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doomsday clock
Why Isn’t the Nuclear Threat a 2024 Campaign Issue?
Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris has volunteered positions on nuclear arsenals or nuclear abolition, due to either not wanting to appear weak or a lack of understanding of the risks of their continued existence.
Sep 27, 2024
Thursday was the United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This day was initially declared in 2013 as a way to heighten awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons in an attempt to educate the world community and reaffirm its commitment to global nuclear disarmament. Next year is the 80th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only use of nuclear weapons, immediately killing an estimated 210,000 men, women, and children with scores dying in the ensuing years from cancers, burns, injuries, and other lethal effects of the bombs.
Following World War II, nuclear disarmament has been one of the highest priorities of the United Nations and was the subject of the first General Assembly resolution in 1946. Unfortunately, the aftermath of WWII also saw the Cold War and the first nuclear arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union. By 1986 this armed the world with 70,300 nuclear weapons. Through arms reduction treaties over the years that number has been reduced to approximately 12,100 weapons this year.
While the significant reductions in nuclear weapons is notable, the knowledge of the humanitarian consequences following the use of nuclear weapons from only a single weapon or a limited or full-scale nuclear war confirms the insanity of the very existence of any number of these weapons.
With the passing of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, let us ensure that future generations look back on our time here and realize that we saw the threat to our existence and took the necessary actions to eliminate that possibility.
Yet today we remain as close or closer to nuclear war than at any time since the dropping of the first nuclear weapons. The world is full of potential nuclear hot spots: the current war in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin threatening the use of battlefield nuclear weapons and more, the war raging in Israel against Gaza, the constant tensions between India and Pakistan, the tensions between China and Taiwan, and finally ongoing tensions with North Korea.
These flash points, in addition to the growing catastrophic effects of climate change resulting in further international conflict, as well as disruptive technologies, including cyber attacks and the potential use of AI, caused the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to move their infamous Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds to midnight for the second year in a row.
In this setting, and in the midst of the current U.S. presidential campaign, mainstream media has largely been oblivious to or unaware of the growing national and international nuclear abolition movement and efforts therein. The presidential campaign has seen no discussion of nuclear weapons or abolition, and only candidate Trump has mentioned them in vague reference to deterrence or World War III. Neither candidate has volunteered positions during this campaign on nuclear arsenals or nuclear abolition, due to either not wanting to appear weak or a lack of understanding of the risks of their continued existence.
Certainly the awareness and understanding of the consequences of nuclear weapons and their use can be overwhelming, paralyzing, and often daunting to address. Yet we must be aware of the risks they pose and the opportunities before us. This past year has seen significant increased awareness of nuclear weapons following the Oppenheimer film; the subsequent New York Times series, “At The Brink,” covering our nuclear world; and finally Annie Jacobsen’s New York Times best-selling book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, which describes in graphic detail the end of civilization playing out in 24 minutes, following a hypothetical nuclear attack by North Korea on the United States and the self-fulfilling prophecy of the reflexive apocalyptic response. This book should be mandatory reading for any presidential candidate or member of Congress, requiring their response for how they plan to prevent this scenario.
On this week of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, there is much happening, both internationally and here in the United States. As people are made aware of the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, they are demanding abolition of these weapons and for our leaders to take action immediately. Internationally, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has three new nations ratifying the treaty this week, bringing the total to 73—with 25 additional signatory nations awaiting ratification.
This movement has been spearheaded by ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons. In the United States there is an intersectional grassroots movement that is rapidly growing called “Back From the Brink.” Supporting the TPNW, this movement calls on the United States to take a leadership role in convening the nine nuclear nations for a verifiable, time bound effort to abolish all nuclear weapons. In addition, it includes the actionable precautionary measures until abolition has been realized. These include a no-first-use policy, eliminating the authority of any president to initiate nuclear war, removing our weapons from hair trigger alert, and finally canceling the plan to replace all of our nuclear weapons with new, enhanced nuclear weapons.
