Humanity: Like a Rock
Interesting Yet Potentially Useless Observations on Nuclear Proliferation and Autocrats
We are planet earth.
Earth, over its mighty history, has evolved from a clump of a gases to a clump of rocks to a world of oceans to - let’s not belabor the point - to the planet we know today. Paralleling this history is the ever-changing earth climate. From being on fire, to drowning in water, to choking on ash, to being space-cold, to tropical island hot, the earth has exhibited a surprising capacity to promote all textures of climate change.
Up to this point in earth-time, only the earth has been able to animate these changes. Now, and for the first time, the earth sports a being that, intentionally or not, has developed an earth-like capability to change earth’s climate.
Humans ability to launch endless oceans of carbon into the air and to develop ever-larger nuclear blast zones threaten to displace earth as the sole promoter of climate change. Nuclear nonproliferation is a means humans developed to prevent a sudden, irreversible, humanity-eradicating, change in earth’s climate. As with most things developed by humans, this means is deteriorating, daily.
Recent history has observed the steps humanity has taken, knowingly or not, towards taking the mantle (no pun intended) of earth’s climate change capacity for itself. One long step is a couple hundred years of carbon emissions. The erosion of Nuclear Non-Proliferation is another:
2015 JCPOA - the US-EU-Iran treaty prevented any near-term nuclear weapon achievement by Iran. In “World Order” context, this aimed at keeping the Nuclear Club small.
2017 JCPOA is killed. The US (under Trump) withdrew from this non-proliferation treaty. The US, under Trump, replaced the JCPOA with harsh words, known as the '“Maximum Pressure” campaign - which accomplished nothing in terms of non-proliferation. Iran expanded its nuclear programs.
2018 US-Russia allows the medium-range missile treaty (INF) to die. This treaty prevented proliferation of missiles with a range of less than approximately 5500 kilometers. This distance makes short-range nuclear missiles plausible, to some. If Trump’s claims of being able to manage Putin, to the point of avoiding Putin’s War of 2022 were real, he would have found a way to persist the INF. He did not.
2016-2018 North Korea repeatedly demonstrates its nuclear capacity. Kim meets with Trump, for some reason. Zero North Korean nuclear missiles are decommissioned. Trump, having maxed out his skill set, fecklessness, loses interest.
2018 Trump directs the pentagon to reduce US troop presence in South Korea. This is a destabilization event for the alliance. Previously, in 1991, the US removed its nuclear weapons from South Korea as part of SALT. A nuclear armed North Korea, plus a destabilized US support “presence” generated instability.
2020 Trump does not pull US troops from South Korea. North Korea’s Kim resumes his nuclear proliferation. South Korea notices.
2022 Putin invades the only nation ever to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of its sovereignty: Ukraine. South Korea, Japan, Australia, North Korea, China, India, the EU, all notice.
2024 Putin begins using his intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles - the same ones that were prevented by the INF, which Putin and Trump allowed to expire. Putin episodically augments his attacks on Ukraine with threats of localized nuclear war. Putin’s malevolence cheapens even the Autocrat brand.
2024 North Korean troops arrive in Russia to obtain real-war training. Kim continues his nuclear buildup, and continually leans towards Putin, not Xi’s China. Those who noticed previously, notice again.
2025 Trump appoints isolationists wrapped in loyalty to his cabinet: Secretary of Defense (Hegseth) and Director of National Intelligence (Gabbard), Noem (Homeland Security). Trump introduces erraticism and unreliability into US foreign policy by openly questioning Article 5 of NATO, publicly and privately degrading the US policy toward Ukraine and, also visibly, granting Putin Time (which Putin needs desperately if he is to conquer Ukraine). And Again, those who noticed earlier, and noticed again, noticed again.
2025 Xi Jinping continues his support of Putin’s War by supplying the means for making more war materiel. China continues to purchase Russian energy using Chinese currency simultaneously helping Russia militarily, and debasing the value of Russia’s main export. (With friends like these….) Xi cheapens the Autocrat brand.
2025 Ukraine continues to fight for its life. A situation the entire global population understands would not be the case if it had kept its nuclear weapons. The US, Ukraine’s main ally by treaty and morality, continues to tie US reliability to its President’s “gut instincts”, generating more instability. Instability, unsurprisingly, in the post WWII system of security (aka: the World Order), continues to emerge.
Autocrats and Climate Change
It is highly likely, meaning it’s happening, that several of the nations who have the manufacturing capacity to build nuclear weapons have begun preparations. To not do so would require a kind of faith in human goodness which would embarrass the Pope.
What does any of this have to do with humans becoming more earth-like?
As more nations develop nuclear weapons, many things happen. At the core of these things churns human stupidity.
Today’s happening: human stupidity augmented with autocratic pride. Kim, Putin, Xi, and we’ll include Trump, all demonstrate a preference and practice for the autocratic. As competition - autocrats’ 2nd worst enemy (freedom is the first) - heats up, decisions will be made.
To stand by and do nothing while its prey develops nuclear capacity is not something autocrats can or will do. Autocrats naturally crave more. If other nations develop the means of preventing the acquisition of more, autocrats will be out of business because they will no longer be able to sell The Big Lie to their minions or their captive peoples.
Meanwhile, the global climate, encouraged by human’s capacity to emit carbon dioxide, methane, and the like into the atmosphere at earth-epoch levels, heats up. Normally heating up or cooling down climate change globally, is something only earth’s mighty epochs can do.
Fun note, the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE, 232 million years ago), is known for simply having rained, all the time, for two million years. (Seattle’s got it easy!) This rain was influenced by a significant buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This period was followed by the “reign of the dinosaurs”, until about 66 million years ago. 66 million years ago the environment Earth itself moves in, casually informed our planet just how its asteroids (coming in at about 100 million megatons of TNT) can alter Earth’s climate. Here Earth’s greater environment adjusted Earth’s environment by applying a large asteroid.
There were no mechanisms to stop it.
As epochs go, the CPE and dinosaurs are amazing, but not the real point here. The real point is the persistent changes in climate which the earth alone has managed, until now. Earth’s nuclear club has about 4,000 megatons. The Pleistocene Era known as the Ice Age persisted from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, leaving its presence before us in the spaces of the Arctic and Antarctic.
Without causing too many eyes to glaze over we’ll skip ahead to the Holocene, or current, era. While humans emerged during the Pleistocene, we came into our own during the Holocene. This era has been, in human terms, livable. Previous epochs were not livable. Unlike every preceding creature on this planet, humans are currently establishing the means to propel earth’s climate into a climactically different earth epoch (aka: not livable). Humans are pressing this effort into our time using carbon, the slow poison, and expanding its nuclear club, a comparatively fast poison.
Right Between the Eras
Similar to the eroding political failure of the Concert of Europe, this era was accompanied by a proliferation in industrial capacity. This capacity brought railroads to Europe, for example. Railroads, an example of technology with impact, made Europe smaller, in terms of time to travel (armies could move more quickly), eliminating the Time and Space previous regimes could count on, and amplified the governing failure of political regimes established to “maintain the peace”.
As Europe’s kingdoms (run by autocrats) embraced technologies which facilitated the acquisition of more, polite treaties and norms like the Concert of Europe rose to the level of nuisance. Maintaining an effective autocracy is exhausting enough, Autocats abhor nuisance.
When something as banal as the assassination of an Archduke (whatever that is) occurred, Europe stumbled over its performative tripwire, and murdered its own in the millions. Prior to this, only earth had been able to eliminate huge percentages of life on the planet. (Oh, and the Huns. Never forget the Huns. Ah, and the Great Plague.)
This sort of sliding-into-war from non-war eras - sliding on the rails of technology - is a pattern repeated throughout human history. Whether the Huns’ adoption of mobile armies, or Alexander the Great’s “combined arms tactics”, or the Roman chariots and short swords, technical advances shrunk the distances between periods of progress and periods of war, and often generated a symbiosis of the two: Progress animated by war. Think: atomic weapons.
If we are between two eras, the peace following WWII, and the current destabilization of this peace, then much recommends alarm. As nuclear weapons proliferate due to an increasing technical capacity, the distance between these two human composed, mini-eras shrinks. As climate change, and general human carelessness, proceeds, the distance between arable lands and people who need arable lands gains a force of gravitational attraction. As weapons of war, like railroads, or nuclear weapons, proliferate, Time and Space, the necessary ingredients to build or act rationally, evaporate.
Many elements (economics, politics, military capacities, immigration) of global friction grind together, generating greater heat. Elements like immigration, wealth and lack of wealth, war, general outrage and everyone’s friend, fear, all seem to emerge from all directions in a steady flow.
Instability is seen everywhere.
Leadership is absent.
Leadership and its possibilities
Leadership is present in a system when those in charge are transparently facing facts, head on. None of the actions causing proliferation are insurmountable. Yet, addressing these requires leadership. Leadership from at least one capable power. Today, we lack even this minimal requirement.
In 1776, humanity invented a means to manage human events (rather than just enduring these): democracy. Humanity today has done to democracy what it has done to non-proliferation, failed to provide effort. The fix, of course, is to provide effort. Using democracy’s tool called elections, voters can compare would be contenders for their leadership capacities, and ideally grant them a term or two to demonstrate same.
Problem is, humans are easily distracted.
Human challenges are fairly simple. Which is good, because humans, despite their many advances - let’s be honest, these are advances only to humans - are simple. (Human advances are a kind of perpetual motion machine where one advance, say burning fossil fuels or “carbon maximization”, requires another invention, say electric-hybrid cars, battery storage, or “Carbon minimization”, to fix, and on and on.)
Autocrats, because they abhor humanity indirectly, preferring delusions like “Russian Greatness” or “Chinese Centrality” or Trump’s “American Greatness”, are not going to be the ones to redirect humanity from its current nuclear proliferation and climate change trajectory towards being more earth like. Earth-like in the sense of granting eons before disastrous change is levied. Autocrats are not problem-solvers, and refuse to look at these crises as problems. Problem solving gets in the way of satisfying cravings.
Instead - and this is where Trump helps us to understand Putin, Xi, Kim, and others -autocrats see activities like “making deals” focused on elements peripheral to humanity’s survival, as worthy of their time. Trump’s “deal making” uber-fetish accurately reflects the content of the autocratic character. Xi and Putin also believe they are paramount “deal makers”. Populations willing to risk their freedom, allow these deals to hypnotize.
Putin made such great deals that he became one of the world’s richest men - which apparently is a thing - positioning himself to pose Russia in a delusional state called “Russian Greatness”. Xi made such great deals, via excessive-control-centered subsidies, that his great manufacturing nation sits on the knife-edge of real estate collapse and modern technology collapse, and AI collapse. The sound you hear is China being hollowed out.
Trump’s failure wrapped in “90-deals-in-90-days” (current tally at day 90: 1 deal, with Britain), demonstrates a core autocratic incompetence (apologies for the redundancy), also known to those paying attention as incompetence. Trump hollows out the United States’ economic system by introducing instability, say tariffs, and then amplifying it with erraticism, say, supporting Russia. Trump’s Make America Great Again becomes more ephemeral with each Trump action. It’s getting so that every time Trump think-speaks, he weakens the country.
Leadership roles are filled with those for whom leadership is an unknown.
Defining Competence Down
Allowing these men to persist in their incompetence is humanity’s way of defining competence down, not to mention defining survival down. These are not worthwhile outcomes.
The press of proliferation forces questions on, demands answers from, the current nuclear club. What are they willing to do to force a retreat from broader nuclear acquisition? We cannot expect regimes drenched in cruelty to forego the advantages of having. We can expect them to allow the nuclear have-nots to have - that careless feature of autocrats, again.
Kim’s regime, a wildcard turning itself into a player, is currently training his troops in a battle he must wage in Ukraine, to win the battle he wants to wage in South Korea. This is how Kim spells: More.
Xi’s policies (noted above) have wrapped China in a kind of amber - Xi cannot sell to the West while simultaneously warring on the West. “Buy our stuff while I kill your children” doesn’t sell. Xi looks on as Kim wraps his nation around the axel of Russia - a Russia in the throes of a delusion manifested in futile war. Simultaneously, a Russian “loss” in Ukraine would expose Xi as feckless. Few would believe Xi “did all he could”. BRICS would fast become BIS. Or, India being opportunistic, maybe just BS.
Russia, if captained by a rational actor, minimally, would have prepared militarily to take Ukraine. We are put in mind of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s explanation of rich Tom and Daisy as “careless” - breaking this and that. Putin, Russia’s rich man, was careless with his things. Unlike Tom and Daisy, Putin cannot retreat into his wealth, his carelessness, and live.
Russia’s epic failure to prepare has revealed Putin as someone who, now, may very well see “war as peace”. Xi’s ally seems only able to turn the ratchet of war ever tighter. And now Kim is learning lessons at Putin’s knee. Stability, long a necessity of China’s rise, is being undermined by China’s “allies without limits”. Xi’s own policies insist his delusion of greatness “Chinese Centrality” is as real as Putin’s “Russian Greatness”. Neither vision is necessary to people: Chinese or Russians.
Whether either sees their assistance to Kim as a critical factor in proliferation is unclear. Neither have an excuse where Ukraine is involved. Ukraine would not be suffering Putin’s delusions if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons. Iran would not be reeling from Israeli (and US) strikes if it had nuclear weapons. Wars are messages received and sent.
Proliferation Picks Up Speed
Globally, the flow of technology away from this period of peace and toward an era of war, animated by nuclear proliferation, is getting faster. Autocracies don’t move faster because they are getting stronger. They move faster because gravity pulls on expanding masses. The speed thrills the autocrat, but the destination is always down.
It’s not the fall that’ll kill ya.
The message being sent by Putin’s War is that nuclear weapons make nations immune to war. The message being sent by bombing Iran, is that an incomplete nuclear program does not make nations immune to war.
The global titration of Nuclear Proliferation, coupled with increasing carbon dioxide, is metaphor for pre-Carnian Pluvial carbon, and represents a critical flaw in today’s global politics. Each of the Three Kings have worked, in their way, to expand this flaw.
