The Wish For Peace – The Will To Peace

November 3, 1985
Lakeland

There is no doubt that the people of the world wish for peace. There is much doubt that beyond the wish there is the will to peace. The will to peace requires risks relatively few are willing to take; the will to peace demands a search for purpose that will see through the blizzard of paper and words that blow in on us from the governments of the world, from the media, and from agitated partisans we may encounter in our day-to-day doings.

According to the gospel of Luke (19/42), Jesus looked over the city of Jerusalem and said, “would that you knew even today on what your peace depends.” By and large, we do not know on what our peace depends, although we wish for peace.

Former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford told the National Press Club, “If we were to combine the destructive power of our 25,000 weapons with the Soviet weapons, less than that, but maybe of the same intensity, our scientists have estimated that the total destructive power of the nuclear forces in the world is one million times the force of the bomb we dropped on Hiroshima. And what do we do? We go on making more. I pray to God that some day the nations of the world will have leaders who can bring to a grinding halt this incredible arms race which is to me the most poisonous insanity ever to afflict the minds of man.” (WASHINGTON SPECTATOR)

[CJW notes: Talmud: “The soldiers die, the kings are heroes.” Nuclear world: the people will die, and so will the kings, premiers, prime ministers, and presidents.]

My purpose today is not to question the wish for peace, that’s a universal wish, but to outline some forces that weaken the will to peace. The summit meeting between Reagan and Gorbachev approaches. That meeting may result in some sort of break-through. But, judging from the pre-summit publicity blitz from both sides, the question seems to be which one will return looking better, rather than doing better for the peace of the world. I hope I’m wrong. There is always hope. [CJW note: Report, Reagan may be open to Gorbachev’s stated willingness to reduce offensive nuclear weapons 50%. We will see.]

The will to peace is weakened by fears, fears that seem to override fear of a nuclear winter and planet where human life has died. There is territorial fear. A cartoon in the NEW YORKER has a scribe saying to a king on a throne, “War is the highest form of the real estate business? May I quote you?” Territorial conquest has always been one of the prime causes of war. Fear of being conquered has always prevented the conversion of swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks. Modern war conditions and the military industrial complex, which President Eisenhower warned us about, [are] the sources of economic fears. Or in plainer terms, who wants to lose his job?

Three hundred billion [dollars] a year for the Pentagon is such an immense dollar figure that it is almost abstract. But when reduced to some specifics, we can understand why the will to peace is weakened by the fear of losing jobs.

I read that in California, U.S. defense spending totals $40 billion a year and that 22% of the jobs in that state are related to defense spending. If one’s job depends on preparation for war, he or she has to be a rare individual to readily accept unemployment as a consequence of one’s wish for peace.

Or take our own state of Florida. Horance Davis, in his column of October 20, presented some formidable facts. Florida’s biggest business is war making. Our “state has 57 military bases employing 100,000 military and civilians, which along with retirees, provide an annual payroll of $4.2 billion. Florida has 64 plants with military contracts worth at least $5 million each, for a total of $5 billion. Martin Marietta alone has 12,000 people employed in Orlando. ... Total military spending in Florida about $24 billion. ... By Pentagon calculation, Florida has 840,000 beholden to military.” But Florida and California are only two states.

When a person gets the pink slip and is unemployed, that’s a big reality. If you’ve never known the gut-wrenching fear of being unemployed with thousands of others competing for available openings, then you might not understand that a good job takes precedence over the will to peace. That’s an authentic fear in our time, when the alternative to a well-paying skilled job may be frying hamburgers in a fast-food joint at minimum wage. It’s not easy to persuade a technician to stop making nuclear fuses when his mortgage payment, college for his son/daughter, car payment, and a measure of self-esteem depend on his continuing to make nuclear fuses. Such a high-wage-dependent worker may have a wish for peace, but an ambivalent will to substantial arms reduction.

Now, I’m aware that since the close of WWII there have been hopes and some suggested plans for conversion of war industries to peace industries. But there are few specifics and little clout in such proposals. The non-war needs are massive to which industry, science, and engineering could be converted. Better health services, tackling world-wide hunger systematically, grappling with the mounting problem of polluted earth, air, water, affordable housing for lower-income levels, world-wide population crisis – you could add to the list.

However, perhaps I am too cynical, because I do not envision the executive branch or the houses of Congress switching 50% or 25% or even 10% of the $300 billion from the Pentagon to such peaceful activities, however vital they could be.

There is another fear that is a powerful obstacle to halting the escalating arms race. That is the fear that history may repeat itself. The fearful ghost of Hitler haunts the dreams of both hawks and doves.

