Our Last Chance to Prevent Catastrophe

By Joseph Mazur

We have a few possible paths to deal with the risks of a nuclear war. One is deterrence, having atomic powers that are so powerful that no state would dare to be the first to strike. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is strong. Stronger still is disarmament, a position of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), designed to stop the spread of atomic weapons by achieving complete world nuclear disarmament. With proliferation among growing nuclear states increasing, so are risks concerning possible miscalculations and accidents. We may never have airtight prevention, but two possibilities could set the “Doomsday Clock” back hours before midnight: the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the 2045 vision.

 – John F. Kennedy’s address before the
General Assembly of the United Nations, 1961 

It is difficult to imagine United States foreign policy altering immediately after atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One country became a superpower, and the hope at that time – for worldwide sanity – was that nuclear weapon adventurism would not spread wildly. That hope did not last long. There would be two, then three, and eventually nine. But, 18 years after that tragic bombing, there were already three: the United States, the Soviet Union, and the UK. It was a “stop and think” moment: what could happen if the numbers move far upward?

In 1963, the Soviet Union was number two on the nuclear list of three, not yet a threat but not a dire problem. The United States had 28,133 nuclear warheads, while the Soviet Union had 4,259 and the UK 256. It was a time to think. It was a time when schoolchildren knew almost nothing about the seriousness of a nuclear impact that could happen in their neighborhoods. They had not seen photos of children burned and poisoned by atomic radiation. They followed the rules designed for children to believe all would be well if they hid under their schoolroom desks when alarms went off. It was a pivotal year, because intelligence knew it was just a matter of time when there would be dozens of new nuclear powers.

??For the United States, 1963 was a decisive year. There were many reasons, especially the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 26th. His administration was worried (as was Eisenhower’s) not only about a pending proliferation of nuclear arsenals but about the growing number of states that could become nuclear powers.

It took five years for the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. Though its research was classified, key nuclear bomb intelligence continuously leaked to the Soviet Union.^[2] Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who became a British citizen in 1942, passed atomic weapon design information to the Soviets while at Los Alamos, working for the Manhattan Project. Seven other spies leaked A-bomb intelligence to the Soviets. Though nuclear physics was freely accessible as textbook information, weapons-grade intelligence was leaking to adversaries and possibly to rogue states that could start their nuclear programs. Fuchs, who confessed to passing on information for seven years, was just one of eight spies feeding information to the Soviets.

For 13 days in October 1962, the United States was in a dangerous confrontation with the Soviet Union. It was a month of reckonings, slip-ups, secret communications, miscommunications, and – for sure – uncertainties that brought fear to the world that the two sides would soon be in a nuclear war over the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

I was a 20-year-old at the University of Paris, reading and seeing news that persistently interrupted my studies under mingling thoughts that I was 3,700 miles from home. I was living with a couple who generously offered rent-free rooms in their spacious, elegant apartment to musicians, artists, and me for nothing other than socializing in different languages. My host and hostess were carefully fair-minded over who to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis, while I stayed shocked over an argument that the United States was to blame. “You,” one artist said, pointing a finger at me as if I had been on John F. Kennedy’s National Security Council, “you put missiles in Turkey and Italy. Turkey is just 1,000 miles from Moscow. How many miles is Cuba from Washington, DC? Same! So, what do you expect?”

What should I have expected at that time when all my information was coming from English newspapers? Were US missiles deployed in Turkey? What possessed the CIA to invade Cuba? “Think about it!” another resident entered the fray before I asked. “How far is Havana from Miami?” At that point, my host left the room and returned with an atlas to calculate the distance between the Turkish and Russian borders. Again, the distance was the same as between Havana and Miami. As I said, I was naïve. I later learned that expatriate Cubans supported and trained by the CIA formed a paramilitary force to overthrow the Cuban government through sabotage. That, in the summer of 1962, when the Soviets started shipments to Cuba to construct facilities to deploy nuclear weapons, opened the first atomic alarm.

The United States had put in place a nuclear umbrella, a doctrine of extended deterrence but also a promise to protect countries that would not engage in building their nuclear arsenal.

