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In the [September 1961] essay’s* most remarkable passage, [Hans J.] Morgenthau envisioned the apocalyptic annihilation whose enormity his contemporaries seemed unable to grasp:
'Nuclear destruction is mass destruction, both of persons and of things. It signifies the simultaneous destruction of tens of millions of people, of whole families, generations, and societies, of all things that they have inherited and created. It signifies total destruction of whole societies by killing their members, destroying their visible achievements, and therefore reducing the survivors to barbarism. Thus nuclear destruction destroys the meaning of death by depriving it of its individuality. It destroys the meaning of immortality by making both society and history impossible. It destroys the meaning of life by throwing life back upon itself.
It is easy to ridicule or dismiss Morgenthau’s warnings now. After all, we avoided an all-out nuclear war. If Morgenthau was a “prophet of doom,” his prophecy failed. But this was surely his intention. He was a self-defeating prophet of doom. He foretold a nuclear apocalypse to help us imagine — and so to avoid — what had been unthinkable.'
Today, there are about 9,200 stockpiled nuclear warheads in the world. About 4,300 of these are controlled by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has been investing heavily in modernizing its forces and ominously flaunting a new range of destructive weapons. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, contrary to President Trump’s triumphalist Twitter announcement, has not promised “denuclearization” in any common-sense understanding of the term.
About 4,000 of the world’s nuclear warheads are in the hands of a United States president whose nuclear “policy” oscillates between antagonizing and inexplicably praising the ruthless leaders of nuclear states. Trump is now supported by a secretary of state and a national security adviser who hold even more alarming views. And yet most of America seems to be in denial.
What would Morgenthau say to us now? And would we listen?
*“'Death in the Nuclear Age,' an essay in Commentary magazine that detailed in stark terms the cost a nuclear war would exact on humanity. It was both a warning and an attempt to spread existential fear."
Many of the world's amphibians are staring down an existential threat: an ancient skin-eating fungus that can wipe out entire forests' worth of frogs in a flash.
This ecological super-villain, the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has driven more than 200 amphibian species to extinction or near-extinction—radically rewiring ecosystems all over Earth.
“This is the worst pathogen in the history of the world, as far as we can tell, in terms of its impacts on biodiversity,” says Mat Fisher, an Imperial College London mycologist who studies the fungus.
"You've heard of the book 'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking (who, incidentally, is on our Board of Sponsors)? Well, this is a brief history of the Bulletin's Doomsday Clock, set to a song by Arielle Martinez Cohen, a high school student who wrote 'Two Minutes to Midnight' after hearing about the Clock last year. You can get a free download of the song at CD Baby."
The Josh Abbott Band's Caleb Keeter feared for his life during the mass shooting, and now says, “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.”
"CHARLOTTESVILLE -After a morning of violent clashes between white nationalists and counter protesters, police ordered hundreds of people out of a downtown park - putting an end to a noon rally that hadn’t even begun. • Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency shortly before 11 a.m. • Using megaphones, police declared an unlawful assembly at about 11:40 a.m., and gave a five-minute warning to leave Emancipation Park, where hundreds of neoNazis, Ku Klux Klans members and other white nationalists had gathered to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. They were met by equal numbers of counterprotesters, including clergy, Black Lives Matter activists and Princeton professor Cornel West."
The review also summarizes the key findings of thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of climate scientists across the globe over a period of decades:
- Global evidence makes clear that today’s climate is changing rapidly compared to the natural climatic changes that have occurred throughout Earth’s history.
- The frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation and extreme heat events are increasing in most regions of the world, consistent with the expected physical responses to a warming climate.
- Human activities—especially emissions of greenhouse gases—are primarily responsible for the observed changes in climate since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. There are no alternative explanations or observed natural cycles that can explain recent climate change.
- Atmospheric CO2 levels have now passed 400 parts per million, a concentration last seen about 3 million years ago, when average temperature and sea level were significantly higher than today.
- The world is not reducing emissions enough to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial temperatures by 2100, the goal of the Paris Agreement.
North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles, crossing a key threshold on the path to becoming a full-fledged nuclear power, U.S. intelligence officials have concluded in a confidential assessment.
