Author’s Note This month’s ‘War & Peace’ column is dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022), the last leader of the Soviet Union, who grasped—as he told the United Nations in 1988—that in the nuclear age, “disarmament” is “the most important thing of all, without which no other issueRead More

One hears the word and wants to know more, but one also wants to forget it. One has heard both too much and not enough about Hiroshima. For the city evokes our entire nuclear nightmare…  Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967) Return to Hiroshima on AugustRead More

On April 21, Siegfried Hecker, a world-leading authority on nuclear security and proliferation, told John Mecklin, editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constituted “a major hinge, a turning point in the nuclear world”: as “big a hinge as when the Soviet Union dissolved.”Read More

As previewed in last month’s column, on January 22, the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – popularly known as ‘The Ban Treaty’ – became international law. Hailed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as “a major step toward a world free of nuclear weapons,” itRead More

Editor’s Note: The Spectator’s Sean Howard will be back next week with his regular, monthly column, but he sent along a press release from Peace Quest Cape Breton about an important development in the progress of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW):   On October 24Read More

“The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve…” Shakespeare, The Tempest   “That’s a dark thinking that I have a hard time understanding…” Marshall Billingslea, President Donald J. Trump’s Special Envoy for Arms Control   On May 15,Read More

The Spectator, Tree!Umphant I found Albert Barbusci! He’s in Kissimmee, Florida where “the Lemieux and Barbusci families” own and operate the Tree Trek Adventure Park! Okay, he may not actually be there right now (although why not be in Florida in December?) but he could be. When I stepped backRead More

On November 22, US President Donald Trump, asked who should be held accountable for the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pinned the blame on an unlikely suspect: “Maybe the world should be held accountable. Because the world is a vicious place. The world is a very viciousRead More

In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice: in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear William Blake   Was the June 12 Singapore Summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a breakthrough or a let-down, a successRead More

In a speech at the University of Geneva on May 24, UN Secretary-General (SG) António Guterres launched a new ‘Agenda for Disarmament’ – Securing Our Common Future – designed to revitalize and refocus efforts to achieve the core objective the UN Charter to “save succeeding generations from the scourge ofRead More