It was the Cuban Missile Crisis that brought us to the ultimate stop-and-think moment. For eight months following the challenging end of the crisis, Kennedy was pleased by the outcome but terrified by his thoughts for the future of “a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have” nuclear weapons. At a radio and television address to the American people on July 26, 1963, he asked his audience to stop and think for a moment about what could happen to the world if nuclear weapons continued to proliferate. The United States had put in place a nuclear umbrella, a doctrine of extended deterrence but also a promise to protect countries that would not engage in building their nuclear arsenal. Thirty Asian and European allies agreed, but there was still a need to stop and think.

 – John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States: 1961-63^[3]

Along comes deterrence theory and the stability-instability paradox ^[4]

– Tadatoshi Akiba, a former Mayor of Hiroshima

Deterrence is a hope that no state would launch a nuclear attack on another nuclear state for the simple reason that there would be such an enormous retaliation that neither state would survive. That theory makes a flawed sense when opposing states are nuclear. Each side is likely to have policies that avoid using nuclear weapons, but what happens in unintended escalations or battlefield miscalculations bringing heavy losses? In those cases, we know next to nothing about what will go through the heads of leaders unwilling to pay the price of losses. We have several examples where deterrence has governed armed conflicts between nuclear and non-nuclear states. Russia, having the largest

nuclear arsenal in the world, invaded Ukraine, under illusions that its nuclear prowess would deter Ukraine from attacking Russian military bases and cities. Deterrence did not stop Ukraine from seizing control of almost half of the Kursk Oblast region of Russia, where the fighting has continued for more than seven months. Russia paid a heavy defense price of 17,819 casualties, according to Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine.^[6]

So yes, we have the example of the Cold War, where deterrents seemed to hold between the two super-nuclear powers. But what happens when a non-nuclear state is at war with a nuclear one? Paul Avey tells us in his book Tempting Fate, and too in his recent article in Foreign Affairs, in referring to examples of conflicts between nuclear and non-nuclear states: “They tempted fate, pursuing strategies that they believed would fall short of their opponent’s red line for nuclear use.” ^[7] Ahh, tempting fate! That is a risk with impossible odds, a game that Avery calls “nuclear monopoly,” though, unlike monopoly, no side wins. In tempting fate, a state feels “emboldened to attack, correctly surmising that inflicting significant casualties on a nuclear power and even taking some of its territory would not trigger nuclear retaliation.” ^[8]

The overall and persistent objective of deterrence theory is to avoid conflict while believing that there will be no nuclear wars in the future. In that vein, it is a means to convince one hostile side to refrain from military action on another. Nuclear deterrence was a United States tenet during the early stages of the Cold War by understanding that a full-scale nuclear attack would be devastating for both sides. ^[9]

The theory has always been a convenient excuse for nuclear military power under the guise of massive deployment of nuclear weapons that tell potential attackers, “Do not mess with us, or else.” But that works only when each side sees the end as mutual destruction. So, critics claim that global security connects with the broader concern for threats such as terrorism and governmental instability.

An overwhelming number of nuclear warheads are in the possession of two countries, a combined total of 9,666. Now, we have India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea vying for high nuclear recognition. Their steep-climbing military buildup might still be for show, but their nuclear arsenals are not for deterrence but for gamesmanship demands. When arsenals increase for one state, they increase for others to bring deterrence into an expensive arms race that increases accident likelihood. As Jessica Mathews, a Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, points out, “The numbers may seem to boost one side, but having more weapons in an unwinnable war is meaningless. The strength of deterrence correlates with the amount of catastrophic damage that could come after the survival of an attack.”^[10]

Greenland and Canada: what do they have to do with nuclear deterrence policies? Donald Trump enters the game

– Donald Trump (NBC interview,
March 30, 2025)

Pardon my short divergence and bear with me as my thoughts move now to surprising connections between climate change, nuclear deterrence theory, and the potential proliferation of atomic weapons.

