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golden rule peace boat
80 Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Are We on the Verge of Another Nuclear War?
“So Far, So Good…”
“So far so good” is probably the faintly hopeful refrain heard from many who feel helpless to undo the nuclear danger. This is reminiscent of the cartoon of the man falling from the top of a building. As he passes each descending floor, he proclaims, “So far, so good…”
In reality, a fair amount of luck has helped humanity avert nuclear catastrophe until now. We came very close during the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” A political officer on a Russian submarine that was out of communication and uncertain if a nuclear war had already begun called off a missile launch at the last minute. Another Russian military technician, suspicious of an errant radar reading that appeared to show incoming U.S. missiles, called off another imminent nuclear strike. It could just as easily have gone the other way.
Many experts worry that it will be an accidental nuclear launch that ends us. This is all the more concerning as Artificial Intelligence is applied to nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, decreasing the decision-making time to split seconds, and removing human oversight. What could go wrong?
Never Again?
Sunset or nuclear blast?
2025 also marks 80 years from the end of World War II and the defeat of the German fascists by Russia, the United States, and the European Allies. Eighty years since Russian and U.S. troops liberated thousands of skeletal prisoners from German concentration camps, much to the horror of the world, which reacted with calls of “Never Again!”
But wait, don’t we have concentration camps now in the U.S.? Isn’t that why Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) now has a larger budget than many national militaries, and larger than the entire current federal prison system? They are building concentration camps for undocumented workers, whom they demonize as “murderers,” “rapists,” “gang members,” and “terrorists.” The vast majority of immigrants who have already been violently taken from their jobs and families, imprisoned, and deported have no criminal records whatsoever, and are productive, respected members of their communities.
If you think I am pointing the finger at the U.S. as the “bad guy” who is mostly responsible for the prospect of a civilization-ending nuclear war, then you are reading correctly.
Authoritarianism with distinct overtones of white supremacy is on the rise once again, while craven European politicians clamor for war with Russia and more military spending. What could go wrong?
Israel, purportedly a safe haven for the persecuted Jewish people—a “land without people for a people without land”—is escalating its blatant genocide in Gaza. The images of intentionally starved Palestinian men, women, and children conjure images of emaciated prisoners—mostly Jews—in World War II concentration camps.
Israel Wages Genocide While Threatening Its Neighbors with Nuclear Weapons
Israel is also a nuclear power, although it has long been considered impolite to say so. The United States helped Israel gain nuclear technology and has helped to shield Israel from any nuclear accountability. Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Its nuclear arsenal is not inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which the U.S. weaponized to support its rationale for war against Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The IAEA announced a resolution critical of Iran’s nuclear program on Thursday, June 12, the day before Israel’s attack on Iran. Coincidence? Probably not. Like so many other international bodies, the IAEA has been subverted to serve U.S. and Israeli war aims.
Unlike Iran, Israel actually has nuclear weapons. Will they use them against Iran? The Israeli government of right-wing extremists has already shown us the depths of depravity they are willing to go. Furthermore, all their Arab neighbors know Israel is the only nuclear-armed nation in the Middle East.
Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, reminded us that “nuclear weapons are used every day. They are like a gun you point at somebody’s head.”
Aside from “luck,” it has been nuclear arms treaties that have held nuclear war in check. In recent years, however, the U.S. has shredded most of these treaties and missed many opportunities for peace:
- Former President Ronald Reagan rejected Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons if the U.S. would stop deployment of a “Star Wars” missile defense system in space.
- Former President Bill Clinton refused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to cut our massive nuclear arsenals to 1,500 bombs and to call on all of the other nuclear-armed states to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons, in exchange for the U.S. not placing missile sites in Romania.
- Former President George W. Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and put a missile base in Romania. President Donald Trump placed another missile base in Poland.
- Former President Bush in 2008 and former President Barack Obama in 2014 blocked any discussion of Russian and Chinese proposals for a space weapons ban in the consensus-bound United Nations Committee for Disarmament in Geneva.
- President Obama rejected President Putin’s offer to negotiate a treaty to ban cyber war.
- President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
- President Trump withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, and placed sanctions on Iran.
- From President Clinton through President Trump, the U.S. has never ratified the 1992 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which was ratified by Russia has ratified.
Taken in their totality, these U.S. moves constitute an attempt to gain nuclear superiority, including the possibility of launching a First Strike nuclear attack. Pulling out of the ABM and INF treaties, in particular, indicate U.S. intentions to threaten Russia with nuclear war.
