WAR
90 Seconds to Midnight
This is the closest humanity has ever been to doom
As a kid, listening to Iron Maiden’s now classic track “2 Minutes to Midnight” I had no idea what it was really about. Watching the music video on MTV did give me a clue that it wasn’t something horror themed or, rather, that it wasn’t the same kind of horror described in “Number of the Beast” or “Killers”. It was something very real and infinitely more dangerous than a serial killer.
Back then, although I was aware of the ever-present threat of nuclear war, I didn’t know about the concept of the Doomsday Clock. It made no difference. “Star Wars” was all over the news, and not our beloved space opera movies, but the ill-advised Strategic Defense Initiative project that proved to be not only provocative to the Soviet Union (which saw it as a covert way for the U.S. to acquire a viable first strike strategy), but also hugely costly and impractical. Thanks to SDI, it was in 1984 that the Clock reverted to the urgency the ’40s: 3 minutes to midnight. Only the advent of the dreaded hydrogen bomb in the ’50s had pushed the hands of doom even further than that, to 2 minutes.
Eventually even Reagan, whose presidency marked a hard turn towards antagonizing the Soviet Union, saw the light or, rather, “The Day After” and he was so affected by that movie, that he decided to initiate nuclear disarmament talks with Mikhail Gorbachev.
At last, there seemed to be some hope on the horizon. The signing of the START treaty in 1991 marked the high point of hope that the nuclear threat would become a thing of the past, something that would melt away along with the Cold War. The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the furthest it has even been from Armageddon since its inception.
Unfortunately, this wouldn’t last very long. Terrorism, successive wars, the rise of India, Pakistan and North Korea to nuclear powers and, finally, the prospect of a new Cold War against China and Russia pushed the hands ever closer to the hour. By 2018, we were back to what Iron Maiden sang about in the ’80s. And then, down to counting seconds: 100 and then last year just 90.
I don’t believe we have ever been so close to nuclear annihilation than we were during the 13 days of terror in 1962 or even during the various mishaps with false alarms (there have been several in history). But these events were too brief to warrant a shift to the Doomsday Clock. The reasoning of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is that the Clock is meant to keep track of events affecting global stability in the long term: things such as nuclear tests and threats, disarmament treaties, wars and the modernization of nuclear arsenals. Even seemingly unrelated factors are taken into account, such as the climate crisis, as this puts humankind’s resolve to work towards a peaceful world to the test. The pressure is already being felt and it is mounting.
The ever-worsening relationships between the West and Russia, China’s political support of Putin’s regime and Iran’s material support of the war in Ukraine, and now the dire situation with the mounting death toll in Gaza, a conflict that is affecting the wider Middle East and Africa, with its newly dubbed “Coup Belt” are all factors that are pointing towards a destabilizing world.
This is not a planet that is seriously preparing to face the onslaught of climate change. This is not a world that is heading towards the global cooperation that will be crucial to tackling the challenges of resource scarcity. This is humanity failing to come together at the time when it’s critically important to do so.
I’m not a pessimist by nature. I didn’t use to be that way. But I’m seeing that the clock is ticking, time to act is running out and we are called to do something that we have never accomplished in the entire history of our species: come together and take proactive steps to avert a disaster that will affect all of us.
What I am seeing is a lot of nuke rattling and warmongering. World leaders are much more likely to level threats at each other rather than consider steps towards finding solutions to our common problems. Only the UN is calling for action with increasing alarm and is rewarded with, at best, indifference or token compliance by the more powerful countries. In the meantime, these countries keep playing their game on the geopolitical chessboard. Never before in history has any nuclear power so casually and repeatedly threatened to use its arsenal. Never before have such threats been answered with bluff-calling and counter-threats of escalation of conflict between nuclear powers.
Time, literal and figurative, is running out. We have to stop playing games.