I may be wrong about why Donald Trump’s notion of taking over Greenland (a mineral-rich autonomous territory in the Kingdom of Denmark), Canada, and the Panama Canal might not be too ludicrous. It might seem too wild an idea in an era of territory respect. One thought is that such commandeering will not happen, at least not by sales or invasions. An opposing thought is that if Greenland is taken by force, a chaotic imbalance of trade, a mess of world order, and nuclear expansions would follow. For 80 years – from the end of WWII to the Russian invasion of Ukraine – the most powerful countries have been cautious in taking over independent territories. With climate-changing conditions, however, there will come a time when rising temperatures will strike existential threats for some countries and turn others into havens of habitation, resources, and fertile soil. As the world warms, so will the rush to territorially grab those colder territories, not for tourists but for the most dominant powers that will eventually feel their oncoming problems. If I can pick on the United States for a worry, California wildfires, Nevada and Arizona’s unbearable temperatures, and Florida floods will become existential threats to those states in the coming 50 to 100 years. How will the United States cope? Without serious worldwide government commitments to diminish the carbon problem, land between 30° North latitude to 30° South latitude will be feebly habitable, if at all fit for human habitation. From that point of view, Canada and Greenland secures more than enough land mass for migration from southern states. With glaciers disappearing at alarming speed, territories under ice for millennia are becoming comfortably habitable. Moreover, after the thawing of the polar ice caps, whoever owns Greenland would possess new shipping routes through the Northern Sea Route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Ocean from the Bering Strait to the coast of Norway.

What about Canada? Is Donald Trump serious about annexing the world’s second-largest country? Or is it his usual Trumpian distracting bluster? Well, did it, or did it not, attack the United States by passing fentanyl across the border? It did not! In 2024, the US Customs and Border Protection Agency seized 43 pounds of fentanyl crossing the border from Canada, compared to 21,000 pounds crossing the border from Mexico. Shouldn’t Trump be thinking about annexing Mexico? No, Mexico will be uninhabitable by the end of this century. Canada is getting warmer and will be reasonably comfortable later in this century. It has the world’s longest coastline and a maritime topography that stretches between three vast oceans, a fortune the United States does not have.

That brings us back to the question of nuclear deterrents. For 80 years, deterrence theory has been the game plan for protection against nuclear and conventional military attacks. Under that theory, however, atomic powers feel free to attack non-nuclear territories. The list of territorial attacks under the guise of regime changes by the United States and Russia is extensive; however, we are now in an era where a superpower can attempt to take over an independent country for territorial possession rather than internally messing with government styles. Russia is taking land from Ukraine, and yet NATO’s timidity in supporting Ukraine is limited to money and conventional weapons. NATO is a superpower consisting of 32 member countries. When two superpower adversaries face each other under deterrence theory and threats, there is always a path for aggression with conventional weapons. What happens, though, when a nuclear superpower attacks a non-nuclear country? Deterrence theory gives no support for the non-nuclear side.

In September 2024, Russia changed its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for using atomic weapons. Putin announced that any aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state supported by a nuclear one will be considered a joint attack, and Russia “will prepare to use them ‘upon receipt of reliable information of a massive launch of air and space attack weapons and their crossing of the state border,’ including strategic and tactical aircraft, cruise missiles, drones, and hypersonic aircraft.”^[11] That is a significant change from the older doctrine calling for nuclear action in an event “when the very existence of the state is threatened.” So, nuclear policies can change at a head of state’s whim.

With potential whims on nuclear policies, we have deterrent confusion. Consider an accidental incursion over a border quickly judged as an intended crossing. Indeed, Russia did not use its newly revised document on August 6, 2024, when Ukrainian forces secretly crossed the border into Kursk Oblast, capturing 70 settlements spreading over 1,000 square kilometers. It was a blitzkrieg, yet Russia did not invoke powers from its latest document. It could have, but it did not. So, what does deterrence have to say about that?

The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country, regardless of whether it lies to the east of us or the west, and every state must keep to it, regardless of whether it is a small country or a powerful state.

