Thank you for taking up this existential threat to our world (The Guardian’s view on arms control: essential to preventing the complete devastation of nuclear war, December 27). It seems natural that the logical conclusion that “nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought” is to unconditionally abandon any option of starting a nuclear war. So far, only two nuclear-armed states have taken this position: China and India. It appears to have worked well, at least for countries that retained the option of escalating conventional war to nuclear war.
In an armed conflict between nuclear-armed states, it would be a recipe for disaster to make an adversary worry about being “hit with a nuclear punch,” but NATO believes that the threat of escalation to nuclear war is essential to the alliance’s cohesion. I keep thinking that there is. This policy needs to be abolished immediately.
The same logic applies to all other nuclear-armed states. It’s time to put an end to the verbal abuse and bluffing. This would buy us time to work towards building a world free of nuclear weapons.
Aaron Twish
stockholm, sweden
Now 80 years old, I have lived with the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fear of nuclear weapons since my early teens, knowing that they could destroy large parts of the world. For decades now, the nuclear threat has never gone away, but it has been thoroughly ignored. Finally, a major newspaper is taking this issue seriously and making it clear that in a world facing an existential crisis of climate change, there is another existing threat to contend with. Equal Urgency (Editorial, December 27).
So I’m going to start 2025 with at least a glimmer of hope after all.
diana francis
bus
I read your editorial with more sadness than anger. Since I was a student in the 1950s, I have believed that the only way to survive a nuclear war is to not start it in the first place. I have been campaigning against nuclear weapons for nearly 70 years, but with the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than ever before, I may have wasted my time.
Nuclear weapons are prohibitively expensive national vanity projects, sold to the public as a deterrent and sustained by a false sense of security that they will never be used. While I respect and support causes such as “Just Stop Oil,” my focus remains on the threat of nuclear war. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we are within one step of destroying all life on Earth.
caroline westgate
Hexham, Northumberland
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