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How Fear of Nuclear Armageddon Leads Me to Protest

Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!

How radically and overtly hypocritical that the U.S., the greatest military power in the world—holding such a nuclear posture—initiated a war with Iran on the basis that the country might one day develop nuclear weapons, even though there is no conclusive evidence that it intends to do so. But then, this is how big bullies operate.

The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders.

For nearly two decades, I have been arrested, ignored, and dismissed for protesting nuclear weapons—but as the Doomsday Clock inches toward midnight, giving up is not an option.

Scott Fina, Current Affairs, July 2026

Our tiny protest gathering at Vandenberg had a “micro-Woodstock” feel to it. One of us was dressed like an angel, in a white gown with flashing, battery-powered lights on wings attached to her back. She held a peace sign that also had blinking lights. She started beating a drum she had brought, and broke into an Indigenous chant she had learned from a local Chumash (Native American) community, whose descendants continue to protest military installations on their ancestral homelands. She had driven hours to the military base from her home in central Los Angeles—the likely source of her captivating creativity.

So, there we were, observing the flight of the most dangerous weapon ever created and possessed by humanity: an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that had been launched from an underground silo on the base. The Minuteman III ICBM we were watching could carry multiple nuclear warheads. Fortunately, the missile was not armed, and its launch was a test, sending it 4,200 miles over the Pacific Ocean to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The U.S. military has adopted a nickname for such missile flights: “Glory Trips.”

As protesting observers, we failed to see any glory in the exhibition of the ICBM test launch. But if watching an ICBM launch isn’t glorious enough for some folks, they can go to the U.S. Department of War (DOW) website and check out the “multimedia experience” of the military’s nuclear triad delivery system. The online presentation blatantly and unabashedly explains in detail how the U.S. military can readily make nuclear strikes against its adversaries using not only land-based, silo-launched missiles, but also submarine and fighter plane launchings of nuclear bombs.

The DOW’s flashy, action-filled nuclear triad website is full of bravado, and seemingly overloaded with testosterone. It looks like a violent video game. One can imagine Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, messing around with the website, tapping at the keyboard with one hand, while holding a beer in the other.

Interestingly, the introductory section of the DOW nuclear triad website includes a statement which reads, in part, “…the triad ensures a credible and flexible nuclear deterrent, providing the president of the United States with options to accomplish objectives if deterrence fails.”

Those are nuclear options currently available for Donald Trump, who alone has the authority to order a nuclear attack. Having such choices on which weapons to use has got to be alluring, if not tempting, for our president. Imagine what goes on in his brain at times when he thinks about the power he has over nuclear weapons and the fate of humanity. Think, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”

On top of all its muscle flexing, there is another feature in the U.S. nuclear weapons policy that exhibits a kind of bullying. I refer here to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) published by the Biden Administration in 2022. The NPR remains operative under the Trump Administration.

Consider this statement in the NPR, which is readily available for the world to see:

We conducted a thorough review of a broad range of options for nuclear declaratory policy – including both No First Use and Sole Purpose policies – and concluded that those approaches would result in an unacceptable level of risk in light of the range of non-nuclear capabilities being developed and fielded by competitors that could inflict strategic-level damage to the United States and its Allies and partners.

Simply put, the U.S. maintains a first-strike nuclear option to be deployed against even a non-nuclear enemy. Paradoxically, China does have a “no first use” policy for its nuclear arsenal. Hey, U.S. adversaries, don’t even look at us the wrong way!

But wait! There’s more going on with the U.S. nuclear arsenal: modernization.

The replacement of over 400 ICBM Minuteman III missiles is currently in the works. These weapons have been in use (on alert but not fired off) for over 55 years, and have been kept viable thanks to “a series of life extension programs,” according to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. In the early 2030s, even more deadly ICBM Sentinel missiles will take their place. According to the Air and Space Forces Magazine, these new ICBMs will cost over $140 billion.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Many protesters at Vandenberg have also gone to prison for their nonviolent, civil disobedience: crossing a green line that demarcated where protest was allowed. The case of one courageous protester, Dennis Apel, who was arrested 15 times at Vandenberg, landed at the U.S. Supreme Court……………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Hundreds of Americans protest against nuclear weapons every year at various military bases, and also at private corporate facilities that are connected to the U.S. nuclear program (and make big bucks). Unfortunately, anti-nuclear protesters often go unheard in the U.S., regardless of the often deep, personal sacrifices they make. Also, those voices have been aging and declining in number over the years.