Deterrence is assumed to be just a shield of protection from potential aggressors, but it can also exploit a threat. It would be relatively easy for the United States to forcefully take possession of Greenland, an allied nation not much bigger than the state of Alaska, by flexing its nuclear muscles. Though Denmark is a member of NATO, it is not a nuclear power in and of itself. Any attack on Greenland would surely not be existential for Denmark. It would not likely involve an attack on Denmark’s mainland, for such an escalation would eventually involve NATO, the treaty obliging any member to bring in overwhelming forces for protection. Even the threat of invading Greenland turns allies into adversaries, thereby undercutting American securities. When the Vice President of the United States shamelessly calls Denmark a “bad ally,” he not only shows his historical ignorance on how Demark suffered the second highest military death toll of any of the 32 coalition forces per its population (7.82 per million) in helping the United States with its Afghanistan War but also damages his own country by converting an old ally to an adversary. He and his boss are fools, wrecking a country that once stood for something magnanimous. Who will care for America when it eventually might need Europe again as an ally? By that reasoning, a United States imperialistic takeover would be a grave and shameful mistake, ignoring the economic consequences that could come from European states invoking economic sanctions against the United States, just as the West has against Russia. France and Germany have warned about forceful aggression. In a recent press conference, Olaf Scholz said, “The principle of the inviolability of borders applies to every country, regardless of whether it lies to the east of us or the west, and every state must keep to it, regardless of whether it is a small country or a powerful state.”^[12]

Curiously, a buyout is not such a bad idea if managed, affordable, and mutually agreed upon by the people who live in Greenland and the ministers in Denmark who are also in cordial agreement. Purchasing Greenland is a 19^th-century idea floated after WWII because of that nation’s potential for mineral richness. However, minerals are not the only benefits of possession. With polar ice diminishing, shipping opportunities open. A United States buyout would inhibit Russia and China from having free access to Arctic routes once the polar ice caps melt. So, we are talking about three nuclear superpowers aiming for the same stakes.

Greenland could become a United States territory like Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Puerto Rico, but they came from wars, not purchases. However, the US Virgin Islands was purchased from Denmark for $25 million ($620 billion in 2025 dollars) in 1917 during WWI as a protection for the Panama Canal. The US also purchased the Philippines from Spain in 1898 for $20 million ($765 billion in 2025 dollars). Given the strategic location of Greenland, along with the unexplored minerals buried under melting ice sheets and an estimated potential of a quarter of the world’s oil and gas, there is a benefit. That said, it seems that Denmark cannot sell Greenland, since it does not own that territory. Scott Anderson, a fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a national security expert, said, “Denmark doesn’t claim to own it. I am quite confident that the government of Denmark, as we’ve seen them say things, doesn’t think it has the legal authority to sell Greenland to anyone.” In any case, Denmark is responsible for Greenland’s defense.^[13]

Russia and China are also interested in the Arctic for shipping avenues. Vladimir Putin addressed his concern by carefully saying, “It can look surprising only at first glance, and it would be wrong to believe this is some extravagant talk by the current US administration. The United States will continue to systematically advance its geostrategic, military-political and economic interests in the Arctic.”^[14] As seriousness tightens, the Russian leader’s language will inflate in strength, and he will not just step aside from his plans for control of Arctic shipping routes. Putin continued, “We will closely follow the developments and mount an appropriate response by increasing our military capability and modernizing military infrastructure. We won’t allow any infringement on our country’s sovereignty, reliably safeguard our national interests while supporting peace and stability in the polar region.”

So, where does that leave us? It seems that the only possibility for an acquisition is through either enormously high tariffs for Denmark (which will do nothing for the hopes of acquisition, since Denmark cannot sell Greenland) or a threat of invasion. If an invasion is the answer, deterrence is forfeited.

The one smart thing that Donald Trump might do. I can think of no other.

Trump has said that he is in favor of restarting arms control negotiations. “There is no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons,” he said in February 2025. “We already have so many. You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons. We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are hopefully, much more productive.”^[15] It doesn’t sound Trumpian, so he might spin those words three months later when forgotten, but let’s hope he is sincere – though such a hope is beyond his manner. His idea of “productiveness” is the advance of patrimony, merely a part of his life’s reciprocity performance act. For now, he is proposing investments in “a vastly expanded missile defense system,” an antimissile system that could fend off attacks from hypersonic and advanced cruise missiles, hoping for a reemergence of arms control. However, he favors a missile defense system nicknamed “Iron Dome,” much like what Israel has had since 2011 under the same name. Trump is hoping that the munitions industry could design a scheme to intercept missiles coming from North Korea or Iran. Such a system, however, would not work well against an overwhelming barrage of missiles launched by Russia or China, simply because those countries have a bounty of arsenals that could confuse interceptors.

