It is customary for people to stay up on New Year’s Eve and watch the countdown towards midnight as the New Year arrives and the old year makes its exit. There is one clock, however, that we hope will not continue to advance towards midnight.
It is now five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. This symbolic clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight a few days ago by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. The number of minutes to midnight is a measure of the degree of nuclear threat the world faces. Midnight on this clock represents global nuclear catastrophe.
According to the Bulletin, the clock was advanced to “highlight the most dangerous period since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
They also cite “growing concerns about a ‘Second Nuclear Age’ marked by grave threats, including: nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea, unsecured nuclear materials in Russia and elsewhere, the continuing "launch-ready" status of 2,000 of the 25,000 nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.”
Just about every country has a ministry or department of defense—of war. There are a few countries such as Costa Rica, Monaco and some small islands that have decided not to have a standing army. But you never hear of a ministry of peace. Now, the United Nations was founded after the end of World War II in the hope that it would act to intervene in conflicts between nations and thereby avoid war. Yet since its founding some estimate that here have been over 148 wars or conflicts and in most of these the UN has been unable to stop the carnage.
Can mankind survive? Or will we rush headlong to our own destruction? Can we choose the way of peace or are we destined to wage war even if we ourselves are consumed by it. History does not provide us with much encouragement that we are capable of avoiding the final conflict. After all, nations are always eager to spend considerable time, energy and money developing or acquiring weapons. And governments readily allocate billions for weapons and wars as no one wants to appear to be weak on defense.
I think it was Albert Einstein who said, “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
There have been times when the Doomsday clock was moved backwards—the fall of the Berlin Wall was one such moment-- indicating that conditions in the world had eased a bit. Let us hope that in 2007 we will have a moment like this.
