Still, here's the strange thing (or, in the age of Donald Trump, perhaps it would be safer to say, a strange thing): nuclear weapons and what they could do to this planet are distinctly not in the news anymore, with the sole exception not of the weaponry now possessed by nine countries -- the United States, Russia, China, England, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea -- but of the possible future nuclear arsenal of a nonnuclear power, Iran. In 2018, if you remember, Donald Trump tore up the nuclear deal by which that country had agreed never to make such weaponry, but he's now back in negotiations with its leaders on a similar agreement.
And here's the even stranger thing, so let me mention it a second time. Consider it the unmentioned miracle -- yes, a genuine miracle -- of our era (one otherwise remarkably lacking in them): in the nearly 80 years since that second atomic bomb devastated Nagasaki, while nuclear weapons have proliferated and grown potentially ever more devastating on Planet Earth, not one has ever been used again.
Here's what makes that strange indeed, even possibly miraculous: nuclear weapons aside, it seems as if, at any moment, some of us humans are always at war. At this moment, in fact, at least three devastating wars are underway -- in Ukraine, Gaza and associated areas of the Middle East, and Sudan, two of them involving nuclear powers (Russia and Israel).
Today, such world-ending weaponry can still be delivered by plane as in 1945, or by land-based missiles, or missiles on submarines and, according to the Federation of American Scientists, there are now an estimated 12,331 nukes in the arsenals of the nine nuclear powers, ranging from 5,449 in Russia's and 5,277 in the American one to, at the other end of the scale, 90 for Israel and 50 for North Korea.
And don't for a second assume that those nine will be the last countries to create nuclear arsenals.
Think, for instance, of South Korea, facing a nuclear-armed North Korea, or, yes, Iran, facing a nuclear-armed Israel. And yet, except for the years when such weaponry was tested in the open or underground (something the Trump administration has at least considered doing again), not one has ever been used.
Of course, recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman said his country "reserved the right" to use what are now known as "tactical" nuclear weapons (most of which are significantly more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) in his war on Ukraine, but so far at least that's been an empty threat. And yes, China continues to build up its nuclear arsenal at a rapid pace, making it the third great nuclear power after the U.S. and Russia to have the fate of the Earth in its hands.
And when it comes to my own country, unlike with climate change, Donald Trump has long seemed distinctly anti-apocalyptic when it comes to such weaponry. As he once put it, "You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and" -- referring to Russia and China -- "they're building nuclear weapons." In a 2018 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he even called such weaponry "the biggest problem in the world" and has long warned of the possibility of a devastating "World War III."
But no matter, the country he now rules (more or less) is still spending $75 billion annually and, as of now, planning to spend $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to update or -- the term of the day -- "modernize" the American nuclear arsenal, while Russia and China are both working to update or, in China's case, vastly expand theirs.
If you stop to think about it for a moment, that our world has not been devastated by nuclear weapons should, under the circumstances, be considered little short of miraculous.
Nuclear Winter or Climate-Change Summer?
Oh, and in case you feel relieved that, after so many decades, humanity hasn't destroyed itself, despite having the ability to do so, take a breath. After all, it's increasingly possible that, at some future moment, this planet could be blown apart without human beings initially doing much of anything. Yes, I'm thinking about artificial intelligence (AI), or worse yet, artificial general intelligence (AGI). After all, American military commanders like Air Force General Anthony J. Cotton are already talking about how "AI will enhance our decision-making capabilities" when it comes to nuclear weaponry and, even though he also warns that we should never allow AI to make nuclear decisions for us, letting another "intelligence" loose in the nuclear realm seems anything but a safe or sound thing to do.
Indeed, who knows what a future independent intelligence might decide to do with such weaponry on this planet of ours?
And there's another thing that's seldom thought about: What might the creature who has already devised two methods for devastating this planet come up with, in the future, that could prove no less (or even more) devastating? After all, there's no reason to believe that there are only two conceivable ways to do in a world like ours.
Consider all of this, after a fashion, both a story of epic failure and, at least in the case of nuclear weapons, strange success.
Still, isn't it odd that, although we don't often think about it, at any moment we live on the edge of ultimate destruction, whether immediately via a nuclear war or in a long-term fashion via a slow-motion version of the destruction of this planet, leading not to nuclear winter but to what might be thought of as climate-change summer? And yet, while the reality of climate change has at least led to major protests in recent times, the continued nuclear arming of this country and the planet has not.
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