The Nuclear Reactor

As we mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, have we reached a new level of risk when it comes to a nuclear war? “We are living through one of the more febrile periods of the nuclear era. The contours of World War III are visible in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been aided by Iran and North Korea and opposed by Europe and, for the time being, the United States. Pakistan and India, two nuclear states, recently fought a near-war; Iran, which has for decades sought the destruction of Israel through terrorism and other means, has seen its nuclear sites come under attack by Israel and the United States, in what could be termed an act of nonproliferation by force; North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal, and South Korea and Japan … are considering going nuclear in response.” And whether or not America would use nukes ultimately comes down to a decision made by a single person in what could be a matter of minutes. Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic (Gift Article): What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Nuclear War. “Trump is highly reactive, sensitive to insult, and incurious. It is unfair to say that he is likely to wake up one morning and decide to use nuclear weapons—he has spoken intermittently about his loathing of such weapons, and of war more generally—but he could very easily mismanage his way, again, into an escalatory spiral.”