Defending life on Earth from nuclear annihilation

Thousands from coast-to-coast took action to challenge militarism, while ideological divisions continue to enable the bipartisan military industrial establishment

This Sunday, I was proud to participate in and speak at a celebration of life in San Francisco organized by Code Pink: Women for Peace, as part of a nationwide “Rage Against the War Machine” day of action. While our gathering in San Francisco featured a variety of politically and ethnically diverse voices, colorful street theater, and energetic performances, its counterpart in Washington drew criticism from many voices seemingly inclined to place ad hominem critique before the need to rebuild a vibrant and ideologically diverse grassroots movement for peace.

Photo: Liz Durán Boubion

More war? Really?

It is beyond absurd that Congress has approved the largest military budget in the history of the United States at a time includes neither a world war, nor the Cold War, nor even the failed regime change experiments of the early 2000s. In the wake of the Pentagon withdrawing from Afghanistan after 20 years of lies, it appears that the military industrial complex has simply seized on any excuse for weapon sales, regardless of the cost to national security or international peace.

At the moment, Washington is actively stoking tension with two nuclear armed powers at once, as if doing so with only one would be insufficiently idiotic. U.S. officials have publicly hinted at seeking regime change in Russia, prompting its leader to predictably pledge the use of all of its resources—including nuclear weapons—to defend itself, before just yesterday canceling Russia’s participation in a world-historical arms control agreement.

Set aside the fact that there is no particularly compelling geopolitical rationale fueling Biden’s escalation with either Russia or China. Even worse is the sheer idiocy of belligerence towards two nuclear-armed powers at once.

More important is the fact that any nuclear conflict would be impossible to contain, either in the sense of limiting fallout to a particular geographic region, or in the sense of preventing an initial conflagration from escalating while expanding to encompass the world in a ball of unsurvivable fire and radiation.

During the Cold War, generations of Americans became sufficiently aware of—and concerned about—the threat of nuclear war that sustained grassroots movements emerged to prevent it. Today, so many have grown inured to American domination of the entire planet that they seem not to recognize the risks of nuclear escalation, or the precarity of a country that can’t even get its own citizens medicine contriving international conflict and inviting nuclear escalation on both sides of the globe at once.

The absolute senselessness of U.S. foreign policy is a theme that, by now, anyone paying attention has come to sadly recognize. Our country has engaged in unprovoked invasions targeting countries from Vietnam to Nicaragua to Iraq; decades of oil wars whose plunder contrived the contemporary climate calamity; and continuing human rights abuses—from torture with impunity to arbitrary drone strikes leaving untold numbers dead for no reason. The United States has not pursued a morally defensible foreign policy since the end of the Second World War 75 years ago.

Today’s nuclear brinksmanship is also dangerous due to the economic interdependence established between China, Russia, and the United States. The bombing of the Nordstream  pipeline offers a compelling example of how conflict hurts everyone.

Investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh once exposed a massacre committed by U.S. Marines who murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in Mai Lai, Vietnam, while raping and mutilating dozens (if not hundreds) of women. That American crime against humanity was suppressed by the Pentagon for a year, before later being spun for the public by a compliant young military officer named Colin Powell, who would go on to lie our country into another war 30 years later.

More recently, Hersh exposed that the Nordstream pipeline was bombed by the United States, despite its public presentations blaming other countries (which, incidentally, matches a long pattern observable across many decades) and the dramatic harm to the interests of our allies, particularly Germany. Hersh reports:

Last June…Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.

Even short of nuclear escalation, the latest round of chest beating has already led to severe costs borne by civilians not only across Europe and Asia, but also the rest of the world impacted by predictable disruptions in the supply & shipping of grain disregarded by the Pentagon.

Civilians across the United States are feeling related pain, as well. Military conflict in eastern Europe has driven increasing inflation that continues to erode the savings of workers and especially retirees.

Meanwhile, train derailments across the country suggest—at the very least—that Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, is out of his league and unable to satisfactorily perform in a federal role. Given his catastrophic performance as a small town mayor, that should not particularly surprise anyone.

But some voices have gone further, suggesting that the train derailments might indicate not only the incompetence of co-opted federal regulators, but also potential cyber attacks spearheaded by the intelligence agencies of foreign countries.

Military whistleblowers have revealed a longstanding preceding war over cyberspace—yet again, initiated by the United States—rendering such speculation terrifyingly plausible. Potential culprits include one (China) that claims the Pentagon recently shot down its weather balloons after reportedly mischaracterizing them, or another (Russia) blamed for sabotaging its own natural gas pipeline before independent investigative journalists exposed the Pentagon’s previously secret machinations.

On the other hand, over 800 trains derailed across the United States in 2022, suggesting that the pace of derailments might not have changed, at all. If nothing else, this zone of apparent ambiguity might be a good reason for the press to finally begin guarding its vestigial credibility, which continues to catastrophically decline with dangerous consequences for democracy.

The truth, we all know, is the very first casualty of war. And having been at war nearly constantly for the last three generations, America seems to have lost its capacity to discern the difference between fact and fiction. That’s unfortunately not surprising given the abdication of journalism by editors who instead act as cheerleaders for Wall Street’s imperial whims.

