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The “Doomsday Clock” of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was kept at 90 seconds to midnight this week—the closest to midnight that the clock has been set since it was created in 1947. Midnight is defined by The Bulletin as “nuclear annihilation.”
The hands of the clock were initially moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight last year. In moving the clock forward in 2023, The Bulletin, founded by Albert Einstein and scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, issued a statement declaring it was: “A time of unprecedented danger.”
“Largely,” though “not exclusively,” the Bulletin said in 2023, the clock was moved forward “to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest I’ve ever been to a global disaster,” due to the war in Ukraine. Thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of confrontation – by accident, intent or miscalculation – is a terrible risk,” he said. “The possibility of the confrontation getting out of anyone’s control remains high. “
On Tuesday, January 23, the Bulletin, keeping the clock at 90 seconds to midnight, published a saying: “Disturbing trends continue to point the world toward a global catastrophe. “
Said Dr. Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of The Bulletin, “Make no mistake: resetting the clock at 90 seconds to midnight is not an indication that the world is stable. Quite the opposite. It’s urgent for governments and communities around the world to act.”
The hands of the Doomsday Clock are adjusted through the Bulletin’s Scientific and Security Council, which includes 10 Nobel Prize winners.
Last year, the Bulletin quoted Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, as saying that the scenario had become “an era of nuclear danger that had not been warned about since the height of the Cold War. “
Since then, this nuclear power has increased.
Take North Korea, for example.
This month’s Newsweek headline read, “North Korea Poses Ominous Caution Ahead of Nuclear Attack This Year. “The subtitle: “North Korea Rushes to Arrange War with the United States. “
The headline of the Associated Press article: “North Korea’s Kim Says Military ‘Will Completely Annihilate’ U. S. and South Korea If Provoked. “The Jan. 1 AP article included: “In a
meeting yesterday with commanding army officers, Kim said it is urgent to sharpen ‘the treasured sword’ to safeguard national security, an apparent reference to the country’s nuclear weapons program.”
The Agence France-Presse article the day earlier began: “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wrapped the year with fresh threats of a nuclear attack on Seoul and orders for a military arsenal build-up to prepare for a war that can ‘break out any time’….[North Korean] state media reported….Kim lambasted the United States during a lengthy speech.”
And in Newsweek last week, the article headlined, “Kim Jong Un has made a decision to go to war,” North Korean observers warn. It quotes researchers at the Stimson Center as saying that Kim “made a strategic decision to go to war. “and the article states that “the scenario on the Korean Peninsula is more damaging than at any time since the Korean War. “
But today, 70 years into the Korean War, North Korea has nuclear weapons and rockets to bring them in.
Consider Iran. The headline last week in the Daily Express: “Iran ‘one week’ away from nuclear bomb, warns ex-UN inspector as West braces for a showdown.” The article quoted nuclear weapons expert David Albright saying: “Iran can quickly make enough weapon-grade uranium for many nuclear weapons, something it could not do in 2003. Today, it would need only about a week to produce enough for its first nuclear weapon.”
The New York Times reported this month that “Iran’s nuclear program has been put on steroids. “The name of his article: “From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Wider Conflict with Iran Looms. “The sub-name: “With its proxies attacking from many quarters and its nuclear program revived, Iran poses a new challenge to the West, this time with Russia and China at its side. “
What would happen if Iran started using nuclear weapons in its confrontation with Israel, which itself has nuclear weapons?
Think of China and Taiwan. This month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published an in-depth investigation titled “China’s Nuclear Weapons, 2024. “It began: “China has particularly expanded its ongoing nuclear modernization program by deploying an increasing number of nuclear weapons than ever before. . . China’s nuclear expansion is one of the largest and most rapid modernization campaigns of the nine nuclear-armed states. This follows New York Times reporting on China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
I have been in China for 20 years as a member of the United Nations Commission on Disarmament, Conflict Resolution and Peace Education and the International Association of University Presidents, and it has long been evident that China is determined to take Taiwan.
If the China-Taiwan situation escalates to war, bringing in the United States, which has building up its military in the Pacific because, it says, of China—would it become nuclear war?
As to Russia and Ukraine, the nuclear threats by Putin and his associates continue. This month Dmitry Medvedev, former president of Russia and now deputy chairman its Security Council, “warned,” according to Reuters, “that any Ukrainian attacks on missile launch sites inside Russia with arms supplied by the United States and its allies would risk a nuclear response from Russia.”
“Putin,” Reuters said, “is the one who calls the shots when it comes to Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal, but the perspectives of Medvedev diplomats give an indication of the warmongering thinking at the Kremlin summit that has framed the war as an existential struggle with the West. “
The Reuters account noted: “Russia and the United States are the world’s largest nuclear powers: Putin controls 5,889 nuclear warheads, while U. S. President Joe Biden controls about 5,244 nuclear warheads. “
Meanwhile, the organization Beyond Nuclear (I’m on its board of directors) published an article on its Beyond Nuclear International website this month titled “‘Steadfast Noon’ Means Catastrophe. “Its subtitle: “U. S. Prepares for Nuclear War at Foreign Bases. “The article was written by John LaForge, co-director of the Nukewatch organization.
