Breaking the Power

In the last 10 years, a truly remarkable thing has happened in our country and in most of the world. The widespread alarm of ordinary citizens at the prospect of nuclear war has become a major factor in domestic politics and international diplomacy. Humanity's silence in the face of a precarious balance of terror has been decisively broken. From town councils and church committees to houses of parliament and super-power summits, the question of nuclear war is finally at, or near the top of, the public agenda.

That great awakening didn't just happen. It was in large part the result of hard work and difficult struggle on the part of thousands of dedicated activists. And churches and Christian communities, in fact many of the readers of this magazine, played a key role in that process. Because of those efforts, combined with the tides of history and providence, we now live in a world where masses of people in almost every nation are awakened and mobilized against the nuclear threat.

We called for a freeze on the production, testing, and deployment of new nuclear systems. And that call was ratified by an overwhelming majority of the American people. We called for one of the superpowers to break the deadly cycle with a bold, unilateral initiative for peace. And with the Soviet testing moratorium, that has come to pass. Even our fondest and often unspoken dream--the complete elimination of nuclear weapons as instruments of national security--is now discussed with apparent seriousness by world leaders. We can look back over the last decade and, paraphrasing the hack politician's dying words in The Last Hurrah, say to ourselves, "We've done great things--among others."

Yes--"among others." "Among others" because, despite the great distance we've traveled, in many ways we've gone nowhere at all. The first-strike weapons we railed against so dramatically are now mostly in place, or well on the way. The historic Soviet test ban initiative was greeted by our government with a stone wall of silence backed by a strangling web of disinformation. At the Reykjavik summit, the super-power arms control agenda seemed to take a quantum leap from the medieval days of nosecone-counting. But Reagan's slick intransigence has, at least for now, turned aside the threat of peace. And, speaking of lost history, by the time this is printed the United States will probably have deployed its latest load of airborne cruise missiles, shattering for all time the feeble constraints of the SALT II agreement.

How did it happen? How did so much exhilarating promise turn into so many squandered opportunities? One quick and easy answer to those questions is "Ronald Reagan." Only a president can make a disarmament treaty and we happen to have one who is ideologically incapable of it. And he happens, through a quirky combination of history and personality, to be our most popular president in at least 25 years.

The other quick and easy answer is actually just an elaboration of the first: "Star Wars." The fantasy of a technological shield in space may never deflect any missiles. But in the hands of the Great Communicator it has worked quite well in deflecting Soviet disarmament proposals and American public opinion.

Those are the quick and easy answers. And they are true as far as they go. Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars dream are the great obstacles in the way of a safer future. But those answers in themselves aren't good enough. If we look deeper and are honest with ourselves, we must also recognize that even Star Wars is itself partly a symptom of one of the peace movement's failings.

BY NOW IT IS A TRUISM among us that the Star Wars scheme is a misguided technological solution to the political problem of the superpower arms race. It is that. But, to the extent that it has succeeded, it is partly because we in the opposition have too often attacked the arms race as a technological problem and failed to address its political roots. We educated masses of people about the scientific and medical effects of nuclear weapons and created a widespread public consciousness that a nuclear war would be an unthinkable disaster. We sounded the alarm about the new first-strike weapons and convinced a large segment of the public that if the present course continued, that disaster was a very real and present danger.

What we did not do so well was address the question of why the nuclear arsenals on both sides exist and why the arms race continues. We tended to treat the weapons as some mutant aberration in human history and to explain the arms race with reference to the blind momentum of technology and public complacency. Our proposals were often framed with the underlying assumption that if public complacency could be broken and the nuclear mutation amputated, then geopolitical business could proceed more or less as usual.

We failed to sufficiently address the fact that nuclear weapons, insane as they may be, are also practical instruments of the permanent state of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. For both superpowers, nuclear weapons are considered the ultimate insurance that the conflict will not get out of hand to their detriment. And the arms race, while certainly self-perpetuating and arational, is also the means through which each super-power strives for the ability to work its political will in the world unhindered by the opposition of the other.

