To the Editor:
Re the “At the Brink” series (Opinion, March 10):
Thank you for highlighting the existential threat of nuclear weapons.
President Ronald Reagan and the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, issued a joint statement in 1985 saying “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” But we squandered the opportunity at the end of the Cold War to abolish these weapons.
Today we are entering an extremely dangerous new arms race and risking direct military confrontation with a revanchist Russia, while other nuclear conflicts loom around the world.
The United States, as you report, is expected to spend up to $2 trillion to “modernize” the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal. More modern weapons are more likely to be used and to take the world over the fateful nuclear threshold.
A group of citizens and experts has proposed an alternative: “Back From the Brink,” a program to reduce nuclear risk. It calls on the United States to 1) declare it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict and invite other nations to make similar pledges; 2) take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; 3) end the president’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack; 4) cancel plans to “modernize” its nuclear arsenal; and 5) enter negotiations with other nuclear powers toward the verifiable global elimination of nuclear weapons.
An awakened citizenry must demand that our leaders work to end the nuclear threat.
David Keppel
Bloomington, Ind.
To the Editor:
The “At the Brink” series offers a much-needed reminder of the continuing grave danger of nuclear war. Yet it understates that danger in some respects.
The International Court of Justice warned in 1996 that nuclear weapons “have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet.” Aside from the death of millions by fire, blast and radioactive fallout, it is now estimated that even in a limited nuclear conflict, the resulting clouds of soot would linger in the atmosphere for years, killing at least two billion people worldwide because of crop failures caused by cold and reduced light.
With both the U.S. and Russia poised to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike on the mere warning of an incoming enemy missile, such a conflict could begin by accident or miscalculation.
We’ve been lucky so far, as when nuclear forces were put on alert by the moon rising over Norway, a bear climbing a perimeter fence at a Minnesota defense installation, a faulty computer chip, a solar storm, and, more than once, computer operators incorrectly reading training programs as depicting real attacks.
The risk of nuclear war will disappear only if the U.S. and other nuclear states join the 2017 U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Despite the opposition of defense industry officials and some in the military, the treaty provides a clear, verifiable means of gradually reducing, then eliminating, this abiding threat to all of humankind.
Stephen Dycus
New York
The writer, professor emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School, has written extensively about nuclear weapons.
To the Editor:
After reading the terrifying “At the Brink” series, I could feel my stomach turn whenever the words “American president” were used because Donald Trump was at one time, and could once again, be that president.
It is horrifying to think our fate could be in this man’s hands once again. God help us.
Mike Aguilar
Costa Mesa, Calif.
To the Editor:
I was astonished to read the first installment in The Times’s series on nuclear war and find just a passing mention of the fact that it was the United States that first used nuclear weapons not once but twice to vaporize two civilian population centers, ostensibly to avoid the massive military casualties that would have resulted from a conventional invasion of Japan in World War II.
This series is unquestionably an important and long overdue piece of opinion and journalistic analysis. But The Times would be gravely irresponsible if it were to fail to educate its younger readers about the significance of our own actions, not just in developing but being the first nation to actually use nuclear weapons — and in the most horrific manner imaginable.
Indeed, not just historical integrity but also the dictates of conscience demanded that an extended piece on our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should have been the first installment in this hugely consequential series.
Joel M. Young
Placitas, N.M.
The writer is a historian and the author of a political thriller about international terrorism.
To the Editor:
I would like to thank The Times for publishing the series on the threat of nuclear war.
In the fall of 2022 I and a few other people organized a march and rally in downtown Seattle calling for the universal abolition of nuclear weapons. I poured much energy and well over $10,000 of my own money into this event. We advertised widely in local newspapers.
I didn’t expect to see thousands of people show up, but I had hoped at least 400 or 500 people might take part. Instead about 100 people turned out. I was devastated by the low turnout.
I believe that the only thing that will eliminate nuclear weapons from this earth — and they must be eliminated — is significant numbers of people across the world calling for the universal abolition of nuclear weapons. But people don’t seem to care. If and when a nuclear exchange does happen, they will care intensely, but it will be too late.
Tom Krebsbach
Brier, Wash.
To the Editor:
The current crisis concerning nuclear weapons is directly related to past events. In 1994 Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia, the U.S. and the U.K. guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. But agreements between nations are only as good as the willingness to abide by and enforce their terms.
Had Ukraine not given up its nukes, Vladimir Putin would probably not have taken Crimea, much less invaded Ukraine in 2022.
It is probable that Iran and other nations will also acquire nuclear weapons in the near future to deter western and eastern powers from invading their territory. The genie is now out of the bottle, never to return.
Ken Ross
Dearborn Heights, Mich.
