hard deal to get
together and say, look, by five years from now, we're both gonna take it down to one
thousand apiece. We don't even know, we're not even quite sure why we need a thousand
apiece but we know we don't need more than that. Why should that be hard for the United
States and Russia to get together and just get started?
There's all kinds of things that we should be doing right now. And in the essay we wrote
in the Wall Street Journal.
Yes. We have, we list them and say we ought to
get going on these things. For example, there is the Treaty on Strategic Arms Reductions.
Right.
That expires in December, 2009. That treaty has in it the best verification provisions
of any treaty on this subject that's ever been negotiated. And we've now had some ten
years or so of experience in administering those provisions so we've learned a lot about
verification.
Which is bilateral between us and the Russians at this point?
Right, exactly. So, to let that expire and lose all of that, that would be insane. We
should be re-negotiating that and in Moscow, 2002, there was an agreement to reduce further,
include those reductions and get going on this, absolutely.
Special case, North Korea carried out a successful nuclear test in October, 2006. It is now unambiguous
that North Korea possesses some, at least single digit number of nuclear weapons. We've
been talk, so far, about moving toward the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons in the
world through good will and talking to diplomats and so forth.
Not through good will.
No?
No, not through good will.
Should we get tough on North Korea?
Through being sensible about the threat from these weapons and about the problem of them
getting out of control and adopting a tough, hardheaded program to do something about it.
And when you do that, then when you address the North Korean and Iranian type problems,
it's not that they're going to suddenly see the light.
Right.
Because of this. It's just that if we're really serious in going on this, then the other countries
will put immense pressure on them not to wind up being a country with nuclear weapons.
So the way, again, what I'm digging at here is for some evaluation of how you think we've
handled matters in North Korea under the current administration with an eye to what the successor
to George W. Bush, perhaps out to do. But is it correct in your judgment that at least
the impulse of the Bush administration, which was to get the Chinese to lean on the North
Koreans, in concert, bring in the Japanese, there were, what was it, six countries at
those talks. That impulse was correct. The right way to address North Korea was by getting
other countries to see that they shared our interests and lean on them, lean on the North
Koreans. That correct or should we have engaged in war?
No, absolutely. The countries that have the most stroke with North Korea are China that
has a big trading relationship with them, and Japan.
Right.
So, they're the countries that have the key, they have the screws they can turn if they
want to turn them. So, you get them involved in your program. Now you say to China, what'll
happen if North Korea winds up with a nuclear weapon on the end of a ballistic missile?
They've already fired ballistic missiles across Japan. Don't you think Japan is likely to
say –
We want missiles.
We're not going to sit still for this. And Japan could have a nuclear weapon on a ballistic
missile like lightning. They have the know-how, they have the capability of doing it, and
they could do it. So, then you say to China, is that what you really want, a re-armed Japan
with nuclear weapons? So, you've got to head that off by being tough with North Korea.
How much patience should an administration have presumably something like the conversations
that you're suggesting ought to take place, have taken place, but as far as we know, China
hasn't, you know more about this than I do. Has China leaned on North Korea as much as
we'd like? If not, how do we, how do we make things, is this the kind of problem you work
for years? Or do you want results within some more, with months? How do you measure this
stuff?
Well, you want results right away but you, if you're a realist, you recognize that it's
gonna take a while. And you have to be patient with it. Kim Jong Il has practically an unbroken
record of breaking his promises so you know that promises are not worth very much. It's
actions that you want. There have been some actions taken that are positive. The big reactor
that they had that was producing plutonium has been shut down now and that's done, it's
shut down. But there's still plenty of issues left and we still work at it and we should
keep the pressure on.
If you could, whoever the next President is, if you could give a sentence or two of advise
regarding North Korea to him or her, what would you say? Keep working it or?
Oh, yeah. Keep working it but give consideration to changing the environment within which you're
working by talking to the other countries that have nuclear weapons and persuading people
that we'd all be better off if we could get rid of them.
All right.
And if we start down that road, then the pressures that go on countries that are trying to get
them, or maybe have one or two, become immense.
