My Journey at the Nuclear Brink by William Perry

My Journey at the Nuclear Brink is a continuation of William J. Perry's efforts to keep the world safe from a nuclear catastrophe. It tells the story of his coming of age in the nuclear era, his role in trying to shape and contain it, and how his thinking has changed about the threat these weapons pose. In a remarkable career, Perry has dealt firsthand with the changing nuclear threat. Decades of experience and special access to top-secret knowledge of strategic nuclear options have given Perry a unique, and chilling, vantage point from which to conclude that nuclear weapons endanger our security rather than securing it. This book traces his thought process as he journeys from the Cuban Missile Crisis, to crafting a defense strategy in the Carter Administration to offset the Soviets' numeric superiority in conventional forces, to presiding over the dismantling of more than 8,000 nuclear weapons in the Clinton Administration, and to his creation in 2007, with George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger, of the Nuclear Security Project to articulate their vision of a world free from nuclear weapons and to lay out the urgent steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers. Editorial Reviews 10/05/2015 Perry, more technocrat than politician, emphasizes his efforts to prevent nuclear war in this sincere and nontriumphalist memoir. Perry, an early Silicon Valley CEO, served as the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering in the Carter administration, before returning to the private sector during the 1980s. Perry was recalled to government service during the Clinton Administration, briefly as Undersecretary of Defense (1993-1994) and then Secretary of Defense (1994-1997); he carried out the Nunn-Lugar program, which dismantled thousands of nuclear weapons in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In 1996, Russian troops served under an American commander as peacekeepers in Bosnia, marking (in Perry's blunt assessment) the high point in the possibility of a nuclear-free world. Then, despite his protests, NATO admitted the three Baltic states and began the early processing of Georgia and Ukraine for membership, enraging Russia. Since that time, Russia, under the pugnacious Vladimir Putin, has expanded its nuclear arsenal just as the alarmingly unpredictable nations of North Korea and Pakistan have further developed their nuclear capabilities. The obligatory how-to-fix-it conclusion is not encouraging, failing to go beyond vague tactics such as education of the public. Perry's admirable memoir is a disturbing reminder that the danger of nuclear war did not disappear with the collapse of the Soviet Union. (Dec.) - Publishers Weekly William Perry's dedicated service to our nation spans generations, and this remarkable book documents a lifetime of achievements that have made America stronger and safer. In these pages, you will have an insider's look at the acute tensions of the Cold War and the expansive opportunities that emerged when it ended. Dr. Perry's experiences demonstrate why we must do everything we can to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation. You will be inspired by the impact that one gifted individual can have on the most pressing national security challenges that we face. - Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall Bill Perry has the highest A to E ratio (accomplishments to ego) of anyone I have ever known. His vision and foresight have made America safer, stronger and more secure. He has lived General Omar Bradley's dictum: 'The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.' Everyone interested in protecting the future of our nation and planet should read this book and learn from Bill's experience. - Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative - Former Senator Sam Nunn In clear, detailed but powerful prose, Perry's new book, My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, tells the story of his seventy-year experience of the nuclear age. Beginning with his firsthand encounter with survivors living amid 'vast wastes of fused rubble' in the aftermath of World War II, his account takes us up to today when Perry is on an urgent mission to alert us to the dangerous nuclear road we are traveling. - The New York Review of Books - Jerry Brown William Perry's dedicated service to our nation spans generations, and this remarkable book documents a lifetime of achievements that have made America stronger and safer. In these pages, you will have an insider's look at the acute tensions of the Cold War and the expansive opportunities that emerged when it ended. Dr. Perry's experiences demonstrate why we must do everything we can to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation. You will be inspired by the impact that one gifted individual can have on the most pressing national security challenges that we face. - From the Publisher 2015-09-03 A methodical memoir of a long, top-level government career developing nuclear deterrence strategy. The former secretary of defense during President Bill Clinton's first term, as well as an accomplished Stanford University scholar, Perry straightforwardly tracks his life's journey in terms of a growing awareness that the only defense against nuclear attack is to prevent the attack from happening. Too young to serve in World War II, the Pennsylvania-born math whiz was barely 18 when he enlisted as an Army engineer and observed firsthand the bombing devastation of postwar Japan. The rise of the Soviet missile threat defined his early years of graduate work at Stanford, which were followed by a job as a senior scientist at Sylvania's Electronic Defense Laboratories. An original entrepreneur in Silicon Valley with his own company, Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory, and dedicated to Cold War intelligence work using new digital technology, Perry was plucked by Harold Brown to serve as his undersecretary of defense for research and engineering in 1977. He gradually began to see that the old way of thinking about keeping up with the Soviets and ensuring an offset strategy was outdated, a colossal failure of imagination. What was needed was diplomacy--e.g., dealing with China, NATO, and Israel-Egyptian peace talks at Camp David. A critic of the Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars, Perry actively participated in nongovernmental international diplomacy, Track II, to develop new paths of understanding with Russian scientists and academics. When he returned to Washington, D.C., in 1993, Perry was in a unique position to deal with the dismantling of nuclear weapons left as the legacy of the Cold War, enforced by Nunn-Lugar legislation. Perry recounts tackling one containment crisis after another during his tenure, from North Korea to Bosnia to Haiti. Having worked so hard to neutralize the Soviet-U.S. relationship, Perry is especially anguished at the new tension with Putin's Russia. Not an exciting account but a solid record of a terrifically significant public career. - Kirkus Reviews Perry has long been one of the more strenuous advocates for confronting the dangers of the nuclear age, and his engaging memoir explains why. - Foreign Affairs - Lawrence D. Freedman Perry's authoritative memoir...is a clear, sobering and, for many, surprising warning that the danger of a nuclear catastrophe today is actually greater than it was during that era of U.S.-Soviet competition.a significant and insightful memoir and a necessary read. - U.S. News & World Report - Mortimer B. Zuckerman