A few of you, like I do, remember the 1930s and the rise to power of Nazi Germany. In that period, pacifism was a fairly strong ideology in Europe and North America

“On February 9, 1933, 10 days after Hitler came to power, the Oxford Union Society, a celebrated training ground for future national leaders, had voted, by just short of a two to one margin, that its members would ‘in no circumstances fight for its King and Country.’” (See Peter Steinfels)

The pacifists urged all of us that war solves no problems, but as Peter Steinfels, editor of the journal COMMONWEAL, confronts such idealism forthrightly:

“War solves some problems. To be specific, Hitler and his accomplices did not complete the Holocaust. They did not establish uncontested reign over the Eurasian continent, from Siberia to the British Isles.... They did not develop nuclear weapons and inter-continental missiles.” (COMMONWEAL, 7/12/85)

But they were getting close on those fearful developments. Nazi rocket science was ahead of the Allies, demonstrated by our importation after victory of German scientists such as Von Braun to try to acquire an advantage over the Soviets. The Nazis were working on atomic weapons, and they were close. If the Allies had not invaded Europe and the Soviets from the East, and conquered the Nazis and Fascists, what would have been the history? It was, as we say, a close call.

Such historical realities in no way undermines the moral objections to war. Again, let me quote Peter Steinfels, “The march of Nazi Germany to world war and Holocaust constitutes a kind of threshold case for thinking about the morality of peace and war. If moral realities do not stand up when tested against these realities, then it seems their proponents have a heavy burden of explaining why their positions should be so compelling today.”

Therefore, such considerations as I have outlined do not alter the wish for peace, but do dilute the will to peace.

I have a booklet, “To Proclaim Peace,” published by The Fellowship of Reconciliation a couple of years ago. The booklet contains the peace resolutions of 27 religious bodies, Protestant, Jewish, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and including OUR own UUA. These bodies state their positions differently, but all condemn the escalation of nuclear weapons. Most call for a bi-lateral freeze and a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons.

I made some rough calculations, and the 27 religions have a total stated membership of approximately 102 million adults in the United States alone! Why have 102 million people had so little effect on the escalating nuclear race? True, I believe that the pressure of religious organizations had some good influence on the SALT II treaty. But by and large, a less than powerful effect.

Why? There are those who maintain that the peace statements of religious bodies are not representative of the majority of their members. The peace resolutions are either by statements of councils of bishops or by delegates gathered in bodies such as the General Assembly of the UUA, General Boards and Councils. Such bodies, the thinking goes, are far more willing to make strong statements for peace than the membership as a whole.

In my view, this disparity of influence can be traced to the fears outlined earlier. Fears are disabling. In the areas of nuclear armament, fear can lead to apathy; fear can also be transformed to hate – a disproportionate hate of the Soviet Union and Cuba, and paranoid outbursts against those [who] advocate steps to disarmament.

Furthermore, we are all deluged by contradictory points of view. In the Ledger, October 29, there was an example that illustrates how confusion can stymie convictions. There were abutting columns, one by James Reston, one by William Buckley. Both chose the same subject, President Reagan’s speech to the United Nations. I won’t read the full statements. But Reston begins, “President Reagan has an odd habit of evading things he can do and concentrating on things he can’t possibly do.” Buckley begins, “The President’s speech to the United Nations was a joy. It antagonizes both the Soviet Union and American liberals, a sure sign on October 24 God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world.”

The contradictions in these two columns go beyond political and policy disagreements. If you read the columns, you may have come to the conclusion that these two commentators were talking about different world realities. What is real?

I have been sharing with you some of the dilemmas that trouble me. Just for the record, I still advocate a halt in the testing of nuclear weapons – a freeze not only in development, but in testing and systematic bilateral nuclear disarmament.

I still advocate that our government pursue strongly with the U.S.S.R. dismantling of not only nuclear weapons, but chemical weapons, and biological gases and poisons.

I believe negotiations should be constant, not periodic; continuing, not spasmodic.

I have been opposed to SDI [the Strategic Defense Initiative, a.k.a. “Star Wars”]. But, after listening to the reasonable (if debatable) case Bob Baum made for this development, I might be for it, IF rather than new appropriations for the billions required to develop SDI, the money was transferred from the Pentagon’s current budget for the production of new and more nuclear offensive weapons.

What’s to be in this world? In my low moments, I resonate to Matthew Arnold’s words that we are

“Wandering between two worlds, one dead,
The other powerless to be born.”

In my dark moments, the lines from W. B. Yeats are foreboding:

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

But always the hope of the prophecy of Micah -

“Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
Neither shall they learn war any more.
But they shall sit every one under his vine and fig tree,
And none shall make them afraid....”