Iran, Iran, I want to close out Iran here. Vice President *** Cheney, quote, we will
not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, close quote, flat statement. Retired Army General
John Abizaid, former Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, quote, there are ways
to live with a nuclear Iran. Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've
lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with other nuclear powers as well. Is a nuclear,
I don't mean nuclear energy, an Iran with nuclear weapons flatly unacceptable?
I would think it so. And yet, when you are the Vice President or the Secretary of State
or somebody, I think you have to be very careful with your words, because if you say something
is not acceptable, that means you're not gonna accept it.
Right.
So what are you gonna do?
Don't let the world see that you are bluffing, in other words.
There's nothing worse than empty threats. I remember to this day when I entered the
United States Marine Corp in World War II. When you enlist, you don't become a Marine,
you become a boot and you go to boot camp for about ten weeks and you get kicked around.
And I remember when the Sergeant gave me my rifle and he said, take good care of this
rifle. This is your best friend. And remember one thing, never point this rifle at anybody
unless you're willing to pull the trigger. So no empty threats.
We've talked about good nations, the United States, bad nations, North Korea and Iran
and Iraq, non-nations, terrorists. After September 11th, 2001, I think it's fair to say that
among people active in politics, people in the know in foreign policy, and people who
are close to intelligence, it was taken for granted that the United States would suffer
another attack within some period of months, or perhaps, a couple of years. We haven't.
Why not?
Well, I think we have proven to be a tough target. We've done a lot of things. People
point to things in addition that we, perhaps, should have done, but anyway, we've done a
lot of things. And I'm completely uninformed about this but I know from when I was in office
and I did know what was going on, that my guess is that there were lots of terrorist
threats that didn't happen because we found out about them and we stopped them. And you
tend to do that quietly so that you don't tip off people to how it is that you found
out. But anyway, I think that probably a lot was stopped. And the same is true in London.
There were some that got through in London, but, from what I've read, the British authorities
stopped a great many by finding out about them and taking preventative action. You've
got to be willing to use preventative action, preventative force, sometimes.
Now, you've thought a lot about these problems. It strikes me there's an inherently a difficult
political problem in the kind of action that you've just described. Based on your experience,
you feel confident that we have snuffed out or caught or prevented some large number of
potential attacks. But you have to keep quiet about it. How can an administration, the Bush
administration, or again, any successor, sustain political support for activity about which
the public must be kept in the dark? The current president's political problem, he'll be leaving
office in less than a year, nevertheless, he has the problem that it's difficult for
him to take certain actions because his public support is so low, but isn't it likely to
be the case that the public would feel quite a lot of gratitude and give him more support
than it does now if only they knew what they cannot know? How do you work that problem?
I don't see any problem with saying there are lots of threats that we have discovered
and we've managed by taking preventive action to stop them from happening. But you don't
want to talk about particulars and how we found out about this or that and precisely
what it was and what we did and so on because that is giving away things to your adversary.
Do you, the terrorist threat, fissile material, the best way of addressing that problem is
by talking to other countries. That's, we return now to your earlier point about the
need to make common cause with other nations to address the nuclear threat. Is that correct?
Or are, or do, or can we, do we have unilateral capacity?
We don't have uni-
We don't.
We don't have unilateral capacity. This has got to be done on a multinational basis. And
you mentioned fissile material.
Yes.
We need to negotiate a fissile material cutoff treaty and get other people to agree that
nobody's gonna produce fissile material. And we need to get a hold of the, make a huge
effort to get a hold of the fissile material that's lying around. There's fissile material
in some forty countries, much of it –
Didn't realize that.
Is in research reactors and I'm told by, I couldn't say this myself out of my own knowledge
but my friends who are physicists say they don't need weapons grade material to do the
kind of experimentation that they do so we want to get that out of there and replace
it with a lower grade of enriched uranium. And there're all kinds of things like that
should be done.
You and Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn and Bill Perry and others are working on this Nuclear
Security Project. You mentioned that you just returned from Oslo where there was a conference
at which twenty-nine countries sent representatives. Are you working in any way with the United
Nations? Do you consider the UN simply to bureaucratic to take up this cause? What would,
in other words, we've just talked about the need for concerted international action, one
would think the UN would be a likely locus for that kind of effort. On the other hand,
the UN isn't easy to deal with, perhaps.