Back From the Brink has the support of 490 organizations, 77 cities and counties, eight state legislative bodies, 44 members of Congress, and 428 municipal and state officials. It also has a U.S. House of Representatives resolution, H. Res 77, sponsored by Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern and supported by 44 members of Congress. Back From the Brink can be endorsed by all, and currently there are 19 local hubs across the nation working collaboratively and in coalition with their communities to build support for this effort.
With the passing of the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, let us ensure that future generations look back on our time here and realize that we saw the threat to our existence and took the necessary actions to eliminate that possibility. Each of us has a role to play in making this a reality.
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The Dangerous Silence on Nuclear War 60 Years After Famous 'Daisy Ad'
When Harris delivered her acceptance speech in Chicago, it did not include the words “atomic” or “nuclear” at all.
Sep 09, 2024
One evening in early September 1964, a frightening commercial jolted 50 million Americans who were partway through watching “Monday Night at the Movies” on NBC. The ad began with an adorable three-year-old girl counting petals as she pulled them from a daisy. Then came a man’s somber voiceover, counting down from ten to zero. Then an ominous roar and a mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb explosion.
The one-minute TV spot reached its climax with audio from President Lyndon Johnson, concluding that “we must love each other, or we must die.” The ad did not mention his opponent in the upcoming election, Sen. Barry Goldwater, but it didn’t need to. By then, his cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons was well established.
Goldwater’s bestseller The Conscience of a Conservative, published at the start of the decade, was unnervingly open to the idea of launching a nuclear war, while the book exuded disdain for leaders who “would rather crawl on knees to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb.” Closing in on the Republican nomination for president, the Arizona senator suggested that “low-yield” nuclear bombs could be useful to defoliate forests in Vietnam.
His own words gave plenty of fodder to others seeking the GOP nomination. Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton called Goldwater “a trigger-happy dreamer” and said that he “too often casually prescribed nuclear war as a solution to a troubled world.” New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller unloaded with a rhetorical question: “How can there be sanity when he wants to give area commanders the authority to make decisions on the use of nuclear weapons?”
- YouTubeyoutu.be
So, the stage was set for the “daisy ad,” which packed an emotional wallop -- and provoked a fierce backlash. Critics cried foul, deploring an attempt to use the specter of nuclear annihilation for political gain. Having accomplished the goal of putting the Goldwater camp on the defensive, the commercial never aired again as a paid ad. But national newscasts showed it while reporting on the controversy.
Today, a campaign ad akin to the daisy spot is hard to imagine from the Democratic or Republican nominee to be commander in chief, who seem content to bypass the subject of nuclear-war dangers. Yet those dangers are actually much higher now than they were 60 years ago. In 1964, the Doomsday Clock maintained by experts at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was set at 12 minutes to apocalyptic midnight. The ominous hands are now just 90 seconds away.
Yet, in their convention speeches this summer, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were silent on the need to engage in genuine diplomacy for nuclear arms control, let alone take steps toward disarmament.
Trump offered standard warnings about Russian and Chinese arsenals and Iran’s nuclear program, and boasted of his rapport with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Left unmentioned was Trump’s presidential statement in 2017 that if North Korea made “any more threats to the United States,” that country “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Nor did he refer to his highly irresponsible tweet that Kim should be informed “I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
When Harris delivered her acceptance speech, it did not include the words “atomic” or “nuclear” at all.
Now in high gear, the 2024 presidential campaign is completely lacking in the kind of wisdom about nuclear weapons and relations between the nuclear superpowers that Lyndon Johnson and, eventually, Ronald Reagan attained during their presidencies.
Johnson privately acknowledged that the daisy commercial scared voters about Goldwater, which “we goddamned set out to do.” But the president was engaged in more than an electoral tactic. At the same time that he methodically deceived the American people while escalating the horrific war on Vietnam, Johnson pursued efforts to defuse the nuclear time bomb.
“We have made further progress in an effort to improve our understanding of each other’s thinking on a number of questions,” Johnson said at the conclusion of his extensive summit meeting with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in Glassboro, New Jersey, on June 25, 1967. But fifty-seven years later, there is scant evidence that the current or next president of the United States is genuinely interested in improving such understanding between leaders of the biggest nuclear states.
