90 Seconds.....

One reason to leave France?

These charming people represent the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. For several decades they have annually used the metaphor of a clock to describe how close we are to annihilation in a nuclear war.

In 2023 they are blunt “The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. “

Sitting here in France, only a 31 hour drive from Kyiv, Ukraine - say three days drive, assuming you choose the toll roads - one can’t help but feel a lot more vulnerable than when in North America.

In fact, even if the Russians don’t start firing Satan II missiles at us (that’s what the NY Post claims that NATO calls them. Russia is less juvenile with the name RS-28 Sarmat.) one has to be thinking about whether a Ukraine/Russia conflict couldn’t shift direction and begin moving west through Europe. Surely past conflicts on the European continent have taught us that you can’t assume that any aggressor nation will be satisfied to stay in one place.

I was born after World War Two, and was just barely politically conscious for most of the Vietnam conflict. Since then I’ve watched with various levels of interest as our Canadian governments have involved us in Cypress, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, as well as lesser actions in Haiti, the Middle East, and Africa.

It is perhaps a dangerous reality that because the vast majority of the Canadian population has never actually experienced a war, they likely feel protected and even indifferent to conflicts elsewhere.

Living in France gives one a very different perspective: the ceremonies on le jour anniversaire de l’Armistice signée le 11 novembre 1918 et rend hommage à tous les morts pour la France feel a lot more personal and immediate than those held at Canadian cenotaphs.

So yes, I am looking at today’s announcement, and looking with great care.

Continue reading the full 2023 Doomsday Clock statement.

This year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moves the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward, largely (though not exclusively) because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. The Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight—the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been. The war in Ukraine may enter a second horrifying year, with both sides convinced they can win. Ukraine’s sovereignty and broader European security arrangements that have largely held since the end of World War II are at stake. Also, Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks. And worst of all, 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.