Preserving Humanity’s Future: The Necessity of Reducing the Nuclear Threat

by John Whitehead

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The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki (August 9) are times to reflect on the past. They are times to mourn the estimated 100,000 people killed in the bombings, as well as all those injured and bereaved. They are times to reject the injustice of using these indiscriminate, massively destructive weapons against cities.

However, the atomic bombing anniversaries are also a time to reflect on the future. The invention of nuclear weapons gave humanity the ability to wipe itself out in a nuclear war—a war that would take perhaps only an hour or two to kill untold numbers of people and destroy human civilization. The atomic bombing anniversaries are a time to reflect on the future because the existence of nuclear weapons casts doubt on whether humanity will even have a future.

For 81 years now, we have been able to avoid nuclear war. We may not be able to avoid it indefinitely, though. 

Our chances of avoiding nuclear war are certainly not encouraging if we simply ignore the danger nuclear weapons pose and hope that, somehow, we will just be lucky enough to avoid these weapons ever being used again in war.

The writer Gwynne Dyer aptly expressed the dangers of a passive approach to the nuclear threat:

The war for which the great powers hold themselves in readiness every day may come, as hundreds of others have in the past. The megatons will fall, the dust will rise, the sun’s light will fail, and the race may perish.

Nothing is inevitable until it has actually happened, but the final war is undeniably a possibility, and there is one statistical certainty. Any event that has a definite probability, however small, that does not decrease with time will eventually occur—next year, next decade, next century, but it will come. Including nuclear war.

Many events and conditions today point toward a growing danger of nuclear weapons being used again. The Ukraine war pits one nuclear-armed nation, Russia, against NATO, a military alliance of nuclear-armed nations. Other conflicts among nuclear-armed nations, such as between India and Pakistan, could escalate into war. 

Further, two nuclear-armed nations, the United States and Israel, have been waging war against Iran. This war against Iran does not currently seem likely to become a full-scale nuclear war, but the war does include the possibility that either the United States or Israel could resort to nuclear weapons in a final, desperate attempt to achieve victory.

Another sign of a growing nuclear threat is the decline in international agreements meant to check the threat from nuclear weapons. The last major nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, the New START Treaty, collapsed earlier this year. The United States is currently engaged in a grotesquely expensive effort to build new nuclear weapons. Other nations, whether in response to American bomb-building or on their own initiative, may similarly waste their resources on such weapons.

A further danger is that nations that do not already possess nuclear weapons may seek to build them. For example, the US-Israeli bombing campaign may remove any doubts and hesitation among Iranian policymakers to pursue nuclear weapons: an Iranian nuclear arsenal would be insurance against future American or Israeli attacks. The more nations that possess nuclear weapons, the greater the potential that these weapons will be used in a conflict.

The nuclear threat is real, and recent events suggest the threat is growing. To respond to the present situation by giving in to despair would be a mistake, though. Such pessimism would be misguided because it leaves out another aspect of the situation.

While the nuclear threat is great, we are not helpless before it. Humans have the ability to reduce the dangers from nuclear weapons, and we have succeeded in doing so in the past. 

In the 1960s, concerns about how the testing of nuclear weapons poisoned human beings and our natural environment prompted activists and policymakers to work to stop nuclear testing. They succeeded in establishing a major international treaty, the Partial Test Ban Treaty, that dramatically limited nuclear testing.

In the 1980s, when the Cold War was at its coldest and nuclear war seemed all too likely, activists and policymakers worked to reduce the nuclear threat. Aided by the gradually improving relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, they ultimately succeeded in reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world. 

As the Cold War ended, the United States and the Soviet Union, and later the Soviet Union’s successor state of Russia, succeeded in radically reducing their nuclear arsenals. While in the mid-1980s the United States and Soviet Union possessed almost 70,000 nuclear weapons combined, today the United States and Russia possess a little over 8,000 nuclear weapons. More than 8,000 nuclear weapons is still too many, but such an extreme reduction shows that dramatic change is possible. 

We can achieve similar successes today. One significant effort against the nuclear threat is the Back from the Brink Campaign (preventnuclearwar.org). Back from the Brink has identified several specific, comprehensible policy steps we can take to reduce the nuclear threat. These steps include cancelling US plans to build new nuclear weapons and taking nuclear weapons off the high level of readiness that makes it possible to use them in a matter of minutes.

A resolution currently before the U.S. Congress (H.Res 317/S.Res 323) advocates for the Back from the Brink campaign’s policy steps. American citizens can lobby their representatives and senators to support these resolutions. 

As dire as the present world situation might seem, we should not lose hope. We should remember that humans can make significant progress toward reducing the threat of nuclear war. History shows us we can. Reason shows us we must.