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Threat Assessment: Doomsday Clock Moves Toward Midnight By Mike Nartker “Despite a campaign promise to rethink nuclear policy, the Bush administration has taken no significant steps to alter nuclear targeting policies or reduce the alert status of U.S. nuclear forces,” George Lopez, chairman of the Bulletin’s board of directors, said in a press release (see GSN, Feb. 20). “Meanwhile, domestic weapons laboratories continue working to refine existing warheads and design new weapons” (see GSN, Feb. 20). Lopez said there are several other reasons for the decision to move the hands closer to midnight, including efforts by terrorist groups to obtain nuclear weapons, the U.S. preference for unilateral action and lack of U.S. cooperation on international arms control agreements (see GSN, Jan. 24). The Bulletin singled out for criticism the Bush administration’s decisions to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its refusal to participate in talks for the implementation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (see GSN, Dec. 13, 2001). The Doomsday Clock’s new position is identical to that when it was created in 1947 as a way to graphically illustrate the current worldwide threat of nuclear war, which is represented by midnight. Today’s move is the third time the clock has been moved closer to midnight since the end of the Cold War in 1991. The clock’s most recent position was nine minutes to midnight, which represented tensions resulting from Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapon tests.
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