Is it any wonder that Russia, faced with the prospect of the U.S.-North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops and nuclear weapons systems stationed on its border with Ukraine, felt compelled to take military action? Now Russia is stuck in a bloody war that has been constantly escalated by the U.S., which has rejected multiple opportunities for peace talks since the war began. Russia asked for neutrality for Ukraine and respect for the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking populations. Over 1 million casualties later (both sides), the bloody trench-and-drone war drags on, not because of Russian intransigence, but because of the aggressive U.S. policy of “full-spectrum dominance” in every corner of the globe.
Drone Attack on Russia’s Strategic Bombers Tempted Nuclear War
On June 1 of this year, a U.S.-supported Ukrainian drone attack on nuclear bombers in Russia almost triggered a nuclear war. According to a Russian general who spoke with former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) geopolitical analyst Larry Johnson, the world was even closer to nuclear war than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russian bombers were openly visible on the tarmac, in accordance with the New START Treaty, which is designed to prevent a nuclear-first strike by either Russia or the U.S. This last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia is due to expire this coming February. But it already has been drone bombed.
News Flash! President Trump just posted on his Truth Social account that he is sending two nuclear-armed submarines closer to Russia. Why? Because he didn’t like something that Russia’s Dmitri Medvedev said on social media. What? Trump is scoring pissing points by playing with nuclear weapons? A narcissistic psychopath has his hand on the nuclear button. This is all the more reason to push for an end to the president’s sole authority to launch a nuclear war.
To round out this bleak report, we must at least mention that the U.S. is planning for war against China. The United States is openly planning to wage a war against China—some say as soon as 2027. Why? Because China’s remarkable revolution from extreme poverty to becoming a prosperous global powerhouse is something that the U.S. ruling class (or “deep state”) will not accept. So China will not be attacked because of its military aggression. Even as the U.S. wages perpetual war on multiple countries, China has not been at war with anybody in this century. U.S. complaints about Taiwan are nothing more than an excuse, a trigger for the war that U.S. leaders are determined to wage, at all costs.
The Pentagon Is Planning a Nuclear First-Strike Against China
The Pentagon has figured out that it cannot win a conventional war against China, however. It is planning to use nuclear weapons—an overwhelming first strike or possibly only “tactical nuclear weapons,” those cute little guys that are several times more powerful than what was dropped on Hiroshima.
U.S. war planners recently asked Australia and Japan to declare what military resources they will bring to bear in a war against China. And get this… the U.S. held talks with Japan, of all nations, to discuss how they will coordinate their efforts after a nuclear strike on China. Among the issues they discussed were how they could best manage public opinion after a nuclear war.
It is mostly by dumb luck, however, that we have not all perished in a nuclear Armageddon already.
So if you think I am pointing the finger at the U.S. as the “bad guy” who is mostly responsible for the prospect of a civilization-ending nuclear war, then you are reading correctly. To put it bluntly, the problem is U.S. imperialism. The waning U.S. empire, desperate to maintain its hegemony and expand it, is the elephant in the room. It is buttressed by a very large and powerful military-industrial complex (MIC), the one that former President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about—now on steroids. Ray McGovern of Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a former CIA analyst himself, has expanded the MIC acronym to MICIMATT (Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academia Think Tanks). Yes, they are all complicit, not just with genocide in Palestine, but with militarizing and destroying the world. We peace-loving people have our work cut out for us. We are up against a lot.
There is a lot of money to be made from war and militarism. And politicians learn the advantages of justifying war and funding the war machine. The ever-growing Pentagon budget has ballooned to over $1 trillion under Trump, money that will be redirected from the social security net that is being systematically shredded. Spending on nuclear weapons “modernization” alone will cost $100 billion in just the next year (from the budgets of the Pentagon and the Department of Energy).
“The End Is Near”
For decades, peace activists, scientists, and others have been warning us about the “growing danger of nuclear war.” Those sounding the nuclear alarm have been treated like the proverbial fanatic with the sign, “The End Is Near,” or like Chicken Little—“The sky is falling.” It is mostly by dumb luck, however, that we have not all perished in a nuclear Armageddon already. The guard rails have been removed, with the U.S. abrogation of nuclear arms deals. There are very few “adults in the room,” certainly not in the U.S., where neocons who love Israel but hate Iran and Russia have seized the helm. It will take a miracle and a lot of activism to avoid utter disaster in the relatively near future.
Many peoples are already experiencing disaster, what with wars, genocide, extreme poverty, starvation, and the climate crisis—the fruits of corporate greed and militarism. Many people also suffer from the poison of the entire nuclear cycle. There are 15,000 abandoned uranium mines in the Western U.S., many of them on First Nations lands. Radiation contaminates the water, the air, the land, and the people, who suffer from many cancers and radiation-related diseases.
