Bradley in Singapore

I had the opportunity to catch up with Bradley Perrett, an old friend, for drinks today. Bradley, who currently writes for Aviation Weekly magazine, was stopping by Singapore for a week and I felt duty bound to take him out for a few drinks, especially given his love of Tiger Beer.

My family literally stumbled upon Bradley while on a holiday to London in December 2000. We had met, quite by accident, two other Singaporeans who overheard my comments (as well as my accent) regarding the musical Starlight Express during the intermission. They later introduced us to Bradley, who lived on a wonderfully cosy apartment on Charing Cross Street, a virtually heaven for both him and myself, given our shared love of books.

It is always enlightening talking to Bradley. On this occasion, we talked about airplanes and ships (a great passion of his), but also about the threat of nuclear proliferation. Bradley took the alarmist line, viewing nuclear weapons as a great danger, particularly its proliferation to states such as North Korea and Iran. I tried to argue from a viewpoint of limited deterrence, and the view that nuclear weapons actually help to limit conflicts by making escalation so costly that states automatically alter their behaviour (the recent Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan as a prime example).

Anyhow, it is always lovely talking to Bradley, and I would greatly welcome the opportunity to converse and meet up with him again.

In a subsequent MSN conversation we had, Bradley sent me his views on the Cuban Missile Crisis. He had read (and I was reading) a new account of the crisis by Michael Dobbs titled One Minute to Midnight. Bradley took the interesting line that Nikita Krushchev was the man primarily responsible for bringing the world back from the brink of nuclear annihilation. Far from it being an excellent example of successful decision making by an American administration, Bradley argues that Kennedy and his advisers were largely irresponsible, and nearly brought about nuclear armageddon. After thinking further on the matter, I have come round more towards Bradley's point of view.