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2020 has been hard enough. The last thing the world needs this year is nuclear weapons. On September 26, 1983, Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov received a warning of an impending U.S. missile attack.
Faced with the choice of launching a nuclear missile from a submarine, Petrov made a split-second decision: the warning must have been a mistake. He chose not to launch the nuclear weapon, sparing the world the horrific possibility of nuclear war.
In Petrov’s memory, the world celebrates September 26 as the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
In a year like 2020 where we’ve dealt with everything from uncovering what sparked deadly forest fires, unleashing swarms of locusts and murder hornets, to finally a global pandemic (COVID-19), talk of nuclear weapons seems like just the radioactive icing on the doomsday cake.
But nuclear weapons are one of the most serious threats to humanity’s survival, and world leaders can take concrete actions now to ensure they are never used again and are eliminated once and for all.
One of these measures was the formal enactment of the United States’ “no first use” policy, meaning that the United States would never be the first to launch a nuclear weapon in any nuclear conflict.
This is more than just a symbolic move.
As I write the first few paragraphs of this article, the sitting President of the United States can unilaterally decide to launch a nuclear weapon on a whim, without the permission or approval of anyone else.
Our current president has blithely expressed his desire to use nuclear weapons against foreign adversaries and hurricanes. He has also expressed a desire to push the nuclear arms race into a new, deadlier stratosphere.
The truth is, most Americans don’t spend much time worrying about nuclear weapons, even though millions of us live near nuclear facilities or even missiles.
The risk of nuclear war is now greater than it has been since the height of the Cold War. The nuclear scientists’ Doomsday bulletin, set at just 100 seconds to midnight, is the closest we have ever seen to a nuclear disaster in the history of the clock.
It didn’t help that President Trump withdrew the United States from most of the international arms control agreements that had been designed to reduce tensions and prevent nuclear conflict, including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (also known as the Iran Deal), the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF), the Intermediate-Range Missiles (INF) Treaty, and the Open Skies Treaty.
He also plans to let the New START treaty between Russia and the United States expire in February 2021. In addition to this, the Trump administration is reportedly discussing conducting a live-fire nuclear test for the first time since 1992.
Nuclear weapons put us all at risk. We all have a stake in ensuring that our only planet is not destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. Even the smoke and soot from a nuclear war could plunge the world into darkness, causing global temperatures to plummet and ending life on Earth.
Like Stanislav Petrov, we can save the world from the possibility of nuclear war. Given the current state of global nuclear weapons policy, we have made some amazing progress in the past two years.
In memory of Stanislav Petrov, we, the nuclear veterans, survivors, and victims of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and nuclear testing around the world, make 2020 the year we eliminate nuclear weapons forever.
* Media Director, Institute for Policy Studies, bold ideas and challenging unfair policies (focus on foreign policy).
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