However, the United States is accelerating an escalation of nuclear arsenals under the umbrella notion of nuclear superiority. The United States already has an arsenal ready to retaliate against a nuclear strike. So, why engage in a massive plan that would inevitably follow a scheme to build a hugely expensive Iron Dome, especially if it is not likely to be feasible? Those schemes tend to increase the odds of a confrontation; besides, they challenge deterrence by the high likelihood of setting off another arms race of increased numbers of warheads that could overwhelm Iron Dome defenses and award big projects to investors who would profit immensely from an Iron Dome industry with dealers of nuclear-weapon intercepting missiles.

Only two of the current nine nuclear countries have signed onto the no-first-use policy. They have their reasons.

Does the United States need more or revised nuclear weapons? It has 5,177 nuclear warheads, 1,770 deployed, 1,930 in reserve, and 1,477 retired. It has 1120 warheads at sea – 970 are submarine-launchable Trident missiles that each can carry up to eight nuclear warheads. There are 14 submarines (eight in the Pacific and six in the Atlantic) that carry 20 missiles each. Forty-six B-52 bombers can carry 20 warheads. Eight hundred missiles are at Air Force bases in Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. A B-2 bomber can carry up to 16 warheads. One hundred warheads are in Europe at six NATO bases: the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, northwest Italy, northeast Italy, and Turkey. 

Graph 1: Russian nuclear warhead numbers 1945 – present.

Graph 2: United States nuclear warhead numbers 1945 – present.

Trump favors reducing the number of stockpiled nuclear weapons. However, the START Treaty will expire in 2026 and, so far, there are no negotiations to extend it. Under the notion that mighty world powers could restart old ideas of territorial expansion, we must ask how. The United States has not agreed to a no-first-use nuclear policy. China and India are the only countries that have adopted such a policy. In a new geopolitical environment, those countries that have not adopted a no-first-use policy will be free to bully non-nuclear states with nuclear threats to either bargain for territory or take it by force.

Spread in nine countries, over 12,000 nuclear weapons are either in stock or aimed in enough strategic directions. Of those, more than 4,000 are launch-ready. For an impression of what that means, consider the possible destruction that just one dozen could do. Today, the tiniest tactical nuclear weapon is capable of destruction far worse than what happened in Hiroshima. Yet we talk of portable and tactical nuclear weapons as if they are supercharged howitzers. But what is a tactical nuclear weapon? There is no precise definition other than deceptions to have us believe that such weapons are not so horrific. A tactical strategy is meant to accomplish something specific. In warfare, it means “a strategy for ending something.” Let us not be fooled by that word. By that definition, the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also tactical military moves. The use of a single nuclear weapon today – the smallest one – could incinerate half the city of Kyiv and half its population of almost 3 million. One atomic bomb dropped in the relatively desolate area near Kyiv would spark a nuclear war between Russia and the West, because no nuclear attack would end with just one.

Nuclear warhead costs

It may seem that $650 billion over a decade is reasonable for military spending, but we must look beyond the United States nuclear arms budget. According to ICAN, in just one year (2023), the nuclear-armed states collectively spent over $91 billion.^[19]

Arms dealers, manufacturers, politicians, and public investors profit from the nuclear weapons industry. You rarely hear about those benefactors, but they lobby for government contracts. Raising the number of nuclear warheads has almost no deterrent effect but rather a one-upmanship glory or benefit to benefactors. There are rational reasons for raising military equipment numbers; deployment of those tools is needed, so equipment must be actively present where it needs to be under immediate defensive measures. However, it seems that the rise of nuclear warheads depends on keeping our financial, technological, and institutional machinery turning and pumping research and development at high costs. The United States will refurbish a few thousand submarine-based W76 warheads, each at a rough cost of $3 million. Does that make sense? One – just one – Trident I/D-5 missile (24 per submarine) with five W76 100 kiloton warheads costs roughly $80.7 million. ^[20]

 At least we should restart arms control negotiations with Russia and China. It is the only policy idea that Donald Trump might have right. “There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons. We already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates detailed plans for the modernization of nuclear forces from 2017 to 2046 would cost at minimum $1.7 trillion, accounting for inflation. Spending a proposed $1.7 trillion to modernize nuclear weapons for the next 30 years seems counterproductive if the hope is that we will never have to use those weapons.

If the United States policy is to modernize to a new generation of nuclear weapons while decommissioning the same amount every 30 years, then the hope of success rests on deterrence.

