{"id":205241,"date":"2022-02-21T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T12:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=205241"},"modified":"2022-02-15T09:32:13","modified_gmt":"2022-02-15T09:32:13","slug":"with-its-doomsday-clock-at-100-seconds-to-midnight-the-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists-calls-for-escalating-us-aggression-against-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/02\/with-its-doomsday-clock-at-100-seconds-to-midnight-the-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists-calls-for-escalating-us-aggression-against-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"With Its Doomsday Clock at 100 Seconds to Midnight, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Calls for Escalating US Aggression against Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The <\/em>Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists emerged after World War II as a voice for peace by some of the scientists who developed the then ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Now, its mission has drifted into being an echo chamber for the US imperial project urging President Biden to take even more destabilizing actions against Russia.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dropping the A-bombs<\/strong><\/p>\n

15 Feb 2022 –<\/em> By the time that the scientists at the top-secret Manhattan Project had developed the atomic bomb and the US military had worked out the logistics for deploying it, World War II was for all intents and purposes over. By early May 1945<\/a>, Germany had unconditionally surrendered; in large part due to the efforts of the Red Army defeating the Nazi Wehrmacht<\/em>, but at the horrific cost<\/a> of 27,000,000 Soviet lives. The Japanese too had been defeated militarily and had agreed to \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d with the one caveat that Emperor Hirohito be spared.<\/p>\n

So, the world\u2019s emerging hegemon had a problem. It had the ultimate weapon to impose its policy of world domination (i.e., today\u2019s official US national security doctrine of global \u201cfull spectrum dominance<\/a>\u201d). But what good is this ultimate weapon if it is a secret? And, even if known, would the world believe that the US has the will to unleash such a destructive force?<\/p>\n

President Truman had the solution \u2013 nuke Japan. All the military targets in Japan had been destroyed, but an even stronger message of the US\u2019s determination to enforce imperial hegemony was made by annihilating the civilian cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.<\/p>\n

The Japanese promptly surrendered, offering up the life of their emperor. The US accepted, but did not execute the emperor, who was more useful alive than dead. Besides, the leniency gesture reinforced the message that the US would capriciously bomb at will. Even when President Obama visited Hiroshima in 2016, he pointedly offered \u201cno apology<\/a>\u201d for the destruction his country had wrought.<\/p>\n

Dawn of the Cold War<\/strong><\/p>\n

The quick Japanese surrender in August 1945 had another cause, which many modern historians<\/a> consider more overriding than the US bombs. The Soviets, engaged with their western front, had remained neutral in the war with Japan, but had promised the Allies to join the war effort against Japan once the Germans were defeated. At the same time the US dropped the bombs, the USSR declared war with Japan causing<\/a> Tokyo to capitulate.<\/p>\n

The dropping of the atomic bombs was the first salvo of the Cold War, signifying the end of the US wartime alliance of convenience with the Soviet Union. Truman\u2019s rush to nuke Japan had the dual advantage of making known his \u201chammer<\/a>\u201d over the Kremlin as well as denying the USSR time to advance east and have a seat in the surrender agreement with Japan. The Soviets had not developed atomic weapons on the assumption \u2013 which proved to be essentially correct \u2013 that World War II would be over before they could be deployed to defeat the Axis powers.<\/p>\n

In the immediate post-war period, the Soviets and their allies were existentially threatened by the unambiguous intention<\/a> of the US and its allies to destroy them. As a defensive measure, the Soviet Union had no choice but to develop a deterrent nuclear force, testing its first atomic bomb in 1949.<\/p>\n

Although the Soviets pledged to use their nuclear arsenal only in defense and renounced \u201cfirst strike,\u201d the US didn\u2019t. Soon the Cold War arms race threatened the planet with destruction. The emergent construct of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction<\/a>) was a fragile arrangement for the future of humanity.<\/p>\n

Emergence of the Bulletin <\/em>by scientists for peace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Voices of peace arose from the very inventors of the atomic bomb. Immediately after the destructive power of the atom was rained on Japan and even before the Soviet Union developed their deterrent force, former Manhattan Project scientists Eugene Rabinowitch and Hyman Goldsmith founded the Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, subsequently renamed the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other notables associated with the Bulletin<\/em> were nuclear physicist Hans Bethe<\/a>, Soviet space scientist Anatoli Blagonravov<\/a>, Jewish-German \u00e9migr\u00e9 and developer of quantum mechanics Max Born<\/a>, physicist \u201cfather of the atomic bomb\u201d turned anti-nuclear proliferation activist J. Robert Oppenheimer<\/a>, British polymath peace activist Bertrand Russell<\/a>, Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov<\/a>, and Albert Einstein.<\/p>\n