The U.S. Exploded 67 Nuclear Bombs in the Marshall Islands
Then there are the “downwinders” who suffer from the radiation of nuclear bomb testing. Or worse. The Marshall Islands were devastated by nuclear bomb testing. From 1946 to 1958, the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear bombs on this island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. To add insult to injury, their islands are now “sinking” from global warming and rising seas. Many Marshallese, unable to grow food on radiated land and unable to eat the fish from radiated waters, have been allowed to live in the U.S., without citizenship or security, and denied healthcare by many states. There is no cancer treatment facility in the Marshall Islands, and no Veterans Affairs facility for its many veterans of the U.S. military.
We will end this disturbing nuclear tour on a positive note. It has to do with the Marshall Islands. In 1958, four Quaker peace activists bought a sailboat and announced to the world their intention to sail from Los Angeles 4,000 miles into the nuclear test zone in the Marshall Islands to stop U.S. nuclear testing. They were led by Albert Bigelow, a World War II Navy commander who resigned his commission in protest of the U.S. nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Golden Rule Crew Tried to Stop U.S. Nuclear Testing
Halfway through the voyage, when Bigelow and his intrepid crew pulled into Honolulu, they were arrested and thrown in jail and the Coast Guard seized their boat, named Golden Rule. They never made it to the Marshall Islands, but they succeeded in bringing worldwide attention to the danger of radiation that was floating all over the globe, even getting into mothers’ milk. Opposition to nuclear testing led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1962, signed by then-President John F. Kennedy and the leaders of Russia and the United Kingdom. The treaty banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in the water, and in space. Only underground tests were permitted. These days most nuclear testing is done using computer simulations.
The remarkable saga of the Golden Rule continued. The 34-foot ketch was sold and sailed as a pleasure boat by several families to the South Pacific and the Caribbean. Somehow, in 2010 it was found in Humboldt Bay in northern California—a derelict boat that had sunk in a gale and had a big hole in its side. Some locals dragged the beat-up boat onto the beach and planned to make a bonfire of it. When a someone discovered the boat’s legacy, however, local members of Veterans For Peace rescued it and decided to restore it to its original glory.
In June of 2015, after five years of dedicated volunteer labor by veterans, Quakers, and boat lovers, the Golden Rule splashed back into the waters of Humboldt Bay and began sailing up and down the West Coast from British Columbia to Mexico (Ensenada), then to Hawai’i and all around the Hawai’ian islands. Back to California, trucked to Minneapolis, sailed down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, to Cuba and up the East Coast to Toronto and back to Chicago, a 12-month voyage with a total of 102 port stops. At every stop the Golden Rule and its crew were welcomed excitedly by local peace and environmental activists as well as by state and local officials. Nobody wants a nuclear war!
The Golden Rule Is Sailing Around San Francisco Bay
The historic peace boat Golden Rule Sails by the Golden Gate Bridge
The historic Golden Rule peace boat sailed last week from its homeport in Humboldt Bay to San Francisco Bay, where it will spend the month of August educating the public about the “growing danger of nuclear war,” and the importance of supporting the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The treaty, supported by an overwhelming majority of countries, went into force in January 2021. It prohibits nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using, or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits them from assisting, encouraging, or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities
Peace at Home, Peace Abroad!
The Golden Rule is a national project of Veterans For Peace, a 40-year-old organization dedicated to exposing the true costs of war; to restraining our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations; and to ridding the world of nuclear weapons. At its recent national convention, veterans from U.S. wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and recent deployments made a united call for opposition to the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and for resistance to racist ICE attacks in our own communities. While calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the Golden Rule will be echoing these urgent cries for “Peace at Home, Peace Abroad.”
On the 70th Anniversary of the Castle Bravo Test, Remember the Victims
There’s no better way to remember Castle Bravo day than by taking action on behalf of the victims of radiation and pushing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Between 1946 and 1958 the U.S. detonated 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. The blasts vaporized whole islands, carved craters into the shallow lagoons, and exiled hundreds of people from their homes. The Castle Bravo blast was the largest of all, sending particulate and gaseous fallout around the entire planet.
Stopping the Nuclear Weapons Tests
Concerned U.S. citizens tried to stop the tests by contacting Congress, the president, and the press and by demonstrating on campuses and in the streets. They weren’t successful through these conventional means, so in 1958 four Quakers bought a small sailboat, the Golden Rule, and attempted to sail her right into the testing zone in the Marshall Islands.
