The Growing 99 Luftballon Crisis

Edward Wong of the New York Times reported today that instead of joining Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his canceled diplomatic trip to China, he joined friends instead at a Chinese restaurant in Washington DC, where they sang an ironic version of the 1983 hit, "99 Luftballons." What Wong did not write is that the song, which was released in the midst of the Cruise missile crisis by the West German band Nena, was an international cry for peace and sanity as the nuclear tensions between West and East spiraled out of control.

I met with Nena's lead singer (real name: Gabriele Susanne Kerner) in a West Berlin loft soon after the song was released. At the time, legendary peace activist Dave Dellinger and I -- a young Mother Jones editor at the time -- were leading a magazine-sponsored tour of Europe, where people were demonstrating loudly against President Reagan's proposed deployment of the Cruise missiles.

I remember Nena as a serious (and very beautiful) young woman. It was a time when even Europe's pop singers took a strong stand on war and peace. The smell of smoke and radioactive ash were in the air. The protestors of the global Nuclear Freeze movement thought they could make a difference. They did. We're still here.

And now our masters of war want a calamitous showdown with China. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Here, in honor of the human yearning for peace, is an English translation of lyrics from "99 Luftballons," which presents a nightmare scenario: a nuclear holocaust is ignited by the playful release of some toy red balloons. (By the way, we now know that an accidental nuclear war nearly broke out in September 1983 -- the world was saved by one cool-headed Soviet Air Defense watchman, Stanislav Petrov.)

99 red balloons

Floating in the summer sky

Panic bells, it's red alert

There's something here from somewhere else

The war machine springs to life

Opens up one eager eye

Focusing it on the sky

The 99 red balloons go by

99 Decision Street

99 ministers meet

To worry, worry, super scurry

Call the troops out in a hurry

This is what we've waited for

This is it boys, this is war

The President is on the line

As 99 red balloons go by

99 knights of the air

Ride super high-tech jet fighters

Everyone's a superhero

Everyone's a Captain Kirk

With orders to identify

To clarify and classify

Scrambling the summer sky

99 red balloons go by

Nena