As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition?
The puerile standoff between the US and Russia ought to alert a slumbering public to a risk that is in many ways greater than during the cold war.
(Text continues underneath the photo.)
A tourist at the peace statue at the venue of the 80th Nagasaki Peace Ceremony in Japan, 8 August 2025. Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA.
Nuclear weapons – their lethal menace, dark history and future spread – are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. (...)
Whatever the reason, it falls to the children of the cold war – to the daughters of Greenham Common, to the heirs of ban-the-bomb protesters, to CND’s indefatigable campaigners – to more loudly warn: this way lies extinction. Yet why is it that they alone sound the tocsin? It’s all happening again, only this time it’s worse, and everyone’s a target. If unchecked, today’s vastly more powerful nukes could turn the planet into a universal killing field. Last week’s ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings should be seen as a warning as well as a reminder. (...)
For the first time since the cold war, Europe, Asia and the Middle East are being transformed into potential nuclear battlegrounds, with the difference, now, that atomic bombs and missiles are viewed not as deterrents but as offensive, war-winning weapons. The proliferation of lower-yield, tactical warheads supposedly makes “limited” nuclear warfare possible. Once that red line is crossed, an unstoppable chain reaction may ensue. (...)
The challenge is formidable, the outcome uncertain. But someone, somehow, somewhere must call a halt to the madness. It is still just possible to hope that, unlike in 1945, wiser counsels will prevail.
Tags: #english #nuclear weapons #nuclear war #non-proliferation #russia #us #united states #nato #missiles #doomsday clock #inf #new start #arms-control
Remco Lee Polman likes this.
helladeboo reshared this.
Bert Ernste
in reply to Bert Ernste • •Hiroshima Remains an Open Wound in Our Imperiled World
Tom Dispatch
Eric Ross consider the strangeness of “remembering” Hiroshima when our country continues to invest such staggering sums in ever more potentially world-ending weaponry.
Moreover, what does it mean to remember Hiroshima in a world where, while no atomic bomb has been dropped on Gaza, the tonnage of “conventional” explosives unleashed there is already equivalent to six Hiroshima bombings?
> Article