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I was born on July 20, 1944, in the midst of the Second World War. Barely a year later, the U.S. ended that conflict in the Pacific by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and creating two all-too-literal hells on Earth.
To this day, fortunately, no other nuclear weapons have ever been used (if, that is, you don't count all the ones tested, including in above-ground places like Nevada). But in some sense, as I wrote a few years ago, "You could say that we've been living in a science-fiction novel since August 6, 1945, when that first American nuclear bomb devastated Hiroshima. Until then, we humans could do many terrible things, but of one thing we were incapable: the destruction of this world. In the nearly eight decades that followed, we have, however, taken over a role once left to the gods: the ability to create Armageddon."
And of course, in our own seemingly inimitable fashion, we've also stumbled across a second slow-motion way to do in ourselves and the planet: climate change. In other words, we're giving classic science fiction and dystopian fiction writers a genuine run for their money (which, of course, will be burned to a crisp).
Worse yet, 80 years after those first atomic bombs were used in Japan, nine (yes, nine!) countries (including Israel and North Korea) now possess atomic weapons. The U.S., Russia, and China, with the three largest nuclear arsenals on the planet, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, are all potentially preparing to expand them further. (The phrase in this country is "modernizing" and our government already plans to "invest" up to $1.5 trillion in "modernizing" this country's nuclear arsenal in the decades to come.) And yet, as Klare also makes clear, it's remarkable how little Americans think about such world-ending weaponry. The popular film Oppenheimer was an exception to that reality, though it paid sadly little attention to the devastation the bombs that Robert Oppenheimer played such a role in creating caused in the last days of World War II.
So, today, let Klare fill you in on humanity's race to oblivion and just what we should indeed be paying far, far more attention to. Tom
The Armageddon Agenda
Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, and the Race to Oblivion
The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration, racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm, she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and China/Taiwan. But one issue that few of us are even thinking about could pose a far greater quandary for the next president and even deeper peril for the rest of us: nuclear weapons policy.
Consider this: For the past three decades, we've been living through a period in which the risk of nuclear war has been far lower than at any time since the Nuclear Age began -- so low, in fact, that the danger of such a holocaust has been largely invisible to most people. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of agreements that substantially reduced the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles eliminated the most extreme risk of thermonuclear conflict, allowing us to push thoughts of nuclear Armageddon aside (and focus on other worries). But those quiescent days should now be considered over. Relations among the major powers have deteriorated in recent years and progress on disarmament has stalled. The United States and Russia are, in fact, upgrading their nuclear arsenals with new and more powerful weapons, while China -- previously an outlier in the nuclear threat equation -- has begun a major expansion of its own arsenal.
The altered nuclear equation is also evident in the renewed talk of possible nuclear weapons use by leaders of the major nuclear-armed powers. Such public discussion largely ceased after the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when it became evident that any thermonuclear exchange between the U.S. and the Soviet Union would result in their mutual annihilation. However, that fear has diminished in recent years and we're again hearing talk of nuclear weapons use. Since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened to employ nuclear munitions in response to unspecified future actions of the U.S. and NATO in support of Ukrainian forces. Citing those very threats, along with China's growing military might, Congress has authorized a program to develop more "lower-yield" nuclear munitions supposedly meant (however madly) to provide a president with further "options" in the event of a future regional conflict with Russia or China.
Thanks to those and related developments, the world is now closer to an actual nuclear conflagration than at any time since the end of the Cold War. And while popular anxiety about a nuclear exchange may have diminished, keep in mind that the explosive power of existing arsenals has not. Imagine this, for instance: even a "limited" nuclear war -- involving the use of just a dozen or so of the hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) possessed by China, Russia, and the United States -- would cause enough planetary destruction to ensure civilization's collapse and the death of billions of people.
And consider all of that as just the backdrop against which the next president will undoubtedly face fateful decisions regarding the production and possible use of such weaponry, whether in the bilateral nuclear relationship between the U.S. and Russia or the trilateral one that incorporates China.
The U.S.-Russia Nuclear Equation
The first nuclear quandary facing the next president has an actual timeline. In approximately 500 days, on February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining nuclear accord between the U.S. and Russia limiting the size of their arsenals, will expire. That treaty, signed in 2010, limits each side to a maximum of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads along with 700 delivery systems, whether ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), or nuclear-capable heavy bombers. (That treaty only covers strategic warheads, or those intended for attacks on each other's homeland; it does not include the potentially devastating stockpiles of "tactical" nuclear munitions possessed by the two countries that are intended for use in regional conflicts.)
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