Should The World Abolish All Nuclear Weapons?

by Marcy Winograd and Medea Benjamin

In a moment of candor, President Biden told Democratic Party contributors the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is the highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida. Referring to Russian President Putin’s veiled threats to use short-range nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the President added it was the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis such a “direct threat” had been issued.

Not true.

In I950, during the Korean War, President Truman said launching nuclear weapons was under “active consideration” against Chinese troops in North Korea.

In 1953, President Eisenhower – who later denounced the military industrial complex – threatened to order a nuclear launch if the Chinese refused to negotiate an armistice in the Korean War.

In 1969, during the Vietnam War, President Nixon secretly ordered B-52 nuclear bombers on high alert to pressure the North Vietnamese to surrender. Nixon subscribed to the “madman theory” – make your enemy believe you are mad enough to use nuclear weapons and the enemy will fold. But that theory proved ineffective, with US troops fleeing Vietnam in 1973 after an estimated 2-million Vietnamese lay dead, nearly 60,000 US soldiers in body bags.

Jonas Alexis

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the new book Zionism vs. the West: How Talmudic Ideology is Undermining Western Culture. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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