"The risk of nuclear war is greater now than in decades and rising. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists recently set its famous Doomsday Clock closer to midnight, indicating a level of risk equivalent to the 1980s, when US and Soviet nuclear stockpiles were increasing rapidly. In those years, massive waves of disarmament protest arose in Europe and the United States. Political leaders responded, the cold war ended, and many people stopped worrying about the bomb."
"We are told that nuclear weapons are necessary for peace, but there can be no genuine peace if security rests on the threat of using instruments of indiscriminate mass annihilation. One large bomb detonated over a modern city could kill millions of people from the catastrophic blast and the spread of genetically damaging radioactive fallout. Research estimates that a nuclear war between the US and Russia could kill up to 5 billion people."
Doomsday Clock moved closer to midnight, signaling nuclear risk comparable to the 1980s. Cold War-era stockpiles have returned in different forms as nuclear weapons have spread to Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea, while China is rapidly increasing its arsenal. The New START treaty is expiring, threatening to accelerate a US–Russia arms competition. Russia offered to maintain treaty limits voluntarily, but the US declined and proposed negotiating a new treaty that could take years. Nuclear deterrence depends on threats of mass annihilation and cannot produce genuine peace. A US–Russia nuclear exchange could kill up to five billion people.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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