There has never been a nuclear war but that is not the same as there never could be a nuclear war. Having forgotten how awful they could be we are now dependent on the hope that it’s awfulness will stop anyone from ever using them, but sometimes awful things happen. Considering that there are more nations with nuclear weapons and more considering them than almost ever before the world is not getting safer. But still the issue often gets a big shrug of the shoulders.

I understand that because there’s even less anyone can do about this than they can about climate change and that’s not much. At least with that issue I can recycle my rubbish & swap my electricity to renewable sources but other than sign a petition there doesn’t seem that much that anyone can do. But we must demand that the people who can do something about it, do. The threat after all is growing not subsiding.

Once again President Putin of Russia raised the threat of nuclear war. He first used it to keep other actors out of the Ukraine conflict & let’s face facts, it worked. No one else is fighting Russia and the West goes into fits of agonizing over every weapons request in case it leads to an escalated conflict between a NATO nation & Russia. Why should that bother anyone? The answer of course is nuclear weapons.

However Putin’s ploy didn’t quite work well enough & Ukraine is now essentially a proxy war: Ukrainian soldiers with Western weapons against Russian soldiers & mostly Russian weapons. So is the West at war against Russia. Yes, sort of. And Russia has done badly, very badly. In order to keep Western weapons at bay, slow them down, make them pause on jets, more tanks and all the rest of it Putin has once again rattled the nuclear sabre: they are now combat ready.

More dangerous still is that the last nuclear treaty of any value is now in the bin. In other words there is now no useful international treaty preventing a new nuclear arms race. I don’t think this is about to happen because Russia doesn’t really have the money although having said that neither does North Korea and that hasn’t stopped them. China which does is a long way behind

The NPT doesn’t work very well – slowed down Iran but failed with North Korea. The nuclear ban hasn’t been signed by any nation with nuclear weapons and Putin just gave himself permission to test again so that treaty is out too.

All this is why whatever its failings, the doomsday clock is now at 90 seconds to midnight.

So we must do the only thing we can do & call on leaders to work on a new policy of disarmament. Which won’t work, especially with Russia at war, but we do the right thing because it is the right thing not because it is the expedient or effective thing.