Nuclear security

On the Brink of Oblivion

Our planet today faces two existential dangers: an impending climate catastrophe, and the very real possibility of a nuclear calamity. Both of these dangers arise from human activity and are thus within our capacity to address. And both challenges are interconnected and require a new attitude that recognizes our common interests and need to cooperate. Public awareness and political will must be raised to levels commensurate with the threat.

The warnings about climate change are now part of our public consciousness, resulting in actions being taken that if continued and built upon might possibly stave off this catastrophe or at least reduce its damage. However, the public seems to believe that the danger from nuclear weapons ended with the Cold War.

But former Defense Secretary William Perry's authoritative memoir, "My Journey at the Nuclear Brink," 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. After a long career in and out of government in which he was at the center of the policy imperative to prevent the use of these weapons – from the grim paradoxes in shoring up fragile deterrence to the enlightened promotion of successful arms control agreements during the Cold War and beyond – Perry warns us that our actions today are in no way commensurate with the growing nuclear danger, a peril that could change our lives in awful and barbaric ways if not end civilization outright.