{"id":25150,"date":"2017-09-03T16:16:04","date_gmt":"2017-09-03T21:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25150"},"modified":"2017-09-03T16:16:04","modified_gmt":"2017-09-03T21:16:04","slug":"william-perry-interview-former-defense-secretary-who-negotiated-with-n-korea-warns-civilization-is-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=25150","title":{"rendered":"William Perry Interview: Former Defense Secretary Who Negotiated With N. Korea Warns Civilization Is at Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-item__header\">\n<h3 class=\"article-item__title \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/articles\/former-defense-secretary-william-j-perry-on-the-nuclear-threat\/\">William Perry Interview: Former Defense Secretary Who Negotiated With N. Korea Warns Civilization Is at Risk<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"layout layout--comment-share layout--comment-share-in-article\"><\/div>\n<figure class=\"article-item__thumbnail article-item__caption-alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"article-item__thumbnail-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/William_J_Perry_cr_2015-850x626.jpg\" width=\"\" height=\"626\" \/><figcaption>William Perry in 2015. <small>(<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:William_J_Perry_cr_2015.jpg\">DoD \/ Glenn Fawcett<\/a>)<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-item__content am2-content\">\n<p>William Perry has had a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_Perry#Early_life_and_career\">long career<\/a>\u00a0in government, serving \u00a0in the Pentagon under Presidents Carter and Reagan before becoming President Clinton\u2019s secretary of defense in 1994.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe stand today, I believe, in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we faced during the Cold War,\u201d Perry tells host and Truthdig Editor in Chief\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/author\/robert_scheer\/\">Robert Scheer<\/a> in this week\u2019s\u00a0episode of KCRW\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcrw.com\/news-culture\/shows\/scheer-intelligence\/william-j-perry-the-real-risk-of-nuclear-war\">Scheer Intelligence<\/a>.\u201d This interview was conducted Aug. 9, the 72nd anniversary of the U.S. nuclear attack on Nagasaki.<\/p>\n<p>Since his time in the Pentagon, Perry has founded the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wjperryproject.org\/\">William J. Perry Project<\/a>, which aims to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons. He has also written a book, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/freshstore.truthdig.com\/my-journey-at-the-nuclear-brink\/\">My Journey at the Nuclear Brink<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perry and Scheer discuss how the expansion of NATO in the 1990s factors into the rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Perry calls this expansion \u201cthe first step\u201d in escalating tensions. The \u201csecond step,\u201d he says, was \u201cinstalling ballistic missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur response to Russia on the objections to these various actions we were taking basically was, \u2018What can you do about it? You\u2019re an insignificant power today,\u2019 \u201d Perry says. \u201cThe reason Putin is so popular today is that he has taken actions that, in [Russians\u2019] view, allow Russia to stand as a great power and overcome this humiliating position they were in \u2026 so we stand today in a position of hostility between the United States and Russia, comparable to where we stood in the Cold War. In the meantime, we still have many thousands of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>William Perry Interview: Former Defense Secretary Who Negotiated With N. Korea Warns Civilization Is at Risk William Perry in 2015. (DoD \/ Glenn Fawcett) William Perry has had a long career\u00a0in government, serving \u00a0in the Pentagon under Presidents Carter and Reagan before becoming President Clinton\u2019s secretary of defense in 1994. \u201cWe stand today, I believe, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[149,2006,581,620,690,8738,10928],"class_list":["post-25150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-cold-war","tag-north-korea","tag-nuclear-war","tag-pentagon","tag-risk","tag-truthdig","tag-william-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25151,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25150\/revisions\/25151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}