Facing the Danger of Nuclear War Over Ukraine
History teaches us that catastrophe can happen, even if leaders don’t want it
At the most dangerous moment in global relations since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the US and the USSR stood at the brink of nuclear war and the US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara left the White House one day literally “thinking that might be the last sunset I saw,” most of us are going through our days as if nothing has changed. On Google Search, people’s top concern in the past two days has been where to find their nearest St. Patrick’s Day parade, followed by queries about Von Miller, the Buffalo Bill’s new defensive end, Liverpool’s victory over Arsenal, an earthquake in Japan, and the latest on Warriors star Stephen Curry’s injured knee. On Trendsmap, which shows what hashtags are trending locally, #StPatricksDay is competing with #MarchMadness for most Twitter users’ attention.
Even the editors of The New York Times, who still set the elite news agenda for most of the rest of mainstream media, seem fairly unconcerned by what is plainly before us, burying a story on the risk of nuclear war on page A12 in the print edition that arrived on my doorstep this morning, and showing it nowhere on its online homepage. According to the Times, a gamble by the Russians to use a single nuclear strike to force…
