Joseph Gerson

This is a moment to be pressing President Biden and those around him to embrace a no first strike doctrine, for Congress to defund the land-based ICBMs and other nuclear first strike weapons, to initiate negotiation of an Asia-Pacific Freeze to halt the suicidal arms race.

We face a classical Thucydides Trap between rising and declining powers that too many times in history has climaxed in catastrophic wars. But now the stakes are existential.

Tragically, despite widespread high hopes for change, in the existential realm of potentially omnicidal nuclear war preparations, the Biden administration has signaled more continuity than change.

First Donald Trump and now Joe Biden have been playing with fire when it comes to policy with China.

A new and global Cold War with China is among the last things that humanity needs.

Despite our differences with China—some of them profound—we would do well to prioritize pursuing mutually beneficial diplomacy and building collaborations to address the existential threats to survival over preparing for catastrophic war with the Middle Kingdom.

The existential truth is that the U.S. and China are caught in the Thucydides Trap, the historic pattern of inevitable tension between rising and declining powers that have too often climaxed in catastrophic war.

"Human beings and nuclear weapons cannot coexist."