Chomsky: World racing toward ‘irreversible’ nuclear disaster  

Leading American political analyst and philosopher Noam Chomsky says the world is racing toward an “irreversible” disaster due to an increased risk of nuclear war, failure to address climate challenges, and a diminished ability of great powers to tackle international problems rationally

During an interview with RT on Saturday, Chomsky recalled that in recent years the Doomsday Clock, which reflects how close humanity is to nuclear Armageddon, has moved closer to Midnight, which symbolizes the extinction of humanity.

Chomsky, who is a Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, said humanity’s main concerns are “an increasing threat of nuclear war” and “a very severe and growing threat of destruction of the climate.”

He added that the latter problem persists because “states are not doing what they know they must do to solve this crisis.”

The third issue, Chomsky said, is “the deterioration of an arena of rational serious debate and deliberation” combined with “the collapse of democratic forces” around the world.

“All three have gotten considerably worse during the past year, and unless there's a sharp reversal, we'll simply be heading for a precipice, falling over, irreversible, and not in the long distant future,” he warned.

Chomsky’s comments came after former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that those who want to see Moscow defeated in Ukraine, ignore the fact that “a loss by a nuclear power in a conventional war may trigger the start of a nuclear war.”

Medvedev, who now serves as deputy chairman of President Vladimir Putin's Security Council, said, "Nuclear powers have never lost major conflicts on which their fate depends."

Russia and the United States, the largest nuclear powers, hold around 90% of the world's nuclear warheads.

Previously, Chomsky said the rising tension between Russia and the United States might lead to a nuclear war that could cause the end of mankind.

“The US has just sharply increased; it quadrupled military expenses on its side. The Russians are doing something similar. There are constant near collisions, jets coming close to colliding with one another... That threat is escalating and very serious,” Chomsky added.

Chomsky said tensions between Moscow and Washington have put the world on the verge of “termination for the species.”

He said the symbolic Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which represents a countdown to possible global catastrophe, is moving closer to Midnight.

Established in 1947, the founders of the clock, who are advised by 18 Nobel Laureates, said that the clock stood at three minutes to midnight, due to “[un]checked climate change, global nuclear weapons modernizations, and outsized nuclear weapons arsenals.”

Russia's Medvedev warns of nuclear war if Moscow loses in Ukraine

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned NATO that the defeat of his country as a nuclear power in Ukraine could trigger a nuclear war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in December that nuclear tensions had risen because of the war in Ukraine.

Putin warned that the Ukraine war could go on for a long time.  He also spoke about the risk of a nuclear war but added that Russia has not “gone mad” and sees its own nuclear arsenal as a purely defensive deterrent.

The Russian leader said Moscow would not transfer its nuclear weapons to anyone as Washington has stationed some of its nukes in NATO allies in Europe.

The United States has privately warned Russia for several months of "consequences" for any use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to American officials, while Moscow has advised Washington of its nuclear “red line”.

Unnamed officials told The Washington Post in September that the Biden administration had publicly been purposefully vague about what those consequences would be in an attempt to build concern among Russian leaders, a method of nuclear deterrence called “strategic ambiguity.”

US President Joe Biden has warned Putin against thoughts of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, adding that it would “change the face of war unlike anything since WWII.”

US will be the first country to pull the nuclear trigger: Academic

The United States will be the first country to pull the nuclear trigger, an American academic and political commentator has warned.

Russia began its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, with a declared aim of “demilitarizing” Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics. Back in 2014, the two republics, which are predominantly Russian-speaking, broke away from Ukraine, prompting Kiev to launch a bloody war against both regions. The years-long conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, mostly in the Donbas.

Since the onset of the February conflict between the two countries, the United States and its European allies have unleashed an array of unprecedented sanctions against Russia and poured numerous batches of advanced weapons into Ukraine to help its military fend off the Russian troops, despite repeated warnings by the Kremlin that such measures will only prolong the war.

The Kremlin believes the Ukraine conflict to be a proxy war waged against it by the United States and its allies.

‘US poses the greatest threat to world peace' 

In a previous interview, Chomsky said the United States poses the “greatest threat” to world peace.

He said that “one [threat to humankind] is an environmental catastrophe which is imminent and we don’t have a lot of time to deal with it and we are going the wrong way, and the other has been around for 70 years, the threat of nuclear war, which is in fact increasing. If you look at the record it is a miracle we have survived.”

Chomsky said that “the US and Israel are the two major nuclear states in the world,” adding, “in international polls, run by US polling agencies, the United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin”.

“No other country is even close” to the US, he said, adding that American media outlets refuse “to publish this. But it doesn’t go away.”

When asked about the extent to which the United States and its allies are responsible for terrorist attacks around the world, he said the US itself is the biggest terrorist.

“The worst terrorist campaign in the world by far is the one that’s being orchestrated in Washington. That’s the global assassination campaign. There’s never been a terrorist campaign of that scale.”

Chomsky said what he meant by the US global assassination campaign is, in actuality, Washington’s “drone campaign”.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the eminent American linguist said that the US and Israel are rampaging in the Middle East by carrying out constant “aggressions, violence, terrorist acts, illegal acts”.

Asked about Iran and its nuclear program, Chomsky said, “Iran’s strategic doctrine is defensive, it’s designed to hold off an attack long enough for diplomacy to start,” but Washington and Tel Aviv “do not want to tolerate a deterrent.”

Chomsky said aside from nuclear proliferation, climate change also posed a grave threat to humanity.

“The threat of global warming is very serious. Every time one reads a science journal, there’s an even more alarming discovery,” he warned.

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