By Alternative Radio, August 20, 2023
The “Oppenheimer” movie and the Ukraine war have brought much-needed attention to the possibility of terminal war. The arms race will end the human race. To call nukes weapons of mass destruction comes nowhere near describing the level of devastation that their use would result in. To be clear, these are weapons of annihilation that would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look trivial. And how are our great leaders addressing this existential threat? Instead of advocating universal nuclear disarmament countries led by the U.S. are spending billions to upgrade them. That’s a good definition of insanity. It’s nothing short of a miracle that nuclear war, the ending of the planet, has not happened. Can our luck last forever? The odds and logic say no. If we don’t reverse the insane arms race, we will be committing suicide.
Koohan Paik-Mander is a journalist, author and peace and environmental activist. She serves on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Her articles appear in The Nation, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and other publications. Her article “Whales Will Save the World’s Climate — Unless the Military Destroys Them First” was named by Project Censored as one of the top 25 censored stories of 2021-2022. She is co-author of The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth.
