It was May 20, 2026, at one minute past midnight. I and two colleagues stood in front of the main gate of Vandenberg Space Force Base (VSFB), located along Highway 1 (AKA the Pacific Coast Highway), on the Central Coast of California. We were looking up to the night sky. Suddenly a large, tube-shaped object appeared, launched from the base, traveling southwest over the Pacific Ocean, with flames coming from its rear end. A delayed, rumbling roar arose behind it. We were briefly spellbound by the display, and lowered our protest signs to our sides. We were somewhat awed, somewhat afraid, and somewhat angered by the spectacle.

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!

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.

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.

But let’s not be overly upset about the amount of money to be spent, even though one can be assured the actual costs will skyrocket. (No pun intended.) Consider the bigger picture.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Obama administration had planned on an expenditure of $1.2 trillion for the upkeep and improvement of the U.S. nuclear forces between 2017 and 2046. At the beginning of the second Trump Administration term in April of 2025, the CBO adjusted the nuclear forces cost estimate to be $946 billion over the period of 2025 to 2034. When it comes to the cost of “nukes” and the U.S., even the sky’s no limit. (Actually, neither is space.)

Standing on the roadside in front of the main gate at Vandenberg on a chilly night, watching an ICBM fly overhead, it’s difficult to specifically blame any modern U.S. president for putting the human race at risk by backing nuclear forces. In this regard, I say they’re all monsters! And they all have had a hand in the U.S. imperial, nuclear aggression.

As a consequence, numerous people have been protesting at Vandenberg against nukes over several decades. Many have been arrested (counting myself, twice: once in January, 2010, and again in November of that year). They include notorieties like actor Martin Sheen and activist Daniel Ellsberg.

My favorite protester arrested at Vandenberg, was an older man named Bud Boothe. Bud, who died in 2017, served on a B-17 bomber squadron during World War II, participating in 15 missions over Germany. He was wounded and lucky to survive the war. I protested with Bud many times, and was arrested with him outside the main gate of the base.

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.

The issue taken up by SCOTUS in Apel’s case was whether a person who was banned from military property could still participate in peaceful protest on a public street that traverses a military base. Public streets in the U.S. are classic examples of public forums, where protest is generally allowed. Public streets are commonly found on military bases.

The Court, under Chief Justice Roberts, unanimously ruled 9 to 0 against Apel, on the basis of statutory trespass law. Justice Ginsburg filed a concurring opinion (joined by Justice Sotomayor), calling for the Court to also consider the First Amendment aspect of the case. Sadly, the “free speech” matter was never taken up by the 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. While the U.S. condemns and threatens Iranians for some nebulous, unfounded efforts to develop their own nuclear weapons, our nation is awash with them and has the nuclear capacity to annihilate humanity numerous times over. Increasingly, and possibly out of fear, other nations are following the U.S.’s lead. Are they to be blamed?

The Arms Control Association currently identifies nine nuclear powers in the world: Russia, the U.S., China, France, United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel (which refuses to admit it has nuclear weapons), and North Korea. (These nations are listed in the order of the number of warheads they have, but not necessarily the extent of their nuclear force and prowess, where the U.S. takes the lead.) The U.S. also has nuclear weapons stationed in five European nations: Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.

Eighty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we find our world awash in thermal nuclear weapons that if deployed, will each wildly dwarf the impact of the atomic (fission) bombs used against Japan in 1945.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, there are approximately 12,187 nuclear warheads around the world, of which 9,745 are available for use by land-based missiles, aircraft and submarines, with Russia and the U.S. far in the lead. Globally, approximately 2,100 warheads are on “high alert.”

Some window shopping out in the global nuke supermarket—that the U.S. has helped bring about—might lead Americans to an epiphany. Take a walk down the U.S. nuclear aisle, and you could be blown away by its arsenal (again, no pun intended). What follows is information from the U.S. Department of War.

