Battered by U.S. and Russian aggressions, the survival of the U.N., its charter, and international law are in jeopardy. Expiration of New START, inadequate though it was, eliminated the last remaining U.S.-Russian arms control agreement. China is annually adding about one hundred thermonuclear weapons to its arsenal, leaving us hostages to three nuclear scorpions in a bottle. Within the last year India, Pakistan, and Israel – all nuclear powers – have gone to war. Europeans are negotiating a second nuclear umbrella. North Korea continues its nuclear and missile deployments. And from South Korea to Poland, including Japan, there are pressures to join the club of nuclear terrorists.
Last year I described the first and frightening intimations of Trump/MAGA fascism. Just weeks ago, Steven Miller, described as Trump’s “Prime Minister” explained that “We live… in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.” We have Trump’s threats to constitutional democracy, immigrants and people of color, universities, the press, truth, and public health. You have no doubt read about the disregard for the rule of law, military deployments to our cities, repeated violations of court orders, Gestapo-like kidnappings of innocent immigrants, murders of nonviolent protesters, Putin style media control, and massive cuts to scientific research and essential human services.
But these brutal excesses, tariffs, the Epstein sex trafficking scandal, and the transformation of our country into a pariah nation have generated broad resistance.
Street protests, solidarity actions, and a consumer strike forced withdrawals of ICE and Border Patrols from Minneapolis. Near my home, every Wednesday up to a thousand people stand outside the ICE headquarters in the bitter cold, reading the constitution and supporting immigrants. People feed immigrants in hiding, escort their children to and from school, turn out by the millions in thousands of No Kings protests across the country.
In the face of this resistance to the billionaire counterrevolution, Steve Bannon, Trump’s former advisor, warned that Trump and his mandarins must seize full control of all facets of government. Why? Because if they lose the next election, they will all be going to jail. Thus, Republicans are disenfranchising voters, redrawing Congressional districts, and otherwise rigging the election.
Among our responses are growing calls for a social/general strike to ensure that elections are actually held and election outcomes are respected. A strike that nonviolently brings society and the economy to a halt is one way that we can exercise people’s power and possibly prevail. It is not clear that such a strike will be necessary or could be successful, but, Stacey Abrams, a leading Democrat, advises that we need to build our capacity for a possible strike. Even conservative Democratic Senator Gallego says that a strike could prove to be our only way to defend democracy.
On the subject of nuclear weapons, there is a massive gap between Trump and the U.S. people. A recent poll tells us that 81% of U.S. people support new arms control negotiations. But Trump isn’t the only culprit. Even as Moscow pledges to observe New START limits as long as the US does, since its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin withdrew from nuclear arms control agreements and refused to reengage in nuclear risk reduction negotiations until they were satisfied with the outcome of the Ukraine War.
After stating that denuclearization would be a “good idea,” Trump refused to respond to Russia’s limits extension offer. Elsewhere in Washington, senior Republicans argue that the “New START Treaty no longer advances meaningful nuclear arms control…, nor contributes to the broader goal of international denuclearization.” And the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 calls for increasing the size of the deployed U.S. thermonuclear arsenal to the combined total of the Russian and Chinese arsenals. The New York Times reports that “administration officials have made two things clear: Washington is actively weighing the deployment of more nuclear weapons, and it is also likely to conduct a nuclear test of some kind.
In powerful Congressional circles there is widespread belief that, even if you can’t find a physicist who says it will work, Trump’s Golden Dome Missile Defense system is seen as replacing the need for arms control. Golden Dome, including possible deployment of nuclear weapons in space, will add to fears of possible U.S. first-strike war preparations, bankrupting the country, and filling the atmosphere with dangerous space junk.
In the meantime, it seems likely that the Pentagon and Kremlin will upload additional warheads onto their missiles. In the U.S. case, this means adding of fifty-six additional missiles and possibly hundreds of new warheads to Ohio class submarines.
