Summary: Dr. William Van Cleave, a truly monumental and historic figure, is among a handful of strategic thinkers most responsible for U.S. victory over the USSR during the Cold War. Van Cleave served as President Reagan's Senior Defense Advisor during his presidential campaign, ran the Defense Transition Team that staffed Reagan's Department of Defense and national security apparatus, and basically educated President Reagan on how to win the Cold War. Van Cleave served on the original B-Team that proved the CIA was underestimating the Soviet nuclear threat, helped expose Soviet arms control violations as a member of President Reagan's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, was a leader of the Committee on the Present Danger that reversed the Cold War decline of U.S. military power, and served in the historic Strategic Arms Limitation Talks that launched the first major arms control treaties of the Cold War. But perhaps Van Cleave's greatest legacy is as a teacher. He founded the Defense and Strategic Studies Program at the University of Southern California, now in Washington, DC, that has trained an entire generation of policymakers, military officers, defense and intelligence analysts, on how to think strategically. This episode with Dr. Van Cleave will "go to the mountain" with our visionary guest, and elicit his views on America's current strategic predicament--New START, the War on Terrorism, Iran, North Korea, the EMP threat--and what we should be doing to prevail.
