Antoine Bienvault / Photo credit: Pixabay
A hundred medical journals warned Thursday about the growing risk of nuclear conflicts in the world. In a joint editorial co-written by the editors of eleven leading journals, including the BMJ and the Lancet, the signatories call on nuclear-weapon states to eliminate their arsenals urgently. A request which is however difficult to envisage.
Eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us. This is the message sent by a hundred scientific journals this Thursday. However, making the 12,000 nuclear warheads currently in circulation disappear is an impossible mission. Despite their extreme danger, these remain a fundamental deterrent tool for the nine countries that have them, including France. Banning them would even be counterproductive according to the analysis of Eloïse Fayet, researcher at Ifri (French Institute of International Relations) and specialist in nuclear deterrence.
Absence of “conventional conflicts thanks to nuclear weapons”
“We must remember that it is partly thanks to nuclear weapons that we have not had very large-scale conventional conflicts since the end of the Second World War”, explains the scientist at the microphone of Europe 1 “We can even say to ourselves that if nuclear weapons no longer exist, we are possibly exposed to a much higher risk of conventional conflicts which would perhaps cause a lot of deaths”, she adds before asking what the doctors behind the message would think about this argument.
The specialist also asserts that the current nuclear threat is not greater than that experienced during the Cold War, contrary to what scientists claim. Nevertheless, the appeal of these journals was not published this week by chance since this Sunday, August 6 marks the 78th anniversary of the very first atomic bombing in history of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Americans. Three days later, it was Nagasaki’s turn to be taken off the map. As a reminder, the father of the atomic bomb is none other than Robert Oppenheimer, whose biopic currently in the cinema is dedicated to him, directed by Christopher Nolan.