The end of everything.

I read Arundhati Roy's essay 'The End of Imagination' while on the bus to Chicago a couple of months ago. As always, I was awestruck by AR's prose, her impassioned appeal to sanity, the use of those formidable skills which make her such a respected writer used with elan. The topic she discusses is of especial relevance now, rather than ever. Just before his rather ignominious departure, Blair initiated steps to enhance England's nuclear deterrent, at a cost of 25 Billion pounds. Why? Who are these enemies that England must be guarded against? North Korea is fighting hard for the unfreezing of a paltry 35 million $ in some off-shore account as a price for standing down its nuclear programme. How can such a country, starving and beggared ever begin to be a threat to England? The real threats are racial strife in inner cities, the vanishing jobs and the disillusionment of the laid-off who were promised that unfettered economic growth would bring milk and honey to everyone, but has simply deprived millions of everything. Those 25 billion pounds could have been better used to improve hospitals and bring back jobs where they are needed. But is anyone listening.

So, back to nukes. The world would be a much better place with no nukes at all. None. Nada. Terms like "credible deterrent", and the "doctrine of mutually assured destruction" make sense only when the enemy thinks and acts like you expect him to. What of the dispossessed, the starving and dying, the miserable and the wretched? They who hold, with good reason that the economic policies endorsed by London and Washington, and enforced by the World Bank are directly responsible for their agony. They who would share that agony with those who have caused it. They who would seek revenge in the searing nuclear fireball. What protection is there against the truly committed fanatic? None whatsoever, except atonement and an honest effort to reverse the injustice of generations. That is where these gigantic military budgets should go. Men cannot reach for the stars by treading on the dying bodies of other men. The only way out of this state is to beat our swords into ploughshares. If only our leaders understood that.

Fail-Safe is a 1962 book by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler which deals with the terrible spectre of accidental nuclear war when a wing of Vindicator nuclear bombers receive an erroneous message to conduct a full strike on Moscow. With all radio communications shut down, their commander leads a penetration of Soviet airspace. The alarm bells start going off in Washington and Moscow at the same time. While the leaders of the two superpowers try to reason their way through the crisis, the Vindicators continue on their path, true to their orders, each one of them carrying ordnance worth 40 Megatons, enough to scorch the earth. The Russians scramble their best fighters, but even with the USAF advising them, they are unable to shoot down all of the Vindicators. The US President then comes to a terrifying decision: the sacrifice of Abraham. The obliteration of Moscow must be met with an equal bloodletting on the American side, else the reprisal will be too horrific to imagine. Minutes after Moscow is hit with 80 megatons, the President orders a Strategic Air Command bomber orbiting New York to lay an 80 megaton in the same burst pattern. An eye for an eye. This book brings to the forefront the fact that we are playing with fire, and we do not have the fortitude to stand fast on the side of sanity. The only victors in a nuclear holocaust will be the cockroaches. Surely that is something worth contemplating.