NATO Shifting Towards First Strike Policy, Russia Says Ditto That! Doomsday Approaches!

As reported in the January 22nd edition of the UK publication,The Guardian, NATO Officials are calling for a radical change in nuclear policy to include a first strike policy when confronted with possible deployment or development of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The fabled WMDs, invoking visions of Doomsday, are once again the rationale behind increasingly aggressive policy making in the west. Sky News reports that Russia has recently reasserted its prerogative and resolve to use its nuclear arsenal to protect its sovereignty and that of its allies. Shades of the cold war returning in spades, without the checks and balances once the underpinning of MAD policy. MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction, was the key element in nuclear arms policy throughout the second part of the last century, the theory being that no one could strike first because the certainty of retribution would make such an attack an act of suicide, preventing a Doomsday scenario.

Those of us who grew up in the 50's and 60's recall the drills, duck and cover, the civil defense shelters, and the constant reminders that the world was "on the brink". Somehow post 60's those fears were marginalized or simply forgotten as the concerns of Armageddon was viewed as the paranoiac obsession of kooks and hippies. The end of the cold war was another reason to forget the old fears and to suppose that humanity no longer had to concern itself with the madness of a possible nuclear apocalypse, even the popular movies of the day began to ignore the nuclear doomsday scenario in favor of giant asteroids, aliens, a killer virus, or global warming. Dr. Strangelove, Failsafe and A Boy and His Dog, were replaced with Armageddon, Deep Impact and The Day After Tomorrow. Next month yet another Doomsday Movie is being released.

One organization that was created in those earlier, dark and fearful times survived through the apathy of the late 70s, 80's and 90's, outlived disco, the "Me Decade", and the yuppies, that was the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the watch dog group that monitors the likelihood of nuclear war. Although they accommodated the general perception that things were improving they never forgot that the threat remained maintaining their vigil throughout those decades of optimism and denial. The Doomsday Clock that the organization uses to represents the danger of a nuclear holocaust striking at midnight had been set back to 17 minutes to the hour with the end of the Soviet Empire, after being as close as 3 minutes till, with the testing of the H bomb. Last year it was advanced to 5 minutes before midnight, as the assessed danger looms more ominously. In recognition of many threats: a rapidly spreading nuclear capability in the hands of more and more nations, terrorist threats and the response of the nuclear powers, and a renewed discussion about first strike tactics, the clock is ticking faster.