Professor Matthew Bunn's thoughts on the 80th Anniversary of the Trinity Test

The nuclear fire lit for the first time in the Trinity test 80 years ago kindled both fears and hopes. The fear, of course, was that the terrifying power of this new weapon would unleash horrifying destruction. While the United States had invented such a weapon first, it would surely not be the last – and as long as such weapons existed, humanity would be living with the danger of nuclear holocaust. The hope was that this fear would drive the world to new accords that would prohibit nuclear weapons and build the foundation for peace.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of nuclear weapons, Dr. Jack Gibbons, then President Clinton’s science advisor, delivered a speech (linked above) I wrote outlining the “peril and a hope” posed by nuclear weapons, and the efforts at that more hopeful time to reduce the danger. Much of it is still relevant today:

Unfortunately, those hopes have not been fulfilled. On the 80th anniversary of the nuclear age, we face a more multi-polar nuclear world with thousands of nuclear weapons, intense animosity among nuclear-armed states, a weakened regime of nuclear arms restraint, and evolving technologies making nuclear balances ever more complex to maintain. Nevertheless, avoiding a new nuclear arms race would serve the interests of all the nuclear-armed states, and the world; there is still some hope that the nuclear-armed states will see that their interests lie in mutual nuclear restraint and measures to reduce the nuclear dangers the world faces.