NUCLEAR DÉJÀ VU

J. Robert Oppenheimer's shadow has stretched well into the 21st century. We are still living in the nuclear age he helped create in 1945-and still confronted with the same moral and political dilemmas he wrestled with about weapons of mass destruction. Now, Christopher Nolan's new film Oppenheimer offers a chance to reinvigorate public debate about the nuclear threat.

- MARY ROBINSON

Oppenheimer was horrified by the terrible power of the technology he had helped create. His story should sound as a wake-up call to global leaders and citizens alike who continue to exhibit alarming complacency and fatalism about the existential risk of nuclear annihilation.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has heightened the threat, and rendered much more difficult the prospect of meaningful U.S.- Russian dialogue on arms reduction. Its absence makes it all the more imperative that Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping put reducing nuclear risks at the top of their agenda whenever they next meet. Progress could help ease Sino-U.S. mistrust and improve wider geopolitical stability.

Yet when the nuclear threat is greater than at any other time since the height of the Cold War, all leaders in all states bear responsibility. As a young woman, I marched alongside hundreds of thousands of protesters against “the Bomb.” Now a grandmother, I am appalled that my grandchildren still face the same specter of nuclear war, and I ask myself, “Where are today’s marchers?”