He recounts how, in October 2023, the “alliance” supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia “began its annual nuclear strike practice session dubbed ‘Steadfast Noon. ‘This practice reaches the air forces of thirteen countries, the “training” of fighter jets, and U. S. forces. B-52s [which] flew over Italy, Croatia and the eastern Mediterranean. It quotes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as saying: “Our training will ensure the credibility, effectiveness and security of our nuclear deterrent. »
“This,” LaForge writes, “is a clever and formal statement about threats of nuclear attack, threats faintly distinguishable from Russia’s verbal warnings. Stoltenberg dared to add that “the basic objective of NATO’s nuclear capability is to keep the peace, prevent coercion and deter aggression. “
LaForge cited the U. S. Air Force Nuclear College’s online project. The U. S. Navy at Ramstein Air Force Base said it “is guilty of delivering, maintaining, and maintaining air-launched nuclear weapons systems for our fighters. . . each and every day. “
Meanwhile, the U.S. is in the midst of a nuclear weapons “modernization” program. Notes the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation: “The United States plans to spend up to $1.5 trillion over 30 years to its nuclear arsenal by rebuilding each leg of the nuclear triad and its accompanying infrastructure. The plans include, but are not limited to, a new class of ballistic missile submarines, a new set of silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, a new nuclear cruise missile, a modify gravity bomb, a new stealthy long-range strike bomber, and accompanying warheads…for each delivery system.”
The good news is that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been enacted, entered into force and is moving forward. This month, two more countries ratified it. The treaty, which is a legally binding agreement that bans nuclear weapons and leads to their general elimination, was approved at the United Nations General Assembly (with 122 countries in favor) in 2017. The treaty prohibits the development, testing, production, stockpiling, storage, transfer, use, and risk of use of nuclear weapons.
“Let us lay down those weapons before we do,” Secretary-General Guterres said of the treaty, an initiative “toward our not unusual goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. “
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has been at the forefront of promoting the treaty. As it states on its website: “Nuclear weapons are the most inhumane and indiscriminate weapons ever created. They violate foreign laws, cause serious environmental damage, undermine national and global security, and divert immense public resources from human needs. They will have to be eliminated urgently.
One big problem: the so-called “nuclear-armed states,” as well as the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain, have signed the treaty.
This is where the tension – through popular, political and media action – directed at the “nuclear-armed states” will have to be concentrated.
People deserve to register as ICAN members. Visit their online page by clicking here.
Can the atomic genie be put back in the bottle? Anything people have done other people can undo. And the prospect of massive loss of life from nuclear destruction is the best of reasons.
There is a precedent: the prohibition of chemical warfare after World War I, when its terrible consequences were horribly demonstrated, killing 90,000 people. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1933 prohibited chemical warfare and, to some extent, this prohibition has been maintained.
There are some in the United States, in Russia, and elsewhere who think nuclear war is winnable. Journalist Robert Scheer wrote a book published in 1982: With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear War. The title was from T.K. Jones, a deputy undersecretary of defense, who said that with a shovel, anyone could dig a fallout shelter—a hole in the ground with a door over the top.”
Today, 79 years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons imply even more gigantic power.
Take the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines built in Groton, Connecticut, across Long Island Sound from where I live in Long Island, New York. As The National Interest describes: “If you do the math, the Ohio-class ships may simply be the formula for weapons of maximum destruction that humanity has ever created. Each of the 170-meter-long ships can carry twenty-four ballistic missiles embedded from a Trident II submarine that can be fired from the water to hit targets over seven thousand miles away. As a Trident II re-enters the environment at speeds of up to 24 Mach, it splits into 8 independent re-entry vehicles, provided of a hundred or 475 kiloton nuclear warhead. In short, a full salvo from an Ohio-class submarine, which can be introduced in less than a minute, can release up to 192 nuclear warheads and wipe twenty-four cities off the map. It is a weapon nightmare of the apocalypse.
As to so-called “nuclear deterrence,” I just did a TV program, aired nationally last month, “Commander Robert Green and Security without Nuclear Deterrence.” Green was deeply involved in the readiness of Great Britain to use nuclear weapons as a bombardier-navigator on a Buccaneer nuclear strike jet. Then he worked in the Ministry of Defense and was staff officer for intelligence to the Commander-in-Chief Fleet during the 1982 Falklands War. That war was a turning point for Green.
“The Falklands War raised fundamental considerations about nuclear weapons,” Green says. During the war, there was “a very sensible secret contingency plan” to “move a Polaris submarine . . . inside Buenos Aires” and the option of carrying out a “nuclear attack” against Argentina. “Fortunately, we don’t want to implement that plan because we won,” Green says.
He retired from the British Navy in 1982 and opposes nuclear war. He was a peace activist and participated in the crusade that led the International Court of Justice in 1996 to ban the risk and use of nuclear weapons.
He says there has been a “systematic effort to minimize the egregious side effects and ‘master’. . . even with the smallest, most modern nuclear weapons,” meaning they are “not weapons at all. “the poisoning of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, as well as the effects of. . . radioactivity, with almost explosive violence.
The “deterrence theory” multiplies the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons, he says. The program can be viewed below:
There’s Trump’s widely circulated comment about nuclear weapons (which a spokesperson denied) that “if we have them, why can’t we use them?
Guterres also said, “Today, the terrifying classes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fading from memory. . . In a world plagued by geopolitical tensions and mistrust, this is a recipe for annihilation. We allow nuclear weapons used by a handful of states to wipe out all life on our planet. We want to prevent them from knocking on the door of the end of globality. “
The abolition of nuclear weapons at the international level has long been a very sensible precedent of the United Nations. In fact, in 1946, the first UN solution – Resolution 1 – followed by consensus, called for the creation of a commission to “make express proposals. . . for the elimination of nuclear weapons from national armaments. “This vision, the abolition of nuclear weapons, will have to become a reality.
Pope Francis, during a stop in Nagasaki during which he condemned the “indescribable horror” of nuclear weapons, stated: “A world without nuclear weapons is imaginable and necessary. “
Indeed, it’s critical—if we and our children and their children are to survive.
In fact, “we are going to have nuclear weapons before they get us. “
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