In an unprecedented move to encourage public conversation, top medical journals published an urgent call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. The editorial, published in several journals simultaneously, begins by referring to the Doomsday Clock.  At the beginning of this year, its hands were moved forward to 90 seconds to midnight. The editorial also refers to the statement by UN Secretary-General António Guterres nearly a year ago that the world is now in “a time of nuclear danger not seen since the height of the Cold War.”

The statement calls upon health and medical professionals to lend their voices to alert the public of the increasing possibility of nuclear war, devastating life on the planet. The editorial warns, “Current nuclear arms control and non-proliferation efforts are inadequate to protect the world's population against the threat of nuclear war by design, error, or miscalculation.”  They explain that the push to the “modernization of nuclear arsenals could increase risks: for example, hypersonic missiles decrease the time available to distinguish between an attack and a false alarm, increasing the likelihood of rapid escalation.” The reality is:

Any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic for humanity. Even a “limited” nuclear war involving only 250 of the 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world could kill 120 million people outright and cause global climate disruption leading to a nuclear famine, putting 2 billion people at risk.

The editorial concludes with a call for three specific actions: “First, adopt a no first-use policy; second, take their nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and third, urge all states involved in current conflicts to pledge publicly and unequivocally that they will not use nuclear weapons in these conflicts.”

The backdrop of this statement, as well as the advancement of the Doomsday Clock, is the war in Ukraine.  For the scientist who created the Clock to warn of threats to human survival, “Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict—by accident, intention, or miscalculation—is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.” Further, the scientists explain that “The war’s effects are not limited to an increase in nuclear danger; they also undermine global efforts to combat climate change.”

They note that this current invasion of Ukraine contravenes “decades of commitments by Moscow.” Based on this, they call for “principled engagement with Moscow that reduces the dangerous increase in nuclear risk the war has fostered.”

This call for principled negotiation and for a renewed public dialogue on the elimination of nuclear weapons is essential as the war in Ukraine is becoming more deadly, brutal, and bleak. The much heralded “spring offensive” is fading from memory. In a recent news analysis of the counteroffensive, we find:

…questions about the quality of the training the Ukrainians received from the West and about whether tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nearly $44 billion worth from the Biden administration, have been successful in transforming the Ukrainian military into a NATO-standard fighting force.

In the first two weeks of the counteroffensive, as much as 20 percent of the weaponry Ukraine sent to the battlefield was damaged or destroyed, according to U.S. and European officials. The toll included some of the formidable Western fighting machines — tanks and armored personnel carriers — that the Ukrainians were counting on to beat back the Russians.

As these conventional efforts prove ineffective, the pressures for upping the weaponry mount. It takes no leap of imagination to find military and political leaders talking of the possibilities of “surgical nuclear strikes” to bring this conflict to a quick end.

There is no place to “duck and cover” from nuclear war. There should be no justification for the continued escalation of weapons. Ultimately, all conflicts must end in negotiation and compromise. The US and Russian control 90% of the nuclear weaponry on Earth. Our country, as the only nation ever to have used these weapons, has a special obligation to pledge to eliminate them from the face of the earth, “before they eliminate us.”