 If the United States policy is to modernize to a new generation of nuclear weapons while decommissioning the same amount every 30 years, then the hope of success rests on deterrence. But does deterrence work? My close friend Tadatoshi Akiba, former Mayor of Hiroshima, who has devoted much of his life to working on abolishing nuclear weapons, told me, “Without knowing how to deter foreign aggression in realistic terms, most of us have no alternative but to accept that claim. So, the half-truth spreads throughout the world to become solid faith in nuclear weapons and the deterrence theory: Nuclear weapons are there for peace.” ^[21]

Deterrence theory advocates a military buildup that calls for an exponential increase of military budgets for maintaining and upgrading existing nuclear weapons in attempts to prevent terrorist attacks and territorial aggression. It also follows a misguided conviction that a country with enough warheads would survive catastrophic damage from an attack and thereby be able to retaliate.^[22]

The idea is that states planning to strike should consider how catastrophic retaliatory damage could be. The misunderstanding is that a state with more nuclear weapons has an advantage in an unwinnable war.

Adding to a nuclear arsenal would not increase the power of deterrence. That view is misjudging the theory. Adding weapons adds to an expensive arms race. Even relatively small numbers of arms already in arsenals point to enough deterrence. The numbers may seem to boost one side, but having more weapons in an unwinnable war is meaningless. The strength of deterrence correlates with the amount of catastrophic damage that could come after the survival of an attack.^[23]

Can public opinion stop nuclear buildup?

Knowing that a single nuclear warhead costs $3 million and that the world spends $91 billion for its total collection of arms that just might never be used could change public opinion on the rationale behind taking money from public benefits. As more money enters the coffers of nuclear buildups, the higher the risk of an accidental attack or an intentional attack by a rogue state. My friends repeatedly ask, Why is that? The answer is not simple, though if one uncovers how government money is spent and dispersed to companies that make the hundreds of parts that enter a warhead, one finds that secrecy escape hatches multiply in direct proportion with the size of distributed funds.

Good people believe that good companies are not crooks and not so corrupt as to steal classified material to sell to the highest bidder. To that, I say, Hmm.

An alternative to deterrence theory

Mayor Akiba continues to inspire and guide me in my efforts to grasp the nuclear policy dilemma and to find ways of dampening future uses of terrifying weapons of mass destruction. My concern is that we will awake to news of a nuclear missile attack and that it will be too late for human habitation to continue. In an earlier article in TWFR, Nuclear Weapons: Are They Deterrents, Goads, or Risks?^[24], I wrote, “Sooner or later, though, a nuclear bomb will be used, either by accident or by the power of an insane leader. It will happen. I cannot tell you where or when, but history creeps up on pseudo-dependable tight security.” That was before I spoke with Mayor Akiba, a world leader in the interminable campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons, who said there is a plan to develop a way to minimize nuclear attack threats. Vision 2045, aside from warnings of how out-of-control a bomb can get, will offer the 21^st century a model for turning back the Doomsday Clock by minutes, if not hours, not seconds. Vision 2045 is a farsighted concept that will neutralize testing and the development of nuclear weapons and eventually ban them. Its goal is to globally abolish nuclear weapons by 2045, step by step as outlined below.^[25]

• Muster public opinion through NGOs and mass media
• Make the abolition of nuclear weapons a major issue in the US presidential election.
• Build a worldwide citizens’ movement that includes nuclear-weapon states. Gather the power of non-nuclear-weapon states and non-hibakusha to strengthen collaboration with NGOs, opinion leaders, mass media, etc.
• Refocus on the abolition of nuclear weapons as the major issue in the US presidential election.2033. “No first use” (NFU) to be adopted at the United Nations General Assembly as a binding declaration treaty.
• Worldwide mass movement concentrated in nuclear-weapon states.
• NFU accomplished.
• In preparation.

Ultimately, implementing these goals will take public opinion enlisting peace groups, civic groups, local governments, and other influential players involved with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to accomplish the 2045 Vision in steps through the years toward the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.

A nuclear sword of Damocles

I conclude with a September 25, 1961 excerpt from President John F. Kennedy’s address before the United Nations General Assembly, just one year before the Cuban Missile Crisis.^[26] It is a paramount “stop and think” moment. 