When the case for nuclear disarmament is argued within the context of the existing superpower enmity, then the question logically arises, "What will replace the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining and managing that conflict?" And, "What will really prevent the other side from using a disarmament agreement as a ruse to finally attain a definitive upper hand?" The disarmament movement for the most part avoided the first question and answered the second with technical verification data. The American people rightly perceived that as no answer at all.

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, dared to take up those questions directly and answer "Star Wars." The "peace shield" may be a fantasy. But it is a fantasy that has the advantage of answering the question of how to eliminate the threat of nuclear war without making peace with the Soviet Union. As President Reagan said in the wake of the Iceland summit, "We will trust in American technology and not in agreements with the Soviet Union." And so far the American people are cheering.

IT IS NOW OBVIOUS, or should be, that to deal realistically with the threat of nuclear war, we must first come to terms with the U.S.-Soviet relationship. The abject failure of the Soviet test-ban initiative and the Reykjavik summit demonstrates once and for all that as long as U.S. policy (mainstream Democratic and Republican alike) remains rooted in Cold War demonology with the Soviet Union permanently cast as the inhuman and intractable enemy, humanity will continue on a collision course with disaster.

We know and, with increasing frequency, we publicly argue that the Star Wars promise is an illusion. But we should also by now know, and begin to publicly demonstrate, that the only viable answer to the threat of nuclear war is a change in the nature of the U.S.-Soviet relationship.

As Freeze strategist Pam Solo has noted, what we have built in the last decade is a disarmament movement. And what we must build in the next decade is a genuine peace movement. We must become a movement for peace between the United States and the Soviet Union and a movement not just against a hypothetical war to come but also against the Cold War that rages here and now.

Nuclear disarmament that is durable and trustworthy can only be founded on the mutual interests of the two superpowers. That requires our government recognizing that the Soviet Union has a genuine interest in disarmament and peace. And it also requires recognizing their status as a world power equal to the United States. In the argot of President Reagan's beloved Western movies, we have to decide that this planet is "big enough for the both of us" after all. And in the midst of the many, and not insubstantial, differences between our two countries, we must find it within ourselves to recognize the common ground we share. We must recognize that the survival and security of each of our countries are inextricably linked and that for both of us long-term security can only be bought by lessening, not escalating, the threat we pose to each other.

That is not a particularly popular proposition in Ronald Reagan's America. Today such sentiments are regularly dismissed as naive, cowardly, or unpatriotic. But we don't have to accept a choice between surrender to anti-Soviet hysteria or self-marginalizing naivete. A call for peace with the Soviet Union doesn't, and shouldn't, mean championing Soviet interests or proclaiming the goodness of the Soviet system. It can and should mean promoting our own country's truest national interests and appealing to our people's best and highest impulses.

In the past decade, our movement has been at its best when it has refused the logic of false choices imposed by the global powers-that-be and instead inserted fresh options into the debate from the grassroots level. The need now is for new approaches that can open up discussion of the U.S.-Soviet conflict in fresh ways. In that discussion we should especially look for grassroots peace initiatives that could speak to the deeply felt fears and aspirations, real or perceived, of ordinary citizens on both sides of the East-West divide.

TO EVEN BEGIN SPEAKING of a world in which the United States and the Soviet Union are no longer at war involves a mind-boggling task of theorizing and speculation. But most of all it will require the political will of the two superpowers to turn in a new direction. And the lessons of history, not to mention the existence of deeply entrenched interests on both sides with a political or economic stake in the status quo, would indicate that the political will for a new direction will have to flow from the bottom up. It will require fulfilling President Eisenhower's prophecy that "someday the people will want peace so much that the governments will have to get out of their way and let them have it."

That, of course, means something very different in the United States and the West than it does in the Soviet Union and the East. But there are a number of good reasons for first considering the American context. One obvious reason is that it is the one we can most directly affect. Another is the plain fact of history and current statistics that since Hiroshima the United States has initiated each new round of arms race escalation. But also important is the effect that U.S. policy has on the course of events in the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries.

