ACTION ALERT: Stop Building More
US Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles
RootsAction

(October 5, 2024) — Defuse Nuclear War activists in California have been on the edge of their seats for over a month waiting for an expected test of a US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), preparing to gather in protest with only a few days’ notice.

Meanwhile, China conducted an ICBM test of its own. Though it usually tests its ICBMs inside its own borders, this time it conducted a test over the Pacific — as the United States does when it fires unarmed Minuteman III missiles from Vandenberg Space Force Base to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

The US Department of Defense said the fact that China announced its test beforehand was “a good thing.” But ICBMs shouldn’t be deployed in the first place.

In an interview last year, Daniel Ellsberg described the profound danger of keeping the ICBM force: “For over half a century, the existence on both sides of vulnerable land-based ICBMs has been the hair trigger to the Doomsday Machine. They pose a use-it-or-lose-it mentality that encourages each side to launch its missiles on ambiguous warning, lest they be destroyed — in order to attack the ICBMs of the other side. The elimination of just one of these pairs of ICBMs would significantly reduce the chance of all-out nuclear war taking place, even in the event of a small nuclear exchange.”

Ellsberg was talking about the US and Russia, but China rapidly developing its ICBM force means the potential for miscalculation, and the risk of nuclear war, will increase. The US can begin to de-escalate the trilateral arms race for more, “better” land-based missiles by canceling its own tests (as it has previously in times of high international tensions) and then proceeding to dismantle its ICBMs.
Send a quick email to your senators and representative, telling them that ICBMs should be shut down

We cannot accept a world constantly held at the edge of destruction in under an hour. Stigmatizing ICBM tests through public protest is a first step toward pulling ourselves back from the edge of total destruction.

I also want to invite you to check out some recent writing and speaking from the Defuse Nuclear War team:

RootsAction’s national director Norman Solomon spoke at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation annual conference. His keynote speech called for an end to the US intercontinental ballistic missile program and a real acknowledgment of the stakes of nuclear threats:
“Today, with nuclear arsenals vastly larger and more powerful, scientists know that a nuclear exchange would cause ‘nuclear winter.’ And the nearly complete end of agriculture on the planet. Some estimates put the survival rate of humans on Earth at 1 or 2 percent.”

And, I invite you to read my own recent article in Jacobin, “There’s No Such Thing as Escalate to De-Escalate,” where I lay out the longer history of the strategy Israel has claimed it is using in its attacks on Lebanon as part of the erosion of the taboo around using nuclear weapons.

You can also sign up for updates on the Vandenberg ICBM protests here. Together, we are building a movement strong enough to overcome this existential threat.

ACTION: Send a quick email to your members of the House and Senate to give them a clear message.

After doing this action, please use the tools on the next webpage to share it with your friends.
In solidarity,
Emma Claire for the Defuse Nuclear War team

Related News
“The US Shouldn’t Waste $125 Billion on Dangerous New ICBMs,” Common Dreams, February 29, 2024