Divide and Conquer

Since the era of colonialism, military industrial powers have relied on the tactic of dividing opponents in order to conquer them. That tactic enabled the transatlantic slave trade, global European colonialism, and it continues to enable the machinations of the Pentagon and America’s military industrial establishment today.

The “Rage against the War Machine” rally in Washington was widely criticized by voices, including many on the left, who took objection to the inclusion among the organizers and speakers of voices who stand on the right. It was striking how many local groups that claim to care about “progressive” principles proved strikingly absent.

Those who criticize politically ecumenical events mistake both the nature of those events, as well as their own position as marginalized dissidents in an empire unthreatened by their critique. 

Many left-leaning voices have argued that marching and speaking alongside libertarian figures, and other conservatives who oppose war, counterproductively enables those figures by “platforming” them.

That perspective, however, is confused. The voices decried by left-leaning observers already have platforms, including a national television network and communities created by filter bubbles across every social media platform. To the extent there is a comparison to be made, the media organs of the left tend to reach much smaller audiences than their counterparts on the right—suggesting that, if anything, it was conservatives running the greater risk by platforming more progressive voices.

Given the need to restrain a military-industrial complex much bigger than either of the ideological wings, “platforming” diverse voices is the least of our worries. Allowing concerns about supposedly legitimating ideologically diverse voices to impede grassroots collaboration only strengthens the war machine. Any effort to prevent nuclear war is worth at least pursuing, rather than abandoning at the outset due to suspicion and mistrust.

In this context, critics arguing against grassroots participation resemble the very same writers whose “journalism” so frequently parrots government disinformation, or perhaps policymakers wearing clever designer gowns to a gala while millions starve in the streets. Dissent without corresponding action is largely meaningless, and ultimately more theatrical than political.

Insisting on ideological purity at a time like this is foolish for other reasons, as well. First, most organizations that claim to stand on the left demonstrated their active hypocrisy and co-optation a long time ago, and have no legitimacy to cast stones from their respective glass houses. Every organization in San Francisco, for instance, that claims to stand for “progressive” values lined up behind an unrepentantly corrupt insider trading oligarch in 2020, and continues to support the runaway corruption of the corporate Democratic Party. In other words, whatever passes for “the left” in the U.S. has little integrity to begin with.

Second, looking beyond our cloistered communities, the distribution of political power in the United States today also counsels engaging diverse allies for strategic reasons. I wrote over a decade ago about the need for the left and right to join forces to challenge the corrupt corporate center, precisely because neither of the ideological wings enjoys sufficient support to dislodge the center on its own. I went on to effectuate the strategy I articulated across the country through organizing projects that successfully shifted local policing policies and practices in several jurisdictions at the local level.

Limiting any coalition to a single ideological perspective is ultimately self-marginalizing. Given the history in the United States over the past several decades, any strategy insisting on ideological purity invites defeat, privileging virtue signaling over peace, and the satisfaction of adherents over the lives of innocent people—and species—placed at foolish risk for nothing.

My highlights from Sunday

I had the honor of addressing the San Francisco gathering, following a series of compelling speakers, including:

• Eric Garris from antiwar.com, who discussed the corruption of the bipartisan war machine;

• Arieann Harrison, founder of the Marie Harrison Foundation in Bayview Hunters Point, who discussed how militarism has particularly harmed Black San Franciscans and led to a local environmental justice disaster;

• John Walsh from Veterans for Peace, who addressed the costs to military servicemembers and their families;

• Starchild from the Libertarian Party of SF, who argued in favor of defunding the military industrial establishment;

• former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern, who addressed the gathering remotely;

• musician and activist Francisco Herrera, whose songs offered vital energy and passion on a cold (though thankfully sunny) day;

• organizer Cynthia Papermaster from CODEPINK SF Bay Area and Extinction Rebellion Peace, who discussed the background behind the gathering and shared, among other things, delightful introductions to a series of “Dogs Against Nukes” who joined us; and.

• Cheryl Davila, former Berkeley City Council Member and Director of the Climate Emergency Task Force, who spoke outside the Lockheed Martin office about budget priorities and the dire needs confronting our communities from which war is, at best, a distraction.

My comments focused on encouraging ongoing participation despite the controversy surrounding the event, exposing the senselessness of military escalation, and exploring the idiotic complicity of journalists who have abandoned independence and their own professional ethics in the service of imperialism and the business opportunities that come with it.

Dancer & choreographer Liz Durán Boubion offered a compelling performance depicting the surreal calamity of nuclear fallout, and a vibrant group of street theater performers gathered outside the San Francisco office of Lockheed Martin to creatively explore the intersections between corporate Democrats, weapons manufacturers, wealthy campaign donors, and the corrupt racket that moves funds between each of those sectors.

No single event offers the promise of ending a challenge so longstanding as militarism. But if Sunday’s gathering was any indication, the movement for peace has planted a new seed. I’m eager to see it grow.

Paid subscribers can access below a song (on Spotify or Apple Music) that I wrote 20 years ago to draw attention to the senseless of militarism and its devastating impacts on military families. I frankly wish it would have grown less relevant over time.