EDITORIAL: Atomic Scientists Set Doomsday Clock at 85 Seconds to Planetary Destruction

By Ken Ferguson

FIRST LAUNCHED in 1947 by a group of scientists working with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock was intended to warn the world how close the policies of the day were taking the planet to nuclear destruction.

It appeared annually through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the decades of missile tension, Greenham Common, and the détente of the Gorbachev years. At the end of the Cold War, the clock stood at 17 minutes to midnight.

Amid a vortex of war, climate chaos and repression — ranging from Trump’s US, through the pitiless sham of the Gaza ceasefire, the gunning down of thousands of protesters in Iran, and the spread of neo-fascism across Europe and beyond — the clock now stands just 85 seconds from Armageddon.

In their announcement, the scientists did not focus solely on the atomic menace. They also highlighted droughts, the failure to address global warming, and other stark challenges facing humanity. Voice readers will be struck by the sober realism of the bulletin’s warning when set against the populist right-wing bluster that increasingly dominates the pronouncements and policies of Western governments. This is led by Trump and slavishly echoed by the leaders of his supposed “allies” as they take the path of war and confrontation.

While this may appear to be the realm of high policy, reserved for parliamentarians, think tankers, generals and admirals, these policies are ultimately translated into action. When they are, they become tasks carried out by workers and soldiers. Thus the ICE goons who shot dead Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti are not aberrations, but the real-world outcome of what is presented to us daily as the wise deliberations of policymakers, prime ministers and presidents, supposedly crafted to keep us safe and secure.

US breaks with the old order

Yet it is these same policies that have stoked war in Ukraine, killing an estimated two million people; that are used to justify the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Maduro; that threaten socialist Cuba; and that menace the Iranian people, who desperately need democracy — not bombs.

This marks a decisive break by the US with the old order of alliances and diplomacy, replaced by an increasingly naked reliance on economic coercion and military force to impose dominance. Hence the cynical calls for the Iranian people to face down a vicious theocratic regime’s machine guns with the lie that “help is on the way”, as thousands were mown down in blood, alongside the dispatch of warships hither and yon in a 21st century version of imperial gunboat diplomacy. All this is neatly packaged as a reasonable
response to new conditions and presented by a phalanx of securicrats, soldiers, weapons manufacturers and war-studies academics, all with very real axes to grind.

We now face the stark reality that, at the behest of NATO chiefs crawling before their “daddy” Trump, European leaders are stepping up war spending and setting out on the path towards a return to military conscription, with one French general warning parents to prepare to lose their sons.

We are only days beyond the anniversary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg by ICE-style German paramilitaries. Luxemburg coined the warning “socialism or barbarism” and fell alongside her close comrade Karl Liebknecht while opposing militarism.

Standing on the precipice of war

As the Doomsday Clock warns us, we are once again standing on the precipice of war — this time accompanied by climate ruin. All of this unfolds in a world that hounds refugees fleeing war and drought, and that fails its elderly on grounds of cost.

This is happening even as Starmer struts the stage, souping up Britain’s supposedly “independent” nuclear missiles, which are in reality hired from Trump and which, if ever used, would annihilate the UK itself.

Time is indeed short for socialist, labour and progressive forces in Scotland, the UK and across the world to confront the reality posed by socialism or barbarism.

In Trump’s US, and in the rising danger of Reform and the far right across Europe, large elements of barbarism are already loose among us, concealed behind a mask of Farage-style banter — an iron hand in a velvet glove. Yet, as the mass movement around Gaza has shown over the past two years, the forces exist to challenge those backing war and repression and to force another path.

The immense courage, unity and cohesion shown by the people of Minnesota in facing down Trump’s stormtroopers deserves recognition and support.

It also puts to shame those who look the other way and refuse to stand alongside such bravery.