The new analysis completed last month by the Defense Intelligence Agency comes on the heels of another intelligence assessment that sharply raises the official estimate for the total number of bombs in the communist country’s atomic arsenal. The U.S. calculated last month that up to 60 nuclear weapons are now controlled by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Some independent experts believe the number of bombs is much smaller.
The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland.
"The projectile flew for 45 minutes, indicating it was another intercontinental ballistic missile." "• TOKYO — North Korea has taken another bold step toward achieving its stated goal of being able to send a nuclear weapon to the U.S. mainland, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile late Friday that highlights the regime’s rapid technological progress. • The missile flew almost straight up for 45 minutes and reached a height of about 2,300 miles before crashing into the sea off Japan. But if it had been launched on a normal trajectory, the missile could theoretically have reached Chicago and perhaps even New York, experts said."
Mark Bowden argues that the president is more likely to start a nuclear war than his adversary in North Korea.
"The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing—boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.
Because of improvements in the killing power of US submarine-launched ballistic missiles, those submarines now patrol with more than three times the number of warheads needed to destroy the entire fleet of Russian land-based missiles in their silos. US submarine-based missiles can carry multiple warheads, so hundreds of others, now in storage, could be added to the submarine-based missile force, making it all the more lethal.
The revolutionary increase in the lethality of submarine-borne US nuclear forces comes from a “super-fuze” device that since 2009 has been incorporated into the Navy’s W76-1/Mk4A warhead as part of a decade-long life-extension program. We estimate that all warheads deployed on US ballistic missile submarines now have this fuzing capability. Because the innovations in the super-fuze appear, to the non-technical eye, to be minor, policymakers outside of the US government (and probably inside the government as well) have completely missed its revolutionary impact on military capabilities and its important implications for global security.
Before the invention of this new fuzing mechanism, even the most accurate ballistic missile warheads might not detonate close enough to targets hardened against nuclear attack to destroy them. But the new super-fuze is designed to destroy fixed targets by detonating above and around a target in a much more effective way. Warheads that would otherwise overfly a target and land too far away will now, because of the new fuzing system, detonate above the target.
The result of this fuzing scheme is a significant increase in the probability that a warhead will explode close enough to destroy the target even though the accuracy of the missile-warhead system has itself not improved.
As a consequence, the US submarine force today is much more capable than it was previously against hardened targets such as Russian ICBM silos. A decade ago, only about 20 percent of US submarine warheads had hard-target kill capability; today they all do. (See Figure 1.)
This vast increase in US nuclear targeting capability, which has largely been concealed from the general public, has serious implications for strategic stability and perceptions of US nuclear strategy and intentions.
Russian planners will almost surely see the advance in fuzing capability as empowering an increasingly feasible US preemptive nuclear strike capability—a capability that would require Russia to undertake countermeasures that would further increase the already dangerously high readiness of Russian nuclear forces. Tense nuclear postures based on worst-case planning assumptions already pose the possibility of a nuclear response to false warning of attack. The new kill capability created by super-fuzing increases the tension and the risk that US or Russian nuclear forces will be used in response to early warning of an attack—even when an attack has not occurred.
The increased capability of the US submarine force will likely be seen as even more threatening because Russia does not have a functioning space-based infrared early warning system but relies primarily on ground-based early warning radars to detect a US missile attack. Since these radars cannot see over the horizon, Russia has less than half as much early-warning time as the United States. (The United States has about 30 minutes, Russia 15 minutes or less.)
The inability of Russia to globally monitor missile launches from space means that Russian military and political leaders would have no “situational awareness” to help them assess whether an early-warning radar indication of a surprise attack is real or the result of a technical error.
The combination of this lack of Russian situational awareness, dangerously short warning times, high-readiness alert postures, and the increasing US strike capacity has created a deeply destabilizing and dangerous strategic nuclear situation.
When viewed in the alarming context of deteriorating political relations between Russia and the West, and the threats and counter-threats that are now becoming the norm for both sides in this evolving standoff, it may well be that the danger of an accident leading to nuclear war is as high now as it was in periods of peak crisis during the Cold War."
"The symbolic clock is ticking. On January 26th, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors and its 15 Nobel laureates, unveiled its latest Doomsday Clock. The current time: two and a half minutes to midnight."