Listen to the whole speech by clicking here. 

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons—ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth—is a source of horror, and discord and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes—for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness—for in a spiraling arms race, a nation’s security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.

And yet, here we are, 64 years later, with double the number of nuclear powers since Kennedy’s speech and with feeble advances toward total nuclear disarmament. If that, and global climate change laissez-faire, continue beyond 2045, “this planet may no longer be habitable.” We must seize the moments of the next 20 years to put us on track for future life on this planet.

About the Author

Joseph Mazur is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Emerson College’s Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts & Interdisciplinary Studies. He is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim, Bogliasco, and Rockefeller Foundations, and the author of eight acclaimed popular nonfiction books. His latest book is The Clock Mirage: Our Myth of Measured Time (Yale).

Follow his World Financial Review column at https://worldfinancialreview.com/category/columns/understanding-war/. More information about him is at https://www.josephmazur.com/

References

1. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-nations-19610925
2. Michael S. Goodman, “Who Is Trying to Keep What Secret from Whom and Why? MI5-FBI Relations and the Klaus Fuchs Case”. Journal of Cold War Studies 2005; 7 (3): 124–46. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/1520397054377160
3. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/radio-and-television-address-the-american-people-the-nuclear-test-ban-treaty
4. ^{https://web.archive.org/web/20170812115507/https://www.stimson.org/sites/default/files/file-attachments/stability-instability-paradox-south-asia.pdf}
5. https://worldfinancialreview.com/tadatoshi-akiba-the-goal-of-the-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons-is-survival/
6. https://kyivindependent.com/russian-casualties-in-kursk/
7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv310vkkv.10?seq=1
8. Paul Avey, “When Nuclear Weapons Fail to Deter: The Ultimate Weapon Is Not Always the Best Defense,” Foreign Affairs (March 6, 2025.
9. Lindsay, Jon R., and Erik Gartzke, “Introduction: Cross-Domain Deterrence, from Practice to Theory”, Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity (New York, 2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 18 July 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190908645.003.0001, accessed 14 March 2025.
10. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/10/17/the-race-that-cant-be-won-jessica-t-mathews/
11. https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2024/09/russia-nuclear-doctrine-blackmail?lang=en
12. https://apnews.com/article/germany-scholz-trump-denmark-greenland-792cf697a69c0f17291dc6a18aba1355
13. https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-arctic-trump-greenland-2dbd00625c2c0c3bd94a2c96c7015b69?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share
14. https://apnews.com/article/russia-putin-arctic-trump-greenland-2dbd00625c2c0c3bd94a2c96c7015b69?user_email=bb759ff36f2ff61999abd346c905873915c01036c5a2b4978fb83f6b22e77fde&utm_medium=Morning_Wire&utm_source=Sailthru_AP&utm_campaign=Morning%20Wire_28%20Mar_2025&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers#
15. https://thebulletin.org/2025/02/what-trump-got-right-about-nuclear-weapons-and-how-to-step-back-from-the-brink/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=How%20to%20step%20back%20from%20the%20brink&utm_campaign=20250227%20Thursday%20Newsletter
16. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nuclear Notebook is interactive on this website that provides graphs of arsenal numbers for all nine nuclear weapons states: United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. See: https://thebulletin.org/nuclear-notebook/
17. In the back it is assembled, in the middle it is divided into its major subcomponents, in the front it is almost completely disassembled. The warhead is contained in the bullet-shaped silver canister (see Image:W80_nuclear_warhead.jpg for a different, but similarly shaped, warhead casing).
18. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2023-07/59054-nuclear-forces.pdf
19. https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_spending_get_the_facts
20. https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-systems-really-cost/#:~:text=W80%2D1%20warheads)%20~$8.4,B83)%20~$4.9%20million%20each
21. https://worldfinancialreview.com/nuclear-weapons-are-they-deterrents-goads-or-risks/#_edn21
22. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/10/17/the-race-that-cant-be-won-jessica-t-mathews/
23. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/10/17/the-race-that-cant-be-won-jessica-t-mathews/
24. https://worldfinancialreview.com/nuclear-weapons-are-they-deterrents-goads-or-risks/
25.  We will have more information on Vision 2045 as it develops.
26. https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-nations-19610925