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By Daryl G. Kimball
The writer has served as the executive director of the Arms Control Association since 2001 and has been a leading nongovernmental advocate for nuclear threat reduction and disarmament since 1989. In November 2021, he was invited to brief the Pentagon's NPR Working Group. The following was published as Arms Control Association Media Advisory on October 26.
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — In any body politic there will be a group of powerful people who, if not in the inner circle of the president or prime minister, can win access to it at regular intervals. Security is their profession, and they can be met at discrete academic conferences where they tend to stand out as rather earnest, if sombre, figures.
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — The longstanding US-Saudi alliance—political, economic and military—which dates back to 1931, is in deep trouble.
US President Joe Biden has warned Saudi Arabia that it would face "consequences" after OPEC Plus, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, announced plans for a cut in oil production—an estimated 2.0 million barrels a day that could escalate gas prices in the United States.
Viewpoint by Katrina vanden Heuvel*
NEW YORK (IDN) — October 16 marks 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis—the 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union widely regarded as the closest we ever came to global nuclear war. On this anniversary, as we veer terrifyingly close to the brink of Armageddon once again, we should look to that crisis to guide us in resolving our present one.
Viewpoint by Norman Solomon
SAN FRANCISO (IDN) — This is an emergency.
Right now, we’re closer to a cataclysmic nuclear war than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. One assessment after another has said the current situation is even more dangerous.
Yet few members of Congress are advocating for any steps that the U.S. government could take to decrease the dangers of a nuclear conflagration. The silences and muted statements on Capitol Hill are evading the reality of what’s hanging in the balance—the destruction of almost all human life on Earth. “The end of civilization.”
![— 12 October 2022] Photo: US President Joe Biden boarding Marine One in New York on October 6 warned that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Credit: Andrew Harnik | AP. Source: Tampa Bay Times.](/images/biden-nuclear_armageddon.jpeg)
Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN) — We were standing in Hiroshima looking at a stonewall. All there was to see was a shadow of a man. It had been etched into the wall at the moment of his obliteration by the blinding light of the first atomic bomb. Olof Palme, prime minister of Sweden, stared hard at it. An hour later, he had to give a speech as head of the Independent Commission on Disarmament, of which I was a member. "My fear", he remarked, "is that mankind itself will end up as nothing more than a shadow on a wall."
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — Russia's military setbacks in Ukraine have triggered widespread speculation in the US that Russian President Vladimir Putin may unleash his stockpile of "tactical nuclear weapons", which may be less devastating than the deadly US weapons that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki back in August 1945.
In the face of battlefield losses in eastern Ukraine, Putin has warned that he "will make use of all the weapon systems available to us" if our territorial integrity is threatened.
By Thalif Deen*
UNITED NATIONS (IDN) — When the United Nations commemorated the annual International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on September 26, the President of the General Assembly (GA) Csaba Kőrösi reminded delegates of the statue of Saint Agnes—"found in the ruins of Nagasaki, charred and mottled from the atomic blast"—and which now stands at the centre of UN’s permanent collection of memorable anti-nuclear artefacts in the Secretariat building.
Viewpoint by Herbert Wulf
This article was issued by the Toda Peace Institute and is being republished with their permission.
BONN (IDN) — In the shadow of the Ukraine war and the extraordinary media attention, the conflict over North Korea's nuclear ambitions is currently receding into the background. For years, the government in Pyongyang has been continuously advancing its program. After numerous missile tests earlier this year, according to the English-language state news agency KCNA, the Supreme People's Assembly passed a law on September 8, "On Policy of the Nuclear Force of DPRK".
By Kalinga Seneviratne
NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (IDN) — An exhibition that opened at Keruen Mall, an upmarket shopping centre here on September 16 and continues until the end of the month, uses a novel method to reach out to young people with the message of the dangers of nuclear weapons.
The exhibition depicts over 70 years of nuclear history from the Hiroshima explosion through to today, using photographs, illustrations, and graphs that show the devastating effects of nuclear weaponry on communities.
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