"To hear Donald Trump describe it, President Barack Obama was 'really screaming' at a pro-Trump protester whose appearance at a Hillary Clinton rally momentarily interrupted the President's remarks." "• More to the point, Obama's rebuke was directed at the Clinton supporters, not the protester. He first told the audience they shouldn't worry about the man, who was peacefully conducting himself. • 'We live in a country that respects free speech. Second of all, it looks like maybe he might have served in our military and we've got to respect that,' Obama said. 'Third of all, he was elderly and we've got to respect our elders.' • Trump -- who called Obama's response 'a disgrace' -- didn't mention Obama's plea for respect for the protester. Instead, he said the President 'spent so much time screaming at this protester.'"
A few key nuclear policy questions for the 2016 presidential candidates:
On nuclear terrorism
— Do you believe that nuclear terrorism is one of the greatest threats facing the United States, and, if so, what will you do to invigorate international cooperation to prevent it?
On nuclear proliferation
— How will you attempt to roll back North Korea’s increasingly threatening and destabilizing nuclear weapon program?
— Will you continue to support the deal and, if so, how will you work with Iran, quell dissent among our allies in the region, and answer criticism here at home?
— Do you plan to continue building a strategic partnership with India, and, if so, how will you reassure Pakistan that the US insistence on nuclear restraint in South Asia includes not just Pakistan, but India as well?
On nuclear weapons policy
— Will you continue to push for a reduced role for nuclear weapons in US defense policy? If so, will you promote further nuclear arms reductions and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty? And if Russia and China stay their current course, how will you deal with US nuclear modernization, and how will you reassure America’s allies?
On nuclear energy
— What are your plans for the domestic nuclear power industry and for the role the United States will play in this sector internationally?
Siegfried S. Hecker (2016) Questions for the presidential candidates on nuclear terrorism, proliferation, weapons policy, and energy, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,72:5, 276-277, DOI: 10.1080/00963402.2016.1216498
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2016.1216498
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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says the Doomsday Clock “is as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels.”
In his first year in office, President Barack Obama gave a landmark address in Prague in which he famously affirmed “clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” The commitment to total nuclear disarmament was a major departure from the George W. Bush administration — the first time, in fact, that the United States had declared a nuclear-free world a major policy goal.
Now, eight years later, it’s the Trump administration’s turn to lay out its nuclear weapons policy. And according to a pre-decisional draft of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) obtained by HuffPost, Trump’s Department of Defense has gone a decidedly different route: new nukes, for no good reason.
The final version of the NPR is scheduled to be released in February. You can read the draft in full at the bottom of this article. A Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment on the draft, saying that the agency “will not discuss pre-decisional drafts of the document.”
In October, NBC reported that President Trump had told a gathering of high-ranking national security leaders that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.” While the report doesn’t nearly go that far, it does call for the development of new, so-called low-yield nuclear weapons — warheads with a lower explosive force.
The logic of those pushing for the development of smaller nukes is that our current nuclear weapons are too big and too deadly to ever use; we are effectively self-deterred, and the world knows it. To make sure other countries believe that we’d actually use nuclear force, the thinking goes, we need more low-yield nukes.
It was the sort of nightmare that had only ever been real for most people’s parents or grandparents — the fear of an impending nuclear attack. “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii,” read the emergency alert that residents of the Aloha State received on Saturday morning. “Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.”
The authorities quickly announced that the alert was a mistake. But it made tangible the growing fears that after decades of leaders trying to more safely control the world’s nuclear arsenals, President Trump has increased the possibility of those weapons being used.
At a time when many are questioning whether Mr. Trump ought to be allowed anywhere near the nuclear “button,” he is moving ahead with plans to develop new nuclear weapons and expanding the circumstances in which they’d be used. Such actions break with years of American nuclear policy. They also make it harder to persuade other nations to curb their nuclear ambitions or forgo them entirely.
Mr. Trump has boasted about the size and power of America’s nuclear arsenal, threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, pushed for a massive buildup of an arsenal that already has too many — 4,000 — warheads and wondered aloud why the United States possesses such weapons if it isn’t prepared to use them.
These historic pictures show the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a black-and-white reminder of what “fire and fury” actually looks like—although the capabilities of modern nuclear weapons far outstrip those of their mid-century counterparts.