Historically in the communist societies, new social and political possibilities tend to open up in direct proportion to the relaxation of tensions with the West. And conversely the wall of militarism and repression tends to come down most decisively when the Soviet leadership feels itself most threatened by U.S. policies and rhetoric. This dynamic has played itself out at least twice in recent history.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations made clear moves toward what was then called "peaceful coexistence" with the Soviet Union. This was a major factor in creating the context for Premier Nikita Khrushchev's post-Stalinist thaw in Soviet society. Then Khrushchev was perceived by Soviet hard-liners to have been humiliated by President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis--a confrontation that starkly illuminated the Soviet Union's military inferiority. Khrushchev was ejected from office, the loosening of domestic restraints was decisively reversed, and the much-vaunted Soviet arms buildup began.

A similar process can be detailed in the rise and fall of the detente policy over the course of the 1970s. Soviet Secretary-General Gorbachev's currently simultaneous moves toward domestic reform and nuclear disarmament reinforce this linkage. He knows he can only have change at home if he has peace with the West. The domestic changes Gorbachev contemplates are hardly what we would call democratic. But they do involve significant decentralization and broadened social participation and could sow promising seeds. Ironically, by refusing Gorbachev's disarmament initiatives, President Reagan may ultimately prove himself the greatest enemy of humane reform in the Soviet system.

EVEN IN THE CURRENT AGE of rough military parity, the United States' clear economic, political, and technological superiority makes it the dominant partner in the superpower relationship. For better or worse, we set the tone of the relationship and the terms of the conflict. If there is to be a turn toward peace, it will have to begin here. And it will have to begin with a change of heart among the American people.

That phrase "change of heart," with its emotional and even spiritual connotations, is chosen advisedly because the Cold War is much more than an ordinary bread-and-butter issue in American politics. It is more like an article of faith. It operates not so much at the conventional level of "interest group" politics as at the deeper level of values, myths, and feelings. So the battle to stop the Cold War must be waged at that level as well.

Most Americans give their tacit assent to the nuclear arms race in large part because they believe that the Soviet Union is a ruthless, totalitarian enemy which threatens our society and the freedom and prosperity it delivers. Americans' self-interest in having a "strong deterrent" is defined by their value-laden worldview regarding America and the Soviet Union. That worldview is based in part on an affirmation of the good that exists in our society but even more on fear of the Soviet Union and its perceived evils. Much of that fear is engendered by the gross exaggerations or downright falsehoods about the Soviet Union which are force-fed to us almost from the cradle. We have the picture in our minds of a cold, monochromatic land where political opinion, religious belief, and all human feelings are forcibly and brutally suppressed. And the dominant picture of this Orwellian land and its intentions toward us is defined by the popular analogy between the Soviet Union of the 1980s and the rapacious Nazi Germany of the late 1930s.

That popular conception is an almost unrecognizable caricature of the real, existent Soviet Union. But the uncomfortable fact is that the lies are mixed with just enough truth to make for convincing propaganda. The Soviet Union is not the Oceania of Orwell's 1984, nor is it perceived as such by the vast majority of its people. But it is a closed society where political, social, and cultural options are severely, and sometimes forcibly, limited.

In the same way, the Soviet Union's international behavior is most decisively not analogous with that of Hitler's Germany. The Soviets suffered horror beyond most of our imaginations in World War II. Their desire to avoid another war is real and runs very deep. But the Soviet Union does maintain a repressive military occupation of much of Eastern and Central Europe, and it is fighting a brutal interventionist war in Afghanistan.

These and other cruel facts about the Soviet system are, first and foremost, concerns for the peoples who live under it. Only their self-initiated efforts will create social change in the Soviet bloc. But the problems with the Soviet system are inevitably also our concerns because they rightly offend the democratic values held by the American people and thus contribute to the fear that feeds the Cold War. They do this in the same way that America's very real militarism, bellicosity, and international adventurism feeds the fear of war and helps keep the arms race going on the Soviet side.

All that only serves to point up the fact that knowing that the Cold War worldview is deceptively simplistic and the result of incessant propaganda won't make it go away. It must instead be confronted and replaced by a more appealing alternative vision of the world and America's place in it that can provide a credible and principled answer to the fears that are real. In the context of such an alternative, it will become more possible to dispel the fears that are false and destructive.

