Presidents who bet on nuclear Armageddon

7 min read JEFFREY D SACHS 0 comments

Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, has brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a gift for peace who can lead the nation, and the world, toward a safer, less dangerous future.

JEFFREY D SACHS

The primary task of any American president is to keep the nation safe. In the nuclear age, that primarily means avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Joe Biden's reckless and incompetent foreign policy is bringing us closer to annihilation. He joins a long and undistinguished list of presidents who have toyed with Armageddon, including his immediate predecessor and rival, Donald Trump.

Nowadays there is talk of nuclear war everywhere. The leaders of the NATO countries call for defeat and even the dismemberment of Russia, while they tell us not to worry about the 6.000 Russian nuclear warheads. Ukraine uses missiles supplied by NATO to shoot down parts of Russian early warning systemto nuclear attacks inside Russia. Meanwhile, Russia nuclear exercises near its border with Ukraine. The US Secretary of State, Antony blinken, and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, give the green light to Ukraine to use NATO weapons to hit Russian territory, as an increasingly desperate and extremist Ukrainian regime sees fit.

These leaders neglect, at our peril, the most basic lesson of the nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told to us by President John F. Kennedy, one of the few American presidents of the nuclear age who took our survival seriously. After the crisis, Kennedy told us, and his successors:

"Above all, while defending our own vital interests, we nuclear powers must avoid those confrontations that lead an adversary to choose between a humiliating withdrawal or nuclear war. To adopt such an attitude in the nuclear age would only demonstrate the bankruptcy of our policy, or a collective wish for the death of the world."

Yet this is exactly what Biden is doing today, pursuing an insolvent and reckless policy.

Nuclear war can easily arise from an escalation of non-nuclear war, or from a hot-headed leader with access to nuclear weapons deciding on a surprise first strike, or from a serious miscalculation. The latter nearly occurred even after Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a disabled Soviet submarine nearly launched a nuclear-tipped torpedo.

Most presidents, and most Americans, have no idea how close we are to the abyss. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock to help the public understand the seriousness of the risks we face. National security experts set the clock based on how far or close we are from “midnight,” that is, extinction. Today, the clock is just 90 seconds from midnight, the closest it has ever been in the nuclear age.

The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have "got it" and which have not. The sad reality is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to demonstrate their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from warmongers, or as a result of sheer incompetence. By a simple, straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock further away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five.

Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was inaugurated in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman fueled the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock only 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race, but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union on nuclear disarmament. When he left office, the clock read 7 minutes to midnight.

Kennedy saved the world by cold reasoning during the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hot-headed advisers calling for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin's masterful Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). In 1963 he negotiated with Khrushchev the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. At the time of his death, which may well have been a coup resulting from Kennedy's peace initiative, JFK had turned the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.

It wasn't going to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated into Vietnam and turned the clock back to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), setting the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight. However, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed in their attempt to obtain SALT II, and Carter fatefully and recklessly gave the CIA the green light in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. When Ronald Reagan took office, the clock read just 4 minutes to midnight.

The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit goes to Mikhail Gorbachev, who sought to politically and economically reform the Soviet Union and end the confrontation with the West. But credit also goes to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. When Bush left office, the Doomsday Clock read 17 minutes to midnight, the safest hour since the beginning of the nuclear age.

Unfortunately, the American security establishment could not take “yes” for an answer when Russia said unequivocally yes to peaceful and cooperative relations. The United States needed to "win" the Cold War, not just end it. It needed to declare itself and demonstrate that it was the world's only superpower, the one that would unilaterally write the rules of a new "rules-based order" led by the United States. Therefore, after 1992, the United States launched wars and expanded its vast network of military bases at will, steadfastly and ostentatiously ignoring the red lines of other nations, with the goal of humiliatingly rolling back its nuclear adversaries.

Since 1992, every president has left the United States and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock read 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to power, but only 9 minutes when he left. Bush reduced the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to just 100 seconds. Now Biden has reduced the clock to 90 seconds.

Biden has led the United States into three devastating crises, any of which could end in Armageddon. By insisting on NATO expansion to Ukraine, against Russia's bright red line, Biden has repeatedly pushed for Russia's humiliating withdrawal. By siding with a genocidal Israel, he has fueled a new Middle East arms race and a dangerously expanding Middle East conflict. By mocking China over Taiwan, which the United States ostensibly recognizes as part of one China, he is inviting war with China. Trump has also stirred the nuclear pot on several fronts, most flagrantly with China and Iran.

Washington seems to be single-minded these days: more funding for the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more weaponry for Taiwan. We are getting closer and closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove the foreign policy of the United States, but his opinion counts for very little. We have to shout for peace from all the hills. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it.