Readers have already been introduced to the vast number of U.S. ICBMs, but did you know “more than 10,000 elite warfighters maintain and operate” the ICBM system? The job of these “highly-trained warriors,” as the Department of War calls them, is to ensure that the missiles “remain in a constant state of readiness.” Every one of these missileers was trained at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

A day in the life of one of these airmen, who spend 24-hour watch shifts below the earth in a reinforced concrete capsule, gives a glimpse into the distinctly anti-human ethos of the whole operation. An article from the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center reads:

Inside that capsule, time is untethered from the sun. … The isolation is absolute. In an age of constant connectivity, missileers step into a world of total silence. No phones, personal computers or unauthorized technology are allowed.

 

“My niece was born, and I didn’t know any of that was going on,” Castonguay said. “It showed me how disconnected we truly are.”

 

This is the quiet sacrifice of the watch. Airmen surrender milestones of a normal life so the world above can keep spinning.

It’s not a life, the author admits, most people would find alluring. According to the Weapons Center, “Many are assigned to the career field rather than drawn to it, yet they still trade sunlight and routine comforts for a singular goal: to preserve the nation’s deterrence." These airmen are completely cut off from humanity in order to maintain weapons capable of extinguishing life on an unimaginable scale—and we are told that this is what keeps “the world above” spinning.

And that is only the land-based leg of America’s nuclear arsenal. Go next to the sea section, and you’ll find 14 Trident submarines, each of which has the capacity to fire off 20 ballistic missiles with multiple warheads. When submerged, these subs are “virtually undetectable” from adversaries, at least so says the U.S. Navy. A number of them are out at sea, at all times. Did you know each sub has the nuclear firepower to be considered the “sixth most powerful nuclear power in the world”?

Now check out the air section. There are two impressive items to choose from. There are 46 B-52 Stratofortress long range, heavy bombers, each that can be armed with 20 nuclear cruise missiles. There are also 20 B-2 Spirit stealth (subsonic) bombers, able to be loaded with two types of nuclear gravity bombs.

So much for the deleterious and destructive merchandise that occupies the nuclear shelves; what about preventative items that are also out there in the nuclear supermarket, i.e., attempts (on paper) to counter and rebuff the development and possession of nuclear weaponry? What’s in stock there is detrimentally disappointing.

Since the 1960s, there have been gallant efforts to rope in nuclear weapons and eliminate them from our planet. They have taken the form of international treaties. Sadly, they have mostly become insignificant.

Multilateral and bilateral efforts to significantly limit and/or fully disarm our world of nuclear weapons have failed despite a plethora of these nuclear treaties, including such major agreements as the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (1972), Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I (1972), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I (1991), Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II (1993), Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (2002), New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (2010), and the New Start Treaty (2011).

Nuclear treaties and agreements are indeed abundant. There is a fuller accounting of them in an online Congressional library file titled, “Arms Control and Nonproliferation: A Catalog of Treaties and Agreements.” Most nations and their peoples, however, are surely saddened by their inefficacy, with one possible exception.

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. According to ICAN, the detonation of just one percent of the global nuclear arsenal will threaten as many as two billion people with famine. A full-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would quickly result in hundreds of millions of deaths and bring about a nuclear winter that will destroy the ecosystems that support life on our planet.

Then there is the questionable—if not idiotic—emphasis of the current Trump Administration in its approach to nuclear defense. Here I directly quote the Congressional library file (Arms Control and Nonproliferation: A Catalog of Treaties and Agreements):

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.

And there’s another new wrinkle. There has been an extremely important, bilateral nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Russia: by far the largest two nuclear powers. The agreement between these two super powers—the last adopted by them, anyway--is the “New START Treaty” of 2010. The treaty has since dissolved.

More accurately, President Trump allowed the treaty to expire in February of 2026, even though the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, offered to extend it. President Trump simply ignored the offer.

What’s tragically lost by the expiration of the New Start Treaty, is a commitment to certain limits of the number of nuclear missiles and warheads by both the U.S. and Russia and an agreement to “exchange data on the numbers, locations, and technical characteristics of weapons systems and facilities that are subject to the treaty and provide each other with regular notifications and updates.”