FOR US AS CHRISTIANS, the place to begin searching for that new worldview is with the gospel. As in every age, our task is to bring the Word of God to bear on the historical questions we face. That means we need to begin to forge a new theology of the Cold War to replace the one so clearly articulated by President Reagan.

The starting place for our theology of the Cold War must be with a "theology of the enemy." As Walter Wink has pointed out in these pages recently, the central faith question of our day may be that of "the enemy" as it is framed in the teachings of Jesus. In those teachings we are, of course, flatly and unconditionally commanded not to hate, kill, or revile our enemies but to love them. This teaching is fleshed out with examples drawn from everyday experiences of the "the enemy" faced by Jesus' contemporaries--the Roman occupation soldier, the rich and their courts of law, and the one who does physical violence. In each case study, Jesus puts forward an example of a creative response of love--walking the second mile, giving the cloak as well as the coat, turning the other cheek-that doesn't avoid or deny the reality of conflict between enemies but instead casts it in entirely new, unexpected, and humanizing terms.

The implications of this should be obvious for Christians living at the heart of the most dangerous enmity in human history. More than 20 years ago, in his book The Nonviolent Cross, theologian-activist Jim Douglass noted that with the advent of nuclear weapons the conventional politics of violence--the way humanity has done business since the time of Cain--has been rendered impotent. Violent force can no longer defend the nation or enforce order in the world. It can now only destroy itself and all who touch it. The serpent of violence has swallowed its tail, and the way of Jesus, the way of enemy-love which we clumsily call nonviolence, has become not just a spiritual truth but a pragmatic necessity.

What remains is for contemporary followers of Jesus to take his way seriously at every level of our individual and communal lives and to translate it into the terms of contemporary history. As in Jesus' time, that means first and foremost that you do not deal with your enemies by killing them. Instead you approach situations of conflict and hostility with a posture that humanizes the enemy, recognizing that in addition to our differences we have some important and fundamental things in common. This should also make us able to empathetically comprehend that the enemy's posture toward us is rooted in much the same mix of feelings and fears as is our posture toward them.

And loving our enemy should eventually form the basis for political approaches that remove the threat of mutual destruction which drives us ever deeper into our bunkers and instead open up new room for creative change on both sides, perhaps even to the point of reconciliation.

THE COMMAND TO LOVE our enemies is the spiritual and practical foundation for a Christian theology of the Cold War. But the call to love our enemies can lead down a path of deception if it is not accompanied by a keen and equally biblical theology of the powers. The New Testament teaching on the powers and principalities (well amplified in the work of theologians Hendrik Berkhof, William Stringfellow, and others) should lead us to the recognition that, despite the best of intentions, real or proclaimed, both superpowers are fallen entities. And as such they are given to playing God by making absolute claims over their own citizens, over weaker nations, and, through their nuclear technology, over the whole of humanity.

Among other things, a biblical theology of the powers should provide us with a healthy measure of skepticism regarding the moral claims of both superpowers. It should make us wise as serpents, just as love for the enemy should make us gentle as doves. Christians should be among those who stand outside the authority and assumptions of the powers on both sides, holding both accountable to the values of the kingdom.

In addition to a theology of the enemy and of the powers, a Christian approach to the Cold War should also reflect a deep-rooted theology of solidarity. In a way, this is only an elaboration of the theology of the enemy which asserts that all people, even our enemies, are children of God and the objects of God's compassion. But the biblical witness also calls us to a more specific solidarity that inevitably involves the making of choices. The God of the Bible is the one who actively chooses the side of the oppressed, the one who pleads their case before the powerful and acts for their deliverance. In accepting death on the cross, Jesus drew for all time a line between victims and executioners and demonstrated that God stands victorious with the victims.

