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EIGHTY YEARS OF NUCLEAR TERROR  
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Lawrence S. Wittner
August 3, 2025
Z Network
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_ Ever since the atomic bombings of Japanese cities in August 1945,
the world has been living on borrowed time. To facilitate these
nuclear war preparations, the major nuclear powers have withdrawn from
key nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties _

A digitally altered image of a US nuclear weapon test at Bikini
Atoll, July 1946., Photograph: United States Department of Defense //
The Guardian

 

The indications, then and since, that the development of nuclear
weapons did not bode well for human survival, were clear enough. The
two small atomic bombs dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki killed between 110,000 and 210,000 people
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wounded many others, almost all of them civilians. In subsequent
years, hundreds of thousands more people
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world lost their lives thanks to the radioactive fallout from nuclear
weapons testing, while substantial numbers
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died from the mining of uranium for the building of nuclear weapons. 

Most startlingly, the construction of nuclear weapons armadas against
the backdrop of thousands of years of international
conflict portended human extinction
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Amid the escalating nuclear terror, Einstein declared
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“General annihilation beckons.”

Despite the enormity of the nuclear danger, major governments, in the
decades after 1945, were too committed to traditional thinking about
international relations to resist the temptation to build nuclear
weapons to safeguard what they considered their national security.
Whatever the dangers, they concluded, military power still counted in
an anarchic world. Consequently, they plunged into a nuclear arms race
and, on occasion, threatened one another with nuclear war. At times,
they came perilously close to it―not only during the 1962
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missile crisis
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but during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war
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numerous other occasions
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By contrast, much of the public
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weapons and the prospect of nuclear war very unappealing. Appalled by
the nuclear menace, they rallied behind organizations like the
National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy in the United States, the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain, and comparable groups
elsewhere that pressed for nuclear arms control and disarmament
measures. This popular uprising secured its first clear triumph when,
in the fall of 1958, the governments of the United States, the Soviet
Union, and Britain agreed to halt nuclear weapons testing as they
negotiated a test ban treaty. As the movement crested, it played an
important role in securing the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 and a
cascade of nuclear arms control measures that followed.

Even when U.S. and Soviet officials revived the nuclear arms race in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, a massive public uprising halted and
reversed the situation
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leading to the advent of major nuclear disarmament measures. As a
result, the number of nuclear weapons in the world’s arsenals
plummeted from about 70,000 to about 12,240
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1986 and 2025. At a special meeting of the UN Security Council in
2009, the leaders of the major nuclear powers called for the building
of a nuclear weapons-free world
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In recent decades, however, the dwindling of the popular movement and
the heightening of international conflict have led to a revival of the
nuclear arms race, now well underway. As three nuclear experts from
the Federation of American Scientists reported
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June: “Every nuclear country is improving its weapons systems, while
some are growing their arsenals. Others are doing both.” The new
nuclear weaponry currently being tested includes “cruise missiles
that can fly for days before hitting their targets; underwater
unmanned nuclear torpedoes; fast-flying maneuverable glide vehicles
that can evade defenses; and nuclear weapons in space that can attack
satellites or targets on Earth without warning.” The financial costs
of the nuclear buildup by the nine nuclear powers (the United States,
Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North
Korea) will be immense. The U.S. government will reportedly
spend over $1.7 trillion
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its nuclear “modernization.”

To facilitate these nuclear war preparations, the major nuclear powers
have withdrawn from key nuclear arms control and disarmament treaties
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The New START Treaty, the last of the major U.S.-Russian nuclear
agreements, terminates in February 2026. 

Furthermore, over the past decade, the governments of North Korea, the
United States, and Russia have issued public threats of nuclear war
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In line with its threats, the Russian government announced
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late 2024 that it had lowered its threshold for using nuclear weapons.

In response to these developments, the Doomsday Clock of
the _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ has been set at 89 seconds
to midnight [[link removed]], the most
dangerous level in its 79-year history. 

As the record of the years since 1945
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catastrophe of nuclear war can be averted. To accomplish this,
however, a revival of public pressure for nuclear disarmament is
essential, for otherwise governments easily slip into the traditional
trap of enhancing military “strength” to cope with a
conflict-ridden world―a practice that, in the nuclear age, is a
recipe for disaster.

This public pressure could begin, as the Nuclear Freeze movement
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the 1980s did, with a call to halt the nuclear arms race, and could
continue with the demand for specific nuclear arms control and
disarmament measures. 

But, simultaneously, the movement needs to champion the strengthening
of global institutions―institutions that can provide greater
international security than presently exists. The existence of these
strengthened institutions―for example, a stronger United
Nations―would help resolve the violent conflicts among nations that
spawn arms races and would undermine lingering public and official
beliefs that nuclear weapons are essential to safeguard national
security.

Once the world is back on track toward nuclear disarmament, the
movement could focus on its campaign [[link removed]] for
the signing and ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons [[link removed]].
This treaty, providing the framework for a nuclear weapons-free world,
was adopted in 2017 by most of the world’s nations and went into
force in 2021. Thus far, it has been signed by 94 nations and
ratified by 73
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Given recent international circumstances, none of the nuclear powers
has signed it. But with widespread popular pressure and enhanced
international security, they could ultimately be brought on board.

They certainly _should_ be, for human survival depends upon ending
the nuclear terror.

_[LAWRENCE ("LARRY") WITTNER was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and
attended Columbia College, the University of Wisconsin, and Columbia
University, where he received his Ph.D. in history in 1967. 
Thereafter, he taught history at Hampton Institute, at Vassar College,
at Japanese universities (under the Fulbright program), and at
SUNY/Albany.  In 2010, he retired as professor of history emeritus. 
A writer on peace and foreign policy issues, he is the author or
editor of twelve books and hundreds of published articles and book
reviews and a former president of the Peace History Society.  Since
1961, he has been active in the peace, racial equality, and labor
movements, and currently serves as a national board member of Peace
Action (America's largest grassroots peace organization) and as
executive secretary of the Albany County Central Federation of Labor,
AFL-CIO.  On occasion, he helps to fan the flames of discontent by
performing vocally and on the banjo with the Solidarity Singers.  His
latest book is WORKING FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE: MEMOIRS OF AN ACTIVIST
INTELLECTUAL (University of Tennessee Press).  More information
about him can be found at his website: 
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_ZNetwork is funded solely through the generosity of its readers.
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* Hiroshima
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* Nagasaki
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* Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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* nuclear bomb
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* nuclear weapons
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* Nuclear war
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* disarmament
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* Nuclear Disarmament
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* war
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* nuclear freeze
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* Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons
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* START Treaty
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* New START Treaty
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