We Need to Stop the Nuclear Arms Race Before It Stops Us

Last week, President Trump reported that he had ordered nuclear weapons to the American submarines to get closer to Russia in response to the veiled nuclear threats pronounced by former Russian president Dimitri Medvedev.

The rhetorical fight between Trump and Medvedev stressed the risk that a war of words between Washington and Moscow can transform into a real war – a war between nations with enough nuclear fire power to end life as we know it.

But after a more in -depth examination, Trump’s response to Medvedev was confusing. Like David Sanger from The New York Times Underlined, American ballistic submarines “do not need to be repositioned. They can reach targets thousands of kilometers. In fact, moving them can expose their position. ”

Is it possible that our current commander -in -chief – Man having the power to launch the Second World War – does not understand how nuclear delivery systems work?

Whatever in mind, Trump’s words were light compared to the threats of Vladimir Putin to use the use of tactical nuclear weapons during the first stages of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The loose speech of the two men underlines the danger of our current moment – an accelerated investment period in nuclear weapons in the United States, Russia and China at the same time as relations between Washington and Beijing and Moscow are at a low reflux. To worsen things, the last American -Russian weapon agreement – new starts – should expire next year.

The distance between the last posture and the beginning of a real conflict is too close to comfort. This is why the Atomic scientists ‘bulletin’ The famous “Doomsday Clock” is now 89 seconds at midnight, closest to the disaster since the start of the nuclear era.

And even if the great powers rush to build a new generation of nuclear weapons, there is no constant dialogue among Russia, China and the United States on their nuclear postures or their nuclear intentions. Meanwhile, defenders of nuclear weapons at the American Congress and in the world of conservative reflection groups are growing aggressively for a return to some of the most risky practices in the Cold War era, long-range Multi-Warhead nuclear missiles to the largest stocks of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, nuclear tests above soil. These measures may bring us back to the attitudes This prevailed in American national circles before the 1980s peace movement transformed Ronald Reagan of the man who called the Soviet Union “the evil Empire” and joked by saying that the bomb attack would begin in five minutes to the one who publicly recognized that “a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought”.

Before the public pressure hides Reagan’s opinion on the usefulness of nuclear weapons, there have been extraordinary declarations on the “survivable” nuclear war. For example, Colin Gray and Keith Payne joined a sad 1980 article in Foreign policy Entitled “Victory is possible” in which it said that the United States could cross a nuclear war with Russia while losing “only” 20 million people. And Reagan’s civil defense manager TK Jones told progressive journalist Robert Scheer that “with enough shovels”, the Americans could dig makeshift shelters – the holes with wooden boards on top – to release a nuclear conflict. Scheer’s book in 1982 caused by this conversation was a pillar of antinuclear organization and education as the peace movement increased in power in the 1980s.

While nuclear hawks push to a return to the dangerous practices and attitudes of the era of the Cold War, the anti -nuclear movement is on its heels, fighting to collect funds and generate attention in the middle of the shooting of horrible acts emanating from Moscow, Tel Aviv, Washington and other world capital. The genocide in Gaza, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Sudan, of the simmer trade wars, of real -time ravages of climate change, the increase in authoritarianism and growing global inequality causes widespread devastation and trauma, leaving many powerless people to significantly grow back. In this political environment, with lives in danger daily, bringing people to focus on the risk of nuclear confrontation is a difficult sale.

But from the Ban-the-Bomb movement of the 1950s and 60s to the dynamic peace movement of the 1980s, people have access to the occasion before, in reintegration into the nuclear arms race and by reducing global nuclear arsenals.