Can there be a bunch of more self-serving individuals than the board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which annually presents its assessment of global politics in the form of its ‘Doomsday Clock’? Yesterday, the organisation announced that it was moving its clock forward by 30 seconds so that it now stands at two and a half minutes to midnight – where midnight is Armageddon, the end of human civilisation as we know it.
The reason, of course, is Donald Trump. As the scientists explained: ‘He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the US nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security, including the conclusions of intelligence experts. And his nominees to head the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency dispute the basics of climate science.’
We all know that Trump is a bit off his rocker, but is the world really closer to annihilation than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, during the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968, during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980 or in the aftermath of 9/11 in 2001? The only time that the Doomsday clock has been set closer to midnight than it is now was in 1953 when the US tested its first hydrogen bomb.
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