In Pentagon parlance, a key measure of a military unit's performance is its "optempo," the pace at which it operates. No recent secretary of defense maintained a greater optempo than William Perry, who served under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997. On his watch, the world became a bigger place.
Perry's tenure came at a time when the states of the former Soviet Union suddenly found themselves reborn as independent countries. Faced with the task of defending themselves without assistance from Moscow, they turned to Washington, once their Cold War enemy, for help in modernizing their militaries. This left the U.S. secretary of defense with a long list of relationships to nurture -- from Belarus to Uzbekistan.
Perry had to act swiftly, before these new nations looked elsewhere for advice and support. He logged thousands of miles building military relations that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. From the Baltic Sea to the Chinese border, generals who never before contemplated formal ties with the United States had their honor-guard bands learning "The Star-Spangled Banner" as they anticipated Perry's visits and prepared to spend the money the new contacts would bring. To Perry's credit, his marathon travels were a success.
The former secretary recounts those historic developments in Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America (Brookings Institution Press, 1999; $24.95). Perry, '49, MS '50, PhD '55 (mathematics), is an engineering professor and senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford. He and co-author Ashton Carter, the Harvard professor who served him as a top Pentagon policy adviser, direct the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project.
While books about military policy can be heavy going, Perry's work -- part memoir -- is enlivened by intimate details. For instance, he chalked up his air miles in a Boeing 747 that, as a Cold War Doomsday plane, had been equipped as an airborne command post in case of a nuclear war. A chart on its bulkhead listed the order of presidential succession in the event the commander-in-chief did not survive an attack. For Perry, the chart stood as a warning about one of the main dangers of the post-Soviet era: "that Russia might descend into chaos, isolation, and aggression as Germany did after World War I."
The authors' experiences convinced them that America must base its military policy for the coming millennium on "preventive defense" rather than simply readiness to react to a crisis. The United States did just that after World War II by helping to rebuild Europe and Japan. But in the ensuing Cold War, Perry and Carter contend, deterrence and containment became the U.S. military watchwords -- and Americans still think of national security "exclusively in terms of threats to be deterred or defeated."
Perry classifies risks to the country's security and survival by three levels of priority: A-list, or direct threats to U.S. survival; B-list, contingencies that would threaten America's interests but not its survival; and C-list, indirect threats. Russia slipping backward tops his A list, which also includes the former Soviet states losing control of the U.S.S.R.'s nuclear arsenal; China growing hostile in its international relations; weapons of mass destruction spreading to other countries; and terrorists mounting a catastrophic attack on U.S. territory. His B list includes war in the Persian Gulf or on the Korean Peninsula. Troubles in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda or Haiti are examples from his C list.
Preventive Defense reminds us of how skillfully and sensitively Perry worked to build U.S. military relations with Russia, even as Russia's leaders were pushed by hardliners who believed their country could regain more of its former stature by breaking away from a security partnership with the West. During his service as deputy secretary (1993-94), then secretary, the U.S. military staged successful joint exercises with the Russians and worked diligently with them to maintain security over their immense nuclear stockpile.
Perry is careful to give credit to Clinton and especially Vice President Al Gore, who, Perry tells us, worked hard at building trust with the Russians. But the secretary's own accomplishments are all the more impressive because he achieved them working for a president who was famously less interested in foreign and military policy than in domestic issues. Notably, as a loyal member of the Clinton team, Perry gives virtually no credit to the Bush administration for beginning the contacts with the former Soviet states.
One intractable point of friction in Russian-U.S. relations is NATO. Perry argued for delaying expansion of the alliance because it might frighten Russia away from partnership with the West. Now, many advocates of NATO worry that its bombing campaign in Kosovo has alarmed Russia even more, confirming that country's worst fears that NATO isn't the purely defensive alliance it purports to be.
Further complicating the picture in Europe is the possibility that long-term stability in the Balkans may require bringing those countries into NATO -- the very expansion Perry warned against. NATO's unfortunate lapse -- bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May -- harmed another A-list interest, that of preventing Chinese hostility. Already Chinese news media have raised the specter of NATO's intervening in Asia if it is successful in Yugoslavia.
Ironically, it has been the indirect threats from Perry's C list, especially Bosnia and Kosovo, that have preoccupied the military during the Clinton administration. These jeopardize the careful balance between Russia and NATO and impinge on A-list concerns.
The mess in Kosovo demonstrates how political events and C-list diversions can draw attention and resources away from efforts to ward off more fundamental threats. But the A-list risks loom as ominously as ever, and Perry admonishes his successors that it is dangerous to ignore them.
Pete Williams, '74, is the legal correspondent for NBC News and was assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, 1989-1992.
