Photo courtesy of James Vaughn via Flickr
We are living in a time of unprecedented nuclear instability. The nuclear-armed powers Israel and Russia are both engaged in devastating wars with no sustainable end in sight. World leaders Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un issue frequent explicit nuclear threats and the authoritarian regime in Iran could be mere months away from creating a fully functional nuclear bomb. Even the United States is in the midst of a $1.5 trillion plan to modernize its nuclear arsenal. I could go on, but you get the point.
In January 2024, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced the Doomsday Clock is still set at 90 seconds to midnight; this is, by their metrics, the closest the world has ever been to destruction (midnight). Though the Doomsday Clock encompasses all types of danger – including AI and the climate crisis – the current threat assessment is in no small part due to nuclear weapons. As the devastating nuclear reactor accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl showed us, nuclear weapons are dangerous even in times of peace. And as Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed us, they are exponentially more so in times of conflict.
Even though the current threat level is unprecedented, this is not the first time we have been close to midnight.
During the 1970s and ‘80s, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were engaged in an incredibly tense nuclear arms race, and at the same time, nuclear weapons programs were popping up in other countries across the globe. In 1984, the clock got as close as three minutes to midnight. In 1985, there were over 60,000 nuclear warheads across the globe.
However, something was critically different in those decades. A lot of everyday people were fighting back. Huge grassroots peace and anti-nuclear movements took off across the globe, especially among young people and on college campuses. In fact, in 1982, a crowd of 1 million people demonstrated in Central Park calling for nuclear disarmament. Hundreds of thousands of people protested across Europe as well.
Though it took a few years, this global outrage yielded results. In 1987, a treaty agreement was signed by the U.S. and Soviet Union that limited the type and number of nuclear weapons the nations could possess. One treaty led to another, and by 1991, the world had turned the clock back to 17 minutes to midnight. By 2000, global nuclear warheads had been reduced by half to 33,000. By 2020, that number had decreased to 13,000. But since 2000, the clock has crept closer and closer to midnight as nuclear tensions escalate once again.
It is also important to consider that nuclear weapons are not just dangerous, but they are also expensive. Americans contribute over $900 billion in taxes to the military budget annually. Nassau and Suffolk counties alone contribute $15 billion. In turn, much of that money goes toward creating, storing and upgrading nuclear weapons. Consider what $15 billion a year could do for Long Island. For example, it could create 1.2 million public housing units to solve the affordable housing crisis. It could also provide wind power to 50 million homes, or it could even put 430,000 students through four years of college for free.
Despite the ever-growing and ever-costly threat of nuclear weapons, only two in 10 Americans report wanting to get more involved in impacting U.S. nuclear policy. While anti-nuclear groups certainly still exist and work tirelessly towards a non-nuclear world, they do not garner even a fraction of the momentum they had in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
If we want our kids to live in a peaceful world (really in any world at all), it’s not that we should be doing more to fight for peace, it’s that we need to do more. I do not think I need to tell you what the world would look like in the event of a nuclear war. Instead, I want you to imagine a world where the money spent on nuclear weapons ($157,000 a minute globally) was instead diverted to social needs. We are paying into a system that makes the world more dangerous, and we should all be worried about it.
Americans and young people must take the first steps towards a more peaceful world. When young people protest, the media is more inclined to cover it and elected officials are more inclined to listen. It is in their interest to capture lifelong viewers and voters. Use that to your advantage, and wage peace for the sake of having a world to grow up in. It works.