In one rather obvious sense, nuclear weapons call us to God's universal compassion. In a nuclear war, even the executioners become victims. And our compassion for the potential victims of that unthinkable war is a primary spiritual foundation for Christian peacemaking. But that universal compassion becomes an empty, lifeless abstraction if it leads us to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the real and present victims before us. That means the homeless person on our city street, the unemployed worker, the abused woman, the displaced farm family, and our abandoned black or Hispanic communities. It means the Central American cities and villages under our guns, the Middle Eastern ones under the guns we supply, and the South African blacks under a system we and our allies finance. If we are a movement for peace that believes in a human future, we must demonstrate that aspiration and that belief in the here and now.

The same truth also applies in our relationship to the religious and political dissenters in Soviet mental hospitals and work camps and to the peoples under the Soviet gun in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan. We are irrevocably linked with them by our common humanity and common compassion; by our common aim of peace and life; and by our common participation in and victimization by the Cold War world system which makes the superpowers and their systems out to be as God. In our theology, our spirituality, and no less in our real-world politics, we must recognize and insist that acts of war and death on either side of the East-West divide are ultimately obstacles to peace and to life everywhere.

ANY STRATEGY FOR ACTION that proceeds from these affirmations must begin by turning back what currently amounts to a unilateral U.S. assault on the Soviet Union. Probably the most important public policy element of the current assault is the Star Wars scheme. Its goal is either to gain a lopsided long-term military superiority over the Soviets or to force them to destroy the remains of their economy in a drive to catch up--or both.

Either long-term prospect makes it the primary short-term obstacle to peaceful accommodation between the two superpowers. In the editorial on page 4 of this issue, we at Sojourners have put forward some of our ideas and suggestions for making Star Wars and its implications for U.S.-Soviet peace the focus of Peace Pentecost services and actions this year.

At least as important as the technological manifestations of the Cold War is the incessant and often brutal anti-Sovietism growing in American culture. Ronald Reagan's Cold War mythology, with its brazen and manipulative appeal to the worst of human instincts, has trickled down with a vengeance to become a commonplace of American life in movies, television-news, entertainment, and commercials--and even children's toys. For the Christian churches, countering this wave of hateful propaganda with Jesus' teaching on the enemy is not solely, or even mainly, a political task. Though it is bound to have political implications, it has as much to do with the pastoral care of souls and with nurturing the survival of Christian faith in an overwhelmingly hostile environment.

Toward that end, church communities should engage at every possible level in programs aimed at fostering genuine understanding and friendship toward the people of the Soviet Union. Beginning at whatever level of political sophistication is appropriate in our context, we should move toward the declaration that we, as Christians, do not consider ourselves at war with the Soviet Union. And we should devise ways for Christians to act on that conviction.

Prayers for "the enemy," for the Soviet people and their leaders, should become a regular part of our worship life. People-to-people meetings between U.S. and Soviet citizens can be an especially significant experience for breaking down the barriers of fear. We should look for a wide range of traditions and rituals that can allow a spirit of reconciliation to grow among us. Jim Forest addresses some of these ideas on page 26 in this issue. And some of the groups listed in the action guide on page 29 offer ideas and resources for East-West reconciliation in churches and elsewhere.

In our current situation, almost any efforts aimed at fostering U.S.-Soviet peace, however small and limited they may seem, are worthy of our time and energy. Especially valuable are actions which grow from the recognition that change at the political level will only come as a result of changed attitudes and perceptions at the grassroots level. Even in the current state of Cold War, we can begin charting a new direction that contributes to breaking down the East-West barriers and points toward, and helps lay the groundwork for, a human future beyond the Cold War. Rather than accepting the assumptions and restrictions of a bipolar universe, we can begin to act now on a vision of peace that is grounded in respect for the human rights and self-determination of all peoples--North, South, East, and West.

ONE WAY TO BEGIN doing this is by expanding our contacts, solidarity, and alliance with those in the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc who also work for more humane, self-governing societies in a context of international peace and who see each of those goals as a necessary requirement for the other. As Cathy Fitzpatrick details on page 20 in this issue, there are emerging throughout the Soviet bloc small but brave and increasingly visible groupings who have declared themselves for non-alignment and democracy and against militarization and superpower hostility on both sides of the East-West divide.

