No War This Week

One of the many fears of the current time is of war. Not just the regional wars that still occur, though less in Europe than they used to be, but the big full-blown World Wars as seen in the Twentieth Century, now to be waged with nuclear weapons.

Though the nuclear clock looked like it had stopped ticking after the USSR's collapse in the nineties, recent events have suggested that it might have started up again.

Relations between NATO and Russia have been poor, exasperated by the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in the UK, and there has been a lot of sabre-rattling between the US and North Korea - along with Iran, one of the United States so-called Axis of Evil states.

And now it seems to have calmed down. Russia is hosting the World Cup, so superficially we are all friends again, Iran has fallen out with the US but not Europe and President Trump has had talks with Kim Jong-un. The president of the United States has met with the North Korean leader. Though there will need to be more talks and some signs of action from both sides, this is an unexpected and welcome move. No one could have predicted this several months ago, let alone last year.

So it would seem that the chances of nuclear war have been reduced again. The clock has stopped ticking, at least for a while.