{"id":43179,"date":"2019-01-26T09:02:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-26T14:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43179"},"modified":"2019-01-26T09:02:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-26T14:02:06","slug":"as-nations-get-ready-for-nuclear-war-their-governments-work-to-create-the-illusion-of-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43179","title":{"rendered":"As Nations Get Ready for Nuclear War, Their Governments Work to Create the Illusion of Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Nations Get Ready for Nuclear War, Their Governments Work to Create the Illusion of Safety<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ever since the U.S. atomic bombings of Japanese cities in August 1945, a specter has haunted the world\u2015the specter of nuclear annihilation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest report<\/a> from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists<\/em>, issued on January 24, reminds us that the prospect of nuclear catastrophe remains all too real.  Citing the extraordinary danger of nuclear disaster, the editors and the distinguished panel of experts upon whom they relied reset their famous \u201cDoomsday Clock\u201d at two minutes to midnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This grim warning from the scientists is well-justified.  The Trump administration<\/a> has withdrawn the United States from the painstakingly-negotiated 2015 nuclear weapons agreement with Iran and is in the process of withdrawing from the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.  In addition, the 2010 New Start Treaty, which caps the number of strategic nuclear weapons held by the United States and Russia, is scheduled to expire in 2021, thus leaving no limits on the world\u2019s largest nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972.  According to Trump, this agreement, too, is a \u201cbad deal,\u201d and his hawkish national security advisor, John Bolton, has denounced it as \u201cunilateral disarmament<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, while nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements crumble, a major\u00a0nuclear weapons buildup<\/a>\u00a0is underway by all nine nuclear powers.\u00a0\u00a0The U.S. government alone has embarked on an extensive \u201cmodernization\u201d of its entire nuclear weapons complex, designed to provide new, improved nuclear weapons and upgraded or new facilities for their production.\u00a0\u00a0The cost to U.S. taxpayers has been estimated to run somewhere between\u00a0$1.2 trillion and\u00a0$2 trillion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin<\/a>\u00a0used his televised 2018 State of the Union address to laud his own nation\u2019s advances in nuclear weaponry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Nations Get Ready for Nuclear War, Their Governments Work to Create the Illusion of Safety Ever since the U.S. atomic bombings of Japanese cities in August 1945, a specter has haunted the world\u2015the specter of nuclear annihilation. The latest report from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, issued on January 24, reminds us that the prospect of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18187,5493,19243,2583],"class_list":["post-43179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-bulletin-of-the-atomic-scientists","tag-counterpunch","tag-lawrence-wittner","tag-nuclear-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43180,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43179\/revisions\/43180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}