WITH so many capricious leaders around the world, we must indeed be blessed to not have been annihilated by a nuclear bomb or two.
On Jan 20, another capricious one will have his finger on the nuclear button when he moves into the White House.
United States President-elect Donald Trump made it clear in his first term that he was all for an arms race.
Whether he would want to outmatch them all in his second term as well is left to be seen.
What we can tell from the reading of Washington-watchers is that the US nuclear arms build-up race would be driven by two factors: one is Russia's repeated threats to use nuclear weapons if attacked and the second is China's allegedly growing nuclear arsenal.
World leaders only know too well that no one wins a nuclear war. Except, maybe, the capricious ones.
Leaving aside intent, the risk of miscalculation — a product of human error and idiocy — can't be underestimated.
Annihilation nearly happened in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. Not many know this, but it is the closest we have come to a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe worse.
Had it not been for the decision of two senior Russian submarine officers not to launch the nuclear torpedo, World War 3 would surely have happened.
The Cuban crisis, however, forced Russia and the US to agree to arms control. It was estimated then that there were close to 130,000 nuclear warheads in the world.
Realising how close they were to the brink, they scaled back. But still, up to January last year, there were 12,100 nuclear warheads in the possession of nine countries, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), more than enough to blow up the planet.
Of this, 2,100 were said to be on high alert and ready to be used on short notice. Also, the world of today has changed, perhaps for the worse.
If the US had one enemy in Russia then, today it has three, with China and North Korea aligned with Moscow.
Blame it on the West's hegemonic geopolitics. Welcome to the Rest versus the West world.
The New Start, or Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the last inhibitor of the nuclear arms race between Russia and the United States, expires in February next year.
Nuclear weapon states must use the deadline to start dismantling their nuclear arsenals. Russia and the United States must start the ball rolling.
The logic is plain: between them, they hold 90 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons. If they don't start, no one will.
And the time to start discussing disarmament talks, if not disarmament itself, is right now.
The world is now in one of the most dangerous periods in history, says SIPRI. Its director, Dan Smith, put it best when launching the SIPRI Yearbook 2024: "The abyss is beckoning and it is time for the great powers to step back and reflect. Preferably together."
There is no better time to make nuclear diplomacy work. We must never forget that we blessedly missed an abyss once. We may not be so blessed again.