85 Seconds to Midnight

The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight. Th at is not a metaphor, not a poetic exaggeration, not something a blogger invented to sell clicks. It is the assessment of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the people who actually know what they are talking about when it comes to global annihilation. And […]

The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds
to midnight. Th at is not a metaphor, not a
poetic exaggeration, not something a blogger
invented to sell clicks. It is the assessment of the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the people who
actually know what they are talking about when it
comes to global annihilation.
And 85 seconds is the closest we have ever been.
Closer than the Cuban Missile Crisis. Closer than
the height of the Cold War. Closer than any moment
in human history when we collectively decided to
build enough nuclear weapons to turn the planet
into a parking lot. Th e clock ticks, and we pretend
not to hear it. But that was before Saturday, when
Trump and Bibi went into Iran, killed the Supreme
Leader, about 160 schoolgirls, among others.
Let us survey the scene, because the scene is
absolutely bananas. A few weeks back, the Canadian
Prime Minister stood before the glittering elite at
Davos and drops a truth bomb so casual it could have
been a joke: “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the
menu”. He says this at a global forum, surrounded
by people who have been feasting at that table since
1945, dining on the resources of nations that never
got an invitation. And when the American president
gets his turn at the microphone, he shoots back
with something about annexing Canada by military
force. Not a joke. Not a hypothetical. A straightfaced
threat to absorb an ally, a neighbor, a NATO
partner, into the United States because why not?
Because the water around Greenland has Chinese
and Russian ships, and if that is reason enough to
claim territory by force, then what is reason enough
anymore?
Th e Greenland Aff air is genuinely bizarre if you
think about it. Th e United States wants to buy or
seize an island from Denmark, a NATO ally, because
Chinese and Russian vessels are poking around the
Arctic waters. Th e rationale is national security.
Th e method is threat of force. Th e response from
Europe is nervous laughter masking genuine terror.
And nobody seems to notice the obvious parallel:
when Vladimir Putin decided that Ukraine drift ing
into NATO constituted an unacceptable threat
to Russian security, when he acted to prevent an
adversarial military alliance from establishing itself
on his border, the West collectively lost its mind.
Hitler comparisons fl ew like confetti. Sanctions
rained down like biblical plagues. Th e man became
the Antichrist in a tracksuit.
But is he doing anything diff erent? Really?
Th e United States wants Greenland because of
ships. Russia wants a buff er because of tanks. One
is framed as national security, the other as naked
aggression. One is the good guy protecting the free
world; the other is a revanchist autocrat resurrecting
empire. Th e cognitive dissonance would be hilarious
if the stakes were not so high. Th e Americans
invaded Iraq on a lie—a vial of white powder
waved at the United Nations, a million dead Iraqis,
hundreds of thousands of women and children, and
not a single weapon of mass destruction found. Th e
response? Not remorse. Not apology. Not a single
offi cial saying “our bad.” Instead, they call the men
and women who killed that million “heroes.” Th ey
thanked them for their service. Th at service. Th e
service of obliterating families, destroying cities,
creating orphans, and then going home to parades.
And they have the audacity to call Putin and
Xi today’s Hitlers. But was Hitler really Hitler
because he did things diff erently, or was he Hitler
because he did things that great powers also do,
only he lost the war? If Germany had won, would
we be reading diff erent history books? Would the
Führerbunker be a museum where schoolchildren
learn about the great unifi er of Europe? Th e thought
is uncomfortable, which is probably why we do not
think it.
Consider the speech at Davos again. Th e
Canadian Prime Minister, whose country has
been at the table since it was built, casually admits
the game. Th e table is for diners. Everyone else is
dinner. Th is is not cynicism; it is confession. And
the confession comes not from moral awakening
but from panic, because the alpha dog at the table
has gotten bored of the menu and developed a taste
for what is on the table itself. When your own ally
threatens to annex you, when the enforcer becomes
the predator, the rules-based order reveals itself for
what it always was: a set of rules for everyone else,
and a set of exceptions for the people who wrote
them.
I have done more growing up in the last three
years than in the thirty-two years I have been alive
before them. I used to think there were rules that
applied equally, norms that constrained behavior,
a global conscience that punished the wicked and
rewarded the just.
I once read about an experiment, a strange
and disturbing one, where scientists gave mice
everything they could possibly need—food, water,
shelter, space—and watched them multiply. And
then, for reasons nobody fully understands, they
stopped reproducing. Th ey lost interest in each other.
Th ey faded away. Th ey went extinct in paradise. And
I wonder, sometimes, if that is what is happening to
some peoples. If you give a society everything, if you
insulate it from consequence, if you let it believe its
own mythology long enough, does it simply forget
how to survive? Does it turn on itself?
Th e odds on the horizon are morose. Th e New
Cold War is not like the old one. Th e old Cold War
had rules. It had backchannels. It had men in rooms
who understood that mutually assured destruction
meant nobody pushes the button. Th e new one has
social media and short attention spans and leaders
who treat nuclear brinkmanship like a reality show.
It has proliferating weapons systems that change the
equation entirely—hypersonic missiles that arrive
before you know they are launched, cyber weapons
that turn infrastructure into hostage, AI drones that
make life-or-death decisions in milliseconds. It has
allies turning on each other, old powers declining,
new ones emerging, and nobody quite sure who sits
where when the music stops.
And yet. And yet.
I have always had this feeling, this irrational
perhaps childish belief, that every nightmare has
a happy ending. Not because nightmares are not
terrifying, but because you wake up. Safe in your
bed, or perched on a cliff , or falling through endless
darkness—you wake up. Th e sheets are tangled.
Your heart is pounding. But you are here. You are
alive. Th e monsters were not real. Th at is the logic
of dreams. And I have clung to it, this conviction
that when we get to the precipice, when we stare into
the abyss and the abyss stares back, something will
pull us away. We will wake up. Th at was until last
Saturday.
I had a dream recently where I actually realised,
mid-dream, that I was dreaming. And I went
absolutely nuts. I went to town like a sick maniac.
I fl ew through walls. I swallowed the sun. I taunted
forever. I was a maniac, a profl igate, a jinn in a world
of phantoms… because consequences had ceased to
exist. And I woke up thinking: what if that is how the
people who could push the button live? What if they,
too, have realised that the rules are made up, that the
game is rigged, that none of this is real in the way
we pretend it is?
Th e grid-shift is obvious. Th e alpha dog is being
credibly challenged. Th e Pax Americana, that long
post-war moment when one power wrote the rules
and everyone else followed them, is unraveling at
the seams. But nature abhors a vacuum. Before an
alpha is deposed, there is civil war. Th e wolves do
not vote on succession; they fi ght. And in the human
world, the fi ghting looks like Ukraine and Gaza and
the South China Sea, Iran, the Sahel and everywhere
else great powers test each other’s resolve with other
people’s blood.
I wonder, sometimes, if the downfall of the
old order will echo that mouse experiment. If a
civilization provided everything, protected from
everything, believing in everything about itself,
simply forgets how to continue. If it goes extinct in
paradise while the rest of the world watches, unsure
whether to mourn or celebrate.
Th e clock ticks. 85 seconds to midnight. And all
I have is dream logic, the hope that we will wake up
before the bomb fl y, that the nightmare will end with
sheets tangled and heart pounding and the blessed
relief of daylight.
But dreams do not always end well. Sometimes
you do not wake up. Sometimes the falling just
continues. And sometimes, the people who could
push the button decide that consequences were
never real anyway.
So buckle up. Th e clock is ticking. And 85
seconds is just a number until it isn’t.