{"id":332396,"date":"2025-08-10T05:49:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T05:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/332396\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T05:49:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T05:49:11","slug":"as-the-world-hurtles-ever-closer-to-nuclear-oblivion-where-is-the-opposition-simon-tisdall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/332396\/","title":{"rendered":"As the world hurtles ever closer to nuclear oblivion, where is the opposition? | Simon Tisdall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nuclear weapons \u2013 their lethal menace, dark history and future spread \u2013 are back in the headlines again and, as usual, the news is worrying, bordering on desperate. Russia\u2019s decision last week to formally abandon<\/a> the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty banning medium- and short-range nuclear missiles completes the demolition of a key pillar of global arms control. It will accelerate an already frantic nuclear arms race in Europe and Asia at a moment when US and Russian leaders are taunting each other<\/a> like schoolboys.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin, Russia\u2019s president, has repeatedly threatened the west<\/a> with nuclear weapons during his war in Ukraine. Last November, Russian forces fired<\/a> their new Oreshnik hypersonic, nuclear-capable intermediate-range missile at Dnipro. It travels \u201clike a meteorite\u201d at 10 times the speed of sound and can reach any city in Europe, Putin boasted \u2013 which, if true, is a clear INF violation. Moscow blames its decision to ditch the treaty on hostile Nato actions. Yet it has long bypassed it in practice, notably by basing missiles<\/a> in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave on the Baltic sea, and Belarus.<\/p>\n

That said, Russia has a point about Nato. Donald Trump first reneged on the INF treaty<\/a> way back in 2018. The subsequent huge buildup of mainly US-produced nuclear-capable missiles, launchers, planes and bombs in European Nato states has understandably alarmed Moscow. It should alarm Europeans, too. In the 1980s, deployments of US Pershing and cruise missiles sparked passionate protests<\/a> across the continent. In contrast, today\u2019s ominous tick-tocking of the Doomsday Clock<\/a>, closer than ever to catastrophe at 89 seconds to midnight, is mostly accompanied by eerie silence.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s melodramatic claim last week to have moved US nuclear submarines closer to Russia came in response to crude threats from the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a notorious Putin stooge. It was another chilling moment. But this puerile standoff will have served a useful purpose if it alerts slumbering European public opinion to the growing risk of nuclear confrontation. Maybe people have grown complacent; maybe they have too many other worries. Maybe governments such as Britain\u2019s, suspected of secretly stashing<\/a> US nuclear gravity bombs at an East Anglian airbase, are again failing to tell the truth. (The UK government refuses to say whether or not American nukes are now at RAF Lakenheath.)<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, it falls to the children of the cold war \u2013 to the daughters of Greenham Common<\/a>, to the heirs of ban-the-bomb protesters, to CND\u2019s indefatigable campaigners \u2013 to more loudly warn: this way lies extinction. Yet why is it that they alone sound the tocsin? It\u2019s all happening again, only this time it\u2019s worse, and everyone\u2019s a target. If unchecked, today\u2019s vastly more powerful nukes could turn the planet into a universal killing field. Last week\u2019s ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings should be seen as a warning<\/a> as well as a reminder.<\/p>\n

The nuclear weapons buildup in Europe proceeds apace. The US already stores nuclear bombs in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey. Now the UK, too, has offered facilities \u2013 and is buying nuclear-capable<\/a> fighter jets. Germany will host Tomahawk cruise missiles<\/a> and hypersonic missiles next year. The US is expanding missile bases in Poland<\/a> and Romania<\/a>. Nato countries such as Denmark<\/a> and Norway<\/a> have joined missile exercises aimed, for example, at establishing \u201ccontrol\u201d of the Baltic.<\/p>\n

All this is justified in the name of self-defence, principally against Putin\u2019s Russia. Likewise, Nato\u2019s decision in June to raise national defence budgets to 5% of GDP<\/a>. The global picture is no less disturbing. The nine nuclear-armed states \u2013 Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the US \u2013 spent $100.2bn<\/a>, or $3,169 a second, on nuclear weapons last year, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) reported. That\u2019s up 11% on 2023.<\/p>\n

Under Trump\u2019s proposed 2026 budget plan, the US, already by far the biggest spender, will increase funding<\/a> for its nuclear forces, including the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, by 26% to $87bn. Doing its bit for global insecurity, China has more than doubled<\/a> its nuclear stockpile since 2020, to 500 warheads.<\/p>\n

Who can doubt where all this is leading? 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 \u201climited\u201d nuclear warfare possible. Once that red line is crossed, an unstoppable chain reaction may ensue.<\/p>\n

The collapse of arms-control agreements \u2013 the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New Start) will be next to lapse<\/a> in February 2026 \u2013 is destroying safety nets. Signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty are bound \u201cin good faith\u201d to gradually disarm; instead, they are rapidly rearming. Dehumanised AI systems may raise the risk of accidental Armageddon. Rogue states such as Israel and North Korea constantly push the boundaries. Trump\u2019s impetuosity and Putin\u2019s psychosis increase the sense of living in a global shooting gallery.<\/p>\n

It might have been very different. In June 1945, a group of University of Chicago nuclear physicists led by James Franck told President Harry Truman that an unannounced atomic bomb attack on Japan was \u201cinadvisable<\/a>\u201d. Detonating the new weapon would trigger an uncontrollable worldwide arms race, they predicted. Their warnings were rejected, their report suppressed. Now, the UN is trying again. In line with the 2021 treaty outlawing nuclear weapons<\/a>, a high-powered, international scientific panel was tasked last month with examining<\/a> \u201cthe physical effects and societal consequences\u201d of nuclear war \u201con a local, regional and planetary scale\u201d.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nuclear weapons \u2013 their lethal menace, dark history and future spread \u2013 are back in the headlines again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[332],"class_list":{"0":"post-332396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115002904768158859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}