A Matter of Idolatry

In the last six months, the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union has become more tense and heated than at any time since World War II. The descent of both sides into a wartime psychology is generally linked to the September 6, 1983 date of the Korean airliner incident.

The Soviet's downing of the airliner was, at best, a tragic blunder compounded by a callous cover-up. But the Soviet leaders were genuinely, and understandably, bewildered by the unusually vicious and frenzied name-calling that came from the United States in the wake of the tragedy. The torrent of verbal abuse, combined with continued U.S. intransigence at the nuclear arms control talks, apparently convinced the Soviets that Ronald Reagan is so consumed with blind ideological hatred of their country that further attempts to reason with him were futile.

As a result, when the United States began deploying the NATO Pershing II and cruise missiles, the Soviet delegates walked out of both the Euromissile and strategic arms control talks and have so far shown no inclination to return. They seem inclined to sit out 1984 with the hope that the American people will make Ronald Reagan go away this November. In the meantime the Soviets have also done their part to escalate the military danger in Europe by moving shorter range nuclear missiles into Warsaw Pact countries closer to potential battle lines.

The current war-like atmosphere has not been limited to the escalation of the nuclear arms race. Reagan proclaimed the U.S. invasion of tiny Grenada a victory against Soviet expansionism. He similarly justified escalations of the proxy war against Nicaragua. Perhaps most foolishly and dangerously, the administration has been concocting a superpower confrontation over Lebanon, applying a simplistic analysis that identifies all Lebanese opposition with the Syrians and sees the Syrians and the Soviets as a monolithic entity.

The deepening U.S.-Soviet crisis of the past several months has been worsened by the fact that the Soviet Union was effectively without a premier for most of that time. While Ronald Reagan has seemed morally and psychologically incapable of opening the door to dialog, the Soviet Union has been internally paralyzed by Yuri Andropov's incapacitating illnesses. The Soviets have also been captive to the same lack of vision and dependence on military might that have fueled the conflict from our side.

Since Andropov's death widespread speculation has suggested that the ensuing shift in Soviet leadership might give Reagan a convenient face-saving opportunity to soften his Cold War stance before it begins to hurt his re-election bid. In fact efforts to retool the administration's foreign policy image began in the weeks before Andropov's death with a televised speech introducing the president in his new election year role as Reagan the Reasonable. Unfortunately the speech showed no traces of change on the substantive issues, like the nuclear arms race, that concern the Soviets and the rest of the world.

One can always hope that new circumstances might lead to new policies, but it doesn't seem likely. The Soviet's selection of Konstantin Chernenko, an elderly Brezhnev protégé, as their new leader does not bode well for any humanizing reforms or creative peace initiatives coming from the Soviet side. The Soviet Union has a Cold War militarist lobby not unlike our own, and in the wake of U.S. political and military escalations, the Soviet cold warriors seem to be in ascendancy. Chernenko will probably concentrate on building up Soviet military strength to match that of the United States, as he promised in his acceptance speech February 13.

Another reason to expect little in the way of a Cold War thaw is the real possibility that Ronald Reagan's animosity toward the Soviet Union may go even deeper than his re-election ambitions. One could certainly draw that conclusion from his refusal to make the small conciliatory gesture of attending Andropov's funeral. Attending the funeral might have given the Soviets and the world the idea that our president was capable, after all, of occasionally transcending his deep ideological enmity toward the Soviets. But President Reagan felt that would be "the wrong message at this time."

Of course a symbolic gesture like attending Andropov's funeral would hardly have turned the tide of the U.S.-Soviet conflict. But Reagan's decision gives another clue to why he may never make any authentic steps toward peaceful coexistence. Reagan and most of his advisers have so demonized and mythologized the Soviet Union that they are utterly incapable of seeing it as a nation like other nations, pursuing its perceived national interests, some justifiable and some greedy and aggressive, in the same way we pursue our interests. To admit that fact would require admitting that even the leaders of the Soviet Union, however much we dislike some of their actions, are only human beings like ourselves and not the "focus of evil in the modern world" as the president maintains.

Reagan is not alone in his simplistic and self-righteous view of the world. He speaks for a long tradition of nationalistic moral arrogance in the United States that reaches back to the nation's very founding. It is a tradition Reagan often acknowledges by quoting the Puritan dream of America as the biblical "city on a hill."

The United States is not the first or only nation to conceive of itself as specially blessed or its dominion as divinely mandated. Every empire throughout the ages has held to some version of that national myth. The Soviet Union, and czarist Russia before it, has itself embraced a powerful streak of such nationalist mythology. And it is not only nations that are capable of deifying themselves and demonizing the adversary. The failure to recognize the humanity of those with whom we are in conflict is at the root of every form of violence, from the verbal sniping of domestic quarrels to the omnicidal threat of nuclear war.

Seen in this light, our country's current Cold War posture is ultimately a matter of idolatry. It is a problem of bad theology. Bad theology is not likely to be solved by good politics or good diplomacy alone. It is the special role of Christians in a time like this to apply publicly a very different theologically rooted vision of our nation and its role in the world. This vision must humbly recognize that we have sinned and see the highest purpose of human life not in aggression and triumph, but in reconciliation and cooperation.

Danny Collum was an associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.