The Clock Is Still Ticking : Unstable Regions, Terrorists Push the World a Little Closer to the Nuclear Brink

Humans first harnessed the atom at the University of Chicago in 1942. On the University of Chicago campus, a Henry Moore sculpture pays homage to that storied chain reaction.

In an auditorium a short walk away, another symbol of the Nuclear Age recently sat center stage. It was time again to set the Doomsday Clock.

Since it first appeared on the cover of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947, the clock has reflected the state of international security (with midnight marking nuclear disaster). Set originally at 11:53, the clock has moved forward and back over the years.

Since 1991, the time has sat at 11:43. In December, a handful of nuclear physicists, political scientists, former bomb designers and arms experts held the first public debate on where to move the clock’s hands.

Some had reasoned that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and a perceived easing of worldwide tensions, the experts would turn back the clock further. Instead, they concluded that the world has grown more dangerous over the past four years and that the risk of an atomic weapon detonating somewhere on Earth has grown.

They have reset the time at 11:46, 14 minutes before nuclear midnight.

The cheerful 1991 assessment--the most optimistic in the clock’s 48-year history--was based on the end of the Cold War, downsizing of superpower nuclear arsenals, the end of proliferation and reductions in nuclear waste.

But that promise was not borne out, a panel of 12 told the 18 members of the Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

The testimony touched on nihilistic terrorists, unratified chemical and biological treaties, a growing rich-poor gap, rogue nations, chaos in Russia, and a world awash in legitimate and black market plutonium and warheads.

According to the experts, the world was not only a brutish place but one in which life was as solitary, poor and short as it had been for centuries.

The collapse of the Soviet Union, celebrated in 1991, actually has contributed to the growing specter of atomic detonations, according to the testimony. The Russian military, “disoriented, weakened and humiliated, could become a serious obstacle to stability,” said Igor Khripunov, who negotiated for the Soviets during arms talks.

The disarmament treaties have become hollow victories, he added. The Russians cannot afford to comply with the existing treaties, and there is little money to destroy chemical weapons. Shaky finances also make the sale of centrifuges, reactors and perhaps warheads very tempting, said author and investigator David Albright.

Regional troubles in the Middle East and Asia, witnesses warned, have led to non-superpower efforts to build nuclear arsenals. In North Korea, attempts by the United States and others to persuade the government to stop its nuclear program have met with mixed results; in Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions have been quashed only temporarily.

The hearing’s dismal tone was set by the first speaker, Adele Simmons, president of the John D. MacArthur Foundation and an expert in international affairs. Simmons predicted that “more violence at levels we cannot imagine is in store.”

But the specific Doomsday times that the witnesses suggested, along with their explanations, were as different as fission and fusion:

* Midnight. Bradford Lyttle, editor of the Midwest Pacifist Commentator, said that “the players should stop playing the game” and that “nuclear arsenals be deactivated at once.

* 11:58. Theodore Taylor, a repentant former fission bomb designer-turned-activist, focused on “grossly insufficient” security leading to the possibility that terrorists could construct weapons of mass destruction.

If it were just national governments that had access to plutonium, Taylor said, the clock could be moved back to 11:30. But “no system of safeguards,” he added, “could provide absolute assurance against violations of bans.” He advocated the complete elimination of nuclear materials, facilities and weapons.

* 11:51. Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear fusion expert with the Maryland-based Institute of Energy and the Environment, blamed the spread of dangerous plutonium on U.S. government funding pushed by members of Congress for their home districts. “The Trojan horse carrying a nuclear device should be depicted as a pork barrel,” Makhijani joked.

* 11:40. Gloria Duffy, who headed the Pentagon’s disarmament assistance to the former Soviet Union, was heartened by the retraining of Russian weapons scientists, the dismantling of the nation’s weapons and a surrender by Ukraine to Russia of weapons that had belonged to the Soviet Union.

* 10:00. University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer alone defended the bomb, calling it the “ideal middle-class weapon.” He called atomic bombs “a source of peace, not war,” because of their deterrent effect. A minor-country conflict, he said, is more likely than a major-nation exchange. (He suggested a separate clock--set at around 11:45, to illustrate the risk of a nuclear clash between, say, India and Pakistan.)

“Most Americans,” he assured his audience, “like nuclear weapons.”

In the end, the board agreed unanimously with the pessimists. “We are still in a nuclear world,” said board Chairman Leonard Reiser, a former Manhattan Project scientist.

With 35,000 warheads still threatening, with no treaties in progress, the board hoped to send a message to a complacent U.S. government and a weary public: The nuclear threat continues.

Reiser stretched an arm out to the shiny white minute hand and moved it three spaces ahead.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Countdown to Doomsday

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has told the world what time it is since 1947, when its famous clock appeared on the cover. Since then, the clock has moved forward and back, reflecting the state of international security.

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1947: 7 Minutes Til Midnight: The clock first appears on the Bulletin cover as a symbol of nuclear danger.

1953: 2 Minutes Til Midnight: The United States successfully tests a hydrogen bomb in late 1952.

1963: 12 Minutes Til Midnight: The U.S. and Soviet signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty “provides the first tangible confirmation of what has been the Bulletin’s conviction in recent years- that a new cohesive force has entered the interplay of forces shaping the fate of mankind.”

1981: 4 Minutes Til Midnight: Both superpowers develop more weapons for fighting a nuclear war. Terrorist actions, repression of human rights, conflicts in Afghanistan, Poland, South Africa add to world tension.

1991: 17 Minutes Til Midnight: The United States and the Soviet Union sign the long- stalled Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and announce further unilateral cuts in tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.

1995: 14 Minutes Til Midnight: Instability and chaos in Russia and Third World countries and unratified nuclear treaties darken the nuclear picture.