Well, Mister Duarte, a very able man, a Brazilian who is the UN's chief person for this subject
was at our conference at the Hoover Institution last October and he was at the Oslo meeting
and I think once the powers that have nuclear weapons were to get going on something, it
no doubt would benefit by being part of a UN process. And Duarte is a very capable,
sensible person so I'd have a lot of confidence in him. You also might say, I think the new
Secretary General of the UN gives me good feeling.
Good. You're supporting, I believe this is public, you're supporting John McCain for
President.
Yes.
All right. Ought not John McCain to call during the campaign for an international conference
to address these matters and, in particular, for the United States and Russia to reduce
their arsenals by some large proportion, isn't this a moment when a dramatic gesture by a
candidate who's credentials on national security are beyond question to get this, to get the
world paying attention? Good idea?
Not necessarily.
I thought I had one for you there. No?
Remember that what we're doing is being supported by a great many, like two-thirds or so, of
the former secretaries of State.
Of both parties.
And Defense and National Security advisors of both parties.
I see.
And people keep asking us, or saying to us, isn't this a nice thing that it's bi-partisan?
Perry and Nunn are Democrats; Kissinger and I are Republics, and we all say, it's not
bi-partisan. It's non-partisan. And this is a subject of such importance that it shouldn't
be dragged into the partisan divide. It ought to be considered on its merits. There's plenty
to argue about. Let's just argue it just on the merits and not drag it into partisan politics.
So my hope is that the candidates might say that they have some respect for us and if
elected President, I'll listen to these guys and we'll see where we go from there.
All right. A couple of last questions. These are open-ended, these are to see what else
might be on the mind of George Schultz. Filmmaker Ridley Scott has announced that he intends
to shot a movie about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit. Had you heard that? Ridley Scott is a big
time Hollywood producer and he has, this is from the Hollywood, from Variety, it's either
from the Hollywood Reporter or Variety. I can't remember where I saw it. I hope you're
impressed by the width, by the breadth of my reading here, quote Ridley Scott, these
are fascinating historical characters, larger than life figures, but I want to show who
they were and why they did what they did. Their actions helped shape history, paving
the way for the end of the Cold War, close quote. Reykjavik 1986, of course, is where
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev came this close to agreements that would substantially
have eliminated nuclear weapons. Here's the question, the biggest audience for movies
these days is young people. Kids are not gonna remember 1986 and Reykjavik, what should Ridley
Scott take special care to get right?
Well, the record of Reykjavik is open. The note takers –
Yes.
We had note takers on each side taking notes. Those notes have been published and so, nobody
has to speculate about what was said. And in the press conferences afterwards, I know,
I gave the one for the U.S. and I asked President Reagan as we were riding back in the car what
I should say and he said, just say what happened. Don't hold anything back. So there are no
leaks from Reykjavik. It's all out there. And I do think that that was something of
a turning point. And since that time, the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. and
Soviet, or now Russian, arsenals have been reduced dramatically. And Ukraine and Kazakhstan
are two countries that had nuclear weapons and they don't have them any more. They're
zero. So, Reykjavik did achieve a lot and, but we have a long ways to go.
Another open-ended question here. During the Second World War, you served in the United
States Marine Corp. During the Cold War, you served as Director of the Office of Management
and Budget, Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State. You
and I now live in Northern California where everything is beautiful, where life if affluent,
what would you say to these very bright kids here at Stanford University and at other institutions
across the country to convey to them that the world is dangerous, that threats, that
there is a reality to threats to this country? How do you convey to kids a sense of what
is now, what you saw with your own eyes, but what is now history?
I think you said it all, that you are very special people. You're here at one of the
best universities in the world. You're getting a fabulous exposure to opportunities for learning.
And with those opportunities come responsibilities. And you have to be willing to undertake some
public service and help grapple with these problems. Furthermore, when people say to
me, you did all this public service and we're grateful to you for all those sacrifices,
I say nonsense. Those were the high point years of my life. And it is a tremendous opportunity
and a tremendous privilege to serve your country.
Last question, in Ridley Scott's movie, who plays George Schultz?
Why don't you take a crack at it?
I think we'll leave it to Tom Cruise, how's that?
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
I'm Peter Robinson at the Hoover Institution for Uncommon Knowledge, thanks for joining
us.