His aim has been to force all the former Eastern bloc countries now aligned with the West to agree to their 1997 pre-NATO positions. The very next month this small pause of reason was broken when Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.Īlthough Ukraine is hardly comparable to Cuba in the 1960s – there were no missiles on Russia’s doorstep and no blockade – Putin feared the country could potentially become a nuclear base for NATO. While the clock moved backwards and forwards as threats came and went, the US and Russia extended the bilateral arms control treaty capping the number of deployed warheads, and in January this year the five main nuclear powers agreed that a nuclear war “cannot be won and must never be fought”. Photo: Getty Images via The Conversation Putting back the clockĮven when the United States and Russia were closest to a nuclear conflict during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the clock only got to seven minutes to midnight. Ramping up the rhetoric: Vladimir Putin speaks at a concert marking the anniversary of the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
Saber-rattling or not, these are worrying developments in a world that has struggled to pull back from the precipice of nuclear disaster since the Doomsday Clock began in 1947. In placing the clock hand at five minutes to midnight in January 2012, the Bulletin cited “clear and present dangers of nuclear proliferation and climate change” as the motivation behind the move toward doomsday.Perhaps following former US president Donald Trump’s lead, Putin has broken with diplomatic norms around the reckless use of nuclear rhetoric, threatening the West it would “face consequences that you have never faced in your history”.Īnd following the failure of the international community to create a convention that nuclear weapons should be kept at a non-alert status (meaning they can’t be fired quickly), Putin has put his nuclear forces into “special combat readiness”. In 2007, the BAS broadened the scope of threats represented by the Doomsday Clock to include not only nuclear weapons but nuclear energy, climate change and “technologies not created with malice aforethought, like synthetic biology, but technologies that nonetheless could spell doom for civilization today,” Benedict said. Five minutes to midnight: Expanded to include threats from climate change and emerging technologies, the Doomsday Clock reflects urgent danger to civilization in January 2012. Finally, in December 1991, after the United States and Russia signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and began slashing their nuclear arsenals, the Bulletin moved the clock hand 17 minutes away from midnight to reflect this unprecedented moment of peace and cooperation between the superpowers.ħ.
“This was a time they literally went off the charts” in debating the position of the Doomsday Clock hand, Benedict said. Seventeen minutes to midnight: With the Cold War over, in December 1991 the clock’s hand retreats far from the midnight of humankind’s destruction.įollowing the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union, in 1991 the BAS took the exceptional step of holding a public symposium to discuss the meaning of these events and invite discussion about the state of global security in the aftermath of the Cold War. “There is little reason to feel sanguine about the future of our society on the world scale,” the Bulletin proclaimed at the time.Ħ. war in Vietnam escalating, India and Pakistan at odds and renewed hostilities in the Middle East, the BAS lamented the state of global security by moving the Doomsday Clock hand forward to ring in January 1968. With China and France obtaining nuclear capabilities, the U.S. Seven minutes to midnight: As more nations enter the arms race and war rages around the world, the clock hand inches closer to midnight in January 1968. In response, the Doomsday Clock’s hand moved comfortably away from midnight, conveying the Bulletin’s increased optimism.Ĥ. To de-escalate the arms race and reduce the effects of excessive nuclear fallout on the environment, leaders from the three major nuclear powers-the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union-signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited above-ground nuclear testing, in August 1963. Twelve minutes to midnight: In October 1963, as the nuclear arms race eases, the clock hand backs away from doomsday.