Let's be honest: America needs another nuclear weapon about as much as Donald Trump deserves a Nobel peace prize. Yet on Thursday, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U S and Russia will expire. When the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty New Start goes away, there will be no limits on US and Russian nuclear arsenals for the first time in more than 50 years. That is very bad news.
POBUZKE, Ukraine In the middle of vast farm fields in southern Ukraine, you'll find what was once a secret Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile launch site. Today it's the Museum of Strategic Missile Forces. Aside from chronicling the Cold War arms race between the Soviet Union and United States, the museum tells the story of how Ukraine dismantled its nuclear weapons arsenal with assurances from the U.S., Britain and Russia that its sovereignty would be respected shortly after becoming an independent country in 1991.
I spent my entire childhood worrying about nuclear war, partly because it was the 80s, and everyone did, and partly because we spent our lives demonstrating against it. We had Protest and Survive stickers everywhere, in droll parody of the public information booklet Protect and Survive, along with Nuclear Power? No Thanks. We were also early adopters of climate change anxiety, while fiercely against the closure of coalmines.
