Setting the Earth on Fire?

Dear Friends and Family

Fr David’s homily this morning, on Jeremiah and this Jesus passage, was on fire.  It landed on me as a call to share something with which I have been wrestling.  Something about America.

Setting the Earth on Fire?

“I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!...Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division…”  (Gospel of Luke 12: 49, 51, reading for Sunday August 14, 2022)

This is not the usual Jesus, all about peace and unity. He was talking to his disciples.  Jesus saw that Israel was on a collision course with the Roman Empire. Their addiction to money and power would eventually provoke a blazing reaction.Jesus was offering them his way out of this collision, his Kingdom of God. His Kingdom established division of his followers from the addicted, who were blind to the consequences of their greed. So in the end, Rome levelled the Jerusalem Temple, killed 1.1 million Jews and drove all the remaining Jews out of Israel. The Jewish Christians had already moved out of Israel and were saved.

It seems to me that America is like Israel.  We will eventually set the earth on fire, literally.  Jesus’ Kingdom is the way out for us also.  But I fear that our addiction to money and power has already blinded us to where we are going.  Let me explain.

Around the time of World War II, two key technologies developed.  One was telecommunications.  This made possible trans-national corporations.  A CEO in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles could follow developments on any continent and initiate actions anywhere on earth instantly.  So this made a new form of empire possible, driven by trans-national corporations.  

The other key technology was the development of nuclear weapons.  Empires function by threatening and dominating other countries.  The threat of the use of nuclear weapons is the ultimate tool of domination.  After Hiroshima, and the exhaustion of Britain, France, Russia and China in World War II, we became the “leader” of the world, ie, the dominating empire.  No American leader talks about it, but we behave exactly as an empire (see the work of Johann Galtung).

World War III will probably be the shortest war ever fought, maybe several hours long.  It will be fought with nuclear weapons.  Over the following week, thousands of cities will be consumed in enormous blazing firestorms.  The smoke will rise into our stratosphere, where much of it will stay for 10 years (see Steven Starr).  This will block enough sunlight and drop global temperatures enough that most agricultural crops will not mature.  This is called “nuclear winter.”  Most large animals, including most humans, will not survive.  It is unclear if any will survive.  In other words, nuclear war is essentially suicide.  

Decade by decade, our greed increases.  Our media, our health care, our education have largely been privatized.  The inequality between our rich and our poor grows and grows.  Our military budget grows by leaps and bounds.  Our war-hawks push relentlessly against Russia, China and many Muslim countries.

So the probability of nuclear war by miscalculation or accident or blunder or ignorance or ego grows also.  In 2019, Martin Hellman, Senior Fellow for Nuclear Risk Analysis, Federation of American (Atomic) Scientists, estimated the probability at roughly 20% per century.[1]  So the probability of no nuclear war in any century may be about 80%.  For three centuries, that probability is 80% x 80% x 80% = 50%.  Thus the half-life[2] of a nuclear civilization may be roughly three centuries.  Hellman concludes, “Continued possession of nuclear weapons makes nuclear war inevitable.”

A great prophet taught “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”  Violence inevitably elicits counter-violence.  So if empires live by violence, are they not sowing the seeds of their own downfall?  All previous empires have collapsed.  Is the US empire collapsing?  Vietnam?  Iraq?  Afghanistan?  We are sending weapons to Ukraine so they will fight Russia for us.  We are expanding NATO towards Russia, and towards China (in the RIMPAC maneuvers).  Will these weapons and expansions not eventually lead to larger wars?

Instead of suicide, consider abolishing nuclear weapons.  Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated a large reduction in the number of nuclear weapons.  The key ingredient was strong verification protocols.  Tragically President Trump was manipulated, probably by our war-hawks, into withdrawing from two critical treaties (intermediate range missile ban, Iran nuclear deal).  These withdrawals have increased the likelihood of nuclear war.  But nuclear weapons can be abolished, and that will be a long step forward in security.

Yet in 1955, Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein published a manifesto, pointing out that any nuclear-capable nation facing total dismemberment will likely abandon such a treaty and frantically attempt to (re)build some nuclear weapons.  The ultimate solution is the abolition, not just of nuclear weapons, but of war itself.  Most people today assume war can not be abolished.  But it has been done.  

In 1968, Russia invaded Czechoslovakia.  The Czech prime minister suggested they try this Gandhi thing called ‘nonviolence.’  There was some friendly mischief – rotating road signs, underground newspapers.  But mostly they just talked to the invading troops, “Why are you here?” 

“To rescue you from your terrible dictator.” 

“We love our prime minister – he has given us free speech, choice of political parties, democracy.”  

Within one week, most Russian soldiers were refusing orders.  So they were all silenced and sent to Siberia, and a new army was brought in.  The result was the same, week after week.  After six months, the Russians mostly gave up and went home.  The total death toll during this friendly non-war was 137, mostly in the early confusion of the invasion.

Gene Sharp is the father of strategic nonviolence, premised on the withdrawal of consent through mass civil disobedience.  In 1985, he wrote “Making Europe Unconquerable,” using what happened in Czechoslovakia as a beginning template for how to make any country unconquerable, ie, how to deter attack, or defend a country (even America) from invasion, or from a coup d’etat, without war.

He develops the concept of “civilian(-based) defense,” and proposes refinements through research, policy studies, feasibility studies, contingency planning, preparations, and training. This deterrence and defense are accomplished by widespread noncooperation and offering massive public defiance. They aim to deny the objectives of the invaders, and to make their society politically indigestible and ungovernable by the invaders. They also aim to subvert the loyalty of the aggressors’ troops and functionaries, to make them unreliable in carrying out orders and repression, and even to mutiny

Sharp’s fundamental insight is that violence is not the source of power in politics.  Rather its source is the cooperation of people and human institutions, which can be refused.  Nonviolent struggle can generally wield great power, even against ruthless rulers and regimes, because it attacks the most vulnerable characteristic of all hierarchical institutions: dependence on the submission and cooperation of the governed.

Martin Luther King explained that Jesus’ Kingdom of God is the beloved community we are to build.   

Blessed are the poor.  The rich are blinded by their greed.

Blessed are the meek.  The arrogant have no friends or allies.

Blessed are the righteous seekers.  The self-righteous win no respect.

Blessed are the peacemakers.  The warmongers make hell for everyone.

Blessed are the persecuted.  The persecutors sow the seeds of their own downfall.

I need to focus on studying and advocating that our society begin building Sharp’s civilian defense (related to “unarmed civilian protection”).  It is the key to preventing future coups d’etat, Trump or otherwise, as well as to abolishing nuclear weapons, and abolishing war itself.  The nuclear weapons part will be the most difficult, because we are so addicted to the benefits of our empire.  I suspect that we can do this only with the help, and by the grace, of God.

Peace and blessings

Lorin

[1] “Rethinking National Security”

[2] Half-life of a decaying isotope is defined as the time in which exactly half of that isotope decays