Beyond Nuclear International
Competition, Conflagration, or Coexistence?
The US-China relationship doesn’t have to be MAD, writes Joseph Gerson
Just over 60 years ago, in structuring the analytical abilities of freshmen who aspired to become US diplomats, including future President Bill Clinton, professor Carroll Quigley, who taught Evolution of Civilizations, insisted that his students accept that civilizations are based on six interrelated dynamics: political, economic, military, intellectual, social, and spiritual dimensions. He also taught that in different periods of history one or more of these dimensions are most important to defend and to the exercising of power beyond the society’s borders.
That analysis applies today when the struggle for great power hegemony is rooted in economic and intellectual competition as much as in traditional, but increasingly complicated, arms races. Twenty-first century economies and militaries cannot function without rare-earth metals and magnets. The list of civil and military products that cannot be manufactured without them begins with cell phones and LED screens to F-35 fighter jets, Virginia– and Columbia-class submarines, Tomahawk missiles, radar systems, and Predator drones. China has a near monopoly over both the minerals and magnets production although Greenland—an object of US President Donald Trump’s desire—can be a future source of those minerals.
Beijing’s export controls announced in October are the economic equivalent of a 1950s nuclear weapon test, demonstrating both its possession and willingness to use this ultimate economic weapon to impose global economic domination. This was not the first time that Beijing flaunted its economic superweapon. Hardly recognized by anyone in the United States, the ban came in reaction to US Commerce Department China hawks’ announcement of new technology export bans targeted primarily against China.
Power and security have always rested on economic foundations. Slavery and the industrial revolution made the European colonial era possible. Japan’s defeat in its Pacific War was dictated by the reality that it’s GDP was one-tenth that of the United States. And, as the country lacked a modern economy, the Russian revolution was won on the slogan of “Bread and Peace.”
This century’s economic and technological developments have been no exception. China now holds the US Seventh Fleet, which has guaranteed US dominance of the Pacific Ocean—“the American Lake”—at risk from its aerial denial missiles and massive naval fleet. Russian-Ukraine drone warfare, now augmented by AI coordinated drone swarms, and by the integration of AI and cyber warfare, now place conventional military and nuclear forces at risk. So too, essential civilian infrastructures, which place water and electrical supplies at risk.
Read MoreMinnesota’s aging nukes pose national threat
More than electricity, the reactors supply a steady dose of radioactive tritium in drinking water, writes Susu Jeffrey
“Sometimes before I give a speech, I ask the audience to stand up if they or someone in their family has had cancer,” says John LaForge of Nukewatch. “Eighty percent of the audience gets up.”
The Monticello nuclear power reactor is on the Mississippi River about 35-miles northwest of Minneapolis. Xcel’s twin Prairie Island reactors, plus about 50 giant dry casks storing waste reactor fuel, are all in the floodplain of the Mississippi. This waste is sited 44 to 51 miles southeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
There are no plans to move the waste off-island because there is no alternative destination. In fact, 34 more concrete encased steel casks are planned. There is no national hot radioactive waste repository. Think of these waste container sites as permanent radioactive waste dumps.
The greater Twin Cities’ 3.7 million people are in the nuclear “shadow” (within 50 miles) of all three nukes. The Mississippi River serves 20 million people with drinking water, way beyond the Minnesota state population of 5.7 million. Minnesota’s aging nukes are a national threat. For approximately the next six generations, radioactive tritium will be a part of the drinking water wherever those molecules wander.
The Monticello nuke was licensed in 1970 for 40 years, and went online in 1971, a year it had two radioactive cesium spills. In 2010, the license was renewed for another 20 years until 2030. Xcel Energy has even been granted an extension for another 20 years until 2050. It is a corporate financial security move not yet approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which holds the final consent. Paperwork is one thing, pipes are another.
Read MoreWhy citizen scientists and public information are so crucial
Russian activist Andrey Ozharovskii, who was detained in Mongolia for radiation testing, must be restored full rights, urges Nuclear Transparency Watch
Editor’s note: The letter and call to action below were originally made in August 2025 after Andrey Ozharovskii was first detained and then deported back to Russia from Mongolia. To date, his passport has not been returned. However, his story is also an excellent illustration of the need for independent citizen scientists working in the field to provide the public with accurate and unbiased information about the levels of radiation they may be being exposed to on a daily basis. And of course, it speaks to larger issues of freedom as well.
Nuclear Transparency Watch, including our colleague Jan Haverkamp, has published an open letter regarding the arrest of physicist and environmentalist Andrey Ozharovskii in Mongolia.
Andrey Ozharovskii was detained by Mongolian authorities while measuring radiation levels with a personal dosimeter near uranium mining sites operated by the French company Orano. Although released, his passport has not been returned, and he faces uncertainty about his freedom of movement.
Ozharovskii’s activities form part of a long-standing European tradition of “citizen science” in the nuclear field: independent experts and local communities taking radiation measurements to help ensure transparency, safety, and accountability. Nuclear Transparency Watch and its members have supported such initiatives across Europe in cooperation with regulators, laboratories, and NGOs.
The principle at stake is simple but crucial: environmental information, including radiation data, must be accessible to the public. This is at the heart of the Aarhus Convention, the international treaty guaranteeing the rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice on environmental matters. Under its Article 3(8), people exercising these rights must not face persecution or harassment.