And we know that both the U.S. and Russia, are already arms racing. The U.S. spends $87 billion a year to “modernize” its nuclear forces, sent new gravity bombs to Europe, and Russia has developed nuclear capable sea drones that could hold every U.S. or Japanese coastal city and region hostage.
The Doomsday Clock has been reset to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to annihilation. Among its reasons is that the nuclear weapons states refuse to honor their Article VI NPT obligations. The last two Review Conferences ended in failures. There is a growing belief that if the U.S. and/or Russia increase their nuclear arsenals, or if Trump holds to his threat to resume nuclear weapons testing, this spring’s Review Conference will also fail. In that case, with reduced respect for the Treaty and doubts about Trump’s commitments to alliances, we could lose the NPT. There will be greater pressure for non-nuclear countries to withdraw from the Treaty, increasing the existential danger that threatens us all.
We also face increasing commitments to militarism: Trump’s calls for a $500 billion increase in Pentagon spending. Takaichi wants to massively increase and transform the SDF, including reversion to 15 Year War’s military ranks. Europe is racing to become a military superpower within or independent of NATO to balance Russian military power. Putin still murderously pursues his war in Ukraine. Trump’s military decapitation of Venezuela’s president was designed to win regime change in Cuba by starving it of food and energy. And in the tradition of killing the chicken to scare the monkey, it aimed to terrorize American nations to reinforce Washington’s hegemony at the expense of China.
Let’s not forget Trump’s failure to obliterate Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. He has now dispatched two aircraft carrier fleets to intimidate Iran, risking a region-wide and potentially nuclear war. And, despite being allied to Denmark and Canada, Trump pledges to seize control over mineral rich and strategically located Greenland, continues to pursue subjugation of Canada, and along with Israel, the colonization of Gaza and the West Bank.
As I conclude, let me appreciate Bob Dylan’s admonition: “Let us not talk falsely now/The hour is getting late.” It leads me to say that there is more than one road to the Golden Day, and that the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line.
We have to face the reality that the world as we have known it has fundamentally changed. Two weeks ago, German Chancellor Merz joined the chorus, singing that, seriously flawed though it was, the international rules based order “no longer exists,” In a world in which we are told that “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must” we must confront the new political and geopolitical landscapes and revise our strategies, not our values and commitments.
We have an unhinged and extremely dangerous thermonuclear monarch in the White House. His popularity has plummeted and rests at just 36 percent. His physical and mental health are in obvious decline. But my worst nightmare is that when he goes down, he might be tempted to take us all with him.
In the U.S., the broad struggle for democracy and human rights has necessarily subsumed almost all other life-affirming struggles. Immigrant children and their parents must be safeguarded. New regime change wars must be prevented, truth, science, and freedom of speech, as well as elections, must be protected. As a result, our movements are pulled in many directions. The only way to truly prevail in any of them, including nuclear disarmament, is to throw the fascist bums out of office.
For our nuclear weapons and peace movements, this means helping to build a multi-issue nationally integrated movement to defeat tyranny and preserve constitutional democracy so that we can impact policies. We have to walk and chew gum at the same time: defending democracy while warning about and resisting nuclear dangers and keeping the hope and the possibility of a nuclear weapons-free world alive. And it means deepening our international – as well as community – solidarity, and reinforcing our partnerships, collaborations, and alliances. This is one more reason to appreciate the large delegations that Gensuikyo, Hidankyo, and others will be sending to New York in April.
Our US nuclear disarmament movement has two important resources. First is the community-based Back from the Brink campaign that opposes nuclear weapons modernization and urges implementation of the NPT’s Article VI. It has been endorsed by dozens of cities, towns, counties, several states, and forty members of Congress. Second is our international collaborations. Your presence and advocacy during this spring’s NPT Review Conference will be critical in keeping hope and possibilities alive. For that we are deeply grateful. I look forward to seeing many of you in New York.