Since I first joined protesters at Vandenberg in 2008, our numbers have dwindled to less than a dozen who gather monthly at the main gate. Annually, on or around the dates of August 6 and August 9—the anniversaries of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively—the number of protesters grows to a few dozen at Vandenberg, with most coming from Los Angeles. The somewhat larger crowd draws a good number of well-armed, military security guards who line up in formation a hundred yards down the base entry road.

The soldiers wait for protesters to cross the green line, and every year, a few do. Over a loud speaker, the military officer in charge of the formation warns these brave folks to cross back over the line within two minutes or they will face arrest. The protesters ignore the command, are handcuffed, cited, and then driven off the base in a van by the soldiers.

This scene is both moving, and a little comical, depending on one’s perspective. You see, these days most of the protesters at Vandenberg are old and grey (including myself). We are also a motley group, and frumpy. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine us as a collection of outsized Ewoks from a Star Wars film, standing up to Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire. If someone played a John Williams score over a music box in the background, we’d have a real show.

Admittedly, probably most Americans would see the protesters at Vandenberg as preposterous, daring to confront the most powerful military on the planet with little hope of disarming our nation of nuclear weapons. Perhaps we are. But we are driven by a moral and humane purpose. . And if observers—even those who are patriotic—were more objective and opened their eyes widely, they might see what we protesters deeply sense: that the huge and deadly U.S. nuclear arsenal and forces contain our nation’s own demise.

The blindness of Americans to the reality of nuclear annihilation begins with a national hypocrisy, one that we hold as the first and only nation to ever use nuclear weapons in war, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. It is a striking example of our hypocrisy that is blatantly clear to most of the world beyond our borders……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The most recent, significant multilateral treaty, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), was adopted at the United Nations in 2017, and entered into force in 2021. In sum, this treaty calls for nations around the world to either commit to never creating, possessing, testing, or transferring nuclear weapons if they have not yet done so, or to fully rid themselves of nuclear weapons—disarm—if they already have them.

To date, 95 nations have signed onto the TPNW. While that seems promising, it really isn’t, yet. The TPNW has been ignored by all the nuclear states, including the U.S. Still, it’s premature to write the treaty off at this point. But consider what looms over humanity’s head in the meantime.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an international coalition of non-governmental organizations and winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, warns that even limited nuclear conflicts will cause global devastation.

………………………. The second Trump Administration has said it is pursuing a “peace through strength” policy in national security and foreign affairs. The National Defense Strategy emphasizes the importance of modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent in response to increased nuclear threats.

“Peace through strength!” That doesn’t quite sound like a winning catchphrase that could inspire adversaries to surrender their nuclear weapons. More accurately, the image I get is Pete Hegseth crushing an empty beer can against the side of his head. Add on the “weapons modernization” program and you don’t really improve nuclear deterrence, but embolden the arms race already in place by nuclear adversaries.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..What JFK described in his peace address is a very different America, one that respects other nations and treasures humanity. It presents an America that tries to lead, rather than rule the nations around the world. Consider these comments:

“What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. … I am talking about …the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, … that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.”

Currently there is a movement in Congress echoing JFK’s thinking on peace……………………………………………………

JFK’s thinking on peace is radically different from Trump’s and Hegseth’s. In our day and age, Kennedy’s perspective would be widely held as preposterous—just like the case of protesters who make personal sacrifices in attempts to waken our nation to see its almost hypnotic violence and self-destruction threatened by nuclear weapons.

……………………………………………………………………………………………Recently, the DOW has posted television and social media ads about “peace through strength” that compliment its multimedia presentation on the nuclear triad. One asks: how do most Americans carry on daily life, seemingly unconscious of the deeply disconcerting possibility of nuclear Armageddon? Is it because our populace is errantly convinced that immense, superior weaponry will fully protect us from our adversaries? Have we drank a soon-fatal dose of the potion of military propaganda? https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/how-fear-of-nuclear-armageddon-leads-me-to-protest

July 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | opposition to nuclear, PERSONAL STORIES, USA | Leave a comment