Mongolia is currently considering accession to the Aarhus Convention. This incident highlights why such commitments matter: ensuring that those who act to protect the public and the environment can do so without fear. At this moment, Andrey Ozharovskii should regain access to his ability to travel freely.
Read MoreHuman security is climate security
The COP30 climate summit is about more than carbon, it’s about conscience, writes Dr. Ghassan Shahrour
Health professionals have long warned that climate change is a public health emergency. But it is also a moral emergency. At COP30, we must demand that climate action include disarmament, equity, and protection for the most vulnerable. As a physician and humanitarian, I have witnessed how environmental degradation and human suffering are inseparable — from war-torn landscapes to drought-stricken communities. This is not just about carbon. It is about conscience.
A personal journey toward environmental conscience
My relationship with the environment didn’t begin with declarations or data. It grew through lived experience and shared struggle. I first encountered the environmental toll of war not in theory, but in the field: the long- and short-term damage caused by landmines, cluster munitions, and other remnants of conflict. These realities were central to the discussions I joined in Damascus, Sharjah, the Dead Sea, Cartagena, and Beirut. Each meeting deepened my conviction that environmental justice is inseparable from human dignity.
In 2012, while coordinating the Arab Human Security Network, I participated in the National Meeting of Environmental Societies in Syria. There, I proposed that our active local organizations be part of the global environmental movement — one that began in earnest with the 1972 Stockholm Conference, the first to place the environment at the heart of international concern. I do not speak as an expert above others, but as someone who has witnessed how human suffering and environmental neglect are one and the same. In conflict zones, the air is poisoned not only by smoke but by silence. The soil is not only depleted but denied its right to renewal.
Belém: A test of global conscience
On November 10, 2025, COP30 opened in Belém, Brazil — the beating heart of the Amazon. This is not just a symbolic location; it is a living reminder of what’s at stake. A decade after the Paris Agreement, and amid worsening climate disasters and broken promises, we must recognize that this moment is not merely environmental. It is ethical. It is human.
Embroiled in war and embattled at home
Can president Zelensky survive a kickback scheme involving the state nuclear company that enriched associates and possibly even ministers in his own government, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
If you live in Ohio, and possibly even in Illinois and South Carolina, you might be getting a bit of a déjà vu feeling reading the news coming out of Ukraine about a corruption scandal involving Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear energy company. That’s because two independent Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies have just uncovered a massive graft scandal involving kickbacks from nuclear power projects.
In July 2020, then Speaker of the Ohio House, Republican Larry Householder, was arrested along with four others for involvement in what was described as “the largest bribery money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”
In a year-long covert investigation by the US Attorney’s office and the FBI, a plot was uncovered that involved $61 million in dark money that flowed from FirstEnergy into the pockets of Householder and others to ensure a favorable vote in the House that would guarantee a $1.5 billion bailout of the company’s Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear reactors to keep them running. Once uncovered, indictments followed. Householder is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Similar scandals rocked Illinois and South Carolina, also connected to nuclear power plant schemes and also leading to indictments and prison sentences.
In Ukraine, the two investigating agencies — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) — have just named at least eight individuals who have reportedly been charged with bribery, embezzlement, and illicit enrichment, netting around $100 million off contracts with Energoatom.
Details about precisely how the scheme operated and which contracts were involved have not fully emerged. However, some sources have suggested it involved a wide range of Energoatom’s private subcontractors who were allegedly forced to pay kickbacks of 10-15% to secure or maintain their supplier status and ensure timely payments.
Read MoreSpoiler alert: deterrence doesn’t work
‘A House of Dynamite’ reminds us there are no good choices after a nuclear launch, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Warning: This article contains spoilers in connection to the film, A House of Dynamite. If you have not seen the film, you are advised to read no further (and to watch the film).
Upon the abrupt ending of Kathryn Bigelow’s new drama, A House of Dynamite, the three bros in the row in front of us at the cinema all exclaimed in unison, “Whaaaat??” They had expected the film to have an ending; a resolution; a big bang for their fourteen bucks. “Congratulations” I remember uttering under my breath, “you just missed the entire point of the movie.”
A House of Dynamite is not about seeing things blow up. It is about realizing that once things are about to blow up, there is no right decision anyone can make, not even the President of the United States. (In case you haven’t seen the film, an omission you should immediately remedy, it features three versions of the same 18-minute span during which US military, officials and the US president must respond to a single nuclear missile headed for Chicago.)
The editorial pages of the Washington Post, which have become a compliant mouthpiece for the paper’s owner, Trump-supporting billionaire Jeff Bezos, couldn’t wait to nitpick at the film, desperate to find “inaccuracies.” The US president, they complained, played by Idris Elba, would not have been “alone on Marine One with one military aide” when faced with deciding what to do about the missile.
Really? Chicago is about to be obliterated and this is what niggled at them? Doubtless the scene was done this way for dramatic effect. Their other gripe was that the greeting between the president and his deputy national security advisor was too formal. Perhaps the Post had to cling to these trivial pursuits because when it comes to the things of substance in the film, almost everyone familiar with how such a scenario would play out has called many of the depictions in it by and large chillingly accurate.
All of this was simply the Post’s way of navigating toward the central thesis of its editorial — entitled How to live in our nuclear ‘House of Dynamite — that “only deterrence, not disarmament, can actually keep the peace” and that “Mutually assured destruction works.” Houston, we’ve had a problem!
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