Start Of A New Unwinnable Nuclear Arms Race

      Trump announced he will pull the United States out of a nuclear weapons agreement signed long ago by Gorbachev and Reagan. Trump's arguments include allegations Russia is violating the treaty, and that China, which is not a signer to the treaty, is free to develop nuclear weapons that the United States is prevented from developing. Putin has been boasting lately of Russia's new supersonic nuclear weapons that cannot be stopped.
      What does humanity get in exchange for the leaders that it has? Leaders that are fabulously wealthy, or that make themselves fabulously wealthy? Leaders that are far removed from the lives of ordinary people, many of whom live in grinding poverty. Most people struggle for nothing more than a decent place to live, enough food to eat, clean water to drink, a job, and a small sense of security. Their leaders, far removed from ordinary lives, seem oblivious to the serious issues ripping humanity apart, including enormous environmental degradation, grinding poverty, violence, and religious fanaticism, to name but a few. In exchange for leaders that are often corrupt, enormously enriched, live like kings, and give so little to the people from whom they take so much, is it too much to ask that they not embark on another senseless nuclear arms race that no one can win? These leaders seem incapable of providing even that. If only they would take their billions of often ill gotten wealth, and leave the world stage if they cannot achieve at the very least a reduction in the nuclear weapons threat. Nuclear weapons proliferation is one of the greatest threats to human survival. No one wins a nuclear war. The radioactive fallout alone will destroy human civilization. Even if one sides destroys the other, the radioactive fallout will travel the world, making human life uninhabitable on all sides.
       Before the dark days of the cold war return, before a new nuclear arms race begins, will sanity prevail?
       Imagine if the world had leaders that announced an 80 per cent reduction of nuclear weapons within five years. The 20 per cent left is still enough to destroy the world. And then, after another five years, the remaining 20 per cent is destroyed. Imagine if all nations agree that the destruction of one nation by others is completely unacceptable, which will greatly reduce the argument for any nuclear weapons.
       It is not too late to pull back from a new nuclear arms race. If Trump, Putin and other world leaders change directions and stop and reverse a nuclear arms race, it will grant them a legacy that they can be proud of. Do they have the moral strength and courage to do so?

       There are poisoned, radioactive places that were ruined by nuclear weapons testing or by the storage of nuclear weapons material. Some of these storage places are ticking time bombs where radioactive material is already leaking out. Many people have been genetically damaged by nuclear weapons fallout, whether from nuclear weapons tests or exposure to nuclear weapons material, or from the bombs dropped over Japan. If only these world leaders visit the casualties of high radiation exposure, which is one of the most ferocious, damaging forces on earth. If only they realize that if they develop or unleash these demons, it does not make them martyrs, even if they are not the first ones to unleash the weapons. It makes them mass murderers and the destroyers of mankind and mankind's future.