Is Nuclear War Becoming More Likely?

A surface-to-surface Agni V missile is launched from the Wheeler Island off the eastern Indian state of Odisha April 19, 2012. REUTERS/Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation/Handout

Peter Apps. Reuters: Is the risk of nuclear war rising?

On Sunday, November 28, Californians watched with bemusement and in some cases alarm as a bright light moved across the sky. It wasn’t a UFO. It was a U.S. Navy Trident ballistic missile.

It was, of course, just a test — the first of two in three days. They coincided with tough talk from U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who earlier that month had criticized Russia for engaging in “challenging activities” at sea and air, in space and cyberspace. Days earlier, he had been in the South China Sea aboard an aircraft carrier, sending a similarly robust message to China about its actions in the disputed region.

I was eight years old when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. No sooner had I become even barely aware of the threat of nuclear war than it was gone, apparently forever.

Now, however, it has quietly returned.

WNU Editor: We are nowhere near what the conditions were like during the Cold War. But the trendlines are disturbing.