Humanity’s unwillingness to expand the practice of democracy, exposes it to the whimsical “gut instincts” of autocrats, for whom ignoring reality is a profession.
Nuclear proliferation, as it reaches saturation point, will pose conditions similar to what preceded the Carnian Pluvial Episode: massive volcanic activity. Well, activity with a human flavor. This nascent Nuclear Proliferation Episode, positions humanity to manifest massive radioactive fallout. The rains or snows, should they follow, will not contain the ingredients for new life. This is humanity, clumsily controlling nature.
As Iran pursues its nuclear program - time to reach Tel Aviv is less than 5 minutes; as Pakistan and India reinforce their own nuclear capacities, time between capitols, a couple minutes; as North Korea builds out its global reach for its nuclear capacity, time to reach Seoul, 3 minutes, the US 20 minutes, Beijing, 10 minutes; as Japan, Poland, and South Korea assess the extent of Trump’s destabilization of the World Order, considerations of their own nuclear weapons needs accelerate. Nuclear Non-proliferation becomes today’s “Maginot Line”, today’s “Great Wall of China”, a manifestation of wishes.
Where to end this wan description of global epochal currents?
There is much to recommend the approach to science, politics, religion, and so forth in the efforts of the founders of Natural Science philosophy. Making observations of nature and applying these to better understand our place in the universe seems, once again, apt. Informing our present requires expanding our perceptions. Fear, derived by threats, because it focuses human attention like nothing else, is useful.
Aiding in this effort to see what threatens, and should inspire, humanity, is science. The new Vera Rubin Observatory, just launched this month, found over 1900 new asteroids in our solar system, over 4 days, looking at a micro-slice of our solar system. As evidence of what we should already know mounts, and the actual threat to humanity is better defined - hint: its not immigrants - the necessity of pointing earth’s vast detection resources outward to better monitor threats to our survival (think: Dinosaurs and asteroids) should become increasingly obvious.
Still, humans have great difficulty seeing what is right in front of them. We are now on our third incursion from an extra-solar object in less than 8 years. In terms of orbital positions in the galaxy, we are now approximately where the solar system was when the Carnian Pluvial Episode was in full swing 230 million years ago. Here there be dragons.
Fingers crossed.
Humanity’s willingness to apply power in areas it is awful at managing, sometimes seems like destiny. Its not. Humanity developed a tool, Democracy, at great sacrifice, to help it better contemplate and manage the currents of power of all types. There’s a reason “We The People…” resonates with all who read it. Democracy, when used well, can help humanity avoid the effects of what appear to be inherent, mass stupidity.
When humans cede the field to autocrats, everything, everything, is put at risk. Prior to the nuclear era, humans were wealthy in their toleration of autocrats. Autocrats might try, but they just cannot kill all of us! Well, it’s a kind of wealth. Risks are higher today and humanity cannot spend itself in support of autocrats and hope to come up breathing.
The human brain is fairly good at perceiving risk, and fairly poor at effectively managing it. Autocrats amplify risk. The current decaying World Order was useful, like the Concert of Vienna was useful, in containing risk. Today’s Order, like every previous Order is being undermined by the proliferation of autocrats and their delusions. Carbon continues to flood the atmosphere. Nuclear proliferation amplifies risk. It is no longer difficult to see the problem right in front of us.
We are poised to challenge our rock’s, earth’s, supremacy over its climate. Earth doesn’t really care. We can.
Sources:
The Nuclear Club Might Soon Double: The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/08/nuclear-proliferation-arms-race/683251/
North Korean Nuclear Negotiations; Council of Foreign Relations: https://www.cfr.org/timeline/north-korean-nuclear-negotiations
Trump Orders Pentagon to Consider Reducing US Forces in South Korea, NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/world/asia/trump-troops-south-korea.html
Carnian Pluvial Episode, GeoEngineer: https://www.geoengineer.org/news/carnian-pluvial-episode-that-time-when-it-rained-for-1-2-million-years
Trump, Nuclear Proliferation, and Destabilization, Simple Stuff First:
What Trump Policy Achieved Since Liberation Day, Council of Foreign Relations: https://www.cfr.org/article/what-trump-trade-policy-has-achieved-liberation-day
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Careless people: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/327461-they-were-careless-people-tom-and-daisy--they-smashed-up
The Three Kings, Simple Stuff First:
Vera Rubin Observatory, A Swarm of New Asteroids: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-asteroids
Who has What, Arms Control Association; https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/nuclear-weapons-who-has-what-glance
Land Degradation in Global Arable Lands; Joint Research Center, European Commission: https://esdac.jrc.ec.europa.eu/content/land-degradation-global-arable-lands