nuclear arms race
THE LAST NUCLEAR weapons accord, which caps the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals, expires in February. Signed in 2010, the New START treaty is the final remaining between the U.S. and Russia to limit nuclear weapons. Absent new constraints, the two sides will likely increase the number of deployed nuclear weapons. And thus begins a new acceleration of the nuclear arms race.
In late October, President Donald Trump added fuel to the fire by ordering the resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. Such a step prompts other nations to do the same—indeed, in early November, Vladimir Putin ordered Russian officials to submit plans for “retaliatory” nuclear tests—and reverses one of the signature achievements of the disarmament movement, a de facto nuclear test ban that has lasted more than 30 years.
As participants in the antinuclear weapons movement of the 1980s, we are dismayed to see the gains of that era reversed.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a surprising addition to the typical summer blockbuster canon -- for one thing, it manages to entertain and challenge, without resorting to gratuitous violence to make its point. But there's a deeper subtext that is even more unexpected -- for this is a story in which we start to lose.
It was fashionable in the late 1960s and early '70s for science fiction films to attempt to out-dystopia each other -- see for example the notion in Soylent Green that post-industrial humanity snacks on itself to survive, the suggestion that only robots can be trusted to look after creation in Silent Running, and the climactic revelation in the original Planet of the Apes that a few generations from now, the nuclear arms race will end in mutually assured destruction. All these point to a simple philosophical idea: that humans cannot be trusted to care for ourselves or the planet we steward.
The importance of a comprehensive nuclear test ban as a first step toward ending the arms race does not end with the Soviet moratorium.