Warnings as Doomsday Clock edges ever closer to midnight

Alan Dupont

The Australian 1 October 2024

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Worried that a nuclear war could pose an existential threat to humankind, a group of American researchers known as the Chicago Atomic Scientists conceived the idea of a doomsday clock in 1947 that would measure metaphorically how close the world was to a global catastrophe.

Many of these scientists had intimate knowledge of the danger of a nuclear war, having worked on the development of the Manhattan Project – the top-secret program to make the first atomic bombs during World War II, popularised in the 2023 film Oppenheimer.

The clock’s initial setting was seven minutes to midnight, with midnight representing the moment at which a global catastrophe would occur. In 1991, it was wound back to a reassuring 17 minutes following the signing of the path-breaking Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the former Soviet Union and the US when war seemed a distant prospect.

Through the years the definition of a global catastrophe has broadened from nuclear threats to include climate change, bioterrorism and artificial intelligence.

This year the clock was reset at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to a theoretical doomsday. Although not meant to be taken literally, it would be foolish to dismiss the judgment of the atomic scientists responsible for maintaining the doomsday clock.

They see the world as being in a bad place confronting numerous interconnected crises with no circuit-breakers in sight. And they are far from alone in their pessimistic assessments.

In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, US President Joe Biden declared the world was at an “inflection point”.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres says “we are seeing an epidemic of impunity around the world” and “people everywhere are losing faith in governments, institutions and financial and economic systems”.

British Army head Sir Roland Walker says the West has just three years left to prepare for war against an “axis of upheaval” comprising China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

Ukraine is the most dangerous of today’s many crises because Russia’s modern-day tsar, Vladimir Putin, is threatening to use his nuclear arsenal if Kyiv is allowed to strike military installations deep inside Russia with Western supplied conventional missiles.

Putin is probably bluffing. He doesn’t have a monopoly over nuclear weapons, so escalating to a nuclear conflict would be suicidal. Nonetheless, a heightened risk that the Ukraine conflict could go nuclear has moved the doomsday clock a little closer to midnight.

Nuclear concerns are also at the heart of the worsening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that could trigger a crisis that reverberates beyond the Middle East. Israel is an undeclared nuclear weapons state and Iran is only a few months away from becoming one.

If Tehran is drawn into the conflict in support of Hezbollah, Iranian hardliners will argue that going nuclear is the only way to guarantee Iran’s security.

A third concern is the growing antagonism between the axis of upheaval and the US and its allies. This is starting to look like a reprise of the Cold War and could easily end up as a hot war.

In recent weeks Russian bombers, surveillance aircraft and drones have penetrated the airspace of Japan, Romania and Latvia. China’s air force routinely intrudes into the air identification zones of Taiwan and Japan while its paramilitary coast guard harasses other countries fishing vessels and ships in the South China Sea.

Thumbing its nose at UN sanctions, North Korea continues to develop and launch intercontinental ballistic missiles and is poised to conduct a nuclear weapons test.

Iran provides the Houthis in Yemen with the missiles used to attack merchant ships in the Red Sea and reportedly is brokering secret talks with Moscow to supply advanced Russian anti-ship cruise missiles to the terrorist group.

So how prepared is Australia for a more conflicted world? Not well enough, according to critics.

On the upside, a whole-of-government crisis management framework has been developed to prevent, prepare and respond to natural disasters, pandemics, terrorism and so-called all-hazard events. The Australian Government Crisis and Recovery Committee is the primary co-ordinating body, and the key underpinning legislation is the 2020 National Emergency Declaration Act. But neither provides sufficient guidance or legislative powers to mobilise Australian society in the event of war, a prospect that must be taken seriously given the rising number of geopolitical flashpoints around the world.

Civil defence and national mobilisation on a scale we haven’t seen since World War II is essential to preparedness and deterrence.

Direct military threats can’t be ruled out. But a likelier scenario is that an escalation of hostilities in Asia, Europe or the Middle East could severely disrupt our trade, communications and financial systems.

Mike Pezzullo, the former head of the Department of Home Affairs, argues that we need to adopt and modernise the practices of the 1930s and 1950s by preparing a war book that details what needs to be done and by whom in the event of war. The war book would be an integrated set of plans to protect critical infrastructure, supply chains, industrial material and essential sectors of the economy such as shipping, aviation, health services and pharmaceuticals. It also would include plans for building strategic stockpiles of food, water, energy and critical minerals – none of which presently exists.

Last month, former British trade and Indo-Pacific minister Anne Marie Trevelyan criticised Australia’s bureaucratic culture and slowness in developing war-ready legislation. What was required, she said, was legislation comparable to that passed during Covid that “swept away red tape” and allowed Britain to fast-track the development of the AstraZeneca vaccine at Oxford University.

Trevelyan said she encountered much resistance from her ministerial colleagues when she advocated for a “pull open the drawer” war book because of the cost implications, “which is why no one wants to do it” – including, it seems, the Albanese government.

Alan Dupont is chief executive of geopolitical risk consultancy The Cognoscenti Group and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute.