What is your opinion about the fact that world peace is threatened due to nuclear preparedness

When have nuclear weapons come closest to destabilising world peace – and how close to the brink of nuclear war did the world come? Benoît Pelopidas: “How close was it?” is a misleading question if asked alone. One also needs to ask: how controllable was it? Indeed, some proponents of nuclear deterrence claim that you need to get close enough to the ‘nuclear abyss’ for the deterrent effect to kick in. But is that true? And can we control how close we get? A critical moment commonly cited in this regard was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And that was not fully controllable: the caution of Soviet premier Khrushchev and US president Kennedy alone cannot explain its peaceful outcome, given the limits of their control over their nuclear arsenals, the limits of safety of the weapons, and other factors. The evidence shows we have been lucky. Though the scholarly and policy worlds pay lip service to this finding, they still do not act and plan as if they take it seriously. Malcolm Craig: There are a number of other examples of times when this has happened. For example, during the first year of the Korean War (1950–53), President Harry Truman’s bluster and outbursts from General Douglas MacArthur provoked international fears about perceived American willingness to use atomic weapons. Perhaps the most interesting example was the November 1983 Able Archer incident , in which a Nato communications exercise was perceived by some in Moscow as preparation for an actual ...

Summary: Getting Russia right—assessing its capabilities and intentions, the long-term drivers of its policy and threat perceptions, as well as its accomplishments—is essential because the alternative of misreading them is a recipe for wasted resources, distorted national priorities, and increased risk of confrontation. Listen to Aaron David Miller, Eugene Rumer, and Richard Sokolsky discuss the importance of getting Russia right for U.S. foreign policy. Your browser does not support the audio element. Summary A critical examination of U.S. policy misfires in dealing with Russia and its intentions and capabilities over the past several decades is long overdue. Three factors largely account for this problem. All of them continue to affect contemporary policymakers’ approach to a deeply troubled relationship with Moscow. By unpacking the analytical assumptions that underlie these misconceptions, President Joe Biden’s administration and other important policy players will be better equipped to ensure that U.S. policy going forward is grounded in the most realistic understanding of the challenge that Russia poses and the right kinds of tools that the United States should use to contend with it. The first factor is the lingering euphoria of the post–Cold War period. For many Western observers, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the implosion of Russian power demonstrated the permanent superiority of the United States. The perception that Russia’s decline was so deep and irrev...

On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion immediately killed an estimated 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure. Three days later, a second B-29 dropped another A-bomb on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” 'Little Boy' and 'Fat Man' Are Dropped Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb—known as “Little Boy”—by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city. Hiroshima’s devastation failed to elicit immediate Japanese surrender, however, and on August 9 Major Charles Sweeney flew another B-29 bomber, Bockscar, from Tinian. Thick clouds over the primary target, the city of Kokura, drove Sweeney to a secondary target, Nagasaki, where the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” was dropped at 11...

Nuclear preparedness leads to an Arm’s Race. It increases the possibilities of wars. (i) If a nuclear bomb exploded in a major city, the blast center would be hotter than the surface of the sun. (ii) Survivors would have no electricity, no transportation, no phones, and hospitals would be overwhelmed if they were still standing (iii) India is now a country that has nuclear weapons. We have accepted the role of a responsible nuclear power. India has been consistently supporting efforts for disarmament because it is India’s position that there should be peace and security in the world.

Nuclear weapons and the climate emergency are the two existential threats facing humanity today. Across the world, there is a growing popular movement putting real political pressure on leaders to act boldly and urgently on climate. But the nuclear threat does not attract as much attention from politicians, policymakers or the public. This is a grave mistake, because the risk of a nuclear war is higher than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Relations between the two main nuclear powers are at a worryingly low ebb, shrouded in mistrust and confusion and there is no constructive dialogue between them on the subject. If the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is not renewed in 2021, there will be no nuclear arms agreement in force between Russia and the United States anymore, and no remaining limits on the size of their deployed nuclear arsenals. The upcoming NATO summitin London is a critical opportunity for leaders from member states to impress upon President Trump the urgent necessity to extend New START in the interest of collective security. Those of us who grew up in the era of US-Soviet confrontation took the threat seriously. We marched in the streets for peace and disarmament, and we cheered when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev declared in 1987 that “a nuclear war can never be won, and should never be fought”. But in the decades that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of intermediate-range we...

According to a recent international Gallup poll, the United Statesis overwhelmingly considered the greatest threat to world peace, with Pakistan, China, North Korea, Israel and Iran (in that order) trailing distantly behind. The Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars cost trillions of dollars and killed millions of people (mostly civilians). We now regret starting them, and never would have if we’d had a basic understanding of the situation we were getting into. We’re about to embark on a new war with Russia, a far more formidable foe. Full-scale nuclear conflagration isn’t inconceivable. Those who underrate the possibility of nuclear apocalypse haven’t looked carefully at the numerous times we’ve come close in the past. Consider the Russians' point of view. Since the hopeful days of Perestroika and Glasnost, they’ve seen a nuclear-armed NATO expand right up to their borders. Does anyone remember how the U.S. reacted to nuclear missiles 70 miles from our coast? Can we blame them for feeling threatened? Russia has demanded a guarantee that Ukraine not become a member of NATO. American negotiators call that non-negotiable. We’re teetering on the edge of unimaginable horror. Why aren’t Americans who yearn for a peaceful world speaking out? Why aren’t you? John Linnemeier, Bloomington