William James Perry (born October 11, 1927) is an American mathematician, engineer, businessman, and civil servant who was the United States Secretary of Defense from February 3, 1994, to January 23, 1997, under President Bill Clinton.

Perry is the Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (emeritus) at Stanford University, with a joint appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the School of Engineering.

[30] In practical terms this strategy relied on threat reduction programs (reducing the nuclear complex of the former Soviet Union), counter-proliferation efforts, the NATO Partnership for Peace and expansion of the alliance, and the maintenance of military forces and weapon systems ready to fight if necessary.

Perry rejected calls for revival of SDI, arguing that the money would be better spent on battlefield antimissile defenses and force modernization, that the United States at the moment did not face a real threat, and that if the system were built and deployed it would endanger the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Russians.

[2] Shortly before he introduced his FY 1997 budget request in March 1996, Perry warned that the United States might have to give up the strategy of preparing for two major regional conflicts if the armed forces suffered further reductions.

Perry considered these reforms one of his most important accomplishments, and saw savings generated by the new practices as part of the key to adequate funding of the military in an era of continuing tight budgets.

In doing so Defense would consider the economic impact on the affected communities and the capacity to manage the reuse of closed facilities,[2] and in March 1995 Perry released DoD's 1995 base realignment and closure (BRAC) plan, recommending 146 actions.

The issue remained outstanding when Perry left office in early 1997, by which time NATO had developed tentative plans to admit a few former Warsaw Pact members during the summer of 1997.

He made some progress, although when China threatened Taiwan just before the latter's presidential election in March 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carrier task forces to the area to counter the Chinese.

Late in 1996, the United States agreed to vacate 20% of the land it used on Okinawa and to close some military facilities, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.

During 1994–95 some senators, including Republican leader Bob Dole, wanted the embargo against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina lifted to enable them to resist the Republika Srpska more effectively.

[2] Applying strong pressure, in November 1995 the United States persuaded the presidents of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia, and Croatia to attend a conference in Dayton, Ohio, that after much contention produced a peace agreement, formally signed in Paris in mid-December.

With the final withdrawal of U.S. troops, and Aristide's duly elected successor installed in office in February 1996, the Pentagon and the Clinton administration could label the Haitian operation a success up to that point.

[2] North Korea posed another serious problem for Perry, who backed the administration's policy of pressuring Kim Il Sung's Communist regime to allow monitoring of its nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

North Korea then agreed to open its nuclear facilities to international inspection, and the United States pledged to lift trade restrictions and provide heavy fuel oil for electric power generation.

In a tragic accident in April 1994 two U.S. Air Force F-15 aircraft, operating in the no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq, shot down two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters after misidentifying them as Iraqi.

Most important, in Perry's judgment, was the determination of the United States to maintain a strong regional defense capability with aircraft and naval ships in the area, prepositioned equipment, standing operational plans, and access agreements with the Persian Gulf partners.

When Saddam Hussein intervened in September 1996 by sending some 40,000 troops to assist one side in a dispute between two Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, he demonstrated that he was not deterred by a U.S. warning against using military force.

On both September 2 and 3, U.S. aircraft attacked Iraqi fixed surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites and air defense control facilities in the south, because, Perry explained, the United States saw the principal threat from Iraq to be against Kuwait.

Terrorists exploded a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers apartment complex housing U.S. Air Force personnel in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 and wounding 500.

In September 1996 an investigative panel set up by Perry recommended vigorous measures to deter, prevent, or mitigate the effects of future terrorist acts against U.S. personnel overseas, and further, that a solitary DoD element have responsibility for force protection.

A civil war between two rival ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi, resulted in widespread death and destruction and the flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Rwanda into neighboring countries, including Zaire.

Although not part of the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, the United States provided humanitarian aid in the form of purified water, medicine, site sanitation, and other means.

The others—Dayton, Ohio, becoming synonymous with peace in the Balkans; helping the Russian defense minister blow up a Minuteman missile silo in Missouri; watching United States and Russian troops training together in Kansas; welcoming former Warsaw Pact troops in Louisiana; operating a school at Garmisch, Germany, to teach former Soviet and East European military officers about democracy, budgeting, and testifying to a parliament; dismantling the military specifications system for acquisition; cutting the ear off a pig in Kazakhstan, and eating rendered Manchurian toad fat in China.

His disappointments included failure to obtain Russian ratification of the START II treaty; slowness in securing increases in the budget for weapon systems modernization; and the faulty perceptions of the Gulf War illness syndrome held by some of the media and much of the public.

[citation needed] The four men published four subsequent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, including one on March 5, 2013: "Next Steps in Reducing Nuclear Risks: The Pace of Non-Proliferation Work Today Doesn't Match the Urgency of the Threat".

The film is introduced by General Colin Powell, narrated by Michael Douglas and includes interviews with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 2011, Perry joined a team of former government officials from various countries, formed under the auspices of the Governor of Hiroshima Prefecture Hidehiko Yuzaki to prepare a plan for the total abolition of nuclear weapons.

[58] He warned that: "Today, the danger of some sort of a nuclear catastrophe is greater than it was during the Cold War and most people are blissfully unaware of this danger.”[59] On September 30, 2016, the New York Times published a Perry opinion editorial advocating, " ... the United States can safely phase out its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force ...

[65] This book concludes with a ten-point plan for nuclear weapons safety: Perry, along with all other living former secretaries of defense, ten in total, published a Washington Post op-ed piece in January 2021 telling President Donald Trump not to involve the military in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.