Madness to wantonly heighten nuclear risk

As is known to all, a nuclear war means human annihilation, as a nuclear winter would cause most humans to die in a mass extinction event similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Given that some 14,000 nuclear weapons are still stockpiled around the world, the international community faces the most pressing task to work together to try to avoid anything that might trigger their use.

Thus it was unhelpful that US President Joe Biden recently evoked that "end-of-the-world" prospect by referring to a nuclear "Armageddon", when veering into talk about the Russia-Ukraine conflict at the end of his standard fundraising remarks in New York on Thursday. Saying that Russian leader Vladimir Putin was "not joking when he talks about the use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons", he added that "We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Biden's remarks were in response to Putin pledging to "use all the means at our disposal" to "protect Russia and our people" last month when he announced plans to conscript Russian men to serve in Ukraine.