A Russian serviceman guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, on May 1. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
A Russian serviceman guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, on May 1. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. Credit: AP file

Nicholas Ourusoff of New London has worked with the United Nations and USAID. He taught in Russia and Kazakhstan and provided support to the U.S. Fulbright Office in Moscow.

Greenpeace, uncompromisingly and urgently advocating for a “green” planet and “peace” on Earth,  has alerted the world of the imminent threat that the Russia-Ukraine war poses — unleashing nuclear disaster by accidentally or intentionally damaging any of four commercially operating reactors in war zones in Ukraine.

In particular, according to the International Atomic Agency, the largest reactor in Europe at Zaporizhzhia is “out of control” and the situation in Chernobyl is extremely dangerous.

The world’s top diplomat, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, representing the consensus of its 193 member nations, warned a week ago that “the world is one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”   

The Doomsday clock has been set to 100 seconds in January 2022, its lowest ever setting, by the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, with Doomsday indicating nuclear annihilation.

 Dr. Noam Chomsky has been warning against the increased risk of nuclear annihilation as relations between major powers have worsened and safeguards between Russia and the United States have weakened. Chomsky has cited several documented cases of luck, where only the intervention of an individual prevented a massive nuclear retaliation to what the automated defense system perceived as a hostile attack (>italicres<).  

The five nuclear countries who signed the 1970 U.N. Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was designed to disarm the world of nuclear weapons, have increased rather than decreased their nuclear arsenals in violation of the NPT, spending billions of dollars on modernization and new weapons that have no place on our planet. 

Responding to the inability of Russia and the United States to make significant progress over several years in the NPT, the U.N. General Assembly explored the humanitarian impact of all types of nuclear weapons and found all to have catastrophic humanitarian consequences that furthered an urgent demand to push forward multilateral disarmament negotiations. In 2017 a United Nations conference was convened to negotiate the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Building on the verification safeguards and experience of NPT, TPNW is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons.  The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 for its leadership role in organizing three international conferences in Norway, Mexico and Austria to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and advocating for and democratizing TPNW. 

TPNW was adopted with 122 nations voting for it, and one against, and one abstention. The five nuclear powers in the NPT boycotted the TPNW as did all but one NATO member. TPNW came into force on January 21, 2021 (United Nations Day) with the 50th country ratifying the treaty. Today, 88 countries have ratified the TPNW.  

It’s time for President Biden to come to his senses.  Stop the war in Ukraine, which can escalate to a nuclear war. Commit urgently to the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons. Ratify the TPNW.