The Doomsday Clock Continues to Tick: 2025

 Harry Targ

https://thebulletin.org/2025/01/press-release-doomsday-clock-set-at-89-seconds-to-midnight-closest-ever-to-human-extinction/

(“The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight - the theoretical point of annihilation. That is one second closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.” Reuters, January 28, 2025)

 

THE "WE MARCH ONWARD" RALLY: Seven Years Ago and the Threat of War Worsens

 

County Courthouse, Lafayette, Indiana, January 27, 2018, posted February 1, 2018

Threats to Peace Today: Remarks at the 2018 Rally

We are here to reflect on movements for social and economic justice one year into the administration of Donald Trump.

What caught my attention a few days ago was a press conference that was organized by science editors of the esteemed journal, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. This journal began publishing shortly after the end of World War II. Among its most visible tasks has been tracking the probability of nuclear war.

Using its metaphoric Doomsday Clock scientific experts estimate each year how close the world is moving toward nuclear war. The scientists last week moved the dials two minutes closer to midnight (to a dangerous two and one-half minutes to midnight). In other words, over the last year the United States and the world, the scientists say, have moved ever closer to nuclear war.

Reflecting on the policies of the last year that have led to this symbolic prediction of increasing possibility of nuclear war, we can reflect on several developments:

The recently issued National Security Strategy document issued by the Trump Administration indicates US policy would shift from the war on terrorism to homeland security. This shift would be complemented by the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons and a strategy based on the primacy of threats from Russia and China.

The Trump Administration in conjunction with Congress (with support from both parties) has approved a military budget for the coming year in excess of $700 billion, 68 percent of federal discretionary spending.

The Trump Administration is continuing the trajectory of maintaining US troops and private contract armies in 1,000 military installations in anywhere from 70 to 170 countries. The US continues to expand its military presence on the African continent.

The Trump Administration over the last several months has been engaged in a rhetorical war with North Korea, while US and South Korean military forces engage in simulated military exercises. The US has constructed a new provocative anti-missile installation in South Korea as well.

The Trump Administration has threatened to withdraw from the nonproliferation treaty with Iran, has announced its intention of expanding troop strength in Afghanistan, and has placed thousands of US troops in Syria.

The United States has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, begun to reverse improved relations with Cuba, and continues to escalate its efforts to destabilize governments such as in Venezuela and Bolivia.

And, President Trump announced that the US embassy was moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a position not only condemned by the Palestinian people but by virtually every country in the world.

All of these historical developments in United States foreign policy are occurring in the context of an international system that is shifting away from United States hegemony to a multipolar world. Countries such as China are experiencing economic development that challenges the economic domination that the United States has held over the global political economy for 100 years. To overcome this declining relative economic power, the United States is pursuing greater advances in military power. This combination of economic decline and military advance makes the world a more dangerous place.

The Historic Role of Women in Peace and Justice Movements

As women and men organized politically during 2017, and come together in January, 2018 to celebrate this mobilization, it is critical to reflect on the centrality of women in the struggle for a peaceful world. Campaigns for social and economic justice and women’s movements, and particularly women’s peace movements, are inextricably connected.

In 1915, 1,200 women from diverse backgrounds met in the Hague to create what became the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). They opposed World War I and would continue to oppose war in the over 100 years of their existence. They also demanded that women play a role in decision-making about all matters of foreign policy, including decisions concerning war and peace.

WILPF, the oldest peace group in the United States was led for many years by Jane Addams, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931.

In 1961 another women’s peace group, Women Strike for Peace, organized a day-long national strike of 50,000 women in 60 cities demanding nuclear disarmament. They opposed nuclear testing, increased radiation in the atmosphere and marched to the slogan, “End the Arms Race: Not the Human Race.” Women Strike for Peace became early opponents of the escalating Vietnam war. Among its prominent spokespersons was soon-to-be Congresswoman Bella Abzug.

Code Pink is a grassroots women-led organization opposing war and militarism. It was organized in 2002 and includes militant activists such as Medea Benjamin and Colonel Ann Wright. Code Pink advocates peace, a human rights agenda, and demands conversion from military spending to spending for health care, green jobs, and the general welfare. They have been active in campaigns for justice for the Palestinian people and in opposition to United States support for violence perpetuated by Saudi Arabia in the Middle East.

The writing and activism of Jane Addams has been an important inspiration that runs throughout the educational, advocacy, and militant peace activity of women for the last 100 years. Addams’ classic essay, “Newer Ideals of Peace” was originally published in 1907 and reissued with an introduction by Berenice Carroll and Clint Fink in 2007 by the University of Illinois Press.

In this essay, Carroll and Fink indicate that Addams postulated that the tasks of peace activists must go beyond just stopping war. According to Addams,  achieving what peace researchers later called “negative peace,” ending wars, must be coupled with “positive peace.” Positive peace includes transformations of the societies that engaged in warfare. These transformations must include the end of hierarchies of all kinds including patriarchy, paternalism, the criminal justice system, and systems of domination and subordination at the workplace. Addams wrote that there needed to be a theoretical and practical shift from individualism and property rights to community. The spirit of nationalism must be replaced by internationalism. In sum, advocating for social and economic justice was needed along with demanding an end to shooting wars.

We move ahead in these troubled times inspired by the great fighters for racial justice including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis.

We are also inspired by those who struggled for workers’ rights: Joe Hill, Mother Jones, Paul Robeson, A. Philip Randolph, John L. Lewis, and Sidney Hillman.

And, as the Doomsday Clock ticks toward midnight, we desperately need to reacquaint ourselves with our foremothers whose ideas and activism have been central to movements for peace and justice throughout the world.