And that would be another kind of catastrophe—not the kind you would ordinarily think of, but it would cause widespread crop failure and widespread starvation in the world. Tat’s another kind of catastrophe, and that one, in my opinion, is not a remote catastrophe. Beyond that …
Army AL&T: Tat’s not a remote catastrophe?
Perry: No, it’s not remote. Te dangers we had through the Cold War, I don’t believe now that the United States and Soviet Union were ever ready to deliberately initiate a nuclear war against the other side, the so-called surprise attack or bolt out of the blue. We prepared for that, we worried about it and, in retrospect, I don’t think it was a serious concern. What was a serious concern in the Cold War was that we were susceptible to an accidental nuclear war or a war by miscalculation.
And the poster child for war by miscalculation was the Cuban missile crisis, where we damn near blundered into a major nuclear holocaust. As far as an accidental nuclear war is con- cerned, I am aware of three false alarms that could very well have caused us to mistakenly launch our ICBMs [intercontinen- tal ballistic missiles] during the Cold War, one of which [false alarms] occurred when I was undersecretary of defense.
I was actually woken in the middle of the night to help figure out what was going wrong.
So those dangers of a nuclear war, not just a catastrophe but a real nuclear war erupting during the Cold War, I think were only likely through an accident or miscalculation.
When the Cold War ended, those dangers went away, but now that we have a more and more aggressive posture between the United States and Russia, those dangers, I think, are coming back. So those are four different ways we could have some kind of a nuclear catastrophe: terrorism; a regional nuclear war; an accidental nuclear war, say by a false alarm; or a war by miscal- culation. And those last two have only become issues since the U.S. and Russia in the last decade developed more and more aggressive attitudes toward each other. Tose two are not as dangerous as I think they were during the Cold War, but they are unnecessarily dangerous. Tey add a risk we should not be taking.
Army AL&T: You seem accustomed to having a lot riding on your shoulders. What’s it like to be secretary of defense? What kind of weight does the job bring?
Perry: It’s challenging, exciting. I found it a very gratifying job. I felt I was doing something important. I felt I was doing it well, so it was very gratifying. But also the scary part of it, we were not looking at big nuclear issues in those days. Tat was one period of time in history when the danger of nuclear catastro- phe was minimal, but we were conducting a peace-enforcement operation in Bosnia and we had 25,000 troops over there, not an insignificant number.
Before we sent them over there—and I testified to Congress about the proposed operation—a lot of congressmen did not want to send troops over there. Several of them were telling me, “You’re going to be having a hundred body bags a month coming back from there,” and if they wanted to say something that got my attention, that was it. Because I was the one to sign the deployment orders to send the Soldiers on a mission in which they could be killed, and I was the one who went out to Andrews Air Force Base and met the plane that brought back the remains and talked with the families, explained to them why it was we sent their husband or father or wife or son on this dangerous mission.
So, more than anything else, the personal aspect of the job—sending people on missions in which they could get killed—made a deep impression on me. And I always thought about that every time I signed those deployment orders. Te reason I went to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the families was that they kept the human element of that alive, and when I signed the orders, I had to think about the objective element of it: “We’re doing this for the following security reason.” I had to satisfy that test.
Ten I went out to Andrews Air Force Base to remind myself that I was also a human element to it. I didn’t want to get detached from that human element. So that’s a long-winded answer, but that was the thing which I think probably was unique about that job and which made a very strong impression on me.
Army AL&T: When you left office, was it because you were tired and wanted to get on to something else? What were your feelings?
Perry: Well, first of all, when President Clinton offered me the job, I first turned it down. I wasn’t seeking the job and was persuaded that I should take it, and I think that was the right decision to take it. I wanted to make the point that I really wasn’t seeking the job in the first place, but I told him at the time I was only going to serve one term. And when the end of
ASC.ARMY.MIL 107
CRITICAL THINKING
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