One asks, under these circumstances: is not the current nuclear environment just as threatening as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962—or worse? Do Trump and Hegseth, and whatever military cronies are in agreement with them, understand they are playing with fire?

Trump and Hegseth could take some advice from the former president who dealt with what was then the USSR, and the crisis in Turkey and Cuba that almost led into nuclear war: John F. Kennedy. The greatest challenge JFK faced as president was his handling of the missile crisis. I believe JFK was shaken by the experience, which transformed his leadership.

The U.S. had placed nuclear weapons in Turkey in 1959, near the border with the USSR. This in part provoked Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s attempt to deploy them in Cuba in 1962. In dealing with Khrushchev, JFK promised to remove the nuclear weapons from Turkey, a promise kept secret for over 25 years.

The Cuban Missile Crisis served as an early wakeup call that when nuclear superpowers expand the reach and impact of such weapons, other nations will be inclined to do so, increasing the threat of human annihilation.

Seven months after the crisis, JFK gave a commencement address at American University in June of 1963. It was likely the greatest speech on peacemaking ever made by a U.S. president. The speech was profuse with “peace ethos.” Readers can access its transcript on the JFK Presidential Library webpage.

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. In February of 2025, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar introduced a bill in the House calling for the creation of a cabinet level “Department of Peacebuilding.” The bill, H.R. 1111, currently has 46 Democratic cosponsors and sits in the “House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.”

The bill’s mission includes, in part, cultivating “peacebuilding as a strategic national policy objective,” preventing “violence in the United States and internationally through peacebuilding and effective nonviolent conflict resolution,” strengthening “nonmilitary means of peacemaking,” and addressing “the interconnection of all life and the intersectionality of peace and justice, equality, health, healing, national security, education, the economy, rule of law, democracy, planetary survival, and other aspects of civil rights, civil liberties, and human rights.”

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.

One wonders whether the monstrous nuclear arsenal and forces bred by the U.S. are driven by unfathomable fear, or unquenchable thirst for power, or both. Regardless, I believe our nation and its nuclear adversaries are running out of time.

Speaking of time, in late January of this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset its “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds before midnight (i.e., seconds away from nuclear Armageddon). The Doomsday Clock was started in 1947. The current time on the clock is the closest it has ever been to midnight. The United States must disarm itself of nuclear weapons as soon as possible, and take the lead among the nuclear powers in doing so!

In late February of this year, the base commander of VSFB held a public forum in a senior center in Lompoc, California, a small city very near Vandenberg Space Force Base. The commander titled the program, “Mission Update.” The program provides “insights into Vandenberg’s operations and its critical role in national defense.”

Most of the presentation that night in Lompoc concerned the SpaceX rocket launches placing Starlink satellites into orbit. Those launches at Vandenberg are now allowed to reach 100 annually. Only a very brief part of the commander’s presentation concerned the ICBM testing operations.

I and other protesters have long hoped to speak personally and directly to a base commander at VSFB about the ICBM test launches. The base commander’s program in Lompoc was my opportunity to do so; he invited members of the audience to ask questions.

I stood before the commander and brought the recent collapse of the New START Treaty to his attention, which of course, he was well aware of. I argued that this situation rendered the test launches of the ICBMs at Vandenberg as a heightened nuclear threat that is now shared by Russia and the U.S. I then pleaded for the commander to stop the ICBM test launches. I verbally acknowledged that this action would do his military career no good, but that it was necessary “for the sake of his children, and the sake of my children, and the sake of our children’s children.”

The response by the commander, in sum, was that he stood too far down the chain of command to have the authority to stop the ICBM launches. I expected this claim by the base commander, and didn’t question its validity. And from what I could tell, most of the audience supported the American nuclear weapons arsenal. Some attendees worked at the base.

Still, I hoped that some of these folks who were on the fence about nuclear weapons, might turn against them. Similarly, I hoped that the base commander felt a twinge in his heart thinking about his, and other’s, children.

Ultimately, it is the American people who must come to their senses and challenge our nation’s addiction to its monstrous nuclear arsenal. There is so much, however, impeding this endeavor.

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?