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SAre the European members of Nato starting to face the Russian threat again? And if not, I ask Carlo Rovelli, why? The Italian physicist seems to be the best person to answer these questions as his new timely book, 85 Seconds to Midnight, is called A Physicist’s Argument against Rearmament.
Rovelli, 70, brown-eyed, genial, with dark gray locks, removes his glasses before answering. “The idea that the Russian military is a threat to Europe is ridiculous. Russia cannot reach Kyiv! A few years ago, Russia had 4% of the world’s military spending and Nato had 40%.”
However, at the same time, Russia has more than 4,000 nuclear weapons, making Russia the largest stockpile in the world. “So we can’t bring Russia down,” says Rovelli, “because they can do something.” Of the three nuclear powers – Russia, the US and China – only China has decided not to be the first country to use nuclear weapons. Russia, like the US, has the right to respond to conventional attacks with nuclear weapons.
The real problem, Rovelli points out, is all the fear. We are in a state of distrust. We walk around in these situations where everyone has to be armed, very aggressive. He mentioned what happened a few weeks ago in St Petersburg. “With NATO weapons, the Ukrainians bombed St Petersburg and tried to bomb Moscow. So a country with nuclear weapons is being bombed by the British. It’s not the British pushing the button, but the bombs are coming from Britain, but also Germany and France, and a few from the US.”
Why was this dangerous for Rovelli? It was the first time that a (superpower) with nuclear weapons had actually been detonated. There was a situation where if you have nuclear weapons, you don’t attack. You don’t get blown up.
Rovelli asks me to imagine what the bombing looks like from the Kremlin. Moscow has long feared Western aggression, he argues. The most important moment came in 1962 when the Americans installed nuclear weapons in Turkey. This, he says, prompted Soviet Premier Khrushchev to install nuclear weapons in Cuba, behind the US.
True, the Cuban missile crisis was resolved by Khrushchev and US President Kennedy, but the fear of Russian aggression against the West continues. This is why, Rovelli points out, Putin is so afraid of Ukraine becoming a Nato member: that would enable the West to put nukes in the country. Therefore, Rovelli argues, Putin began a full-scale attack four years ago.
Rovelli believes that this Russian aggression has caused a storm of fear and the cry of arms in Western Europe. “You have the French government saying that the French people should be ready to sacrifice their children again; the British government saying that we should be ready to fight because it might happen; the German government saying that all the anti-war sentiment in schools is not good and we need to change education, make war legal. This is fueled by the idea that Russia is attacking Europe. It is nonsense.”
But isn’t it good to be afraid sometimes? Yes, isn’t it the lesson of the second world war that the countries of Western Europe had to prepare quickly in order to deal with the plan to expand? “I think everyone should read Mein Kampf,” he replies, referring to Adolf Hitler’s 1925 autobiography and manifesto. “Mein Kampf does not say, ‘We are the Germans, we are the strongest, we will rule the world, we are the greatest, we are the purest, we are the Aryans, whatever.’ It says, ‘We are weak. And the only way we can survive is to be strong and defeat the others.’ So what motivated Nazi violence was fear.”
Today’s conflicts in the Middle East have a similar basis, Rovelli argues. “What is fueling Israel’s violence is fear, what is fueling Hamas’ violence is fear. They they will destroy us in Gaza only us they are aggressive. Responding to fear and panic, more and more, seems disgusting to me. “
But isn’t this stupid? Putin is not acting out of fear, no, but he is motivated by a historical misconception to take over Ukraine. Obviously that is nonsense. You write racially motivated articles. And that’s what we don’t want.
Why should we listen to what scientists have to say about carrying weapons? Yes, Rovelli is the man to explain loop gravity, the theoretical foundation that combines quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity. He is also the most famous of critical thinkers in books such as Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and The Order of Time. But when it comes to war and realpolitik, physicists often prove themselves fools.
“We scientists,” Rovelli admits, “we created this thing (nuclear weapons) It is our gift of murder to humanity. It was because of the wisdom of scientists and other intellectuals, he argues, that Gorbachev and Reagan decided to sign the 1991 Arms Reduction Treaty (Begin).
What is also true, however, is that physicists have been destroying humanity. Rovelli mentions his compatriot Enrico Fermi who in 1934 discovered a way to break the atom – giving people new energy. “But the gift is very good,” writes Rovelli. “Small amounts of uranium can produce enough energy to topple cities, burn millions of people and destroy civilization itself.”
Consider again what happened in Copenhagen in 1941 when two well-known scientists, Dane Niels Bohr and German Werner Heisenberg, met. Bohr, who soon after the meeting was promoted to the US, left the meeting convinced that Nazi Germany was developing a nuclear bomb to win the war.
Rovelli tells the story: “Once in the US, Bohr said, ‘Look, this is a picture given to me by Heisenberg of the atomic bomb.’ And it wasn’t like that. It was a peaceful nuclear project. One of the consequences was that the Manhattan Project was motivated by the belief that Nazi Germany was close to having nuclear bombs, which was unfounded.
The unexpected result, as Rovelli says in his book, “the incineration of 200,000 men, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. Not, as some argue, to end the war too quickly but as a great demonstration of US power – or as he says: “The scream of a gorilla beating his chest and telling the forest that it is the strongest.”
Surely there were other and perhaps better reasons for dropping nuclear weapons on Japan than that? I remind Rovelli of conversations at Princeton he had with his friend and mentor, the late occult writer John Wheeler, who worked on the Manhattan Project. Wheeler believed that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was necessary to save many Americans who would otherwise be lost in a world attack.
“John was one of the people I admired the most, and half of my thoughts were based on what he did,” Rovelli recalls with a rueful laugh. “He was the one who recognized my work.” But when Wheeler invited the young Rovelli to Princeton, the two began discussing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I found the argument they used—it’s better to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians to save the lives of a few American boys—disgusting.” Not a few American boys living in America—but they were sent there to conquer a non-American island. Japan had already lost the war.”
Rovelli’s early years help explain his distaste for military equipment. He was imprisoned as a student for refusing to join the army in Italy. “I am Italian and we remember that Fascism grew up with the idea that war is beautiful. War is what makes us victorious. War is fun.”
Let’s talk about Iran, I’ll show. Isn’t it worth having nuclear weapons like Israel and the US? “I don’t think we have to think right,” says Rovelli. “We have to live together, so we can find something we can agree on. If Iran was in danger, maybe it wouldn’t see the need to use nuclear weapons.”
The title of Rovelli’s book comes from the 2026 edition of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which puts the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest we’ve ever come to a nuclear disaster. For Rovelli, the stupidity of our leaders has increased the danger. They think that everyone – from Trump, Putin and Netanyahu to the leaders of Nato and Iran – do not have the good ideas that Khrushchev, Kennedy, Gorbachev and Reagan each of them, they believe, helped to drag people to Armageddon.
As we finish, Rovelli asks me: “Which politician has the courage to say, ‘Instead of making my country strong, I want to make the human race better?'” Maybe it’s not just my shortcomings, but the state of human problems in 2026 that no one comes to mind.