In Europe over the last several years there has been a growing range of contacts and even joint activities between these groups and the Western peace movement. Together they have begun hammering out a vision of a Europe that is no longer a battleground for the Cold War but is instead a non-nuclear, non-aligned, and increasingly demilitarized and democratic buffer zone between the United States and the Soviet Union. They see themselves going under and around the superpower system to begin creating a world free from it. Within that over-arching vision, each group carries on the specific immediate work within its own national context that can create openings for that new possibility and contribute to the slow dissolution of the Cold War bloc mentality.

It's not surprising that this vision and the work around it began in Europe. There the unnatural separation of neighboring countries, the division of Germany, and the military presence of both superpowers makes the Cold War a concrete, unavoidable reality. But the vision of a future that is dominated by neither East nor West will obviously require the participation of the United States. And given a chance, that vision should have great appeal to the American people as a principled and practical answer to the Cold War stalemate which dooms us to "little" wars of intervention while constantly threatening us with the big war of annihilation. That potential has already been demonstrated in small ways by the efforts of the New York-based Campaign for Peace and Democracy/East and West in garnering progressive American support for peace and democracy activists in the Soviet Union and the bloc countries and in initiating a trans-bloc initiative against U.S. intervention in Nicaragua.

So far the U.S. churches have lagged behind in this area of East-West peace work, despite the fact that much of the activity in the East is based in the churches and carried on by Christians. If we actually believe that our first allegiance is to no earthly kingdom but instead to Jesus and the values of his kingdom, then standing with our counterparts on the other side of the lines of hostility is one clear way to demonstrate that belief. It is also an exceptionally clear and pointed way to offer hope for a future beyond the ironclad assumptions of line-drawers and warmakers.

Some within the peace movement, and even within the churches, have argued that involvement with so-called dissident groups in the East, which inevitably means drawing attention to their human rights struggles, can only contribute to Cold War hostility by reinforcing negative images of Soviet totalitarianism. It is certainly true that the U.S. government is most interested in using "human rights" as a club to beat the Soviet Union. For that reason it must always be made crystal clear that our statements and actions on those issues are coupled with clear, unmistakable opposition to the hostile acts of our government toward the Soviet Union. When approached in that light, an alliance for peace and democracy could help disarm our government's "human rights weapon" and offer a positive, constructive alternative to the digging of trenches and building of walls on both sides.

THE BRIEF HISTORY of what the Europeans call "detente from below" is not enough to suggest it as any sort of be-all and end-all panacea. It is still much more of a worldview or even a general attitude toward the world than it is a viable, fully worked-out geopolitical option.

But as we've noted, it is in fact new attitudes toward the world and new morally rooted visions of a human future that are most needed to begin breaking the power of the Cold War. As such, the embryonic movement across the Cold War battle lines suggests at least the possibility of something genuinely new coming to pass. We've already had opportunities to observe the befuddlement of the powerful white men (and Margaret Thatcher) on both sides at the spectacle of people who renounce both the CIA and KGB and all of their works, who stand for self-determination in Poland and Nicaragua, and who demand nuclear disarmament and the dismantling of interventionary forces by both superpowers.

Even more threatening to the war systems of the West and East is the prospect of such people on both sides of the Cold War divide insisting that they and their concerns for peace, justice, and freedom belong together and can no longer be kept apart. Such a vision of peacemaking is consistent with our Christian values of both reconciliation and compassion. And it can draw on and appeal to the best American values of democracy and self-determination.

It offers at least one possibility of a creative response to the question of the enemy that meets the nonviolent criteria of not acquiescing to evil, recognizing the humanity of the other, and opening the way to reconciliation. It could offer the American people a constructive alternative to the Cold War religion by demonstrating that the values we claim to defend can really be best furthered by making peace. As such, it could offer hope where there is mostly what Daniel Berrigan has called "a grinding, low-grade despair." It could help fuel a spirit of cooperation and create new possibilities for openness and collaboration on both sides.

Perhaps we can even begin to discern the seeds of a still-imperfect world that at least no longer has "two sides" but is instead a kaleidoscope of human social experiments. Perhaps we can even begin to act now as if there is a future beyond the Cold War.

Danny Duncan Collum is a Sojourners contributing editor.