No to nukes

To the editor:

President Kennedy, on June 10, 1963, delivered a commencement address at American University in Washington, D.C. 

He said, “Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces…surely, the acquisition of [nuclear stockpiles] – which can only destroy and never create… is not the only… means of assuring peace. ... In short, both the U.S. and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest… in halting the arms race.… For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inherit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future.  And we are all mortal.”

On Feb. 5, 2026, the last arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia expired.  The New START treaty had placed limits on each side’s missiles, launchers and strategic nuclear warheads.

We now confront another nuclear arms race.  The U.S. and Russia, as well as China, are upgrading their nuclear arsenal.  Both the new generation of nuclear weapons and new evasive means of delivering unimaginably destructive warheads are being developed. 

Given these events, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has set the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight.  The Bulletin said it was urgent that actions be taken to address not only the threat of nuclear weapons, but also AI and other disruptive technologies, biological security concerns and climate change.

C. Wright Mills in The Causes of World War Three described the mindset of political and military leadership as “crackpot realism."  The leaders of today’s nine nuclear powers focus on the means (weapons, tactics) and lose sight of the ends (human survival and moral consequences).  In an often inhumane, delusional and unprincipled world of states with nuclear arms, such as the U.S., Israel and Russia, this perspective is called “realism."

Howard Elterman