United States: We live in scary times. Following a terrorist attack in Kashmir (April) that killed at least 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, India put the blame on Pakistan, threatened to blockade Pakistan’s water, and in May retaliated with airstrikes.
Pakistan has given a “measured but forceful response,” threatening a wider war that endangers everyone.
Global Catastrophe in the Making
In India and Pakistan, there are about 170 nuclear weapons each. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would result in smoke from fire in cities and industrial areas.
That smoke would rise up to the stratosphere, the upper atmospheric layer where we live, and which has no rain to wash out the smoke.
From our research, the smoke will block the sun outside, making it cold, dark, and dry at Earth’s surface for five years or more, choking the agriculture of the world.
The consequence would be worldwide famine. Whether we like it or not, humanity is still under the threat of a nuclear dagger over our throats.
Path Forward: US Leadership Toward Disarmament
However, there is another alternative, beginning with the US. If we remove our land-based missiles from hair-trigger alerts and negotiate with Russia to reduce our arsenal, and they follow, then we will be setting an example to the rest of the world.
Provided that we sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons one day, the US can be an example to Iran and other countries with an interest in nuclear arsenal.
A lot of people assume that there will never be another nuclear war, because it has now been 80 years and several generations since the last one.
They have also been told that nuclear deterrence must be maintained in order to make us safe.
But the threats to use nuclear weapons from Russia and North Korea, and even from the US president, have terrified many.
The New START treaty, the last arms control agreement between the US and Russia, will end next year. China is expanding its nuclear arsenal quickly.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), that led the effort to get this Treaty, was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons,” scientificamerican.com reported.