It seems that the new year has begun with less of a bang and more of a whimper, as the venerable Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its symbolic Doomsday Clock a minute closer to midnight on Tuesday. The reason for the move: inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and climate change. The clock was moved to five minutes to midnight, the first adjustment since the beginning of 2010, when it was moved back one minute to six minutes from midnight — or “doomsday”.
In a formal statement issued at the time of its announcement, the group noted:
“It is five minutes to midnight. Two years ago, it appeared that world leaders might address the truly global threats that we face. In many cases, that trend has not continued or been reversed. For that reason, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is moving the clock hand one minute closer to midnight, back to its time in 2007.”
Despite the conclusion and implementation of the New START agreement, a plus in the arms control world. the Bulletin still believes much more needs to be done and that the events of the last two years warrant increasing, and not decreasing, concern.
According to Bulletin member and former United Nations under-secretary-general for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala:
“Despite the promise of a new spirit of international cooperation, and reductions in tensions between the United States and Russia, the Science and Security Board believes that the path toward a world free of nuclear weapons is not at all clear, and leadership is failing. The ratification in December 2010 of the New START treaty between Russia and the United States reversed the previous drift in US-Russia nuclear relations. However, failure to act on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by leaders in the United States, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, and North Korea on a treaty to cut off production of nuclear weapons material continues to leave the world at risk from continued development of nuclear weapons. The world still has over 19,000 nuclear weapons, enough power to destroy the world’s inhabitants several times over.”
The Bulletin also made a number of other recommendations, including the need to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency’s capacity to oversee nuclear materials, technology development, and its transfer, ratification by the United States and China of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and progress on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty; and the implementation of multinational management of the civilian nuclear energy fuel cycle with strict standards for safety, security, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, including eliminating reprocessing for plutonium separation.
The Bulletin made the decision to move the clock closer to midnight through deliberations conducted at a symposium the day before, in which Bulletin members considered a number of topics, including civilian power after Fukushima, and prospects for disarmament.
While the perception of the Bulletin by some is that they are a bunch of bunny-hugging, left wing peaceniks, we should continue to remind ourselves that this organization was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project. They “created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences.”
Indeed, the Doomsday Clock continues to be a potent reminder of the “glass is half empty” scenario in the nuclear weapons world: that no matter how far we have come in disarming, the job is clearly not done. With every step Iran, North Korea and other countries take in nuclear tipping a missile or enriching uranium to upwards of 20%, the clock ticks ever closer to the big bang we all hope to avoid.
