Nuclear destruction: inevitable or avertable?

The Cold War was at its closest to becoming a hot war during the Cuban Missile crisis of 1962. For 13 days, the world was held at nuclear ransom as it awaited an announcement by Nikita Khrushchev that Soviet missiles installed in Cuba, and targeted at the United States, would be dismantled.

Since the obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear bombs have been detonated for testing purposes on over 2,000 occasions: the United Kingdom alone has exploded 21 nuclear bombs in Australian territory, nine of them in South Australia at Maralinga and Emu Field.

The Australian Government, unlike the New Zealand Government, has never adopted a strong stance against nuclear testing. However, to its credit it has implemented safeguards to ensure that the 11,000 tonnes of uranium oxide we export annually - roughly 30 per cent of the world market - is used for peaceful purposes only.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, when it awarded the International Atomic Energy Agency the Nobel Peace Prize last year, emphasised that nuclear energy - which can be formed from uranium - must be used, if at all, for advancing rather than destroying humanity.

That agency, formed in 1957 by the United Nations, provides some hope that nuclear warfare can be averted. It was instrumental in garnering support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which opened for signature in 1968 and was extended indefinitely and without condition in 1995.

Encouraged by the treaty, a number of countries have renounced their nuclear weapons, acknowledging that they threaten rather than enhance national security. Disappointingly, however, Israel, India and Pakistan have never signed the treaty, and North Korea withdrew its signature in 2003, two years before publicly announcing that it has functional nuclear weapons.

Almost 60 years ago, the board of an academic journal at the University of Chicago created the “Doomsday Clock” to depict the time remaining before the human race is annihilated by nuclear war. Over time, its minute hand has moved back and forth, through peaceful and volatile periods. Today, it shows the same time as it did in 1947.

However, we stand not at an impasse but at a juncture. You decide: inevitable or avertable?