"North Korea best not make any more threats to he United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen," Trump said. "They will be met with fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which the world has never seen."
"The report directly contradicts Trump administration claims about global warming and concludes that temperatures have risen rapidly since 1980."
• "... no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough. Over the past decades, our culture has gone apocalyptic with zombie movies and Mad Max dystopias, perhaps the collective result of displaced climate anxiety, and yet when it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination." • Plague, famine, heat no human can survive. What scientists, when they’re not being cautious, fear climate change could do to our future.
TOKYO — The Trump administration made a clear break Thursday with diplomatic efforts to talk North Korea out of a nuclear confrontation, bringing the United States and its Asian allies closer to a military response than at any point in more than a decade.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that 20 years of trying to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program had failed and that he was visiting Asia “to exchange views on a new approach.”
Soon after Tillerson’s remarks, in a sign of mounting tensions, the North Korean Embassy held an extraordinary news conference in Beijing to blame the potential for nuclear war on the United States while vowing that its homegrown nuclear testing program will continue in self-defense.
"For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way. See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2017 time of the Doomsday Clock."
"Because we know from experience that governmental leaders respond to public pressure, we also call on citizens of the world to express themselves in all the ways available to them— including through use of the powerful new tools of social media—to demand that: • US and Russian leaders return to the negotiating table to seek further reductions in nuclear arms and to limit nuclear modernization programs that threaten to create a new nuclear arms race. The world can be more secure with much, much smaller nuclear arsenals than now exist— if political leaders are truly interested in protecting their citizens from harm. • The United States and Russia reduce the alert levels of their nuclear weapons and use existing crisis stability mechanisms to avoid inadvertent escalation of con ict. Provocative military exercises increase the possibilities for accidental war and should cease. • Governments around the world sharply reduce their countries’ greenhouse gas emissions and ful ll the Paris Accord promise of keeping warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, or less. This temperature target is consistent with consensus views on climate science and is eminently achievable and economically viable, provided that poorer countries are given the support they need to make the post-carbon transition. • The Trump administration acknowledge climate change as a science-backed reality and redouble US e orts to limit carbon dioxide emissions and support carbon- free energy sources, including, when economically reasonable and safe over the long term, nuclear energy. It is well past time to move beyond arguments over the reality of climate change and on to solutions, including scal measures—such as carbon markets and carbon taxes or fees—that encourage e ciency and put a price on carbon emissions. • The United States, China, Russia, and other concerned nations engage with North Korea to reduce nuclear risks. Neighbors in Asia face the most urgent threat, but as North Korea improves its nuclear and missile arsenals, the threat will rapidly become global. As we said last year and repeat here: Now is not the time to tighten North Korea’s isolation but to engage seriously in dialogue. • Leaders of countries with commercial nuclear power programs deal responsibly with safety issues and with the commercial nuclear waste problem. Top experts disagree on whether an expansion of nuclear-powered electricity generation can become a major component of the e ort to limit climate change. Regardless of the trajectory of the global nuclear industry, there will be a continuing need for safe and secure interim and permanent nuclear waste storage facilities and for ever-safer nuclear power plants. • The countries of the world collaborate on creating institutions speci cally assigned to explore and address potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies. Scienti c advance can provide society with great bene ts. But as events surrounding the recent US presidential election show, the potential for misuse of potent new technologies is real. Governmental, scientific, and business leaders need to take appropriate steps to address possibly devastating consequences of these technologies."
"There’s no way to sugarcoat it: 2016 has been an emotionally exhausting and, at times, devastating year. With violence and conflict constantly making headlines, the passing of several artistic legends and a bitter, divisive election in the U.S., the countdown to 2017 seemed to kick off midsummer.
But 2016 was also full of hopeful, small acts of kindness between families, neighbors and even strangers, that reaffirmed love and empathy can persevere through the most difficult times. We saw this on display every day in 2016 through the Kiva community.
Hundreds of thousands of borrowers (351,465 to be exact) around the world shared their dreams for a better future for their families, and lenders responded by funding $133 million in loans to help those families take their next steps.
Kiva also celebrated a momentous milestone– 10 years of impact, made possible by the generosity of 1.6 million lenders from 192 countries. That’s truly an international movement of people who believe in lifting each other up as a global community."
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