Art: Scanrail / 123rf.com
Conn Hallinan
Tipping the nuclear dominoes Some of Trump’s talk is about making arms manufacturers and generals happy, but it is also about the fact that the last war the US won was Grenada
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f the Trump administration follows through on its threat to re-start nuclear tests, it will complete the unravelling of more than 50 years of arms control agreements, taking the world back to the days when school children practised “duck and cover”, and people built backyard bomb shelters. It will certainly be the death knell for the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, passed by the UN’S General Assembly in 1996. The treaty has never gone into effect because, while 184 nations endorsed it, eight key countries have yet to sign on: the US, China, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Israel, Iran and North Korea. However, even without ratification, the treaty has had an effect. Many nuclear-armed countries, including the US, Britain, and Rus-
sia, stopped testing by the early 1990s. China and France stopped in 1996 and Indian and Pakistan in 1998. Only North Korea continues to test. Halting the tests helped slow the push to make weapons smaller, lighter and more lethal, although countries have learned how to design more dangerous weapons using computers and sub-critical tests. For instance, without actuColdType | July 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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