Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
Is this competence or optics?
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Current Issue
February 6, 2026
Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
At a time when nuclear dangers are not just rising, but multiplying, we need all hands on deck in sounding the alarm and advocating for abolition of nuclear weapons.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick
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Over a million people gather in Central Park for the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in history on June 12, 1982.(Barbara Alper / Getty Images)
Near the end of his life, Robert McNamara wrote an essay for Foreign Policy, titled “Apocalypse Soon.” In it, the controversial former US Secretary of Defense and president of the World Bank argued that we “must move promptly toward elimination—or near elimination—of nuclear weapons.”
McNamara is known for his moderating role during the Cuban missile crisis, which might have saved us from the end of the world. In “Apocalypse Soon,” he writes about this experience and how it shaped his own views on nuclear weapons. But hardly is McNamara alone in examining his role in national security in his final years and concluding that he needed to speak out about nuclear weapons.
Others with long-time service at the highest levels of government have sounded the alarm. In 2007, former Republican secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Democratic secretary of defense William Perry, and former Democratic senator from Georgia Sam Nunn wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”
Today, of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Bill Perry and Sam Nunn are still alive. Nunn was involved in cofounding and leading the Nuclear Threat Initiative, while Perry, at nearly 100 years old, has his own William J. Perry Project, dedicated to “working to end the nuclear threat.” In 2014, in an interview with three Columbia University students, Perry shared that he was afraid we were already in a new nuclear arms race. More than 10 years later and with the seeming expiration of New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, we may be in an entirely new phase of this new race.
What is desperately needed is people currently in office coming to the same inescapable conclusion that these statemen had reached, while they can do something about it. It is quite shocking that of 100 senators, only Ed Markey has publicly urged the Trump administration to accept the offer of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to extend New START for another year. Markey, a veteran of nuclear policy, has championed many arms control causes during his time in Congress. But even Markey has yet to firmly stand behind nuclear abolition, by, …
Is this competence or optics?
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Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
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Current Issue
February 6, 2026
Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
At a time when nuclear dangers are not just rising, but multiplying, we need all hands on deck in sounding the alarm and advocating for abolition of nuclear weapons.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
Over a million people gather in Central Park for the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in history on June 12, 1982.(Barbara Alper / Getty Images)
Near the end of his life, Robert McNamara wrote an essay for Foreign Policy, titled “Apocalypse Soon.” In it, the controversial former US Secretary of Defense and president of the World Bank argued that we “must move promptly toward elimination—or near elimination—of nuclear weapons.”
McNamara is known for his moderating role during the Cuban missile crisis, which might have saved us from the end of the world. In “Apocalypse Soon,” he writes about this experience and how it shaped his own views on nuclear weapons. But hardly is McNamara alone in examining his role in national security in his final years and concluding that he needed to speak out about nuclear weapons.
Others with long-time service at the highest levels of government have sounded the alarm. In 2007, former Republican secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Democratic secretary of defense William Perry, and former Democratic senator from Georgia Sam Nunn wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”
Today, of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Bill Perry and Sam Nunn are still alive. Nunn was involved in cofounding and leading the Nuclear Threat Initiative, while Perry, at nearly 100 years old, has his own William J. Perry Project, dedicated to “working to end the nuclear threat.” In 2014, in an interview with three Columbia University students, Perry shared that he was afraid we were already in a new nuclear arms race. More than 10 years later and with the seeming expiration of New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, we may be in an entirely new phase of this new race.
What is desperately needed is people currently in office coming to the same inescapable conclusion that these statemen had reached, while they can do something about it. It is quite shocking that of 100 senators, only Ed Markey has publicly urged the Trump administration to accept the offer of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to extend New START for another year. Markey, a veteran of nuclear policy, has championed many arms control causes during his time in Congress. But even Markey has yet to firmly stand behind nuclear abolition, by, …
Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
Is this competence or optics?
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Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
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Current Issue
February 6, 2026
Speaking Out on the Insanity of Nuclear Weapons
At a time when nuclear dangers are not just rising, but multiplying, we need all hands on deck in sounding the alarm and advocating for abolition of nuclear weapons.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes and Peter Kuznick
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
Over a million people gather in Central Park for the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in history on June 12, 1982.(Barbara Alper / Getty Images)
Near the end of his life, Robert McNamara wrote an essay for Foreign Policy, titled “Apocalypse Soon.” In it, the controversial former US Secretary of Defense and president of the World Bank argued that we “must move promptly toward elimination—or near elimination—of nuclear weapons.”
McNamara is known for his moderating role during the Cuban missile crisis, which might have saved us from the end of the world. In “Apocalypse Soon,” he writes about this experience and how it shaped his own views on nuclear weapons. But hardly is McNamara alone in examining his role in national security in his final years and concluding that he needed to speak out about nuclear weapons.
Others with long-time service at the highest levels of government have sounded the alarm. In 2007, former Republican secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, former Democratic secretary of defense William Perry, and former Democratic senator from Georgia Sam Nunn wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, titled “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons.”
Today, of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse,” Bill Perry and Sam Nunn are still alive. Nunn was involved in cofounding and leading the Nuclear Threat Initiative, while Perry, at nearly 100 years old, has his own William J. Perry Project, dedicated to “working to end the nuclear threat.” In 2014, in an interview with three Columbia University students, Perry shared that he was afraid we were already in a new nuclear arms race. More than 10 years later and with the seeming expiration of New START, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, we may be in an entirely new phase of this new race.
What is desperately needed is people currently in office coming to the same inescapable conclusion that these statemen had reached, while they can do something about it. It is quite shocking that of 100 senators, only Ed Markey has publicly urged the Trump administration to accept the offer of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to extend New START for another year. Markey, a veteran of nuclear policy, has championed many arms control causes during his time in Congress. But even Markey has yet to firmly stand behind nuclear abolition, by, …
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