In thousands of movies and tv shows, a future is imagined in which full-grown adult humans with less self-control than toddlers both get into fist fights at the drop of a hat and possess the technology to obliterate entire cities or planets at the touch of a button. The fantasy of living in outerspace certainly does not help us preserve the one place we know how to live. But the most damaging fantasy here is that of maintaining widespread acceptance of violence and continuing to exist into an age of easy annihilation by the decision of a random person or of a machine. Our current luck -- the number of times we have nearly had a nuclear war and avoided it -- is almost unbelievable. The luck that would be required for much of science fiction to exist is not believable at all.
Nuclear Danger
Countless observers believe that we are right now closer to
nuclear war than ever before. There are a number of reasons to take this
seriously:
- The weapons needed to destroy all life on Earth continued to exist right through the supposed end of the Cold War.
- Awareness of that fact, and protest of it, went away.
- Communications and education systems have been corrupted to the point of routinely discussing "tactical" nuclear weapons, "limited" nuclear wars, and "safety" steps such as going indoors.
- Governments, including in the two countries with most of the nuclear weapons, have become ever less responsive to public will.
- Knowledge has advanced of how small a nuclear war would likely end all life through a nuclear winter, but there seems to be no possible means of making most people aware of it.
- The Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons requires eliminating nuclear weapons and all other weapons too, but it is difficult to get anyone to even believe such a treaty exists, or -- if it does -- that laws matter at all.
- Threats of nuclear war have become more common and shameless.
- Adding to the nuclear weapons has become ever more profitable.
- More countries have nuclear weapons, and others appear intent on getting them.
- -
War Danger
The most likely path to nuclear war is non-nuclear war. The
greatest barrier to eliminating nuclear weapons is non-nuclear war. A
number of trends weigh heavily against eliminating all war. We are
one-quarter through (well, we're entering the year 2025 anyway) what
will be war's worst century if we do not abolish war, because the next
75 years is too long to continue the path we're on and avoid nuclear
holocaust. But there's an argument to be made that this would be war's
worst century even if it were simply able to continue at its current
pace. While there are grains of truth in the pinkerist panglossian view
that war has diminished or is almost gone, there are also severe
problems with it. That other forms of violence have diminished is simply
not evidence of war diminishing. Comparing the percentage of a past
society killed in war to the percentage of the Earth's population killed
in a current localized war is not meaningful. Defining imperialist wars
as civil wars and civil wars as not wars at all is not helpful. We've
seen over 5 percent of Iraqis killed. The percentage of people in Gaza
killed already exceeds that and threatens to go much higher. The
widespread endless U.S. wars and "actions" and "drone strikes" in Asia
and Africa have killed millions, made tens of millions homeless, and
done incredible environmental and economic destruction. The entire U.S.
war machine is apparently at the disposal of a madman running the
government of Israel, publicly committing all-out genocide, and openly
pushing for more wars. Military spending, weapons sales, base building,
drone murders, computer hacking, spying, threatening, and renouncing the
rule of law are on the rise all over the globe. So are fascistic
movements, disgust with unaccountable governments, environmental
destruction, overpopulation, poverty, desperation, and permanent,
normalized, saturation, war propaganda.
Peace Potential
Even while people in some countries have been lulled into
believing that they can lie back and moan, hold their noses and vote, or
cheer for murderers of CEOs, those same people would move massive
funding from war to education and environment if it were up to them, if
they were given a democracy instead of wars in democracy's name. And
people in other countries are often demonstrating -- as just this month
in South Korea -- how to use nonviolent activism to get a democracy. Even
as the rule of law is mocked and abandoned by the worst offenders, the
International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have
swung out their fingertips and gripped the very edge of the cliff in an
effort to maintain some reason to exist. Both institutions have, for
the first time, demonstrated a willingness to act on behalf of justice
rather than of Western empire. Many nations of the world have supported a
new treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, and have refused to support
wars in Ukraine or Palestine. Creative nonviolent actions, boycotts,
demonstrations, sit-ins, lawsuits, divestments, and educational fora are
threatening the impunity of the genocidists and of the weapons
merchants. World BEYOND War is growing rapidly as a war abolition
network, and finding a new openness to oppose war among
environmentalists, anti-poverty groups, anti-racism advocates, and
others. Even while corporate media works to normalize killing,
independent and social media are being used to normalize the abolition
of killing, and the development of international law, local
self-governance, unarmed civilian resistance, the re-shaming of war
profiteering, and the celebration of a culture of peace.
One Way or the Other
There are clearly two ways in which this could be war's last
century, and I'm betting we'll get either one or the other. In one, war
eliminates us. End of story. In the other we eliminate war. Beginning of
story.
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