2024 began with the iconic Doomsday Clock – originally set at 7 minutes to midnight in 1947 – remaining only seconds from the metaphorical midnight of a humanmade worldwide cataclysm.
“In 2023 trends continue to point ominously towards global catastrophe," explained Rachel Bronson, CEO of the group that maintains the clock, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in January. "The war in Ukraine poses an ever-present risk of nuclear escalation, and the October 7 attack in Israel and war in Gaza provides further illustration of the horrors of modern war, even without nuclear escalation. Last year, we expressed amplified concern by moving the clock to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been the risks of last year continue with unabated ferocity and continue to shape this year. Today, we once again set the doomsday clock to express a continuing and unprecedented level of risk. It is 90 seconds to midnight.”
This summer, delegates of the Western Mass Area Labor Federation voted unanimously to endorse the Back the Brink campaign, which was launched by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Physicians for Social Responsibility in 2017.
“It was designed to call attention to the urgent danger of nuclear war, which is something that is really off most people's radars. Most people don't fully grasp just how serious this threat is, not just a threat of the past or the Cold War era," said Western Mass Area Labor Federation spokesperson Kevin Young. “It calls first and foremost for the US government to actively pursue a verifiable agreement among all of the nine nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. And that's the most important- I mean, that's the overarching objective. If we want to prevent nuclear war, we have to abolish nuclear weapons, and it has to be universal.”
The second point Back from the Brink calls for is that the United States renounce the right to use nuclear weapons first.
“Believe it or not, the US does not have a no first use policy on nuclear weapons," said Young. "The US has not pledged never to use nuclear weapons before anyone else, right? And I think that the US should be committed to never using nuclear weapons, but to say that that we're not even going to commit to a no first use policy is really reprehensible.”
In its 2022 unclassified Nuclear Posture Review, the Department of Defense articulated the US government’s position on use of the weapons:
“As long as nuclear weapons exist, the fundamental role of US nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our Allies, and our partners. The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its Allies and partners. The NPR takes a comprehensive and balanced approach to defending vital national security interests and reducing nuclear risks while affirming a continuing commitment to a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent and strong and credible extended deterrence.”
“The third point is ending the sole unchecked authority of the US president to launch a nuclear attack," Young continued. "It's horrifying that one individual has the capacity to obliterate the world. We need to end that. Fourth, we need to take US nukes off hair-trigger alert. It's terrifyingly easy to imagine a nuclear war starting, either consciously or accidentally. On a number of occasions since the dawn in the nuclear era in 1945, we've come basically within a hair's breadth of potential global destruction.”
The fifth and final point of Back from the Brink is that the US should cancel its plan to replace its current nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons, which the campaign pegs as costing $1.7 trillion over 30 years.
Young says the federation is calling on fellow labor groups and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO to join the effort.
“We are trying to look out for the good of society as a whole, and the good of working people, broadly speaking, and when you're concerned with that, you can't limit yourself to just talking about, you know, wages or workplace safety," he told WAMC. "We're also concerned with the safety of the world. So for us, this is very much a working class issue."
The coalition and the 50,000 workers it represents joins almost 500 other endorsers across the United States, including Western Massachusetts legislators like Democratic Congressmen Richard Neal and Jim McGovern and municipalities including Northampton, Holyoke, Cummington, Goshen, Easthampton, Windsor, and Williamsburg.
