By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
I used to enjoy listening to Count Basie proclaim, “One More Once!” near the end of his 1960s jazz version of April in Paris. It was his signal that the band was going to repeat a few more rip-roaring bars of the song. The words came to mind when I picked up the May 4 edition of the Jesuits’ America magazine and saw an article by Kevin Clarke entitled “No More Nukes?”
Clarke details the work of a new group seeking to ban the bomb, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Members of the organization met in Vienna in December of last year, where the group’s executive director, Beatrice Fihn, warned of the 16,330 nuclear weapons “ready to kill millions of lives within minutes,” weapons “unworthy of anyone, of any state” that accepts “fundamental principles of humanity.” The Holy See issued a “study document” at the Vienna conference in support of ICAN’s goals.
Why did the Count Basie song come to mind? I have been hearing calls from Catholic peace activists for nuclear disarmament since I was a teenager. I have always reacted ambivalently. The “no more nukes” types always came across to me as part of the political left, often as — come on, you know — hippies, eccentrics, poseurs, holier-than-thou, flower-power types.
That is not to say that I disagree with their premise. Popes from the time of John XXIII to Benedict XVI have pointed out the obvious: Nuclear weapons make no distinction between combatants and non-combatants; they are designed to kill the entire population in the area where they are deployed. You can’t argue that the civilians who are killed in a nuclear attack will be collateral damage, as one could in the case of artillery attacks and aerial bombardment with non-nuclear weapons.
What of the argument that it is necessary to stockpile nuclear weapons as a deterrence to nuclear war, the so-called balance of terror argument. Clarke writes that the Vatican is now questioning the acceptance of deterrence as a morally legitimate geopolitical strategy. He quotes from the study document released by the Vatican at the ICAN conference:
“The apparent benefits that nuclear deterrence once provided have been compromised, and proliferation results in grave new dangers. The time has come to embrace the abolition of nuclear weapons as an essential foundation for collective security.”
The Vatican statement concedes that the Church until now has “expressed a provisional acceptance of” nuclear weapons “for reasons of deterrence,” but stresses that this acceptance was given only under the condition that it be “a step on the way toward progressive disarmament.”
The Holy See’s statement concludes: “The misleading assumption that nuclear deterrence prevents war should no longer inspire reluctance to accepting international abolition of nuclear arsenals. If it ever was true, today it has become a dodge from meeting responsibilities to this generation and the next.”
Far be it from me to challenge the Holy See. But he who says A must say B. If we are going to call upon the United States to dismantle its nuclear arsenal — right now, as a moral imperative, which seems to be the position of ICAN — we have to be willing to accept the world that would follow: We know that there are countries that will not disarm, even if their leaders sign a document calling for the end of nuclear weapons at a global conference headed by the United Nations. They will cheat.
All one has to do to get an idea of how it will be done, is to look at the way North Korea and Iran have hoodwinked the United States on their way to becoming nuclear powers.
Can anyone imagine Vladimir Putin, the Israelis, the Iranians, the North Koreans, and the Indians and the Pakistanis not setting up some secret cache of nuclear bombs just in case the agreement to disarm by the nations of the world does not pan out? Or as a way of gaining a leg up? I can’t.
Would we want to live in a world where Putin and Kim Jong Un have nuclear weapons and we do not? Would we be willing to trust the better angels of their character to prevent them from using nuclear weapons — or the threat of using nuclear weapons — against us?
You say what? That the threat of a nuclear reprisal does not make all that much difference when conflicts arise in the modern world? Really? Why then were we willing to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi, but not North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Kim Jong Un was a greater tyrant and a greater threat to world peace than Qadhafi, but Kim had nuclear weapons and Qadhafi did not. It is that simple, it seems to me.
One also has to consider another implication to nuclear disarmament: If the nations of the world were ever truly to get rid of all nuclear weapons, that would mean that the countries with the largest populations and the largest standing armies and navies would become the world’s superpowers.
They would be the countries most able to intimidate their adversaries in any future international disputes. In that scenario, the United States would slip dramatically as a world power. Israel would be at the mercy of its Arab neighbors, Western Europe at the mercy of Russia.
But perhaps there is no reason to get into the weeds. It strikes me that the Vatican has understood from its earliest pronouncements on this matter that nuclear disarmament cannot be understood in a vacuum; that the moral character of the world’s military powers must be taken into account. The Catholic ban the bomb crowd ignores that fact. It may make sense for the London police not to carry firearms; it does not make sense to propose that the police in Chicago follow suit.
Listen to John XXIII’s words in Pacem in Terris:
“Everyone, however, must realize that, unless this process of disarmament be thoroughgoing and complete, and reach men’s very souls, it is impossible to stop the arms race, or to reduce armaments, or — and this is the main thing — ultimately to abolish them entirely. Everyone must sincerely cooperate in the effort to banish fear and the anxious expectation of war from men’s minds.”
It seems clear to me that John XXIII was making the point that while nuclear disarmament is morally desirable and a goal to which mankind should aspire, it becomes plausible only when “men’s very souls” have been reached by the desire for peace and international goodwill, and when the nations of the world can be assured that the disarmament will be “thoroughgoing and complete.”
I’m on board — when that day arrives.
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