Two decades after the summit that defrosted the Cold War and gave rise to what was dubbed “the spirit of Glassboro,” President Reagan stood next to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and said: “We decided to talk to each other instead of about each other.” But such an attitude would be heresy in the 2024 presidential campaign.
“These are the stakes,” Johnson said in the daisy ad as a mushroom cloud rose on screen, “to make a world in which all God’s children can live, or to go into the dark.”
Those are still the stakes. But you wouldn’t know it now from either of the candidates vying to be the next president of the United States.
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Presidents Who Gamble With Nuclear Armageddon
Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a knack for peace who can steer the nation, and the world, toward a more secure and less dangerous future.
May 29, 2024
The overriding job of any U.S. president is to keep the nation safe. In the nuclear age, that mainly means avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Joe Biden’s reckless and incompetent foreign policy is pushing us closer to annihilation. He joins a long and undistinguished list of presidents who have gambled with Armageddon, including his immediate predecessor and rival, Donald Trump.
Talk of nuclear war is currently everywhere. Leaders of NATO countries call for Russia’s defeat and even dismemberment, while telling us not to worry about Russia’s 6,000 nuclear warheads. Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to knock out parts of Russia’s nuclear-attack early-warning system inside Russia. Russia, in the meantime, engages in nuclear drills near its border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg give the green light to Ukraine to use NATO weapons to hit Russian territory as an increasingly desperate and extremist Ukrainian regime sees fit.
These leaders neglect at our greatest peril the most basic lesson of the nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told by President John F. Kennedy, one of the few American presidents in the nuclear age to take our survival seriously. In the aftermath of the crisis, Kennedy told us, and his successors:
Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
Yet this is exactly what Biden is doing today, carrying out a bankrupt and reckless policy.
Nuclear war can easily arise from an escalation of non-nuclear war, or by a hothead leader with access to nuclear arms deciding on a surprise first strike, or by a gross miscalculation. The last of these nearly occurred even after Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a disabled Soviet submarine came within a hair’s breadth of launching a nuclear-tipped torpedo.
The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Most presidents, and most Americans, have little idea how close to the abyss we are. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock to help the public understand the gravity of the risks we face. National security experts adjust the clock depending how far or how close we are to “midnight,” meaning extinction. They put the clock today at just 90 seconds to midnight, the closest that it’s ever been in the nuclear age.
The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have “gotten it” and which have not. The sad fact is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to prove their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from the warmongers, or as the result of sheer incompetence. By a simple and straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five.
Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman stoked the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock at just 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear disarmament. By the time he left office, the clock was put back to 7 minutes to midnight.
Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.
It was not to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated in Vietnam and pushed the clock back again to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), pushing the clock again to 12 minutes from midnight. Yet Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed to secure SALT II, and Carter fatefully and unwisely gave a green light to the CIA in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, the clock was at just 4 minutes to midnight.
The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who aimed to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically, and to end the confrontation with the West. Yet credit is also due to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. By the time Bush left office, the Doomsday clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the safest since the start of the nuclear age.
Sadly, the U.S. security establishment could not take “Yes” for an answer when Russia said an emphatic yes to peaceful and cooperative relations. The U.S. needed to “win” the Cold War, not just end it. It needed to declare itself and prove itself to be the sole superpower of the world, the one that would unilaterally write the rules of a new U.S.-led “rules-based order.” The post-1992 U.S. therefore launched wars and expanded its vast network of military bases as it saw fit, steadfastly and ostentatiously ignoring the red lines of other nations, indeed aiming to drive nuclear adversaries into humiliating retreats.
Since 1992, every president has left the U.S. and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Biden has led the U.S. into three fulminant crises, any one of which could end up in Armageddon. By insisting on NATO enlargement to Ukraine, against Russia’s bright red line, Biden has repeatedly pushed for Russia’s humiliating retreat. By siding with a genocidal Israel, he has stoked a new Middle East arms race and a dangerously expanding Middle East conflict. By taunting China over Taiwan, which the U.S. ostensibly recognizes as part of one China, he is inviting a war with China. Trump similarly stirred the nuclear pot on several fronts, most flagrantly with China and Iran.
Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it.Keep ReadingShow Less
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