When
Jonathan Schell, the most cogent moral philosopher of the nuclear age, died of
cancer last month, it left a rift in the moral fabric of our small planet, a
hole similar in size to those left by the three Alberts—Camus, Einstein and Bigelow.
Never heard of Bert Bigelow? He was the Harvard grad who in 1958 twice tried to
sail his ketch, the Golden Rule, into
the waters of the South Pacific where nuclear weapons were being tested—and
found time as well to be beaten up by racist thugs alongside Congressman John
Lewis while protesting for civil rights.
Compared
to giants like Schell, Bert Bigelow, or General Lee Butler, a former head of
the Strategic Air Command who now advocates for nuclear abolition, the people
who presume to military, political and industrial leadership here and abroad
sometimes seem, from top to bottom, like a bunch of corrupt, deluded, hypocritical
flunkies.
I take
this indignant tone not out of moral superiority, but because like many
ordinary citizens I experience periodic spasms of hopelessness. I have no
say—except here—in deliberations over war and climate change that could affect
the lives of billions of my fellow inhabitants of spaceship earth.
I
take comfort that a similar spleen occasionally overtook the prophet of love whose
rise from death into new life we celebrate on Easter: “Woe unto you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed
appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all
uncleanness!”
NATO
presses against the Western flank of Russia, risking a game of nuclear chicken,
and then feigns surprise when Russia pushes back. While the U.S. administration
self-righteously excoriates Iran for its mere intent to build a nuclear weapon,
our Congress in January happily funds the production of the latest version of a
700-pound hydrogen bomb that will be fitted to fighter planes in Belgium,
Holland, Turkey, Germany and Italy. A more blatant violation of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty is hard to imagine.
That
the law of force still prevails over the force of law has its roots in a
collective insanity, a gigantic echo chamber of projection. Possessing such
enormous destructive power themselves, the nuclear nations cannot afford to
acknowledge that they are potential agents of genocide—even omnicide—so we
project onto each other the malevolence contained in our own weapons. The
effect is a grotesque chimera, a monster “meme” that does nothing but make apocalypse
more likely. Some in the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) coalition which
focuses on genocide, have rightly turned their attention to the genocide-in-waiting
that reside under the wings, in the silos, and within the submarines of the
nuclear powers.
Do
Costa Rica or Sweden feel so threatened by each other that they obsess with obtaining
nuclear weapons to keep them “safe”? They do not. Nonetheless if, God forbid,
nuclear winter happened, they would perish alongside those in the nuclear club.
The whited sepulcher of our international system is based in the gross illusion
that the potential for perfect destruction will maintain perfect security. And
behind that looms a far older illusion, that the best way to resolve a conflict
is to kill those with whom you disagree.
Did this work between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda 20 years ago? It did not.
Will it work between separatists and their opponents in the Ukraine—or between
Russia and NATO? It will not.
The
vast majority of our leaders and lawmakers do not yet seem to understand that
national interest can no longer be at cross-purposes with planetary interest. Spending billions more on nuclear
weapons will do nothing to solve growing climate instability or the withering
away of life in our oceans.
Effective
leadership must now initiate on the basis that the self-interest of my country
is intimately bound up with the self-interest of my “adversaries.” Shia will
not be secure until Sunnis feel secure. Israelis will not feel secure until
Palestinians feel secure. Ukraine will not feel secure until Russia feels secure.
No one will feel secure until we start spending less on weapons and pay more attention to resolving conflict nonviolently, developing compassion and empathy, and enlarging our frame of reference to include all of humanity and the whole earth. That is what it will take to bring new life to dead bones.
Out
of the crucifixion that was Dresden and Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, out of
the crucifixion that is Iraq or Syria or the Central African Republic today,
may a resurrection come where the military measures its effectiveness by
something other than the sheer level of destruction at its command. Let us call
upon all the institutions that enshrine our values and powers, the governments
and their armies, the churches and mosques and synagogues and temples, the
universities, and the corporations, to turn their creativity toward the life-affirming
mission of caring for the entire earth community.
