Editorial

In our editorial at this time last year, we stated that “we deeply hope that here in the United States there is not a significant shift over to a right wing, bellicose, and xenophobic presidential administration in response to the often unacknowledged fears and anxieties currently plaguing our citizens”. Now we know that this shift has in fact occurred, and of all the multitude of problems facing the Western democracies, generally, and the United States in particular-that include marked economic disparities in the general population, the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the terrorism of ISIS and al Quaeda, the difficulties of immigration and refugees, the threats to the rights of women, minorities, and LGBTQ individuals, two very important issues rise to the top of the list of our concerns: 1) an escalated nuclear arms race leading to the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear war and 2)the deepening and spreading crisis of global climate change.

With regard to nuclear war and/or the use of nuclear weapons in armed conflicts:

“Scientists who study the risk of nuclear war recently moved the hands of the symbolic Doomsday Clock to 2 and a half minutes before midnight-meaning they believe that the world is closer to nuclear catastrophe than it has been since 1953 after the United States and Soviet Union tested hydrogen bombs. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the clock in 1947, says that President Trump is the main reason for this worrisome development” (New York Times 2/6/17: A18).

During the presidential campaign, the now president of the United States spoke “casually about possibly retaliating against the Islamic State with a nuclear weapon and about Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia possibly developing their own nuclear arsenals…” (New York Times 12/1/16: A30). And, as the editors of the New York Times went on to note, since the second World War, it has been consistently the policy of the United States to prevent nuclear war and to pre