Friends,
The risks of turning our planet into an inferno increases by the day. Meanwhile leading newspapers and channels carry endless squabbles between Democrats and Republicans, 2020 candidates, anything but the “elephant in the room.”
Why are we Americans not reacting with alarm as we did in the 1980s when the first nuclear stand-off rocked our nation? Why is it that our doctors, mayors, business leaders, and religious dignitaries aren’t mobilizing to educate the American public on this devastating issue?
Are we walking toward Doomsday with placid disinterest––too immersed in consuming and petty issues to notice?
Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Risk of nuclear war now highest since WW2, UN arms research chief says
Tom Miles
May 21, 2019
The risk of nuclear weapons being used is at its highest since World War Two, a senior U.N. security expert said on Tuesday, calling it an “urgent” issue that the world should take more seriously.
Renata Dwan, director of the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), said all states with nuclear weapons have nuclear modernization programs underway and the arms control landscape is changing, partly due to strategic competition between China and the United States.
Traditional arms control arrangements are also being eroded by the emergence of new types of war, with increasing prevalence of armed groups and private sector forces and new technologies that blurred the line between offense and defense, she told reporters in Geneva.
With disarmament talks stalemated for the past two decades, 122 countries have signed a treaty to ban nuclear weapons, partly out of frustration and partly out of a recognition of the risks, she said.