Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State, said last night at the Faculty Club that he would have struggled to recommend the use of nuclear weapons against the Soviets, even when all other military options were exhausted.

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Shams Shaikh

Former national leaders expressed concern regarding a nuclear threat and discussed the ways to stop the spread of such weapons at a two-day Hoover Institution conference. From left to right: George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry, Max Kampelman and Sidney Drell.

William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, remembers being woken up at 3 a.m. in 1978 by a general who reported that radar showed 200 Soviet missiles headed toward the American mainland. He wanted to know how to respond.

A bipartisan group of six elder statesmen, including three former cabinet secretaries who helped lead America through the depths of Cold War nightmares, said Wednesday that the United States must take concrete steps to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The men are on campus this week to try to come up with a concrete action plan. The dinner, which about 300 top University leaders and donors were invited to attend, was part of a closed-door, two-day Hoover Institution conference.

“We are not doing this as an abstract statement of desirable objectives,” Kissinger said. “We’re willing to contribute to a list of specific steps.”

Perry said American and Soviet forces must take their nuclear weapons off hair-trigger, launch-on-warning alert. Sam Nunn, the former chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and director of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said the U.S. should work with Russia to develop a missile defense system that can to respond to emerging nuclear threats.

“We’re about to deploy a system that is not yet mature for a threat that has not yet materialized,” Nunn said. “For God’s sake, let’s realize we’re out of the Cold War. We do not intend to attack the Russians, and they do not intend to attack us. So let’s work together.”

Unlike the Disarmament movement of the 1980s, led by activists who had never been in the National Security Situation Room, the men on the panel at the Faculty Club — like Kissinger and George Shultz — were iconic household names at the center stage of global politics in their time.

The high-level meetings coincide with the 21st anniversary of the summit in Reykjavik, Iceland between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.

On the 20th anniversary of the summit, which ended in deadlock but laid the groundwork for later agreements by both superpowers to reduce the nuclear stockpile, a small group of top foreign policy gurus met at Stanford for discussions that led to a Wall Street Journal opinion piece in January calling for “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”

The intent of this year’s reunion is to formulate specific next steps for policy makers to take. Wednesday’s sessions were dedicated to scientific challenges of disarmament; today will largely be spent hashing out the political challenges of convincing states in the developing world to discontinue their programs.

“The political questions are even harder,” said Sidney Drell, a renowned physicist and emeritus professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. “How do you build trust?”

Guests had a small wrapped package with a magnifying glass on their chairs. Emblazoned on the metal casing were the words “Trust but verify” and the signature of the man who lived by the motto: Ronald Reagan. Shultz read a letter from Nancy Reagan that said her husband would have supported the way the group is going about its efforts.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was scheduled to speak, but the wildfires in Southern California forced him to cancel. Instead, former Secretary of State George Shultz read the governor’s prepared remarks.

In the speech, Schwarzenegger said that nuclear proliferation warranted as much public concern as global warming — one of his signature issues.

Terrorists will not be deterred by threats of reprisal, the panelists agreed, and any nonproliferation plan needs to consider non-state actors.

Kissinger said that making sure the Soviets thought America’s threat to use the weapons was credible formed the basis for Mutually Assured Destruction, a doctrine that deterred one superpower from using its weapons against the other for fear of reprisal.

“How to conduct foreign policy with a threat you do not want to implement,” he said, “that has been our permanent dilemma.”