Road to Armageddon

 For a brief moment in the 1980s, the two superpowers, Soviet Union and the US, felt that mutual annihila­tion was not a good idea and toyed with the idea of bringing down their nuclear arsenals. This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said they now have an underwater nuclear drone that cannot be detected and can create tsuna­mis when detonated. US President Donald Trump followed it up with an announcement that his nation would resume testing of nuclear weapons. Obviously, they would be greater in scale than the existing ones, with new ways and means of deployment like the Russian drone. The Chinese, no doubt, have their own programmes to catch up.

Among all the foolhardiness that human beings have ventured into in their long violent history, nothing compares to nuclear weapons. First, there was the hu­bris of creating such a technology for myopic ends, like making one war shorter. Then the belief that others could be kept away from making their weapons, which still continues in the desperation with which Iran’s nuclear fa­cilities periodically get targeted. And finally, that bigger and more creative nuclear bombs make any difference when it is essentially a zero-sum game in which, sooner or later, others get to the same point. As a result, it will take a frac­tion of the weapons present today to end life on Earth. All the leftover weapons will pretty much have been pointless.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the NATO alliance of Western powers responded with stringent sanctions, and there was an argument for it. But now comes the unintended consequences, and Putin’s drone and Trump’s renewed tests again slowly lead to the road to Armageddon. The only tragic way that humanity collectively pulls back from this path is for a nuclear bomb to actually be used. Or two bombs, when there is the retaliation against the first. Or, for a terrorist group to get its hands on a smaller one. It will happen and the only question at that moment will be if we go on to make our­selves extinct or if the survival instinct prevails. Hopefully, an inevitability that will not happen in our lifetime.