The Hope of Nuclear Crisis

by

In an address to the United Nations in 1961, John F. Kennedy said:

For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war--and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… For a nuclea

r disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war--or war will put an end to mankind… Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

It should be clear by now that Kennedy was correct. We, every one of us, lives only at the discretion of power-hungry and potentially mercurial men in Washington, Moscow, Pyongyang, and Beijing.

While the present crisis with North Korea consumes our attention, we forget that it is far from the only time we have come close to nuclear annihilation. Between 1950 and 2000 (roughly the dawn of the hydrogen bomb to the end of the century) there are four notable times that a nuclear exchange nearly occurred:

  • during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962;
  • when the U.S.’s NORAD command displayed a Soviet attack on Nov. 9, 1979;
  • when the Soviet early warning system malfunctioned , on Sept. 26, 1983; and
  • when Russian systems mistook a Norwegian rocket launch for a Trident Missile launch on Jan. 25, 1995.

In addition, there have been a number of times U.S. presidents have considered initiating a nuclear war; indeed, every U.S. president from Harry Truman (Korea) to Richard Nixon (Vietnam) either considered or threatened to use launch a first-strike nuclear attack.

Thus, while President Trump’s twitter feud with North Korea unnerves the world, it is in many ways a return to the norm. As long as we vest Presidents, men whose only mandatory qualifications appear to be a thirst for power and an inflated sense of ego, with the power to reign “fire and fury” down on the world, we will all live by their whim.

Indeed, it is not even clear that the President and his advisers understand the effects of their own weapons. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claimed that American should sleep well, suggesting that we have nothing to fear.

Yet this attitude assumes two things. First, it assumes that Americans so lack empathy so that we would not feel sorrow and pain if our government attacks a nation of 25 million innocent people. I don’t know about the things that Mr. Tillerson fears, but for me, loss of innocent life is pretty far up there.

Secondly, it assumes that there are no global effects of a nuclear war. In the 1980s, Carl Sagan helped popularize the idea of “nuclear winter,” the idea that a large-scale nuclear war between the USSR and the U.S. would drop global temperatures enough to preclude food production in much of the Northern Hemisphere. More recently, several climatologists used modern computer models to estimate the effects of a relatively small nuclear war between India and Pakistan. The effects were still catastrophic. Temperatures and growing seasons decreased and the ozone layer, the layer that protects humans from skin cancer and crops from damage, thinned dramatically. A medium-sized nuclear war between, for example, the U.S. and China, might eliminate growing seasons in most of North American and Europe for about three years. Thus, even a small nuclear war will directly impact Americans. The Pacific Ocean will not protect America from nuclear winter.

The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church state, “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy… Consequently, we endorse general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” We have largely ignored this teaching, perhaps because we find it too ambitious. Yet if the crisis with North Korea can teach us anything, it is that we cannot take this teaching as merely aspirational. War is one of the most pressing social issues that the world faces, and the church has spent far too much time inwardly focused and far too little time making the case that war in general, and nuclear war in particular, are antithetical to Christianity.

I often feel powerless and hopeless as distant politicians make decisions that will impact me or the world around me. But the good news is that, as Christians, we are neither powerless nor hopeless. We know that that one day the swords will indeed be beaten into plowshares. It is not a matter of if war will end, but when war will end. Peace will come, and nothing that Kim Jong-Un or Donald Trump can do will change that. The less good news is that until that time comes, we have a lot of work to do.

Brian Snyder is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Louisiana State University and layperson at First United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge, La.