{"id":319170,"date":"2026-08-10T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=319170"},"modified":"2026-08-07T18:46:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T17:46:14","slug":"the-rulers-of-the-nuclear-powers-are-slow-learners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/08\/the-rulers-of-the-nuclear-powers-are-slow-learners\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rulers of the Nuclear Powers Are Slow Learners"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Aug 2026 – <\/em>Although 81 years have passed since the atomic bombing of Japan in August 1945, the rulers of major nations continue their reckless march toward a nuclear holocaust.<\/p>\n

The nine nuclear powers (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possessing some 12,100 nuclear warheads<\/a>, are all busily upgrading and expanding<\/a> their nuclear weapons arsenals at an accelerating pace.\u00a0 Nuclear weapons spending rose<\/a> to an all-time high of $119 billion in 2025\u2015a 19 percent increase over the preceding year.\u00a0 The U.S. government alone, which accounted for more than half of this spending, is embarked on a $1.7 trillion<\/a>, decades-long nuclear weapons buildup.<\/p>\n

As the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons<\/a> (ICAN) has observed, \u201cthis overwhelming spending on nuclear weapons shows a willingness to research, develop, finance and build tools to exterminate humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements among the nuclear powers have collapsed<\/a>.\u00a0 Russia and the United States own 86 percent of the world\u2019s nuclear weapons and, although they signed numerous treaties in the past to limit or reduce the size of their nuclear arsenals, the last of these treaties, New START, expired this February.<\/p>\n

The accelerating nuclear arms race is accompanied by repeated threats of nuclear war.\u00a0 Russian officials are particularly notorious in this connection.\u00a0 According to the Voice of America<\/a>, from early 2022 to late 2024 Russian officials publicly issued 135 nuclear threats, with 27 of them coming from Vladimir Putin.\u00a0 But America\u2019s Donald Trump<\/a> has also publicly and repeatedly threatened other countries with nuclear destruction, as has North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong Un<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Early this year, the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em><\/a>, assessing this deteriorating situation, moved the hands of their famous \u201cDoomsday Clock\u201d to 85 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous setting in its history.<\/p>\n

Of course, there have been a great many warnings<\/a> that nuclear weapons portend global disaster, including many beginning right after the shocking annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\u00a0 \u201cSeldom, if ever,\u201d reported CBS radio commentator Edward R. Murrow, \u201chas war ended leaving the victors . . . with such a realization that . . . survival is not assured.\u201d\u00a0 The Chicago Tribune<\/em> warned that a future atomic war would leave the world \u201ca barren waste, in which the survivors . . . will hide in caves.\u201d\u00a0 In France, the resistance leader Albert Camus declared that the modern world had \u201creached the last degree of savagery,\u201d in which nations were faced with the prospect of \u201ccollective suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

As nuclear fear swept around the world, large numbers of people sought to avert catastrophe<\/a>. \u00a0Some called for dramatically strengthened global governance to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war, while others, with the same goal in mind, championed nuclear disarmament.\u00a0 Speaking on behalf of the newly-formed Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Albert Einstein typified this popular uprising by arguing that \u201ca new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over subsequent decades, the antinuclear movement<\/a> ebbed and flowed, but, at times of mass mobilization, it had an important effect on nuclear weapons policies.\u00a0 Naturally, the leaders of many nations felt the allure of nuclear weapons, especially after thousands of years of human history in which national security often seemed to rest upon military strength. \u00a0Nevertheless, as indicated by opinion polls and massive demonstrations, antinuclear agitation inspired revulsion against nuclear weapons and nuclear war among large portions of the public.\u00a0 Consequently, most governments decided not to build nuclear weapons or even to deploy them on their territory.<\/p>\n

Hard-pressed by antinuclear campaigners and public opinion, even the small number of governments that built nuclear weapons found themselves unable to resist agreement on nuclear arms control and disarmament measures.\u00a0 Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush were not nuclear \u201cdoves\u201d when they entered office, but, in response to popular pressure, they took significant action to curb nuclear dangers.\u00a0 Some government officials, like Mikhail Gorbachev, even became fervent converts to the antinuclear cause.<\/p>\n

As the 20th<\/sup> century came to an end, however, progress in rolling back the nuclear menace began to unravel.\u00a0 Popular protest declined, and nuclear disarmament organizations dwindled in size.\u00a0 By contrast, conservative and militarist forces grew more assertive, blocking U.S. Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, demanding the building of new nuclear weapons, and derailing Barack Obama\u2019s initiative for creating a nuclear weapons-free world.<\/p>\n

Although nuclear disarmament organizations were on the defensive during the early 21st<\/sup> century, they retained enough strength to produce one major victory<\/a>.\u00a0 Joining together in the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, they cooperated closely with officials in small, non-nuclear nations to produce a series of UN conferences on nuclear issues.\u00a0 Then, at the 2017 conference, the national delegates voted 122 to 1 to adopt the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which banned nuclear weapons.\u00a0 Entering into force in January 2021, the treaty has been signed, thus far, by 100 countries<\/a>\u2015a majority of the world\u2019s nations.<\/p>\n

Even so, the situation remains dire.\u00a0 Today, most rulers of the nuclear powers are nationalistic, militaristic, and authoritarian, with no interest in nuclear disarmament.\u00a0 Instead, they are busy readying their nations for a disastrous nuclear war.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, none of them is willing to sign or even abide by the TPNW.\u00a0 Although the antinuclear movement continues to oppose their priorities, it remains weak and unable to halt the momentum toward nuclear catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Thus, unless there is an advent of new, less hawkish rulers, a movement revival, or both, a nuclear war seems likely.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, it\u2019s possible that, when a calamitous nuclear war does occur, it will finally convince even the slow learners among government officials that the nuclear age requires new thinking about international relations.\u00a0 Unfortunately, that recognition will arrive too late to matter, for such a war will snuff out most life on earth.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lawrence \u2018Larry\u2019 S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at the State University of New York Albany, where he taught courses on the history of U.S. foreign policy and international history for 36 years. He is the author of nine books and the editor or co-editor of another four and has written hundreds of articles. Among his books is the award-winning scholarly trilogy <\/em>Confronting the Bomb<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press), a history of the world nuclear disarmament movement. <\/em>(<\/em>https:\/\/www.lawrenceswittner.com\/<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The nine nuclear powers (USA, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea), possess 12,100 nuclear warheads and are upgrading and expanding their arsenals.\u00a0 Nuclear weapons spending rose to $119 billion in 2025\u2015a 19 percent increase over 2024. The U.S. accounts for more than half of this spending and embarked on a $1.7 trillion nuclear weapons buildup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[853,1347,2090,1476,429,1323,1301,450,2298],"class_list":["post-319170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weapons-of-mass-destruction","tag-atomic-weapons","tag-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","tag-ican-international-campaign-to-abolish-nuclear-weapons","tag-nuclear-abolition","tag-nuclear-ban-treaty","tag-nuclear-club","tag-nuclear-war","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-nuclear-weapons-illegal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319171,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319170\/revisions\/319171"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}