The Bulletin<\/em>\u2019s Doomsday Clock<\/a>, unveiled in 1947, was set at seven minutes to midnight. The clock was intended as an educational tool to serve \u201cas a vivid symbol of these multiplying perils, its hands showing how close to extinction we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pugwash Conferences<\/a>, an effort at peace in the early part of the Cold War, were an outgrowth of the Bulletin <\/em>in its formative years in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

Mission drift at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, the risk of nuclear annihilation, not to mention global warming and other threats, has never been greater, according to the Bulletin<\/em>\u2019s Doomsday Clock. But the Bulletin<\/em> has morphed from an advocate for peace and against other threats to humanity to something else.<\/p>\n

From an organization run by scientists, the current governing board<\/a> of the Bulletin<\/em> has hardly a scientist in sight. Its president and CEO is Rachel Bronson, a political scientist who came out of the US security establishment NGO world, including the Council on Foreign Relations (Wall Street\u2019s think tank<\/a>) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (ranked<\/a> the top military think tank in the world). Its chair, David Kuhlman, is a corporate consultant specializing in helping \u201cclients identify pathways to profitable growth.\u201d Its secretary, Steve Ramsey, formerly worked for defense contractor General Electric. Former Secretary of State and accused<\/a> war criminal<\/a> Madeleine Albright does promotionals<\/a> for the Bulletin.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Bulletin<\/em> maintains a liberal fa\u00e7ade<\/a> and still publishes articles that contribute to peace and environmentalism. In that way, its role in collusion with the US imperial project is insidious, because the patina of peace is used to legitimize its mission drift.<\/p>\n

Fanning the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment, the Bulletin<\/em> promotes<\/a> the conspiracy theory that the Chinese artificially developed COVID-19, featuring journalist Nicholas Wade\u2019s \u201cHow COVID-19\u2019s origins were obscured, by the East and the West.\u201d However, scientific evidence<\/a> points to natural origins of the virus. Anti-Russian sentiment is promoted<\/a> with journalist Matt Field\u2019s \u201cRussian media spreading disinformation about US bioweapons as troops mass near Ukraine.\u201d Where are the scientists advocating for peace?<\/p>\n

The Bulletin <\/em>covers the Ukraine crisis <\/strong><\/p>\n

Another case in point of its devolution is the article \u201cHow to mix sanctions and diplomacy to avert disaster in Ukraine,\u201d published<\/a> in the Bulletin<\/em> on February 1. The article advocates for sanctions that would \u201cseverely and quickly devastate Russia\u2019s powerful energy export sector.\u201d Echoing Washington\u2019s talking points, the article couches its recommendations as responding to Russian aggression but actually proposes nothing to de-escalate the conflict.<\/p>\n

It is beyond ironic that an organization that purports to be warning against the dangers of nuclear holocaust is making a full-throated defense of an even more aggressive posture by one of the world\u2019s leading nuclear powers.<\/p>\n

Yes, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist<\/em>\u2019s Doomsday Clock is now 100 seconds to midnight, and they are trying to push it closer to Armageddon.<\/p>\n

The view of the Bulletin\u2019s <\/em>Ukraine article is that the current crisis is Putin\u2019s \u201cown making.\u201d In contrast, the article explains that the US has diplomatically \u201cinitiated\u201d talks with Russia. There is no mention of the forward deployment of US troops<\/a> or sending lethal aid<\/a> to Ukraine. There is no recognition of aggressive actions by NATO such as stationing assault ABM missile systems<\/a> in Romania and possibly Poland. Off limits is allusion to the US shredding<\/a> the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.<\/p>\n

Hidden from sight in the aforementioned article and another<\/a> published the same day on \u201cHow the demise of an arms control treaty foreshadowed Russia\u2019s aggression against Ukraine\u201d is the US-orchestrated Ukraine coup<\/a> in 2014 that installed an anti-Russian regime there. The latter article\u2019s meticulously detailed history of the region notes \u201cMoscow invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea,\u201d but not the coup that precipitated it.<\/p>\n

Reasonable peace proposals<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is not a word in these articles of how some of the Russian initiatives might prevent hostilities and make the region more secure with a reduced likelihood of war. And certainly, there is none of the following reasonable peace proposals:<\/p>\n

+Russia and the US shall not use the territory of other countries to prepare or conduct attacks against the other.<\/p>\n