A couple of nuclear analysts have published an editorial featuring a warning that the longer the war between Russia and Ukraine is allowed to continue, along with the various provocations that are happening around the globe, the closer our world comes to, in their words, “flirting with nuclear disaster.”
Well, it’s not like I had enough on my plate to worry about, right? You probably feel the same way. I don’t mean to add more concern to the mix, but all of this is unfolding while Joe Biden, the man who looked like a robot wearing a fake skin mask during the first presidential debate this week, is sitting at the helm of our nation.
Anyone else need a change of pants?
via Newsweek:
It has been over 28 months since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, leading to a drawn-out conflict currently viewed by many in the foreign policy realm as a stalemate. Although the exact number of casualties remains unknown, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense estimates that Russia’s amassed roughly 535,660 dead soldiers compared to the 30,000 minimum soldiers lost by Ukraine.
In January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB) reset the worldwide Doomsday Clockand kept it at 90 seconds to midnight—representing no change in the perceived nuclear threatslargely connected to the Russia-Ukraine war, but prompting further caution toward the “closest to global catastrophe” the world has ever been.
Ivana Nikolic Hughes, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and senior lecturer in chemistry at Columbia University, and Peter Kuznick, a professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C., co-authored a new piece in Responsible Statecraft—an online magazine of the Quincy Institute—cautioning of how increased military and governmental threats coupled with advanced weaponry could lead the world into a no-win scenario.
“It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans,” the piece declared.
The two analysts then said, “This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.”
The pair then make allusions to an increased year-over-year defense spending of NATO allies, which includes a 13 percent increase on global nukes which adds up to a record $91.4 billion in 2023, according to data that was released by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
That equates to a $10.7 billion increase in spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, led by the U.S. funding 80 percent of that increase.
On June 17, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington—touting the spending increases and confirming that 23 allies will spend at least 2 percent of their GDP. He said the number of NATO countries hitting that target has more than doubled in the past four years.
Making things even more terrifying, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently held a meeting with the highly unstable dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. He, along with Putin, have a reputation for making nuclear threats against nations in the West.
The pair struck a deal, pledging mutual military assistance “without delay by all means at its disposal” if either nation is attacked. South Korea, the United States, and Japan condemned the move, saying in a joint statement Sunday that the treaty “should be of grave concern to anyone with an interest in maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
The analysts then made a rather serious observation, noting the scariest part of nuclear war is you don’t get any second chances, no “do-over” to try and get back to a nonviolent compromise that would result in a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
Hughes told Newsweek via phone on Thursday that she and Kuznick authored the piece due to recent escalations and geopolitical turmoil, including not just the war in Eastern Europe but threats across Asia and the continued violence in Gaza.
“I’ve been concerned all along,” Hughes went on to say. “I wouldn’t say that we weren’t in danger then and now we’re in danger…I’m more concerned about a blunder into oblivion.”
She said that the probability of our world experiencing nuclear war has never been totally zero, however, there have been times when it has gone up, such as in our present day. Hughes pointed out the world is a whole different than it was when both President Ronald Reagan and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev joined forces against the idea of nuclear warfare.
“Even if you have some low probability estimate that something bad happens in the course of one year, over the course of 50 years or 80 years—the course of a lifetime of a child born today—that probability skyrockets,” she further explained.
“I think what really was the dramatic change occurred with the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the spring and summer, and the setbacks on the battlefield that Ukraine had been suffering—combined with the growing realization that Ukraine is just so badly outmanned and unarmed that Ukraine was on the verge of losing or being forced to accept Putin’s terms,” Kuznick stated during a phone conversation with the news outlet.
The smartest way out of the conflict is for Ukraine, NATO and Western nations to negotiate with Putin, he added, acknowledging that Putin’s wants may be uncompromising in theory.
“As a planet, we are on a path to disaster and potential mutual destruction,” he stated in the article’s conclusion.