![]() Nuclear war isn’t the subtext of popular movies, or novels disarmament has fallen far from the top of the policy priority list. And, unlike the original Cold War, this time there is a world of busy fanatics excited by the prospect of a planet with more bombs-people who have already demonstrated the desire to slaughter many thousands of people in an instant, and are zealously pursuing ever more deadly means to do so.Īnd there’s one other difference from the Cold War: Americans no longer think about the threat every day. Decades of cooperation between the two nations on arms control is nearly at a standstill. There is an American president-elect who breezily free-associates on Twitter about starting a new nuclear arms race. At the dawn of 2017, there is a Russian president making bellicose boasts about his modernized arsenal. Instead, nukes are suddenly- insanely, by Perry’s estimate-once again a contemporary nightmare, and an emphatically ascendant one. Nuclear bombs are an area of expertise Perry had assumed would be largely obsolete by now, seven decades after Hiroshima, a quarter-century after the fall of the Soviet Union, and in the flickering light of his own life. ![]() He later founded his own successful defense firm, helped revolutionize the American way of high-tech war, and honed his diplomatic skills seeking common ground on security issues with the Soviets and Chinese-all culminating as head of the Pentagon in the early years after the end of the Cold War. Perry played a supporting role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, during which he went back to his Washington hotel room each night, fearing he had only hours left to live. arsenal, how to minimize the possibility that the old Soviet arsenal would obliterate the United States and much of the planet along the way. His life’s work, most of it highly classified, was nuclear weapons-how to maximize the fearsome deterrent power of the U.S. Instead, he has set out on an urgent pilgrimage.īill Perry has become, he says with a rueful smile, “a prophet of doom.” ![]() secretary of Defense, a trained mathematician who served or advised nearly every administration since Eisenhower, should be filling out the remainder of his years in quiet reflection on his achievements. Perry is 89 now, at the tail end of one of his generation’s most illustrious careers in national security.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |