World faces nuclear war

Seventy-three years ago a shocked and numbed world witnessed the first and only nuclear attack, Japan was firebombed with two nuclear bombs, the consequences of which are still being felt.

Ever since Japan was nuclear-incinerated, world leaders have had the wisdom to avoid another nuclear war. Humanity witnessed the terrifying destructive power of nuclear weapons and vowed never to repeat the mistake. There is a frightening real risk that mankind has not witnessed its last nuclear war.

We live in the shadows of a new and deadly cold war. Many sober observers believe the world is closer to nuclear war now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cold-war tactics are now in the realm of the rationality of irrationality.

It is the equivalent of nuclear roulette, a version of political roulette in which the entire world is at stake, with a two or three-chambered revolver.

Every small conflict pulls the trigger in nuclear roulette. In the metaphor of nuclear roulette, every day we pull the trigger of the many-chambered nuclear gun pointed at the head of civilisation.

Brinkmanship is a shared risk of war in which each side pushes the other towards the brink of disaster or war to force the other side to capitulate at the last second. These two deadly nuclear scorpions will not survive a strategic nuclear exchange.

The only way to survive nuclear roulette is to put down the atomic gun. The current constellation of global events make nuclear war virtually inevitable. We cannot continue on our current course forever.

Farouk Araie Johannesburg

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