Ever since those two mushroom clouds darkened the skies above the fiery hell that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world’s two nuclear superpowers somehow found ways to work together – even in times of intense conflict – to prevent the world from plunging itself into all out nuclear war.

Yet, although we have gone 80 years without another nuclear bomb being detonated as an act of war, the fear of The Bomb remains as menacing as ever. Maybe more so. Our planet seems to be a mass of ever-increasing powder kegs, each fused by regional, racial, and yes, even religiously-driven hatreds.

This past week, we have been watching a nightmarish, longest running tragic opera of nuclear neighbors, running themselves amok once again. The reckless leaders of India and Pakistan seem determined to pound and dare the other to be the first to do the worst.

Yet, the world’s leaders – including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres – have responded just matter-of-factly, issuing statements or making a phone call or two. But no one has mounted the global pressure required to halt the recklessness and rescue the planet.

It’s not like we don't know what can go wrong. I’m reminded of a day in 2002, when I was sitting in the Kremlin office of the former Soviet military marshal, Igor Sergeyev, who had commanded the nuclear forces that targeted America’s Pentagon as Ground Zero and later was Russia’s defense minister. In that year after 9/11, Sergeyev was advising Russia’s still-new president, Vladimir Putin, who was in his nearby office, trying to make Russia’s fledgling democracy work.

Sergeyev was working with U.S. officials to safeguard Russia’s vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that had become poorly secured when the Soviet Union collapsed. Both nuclear powers wanted to ensure that Russia’s so-called “loose nukes” wouldn’t fall into the hands of terrorists who wanted them for just one purpose – to use them against us and Russia. I was in Moscow working on a book, “Avoiding Armageddon,” that would also be a weeklong PBS documentary series (it was narrator Walter Cronkite’s last project).

As Sergeyev spoke about how the two superpowers were collaborating to keep the planet safe, Sergeyev’s muted television set suddenly switched to combat scenes: India and Pakistan were warring again over Kashmir, the bucolic area both nuclear countries claim. Sergeyev pointed at the screen in the middle of talking optimistically about all the superpowers are doing for world peace – and shifted gears: That’s where it can all quickly come apart.

Indeed, it still can. And this past week, the world has watched the two subcontinent nuclear nations trade ferocious conventional strikes. It started in Kashmir, then spread into the heartland of Pakistan. In April, terrorist gunmen killed 26 Indian tourists in beautiful Kashmir. India, which is predominantly Hindu, said it traced the terrorists to a group that is based in predominantly Muslim Pakistan. India struck sites in Pakistan it said were linked to the terrorists. Pakistan said it shot down several Indian planes – and will retaliate.

Back in 2002, Pakistan’s Brigadier General Feroz Khan told me about his great fear that conventional attacks by India and Pakistan could spin out of control due to mistakes in the “fog of war” – and end up erupting into the planet’s first nuclear war.

Mainly, he said, what you don’t have is time. India and Pakistan are next-door neighbors; there is no ocean between them. So a general or decision-maker has just minutes to decide if his nation is under nuclear attack. Is his nuclear arsenal about to be wiped out? Use it or lose it? Is the incoming missile or bomber that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead actually carrying one? What if he guesses yes, launches his own retaliatory nuke, but discovers, too late, that the attacker merely dropped a conventional warhead?

“Once the conventional war breaks out, the fog of war sets in,” Khan said. “And during the war you have deceptions. You have misperceptions. You have communication breakdowns. Things get heated up…”

And that is why Guterres’ UN must go all-out – at once! – to finally do what it was created to do: generate a world of pressure – and finally forge true peace for the people who live in the mountain greenery of Kashmir.

EPILOGUE: In 2002, a small delegation of youths from Pakistan and India, who were so proud their nations were nuclear powers, were taken to Hiroshima to witness the annual memorial of the atomic tragedy that ended World War II. It was a life-changing experience for some.

“I was proud of our Pakistani patriots, but now I’m against it,” said Pakistan’s Jeremy Mance. “When I came here and saw the real disasters… I really changed my mind.” And Sumin Shahain, from Islamabad, agreed. “It’s a vicious cycle of revenge and retaliation,” she said. “We have to stop.”

Peace.

_____

_____

©2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.