How Trump Can Turn Back the Doomsday Clock
SPOTLIGHT, 3 Feb 2025
Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick | Nuclear Age Peace Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has reset the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock 26 times since its debut in 1947, most recently in 2025 when it moved from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight.
Doomsday Clock 2025: It is now 89 seconds to midnight.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
30 Jan 2025 – The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has just announced its latest Doomsday Clock reading. In 2023, following nearly a year of the war in Ukraine, the clock reached 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it had ever been to the hypothesized nuclear Armageddon. This reading was maintained in 2024, as the Ukraine war marched towards a second anniversary and the war in Gaza dominated our screens and attention. This year, the Board moved the clock’s hands one second closer to midnight. One could argue that a larger jump would have been warranted. Insistent militarization, modernization, and expansion of nuclear arsenals loom in the background, while the devastating consequences of climate change, including most recently in southern California, remind us that climate change is here to stay and associated risks are growing. Humanity is facing dire threats.
Since the clock’s birth in 1947, it has become a widely recognized symbol of humanity’s ability to self-destruct. Fourteen Presidents, seven Democrats and seven Republicans, have led the US during this time. Five presided over a turn of the clock’s hands away from midnight: four Republicans (Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr.) and only one Democrat (Kennedy). The hands of the clock have moved closer to midnight by a staggering 19 minutes and ten seconds during Democratic administrations, while Republican administrations have overseen a movement of the clock’s hands away from midnight by a substantial 13 minutes and 39 seconds. If each US President approached their time in office as a race against the Doomsday Clock, rather than a race to US hegemony, Americans and the world would be far safer. President Trump has inherited a country and civilization that is closest to irreversible self-destruction, making a fundamental course reversal more important than ever. The following three objectives would ensure that President Trump can do exactly that.
End the Wars. The first and most important tasks for President Trump are to end the war in Ukraine, stabilize the Middle East by negotiating a genuine two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and embrace China as a competitor rather than an adversary, re-committing to the one-China policy and welcoming a genuine economic rivalry. Preventing further deaths and destruction, as well as potential escalation with unimaginable consequences if any of these wars were to turn nuclear, should be at the top of Trump’s agenda. Each of these instances of peace-making would likely shave a couple of minutes from the Doomsday Clock, not to mention earn Trump a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize.
Return to the Nuclear Weapons Negotiating Table. Once the Ukraine war is in the back mirror, Trump needs to return to the negotiating table with Russia on nuclear weapons. The two countries have the world’s largest nuclear arsenals that threaten to not just kill hundreds of millions of people throughout the northern hemisphere, but to impact global climate and food supplies in a catastrophic manner through the effects of nuclear winter. The bilateral meetings will need to add China either from the onset or once progress has been made on the reduction of the two largest arsenals. There will also be a moment to bring in the United Kingdom and France, who are the remaining two nuclear weapon states according to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Finally, the four states that are outside of the NPT (India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan) will need to be brought in for bilateral and multilateral negotiations that address their specific reasons for having nuclear weapons, e.g. the status of Kashmir in the case of India and Pakistan. Ultimately, all nine nuclear armed states will need to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and give up their arsenals, just as most of them have done with other weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons. Trump has the power to start this process.
Take Forceful Action on Global Warming. The world is burning, literally and figuratively. Temperatures have risen across the globe due to greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity. This is a statement of fact, supported by scientific understanding acquired and data collected over many decades. The extraordinary period of global warming has been accompanied by other planetary impacts, including sea level rise, widespread wildfires, more dangerous storms, and intensified dry and wet weather extremes. Just in the last year, parts of North Carolina were devastated by Hurricane Helene, while New York experienced a drought in November, with wildfires popping up in and around the city for days. No place is safe and “drill, baby, drill” will only make matters worse. President Trump needs to work with Congress on national legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in every way possible, work with the UN and the international community to support green economy transformations abroad, and with both to adapt to changes already afoot. He has next to him a man who has led the revolution in electrifying transport. More ingenuity, creativity, and government support will be needed to ensure that we can preserve a livable planet for generations to come. Trump should not shrug this problem away, nor shy away from working with other countries to address it.
The likelihood of Trump acting on this agenda is small but not zero. To his credit, the US President warned in 2023, “We have never been closer to World War III than we are today under Joe Biden. A global conflict between nuclear-armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history. It would be nuclear Armageddon. NOTHING is more important than avoiding that nightmare. We will avoid it. But we need new leadership.” He reiterated this message in his talk last week to the Davos World Economic Forum, explaining, “Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it. So, we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible.” Putin quickly responded that he is open to new arms control talks as well as to the extension of the New START Treaty, the last remaining arms control treaty, which is set to expire in a little more than a year. But Trump’s closest advisors have been singing a different tune. Echoing Project 2025, some have been pressuring Trump to increase the funding for nuclear weapons and expand the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal after years of cuts. There is even talk about restarting nuclear testing and developing new types of nuclear weapons.
Dangerously loose talk has also been coming from outside the new administration. Recently, Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, director of planning and policy for the U.S. Strategic Command, said that if a nuclear exchange were necessary, “we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States” and to make sure we retain sufficient capacity to deter potential adversaries.
Days ago, former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is currently the secretary of Putin’s Security Council, observed, “Against the backdrop of increasing conflict and aggravation of geopolitical rivalry in the world, the risks of a violent clash between major states, including with the participation of nuclear powers, are growing.”
The road ahead is rocky, unclear, and extremely dangerous. There is much that President Trump can do to make the country and the world better off, from building a fair and prosperous economy, to addressing threats from AI and pandemics, to investing in education, science, technology, and infrastructure, to treating undocumented migrants with the compassion they deserve. But the path to moving the Doomsday Clock’s hands is clear. We must not reach midnight because, despite the fanciful musings of Admiral Buchanan, there may be no one around to deter America’s then non-existent adversaries.
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Ivana Nikolić Hughes is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a senior lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University.
Peter Kuznick is a professor of history and the director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.
Tags: Armageddon, Bulletin Atomic Scientists, Doomsday Clock, Nuclear Abolition, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear war
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Feb 2025.
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