The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Thursday kept its metaphorical Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight, citing continuing aggressive posturing by nuclear-armed nations.
“The risks associated with nuclear weapons, over the long term, are increasing for three reasons: expensive programs to modernize nuclear arsenals, expansive nuclear doctrines, and a decisive turn away from nuclear arms control,” said Bulletin contributor Sharon Squassoni, a professor at George Washington University in Washington, who has worked for the Congressional Research Service and the State Department.
Squassoni was one of seven panelists to speak Thursday in Washington during the Bulletin’s live-streamed unveiling of the 2019 Doomsday Clock.
The dove-ish, Chicago-based nonprofit last set the culturally transcendent Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in January 2018 — when, coincidentally, the Donald Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked to the press.
Midnight on the Doomsday Clock symbolizes civilization-ending nuclear war. Created by the Bulletin in 1947, the Clock has come as close as two minutes to midnight and as far from it as 17 minutes. Besides nuclear threats, the clock also considers the potential global effects of climate change.
Though the Bulletin does not claim otherwise, the Clock is not based on an empirical calculation, but on “a judgment of experts,” Rachel Bronson, the Bulletin’s president and chief executive officer, said during Thursday’s press event.
Bronson said keeping the Clock at two minutes to midnight symbolized a “new abnormal” in which nuclear-armed states are eyeing new and provocative capabilities.
The Clock today “invokes memories of 1953,” William Perry, secretary of defense in the Bill Clinton administration, said during the event. By 1953, the U.S. and Soviet Union had tested their first hydrogen bomb devices, prompting the Bulletin to set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight for the first time.
The Bulletin did not always update the Doomsday Clock annually. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 — when the U.S. had nuclear-armed ballistic missiles deployed in Turkey and Italy and the Soviet Union had ballistic missiles in Cuba — the Clock stayed where it was previously set, at seven minutes to midnight.
Since last year, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has started building the low-yield, submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missile warhead the White House called for in its Nuclear Posture Review. The weapon, dubbed W76-2, will be a modified version of the existing W76-1 warhead, which the NNSA finished modernizing in December.
In addition to continuing the 30-year, $1-trillion nuclear modernization and maintenance program the Barack Obama administration started in 2016, the Trump administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review also called for researching a new nuclear sea-launched cruise missile and keeping the B83 gravity bomb in the U.S. stockpile after the Obama administration proposed retiring it.
The NNSA has said it plans to request study money for the sea-launched cruise missile in its 2020 budget.
