The New York Times' W.J. Hennigan on the Risk of Nuclear War

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longa be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. " - John F. Kennedy, 1961

For over half a century, from the end of the Second World War to the turn of the millennium, avoiding nuclear war has been a key pillar of American foreign policy – guided by arms agreements, communication and common sense.

But today, many of those controls have faded away or ceased to exist – and the Bullet of Atomic Scientists – has warned we’re closer to the nuclear precipice than we have ever been before. 90 seconds to midnight, to use their terminology.

In fact in one of the most recent near misses, in the steppes of Eastern Europe, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that in the fall of 2022 it came down to the flip of a coin as to whether or not Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a Ukrainian offensive.

So how did we get here? Why has the fear of nuclear catastrophe faded from the public imagination even as the threat has increased? And what the hell happened in Ukraine that brought us so close to the edge? Today I am joined by The New York Times' W.J. Hennigan to discuss.


Bill, as he goes by, is serving as the lead writer for an ambitious, NYT series on nuclear threats and the challenges our world faces in combating proliferation. Bill has deep expertise covering the U.S. military and national security issues. He has reported from more than two dozen countries across five continents, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of American service members.

Bill come to the Times from Time magazine, where he was most recently a senior correspondent. In 2021, he received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense for his series on the role of the U.S. military throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year he was part of a reporting team that received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington Correspondence on the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath. Before joining Time in 2017, Bill worked for more than eight years at The Los Angeles Times, where he covered the Pentagon and the defense industry. He has earned several awards and citations, including the Associated Press Media Editors Award for international perspective and the National Press Club’s Michael A. Dornheim Award, and he was part of a team of journalists who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

Twitter: @wjhenn

At The Brink Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/07/opinion/nuclear-weapons-nytimes.html

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