The crew of the Golden Rule was arrested in Honolulu and could not continue. A second boat, the Phoenix of Hiroshima, took the baton and completed the sail into the Marshall Islands, resulting in the arrest of the Phoenix’s captain. The actions and arrests of these crews spurred a massive public outcry that finally led to the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
The Golden Rule also inspired the founding of Greenpeace in 1971, whose first mission was to sail to Amchitka Island, Alaska, to stop nuclear weapons testing. The U.S. Navy stopped Greenpeace, too. The nuclear bomb the group had come to stop was detonated, but the subsequent tests were canceled and the U.S. stopped the entire Amchitka nuclear test program.Rongelap Relocation
Greenpeace and her vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, played an important role in the Marshall Islands in 1985 when Rongelap residents asked Greenpeace to help them relocate to a new home. Both Bikini and Enewetak’s people were evacuated from their island homes prior to the nuclear tests, hoping to avoid radioactive fallout. But the inhabitants of Rongelap (150 kilometers away) were not so fortunate. Within four hours of the Castle Bravo explosion, fallout was settling on the island. A fine white ash landed on the heads and bare arms of people standing in the open. It dissolved into water supplies and drifted into houses.
With double the usual miscarriages and other health problems caused by the Castle Bravo test, the people of Rongelap begged the U.S. government to evacuate them. But they were now human “guinea pigs,” and U.S. scientists wanted to study the effects of radiation on the population.
Finally, in 1985, Greenpeace made three 180 kilometer trips from Rongelap to Mejato (in the Kwajalein Atoll), taking 300 islanders to safety.
New Relationships Built: Marshallese and the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule disappeared from public view in 1958 and eventually sank in Humboldt Bay in far northern California in 2010. After a five-year rebuild, she was re-launched and returned to her anti-nuclear mission by Veterans For Peace.
In 2016 when the Golden Rule visited Portland, Oregon, we visited with a Marshallese group who built a traditional sailing canoe. Most people in and from the Marshall Islands have never heard of the Golden Rule or the Phoenix of Hiroshima. However, when they hear the story, they are very excited that people attempted to help them all those years ago.
Kiana Juda-Angelo presented the Golden Rule Project with a Marshallese flag at our public presentation in Portland, Oregon in 2016.
Hawaii has one of the largest populations of Marshall Islanders in the U.S. It has been our pleasure to meet them and commemorate Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day in Honolulu in 2019.
In 2022, as the Golden Rule sailed down the Mississippi River along the “Great Loop,” we passed through Dubuque, Iowa, where there is a community of 800 or so Marshall Islanders. Veterans For Peace member Art Roche told them the story of the Golden Rule’s 1958 voyage and that we were bringing the boat to Dubuque! They greeted us with leis and songs of sweet harmony in their traditional clothing. We enjoyed dancing, speeches, and song for a whole weekend.
The Marshall Islands and the United States Today
When the Golden Rule was in New York City we met the Permanent United Nations Representative from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Ambassador Amatlain Elizabeth Kabua. She explained that there were several issues that could be improved:
- Although the Marshallese have increased radiation-caused cancer, there is no chemotherapy facility anywhere in the Marshall Islands.
- Although Marshall Islanders, like the Indigenous people in the United States, volunteer at a proportionately high rate for the U.S. military, there is no VA clinic in the Marshall Islands.
For the last three decades, Marshall Islanders have sought compensation from the U.S. for the health and environmental effects of nuclear testing. They’ve been denied standing to sue in U.S. courts, and Congress has declined their requests. The Compact of Free Association (COFA) which governs the relationship between the U.S., Palau, Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands was renegotiated in 2023. However, Congress has yet to fund the $7 billion dollars that was approved.
The Marshall Islands are also being hit hard by global warming and slowly sinking into the rising seas. This will submerge a highly radioactive nuclear waste dump, Runit dome. Runit dome contains nuclear contamination from both the Marshall Islands and the Nevada test site.
Take Action
On March 1, let’s remember all of the victims of radiation—from Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nuclear testing areas; and uranium mining, milling, processing, and disposal sites.
Let your senators and representative know that you support fully funding the Compact of Free Association (COFA).
Tell them that you support the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, including its expansion to include those people exposed from the Trinity test in New Mexico in 1945.
Work for the U.S. to sign the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which includes compensation for victims of radiation. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, is working hard to get all nations to sign the treaty.
Back from the Brink urges the U.S. government to:
- Actively pursue a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals (they support the TPNW);
- Renounce the option of using nuclear weapons first;
- End the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. president to launch a nuclear attack;
- Take U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert; and
- Cancel the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons.
Their website has an advocacy toolkit and sample scripts for talking with the press and policy makers.
Two important bills are in Congress: H. Res 77 would implement the Back from the Brink Measures. HR 2775 would move money from nuclear weapons manufacturing to funding fossil-free, nuclear-free energy as well as human needs. Ask your representative to sponsor these bills and your senators to introduce a companion bill!
There’s no better way to remember Castle Bravo day than by taking action on behalf of the victims of radiation and pushing for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
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