Will More War Help Bring About More Peace?

This AP photo by Natacha Pisarenko and others can be seen on
Outlook India's website.

I'm sure many will see the following op ed piece in today's paper as hopelessly naive and impractical. But what are realistic and humane alternatives to today's horrific wars? 

I welcome your comments.

The late M. R. Ziegler, local Church of the Brethren leader, once wryly observed that world peace could be achieved if all Christians (and people of every faith) simply “agreed not to kill each other.” 

Following the 1892 meeting of the World Peace Conference in Bern, Alfred Nobel, a pioneer manufacturer of munitions and explosives, suggested another way to world peace: “Perhaps my factories will put an end to war even sooner than your congresses. On the day when two army corps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, probably all civilized nations will recoil with horror and disband their troops.”

The 1914-18 World War that followed, hailed as “the war to end all wars,” proved Nobel wrong. Massive use of his munitions resulted in the greatest bloodbath the world had ever witnessed. An added escalation involved the use of planes, first for reconnaissance, then to drop deadly explosives on factories, enemy positions and other targets. 

WW I created conditions that led to a far more devastating genocide, World War II. In that war massive bombardments of civilians became the norm from the very start. Near its end the first nuclear bombs completely obliterated two Japanese cities.  

Since then the world has endured a prolonged Cold War and countless other failed conflicts, including the war in Vietnam. According to analyst Cooper Thomas, “Between 1965 and 1975, the United States and its allies dropped more than 7.5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—double the amount dropped on Europe and Asia during World War II. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history."

Like Russia’s current assaults, this failed to create any enduring peace.

In the latter part of the 20th century,  many saw the prospect of “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD) by nuclear weapons as being the ultimate deterrence to war. But given the trajectory of modern history, it may well be how World War III begins. And ends.

Tragically, humanity seems unable to see any viable alternative to using brutal force to resist an invading nation. We continue to resort to ever more devastating means of fighting fire with fire, responding with an “eye for an eye” and a “tooth for a tooth” that results in unimaginable loss and destruction.

Some two thousand years ago a revolutionary movement of Jesus followers under Roman occupation practiced and preached a radically new message. They insisted that the only way to ultimately resist evil doers was by non-violent means, and by countering evil with good.

Drawing on Hebrew texts like Proverbs 25:21-22 and the teachings of Jesus, they responded to Roman oppression by praying for their enemies, feeding them if they were hungry, carrying a burden a second mile if coerced to carry it for one, and by turning the other cheek when wrongfully struck.

This was directly counter to those who advocated throwing off the Roman yoke by violent means. In the first several centuries of the Christian movement there is not a single record of a church leader justifying any killing by a follower of Jesus, either as a soldier or an executioner.

One wonders what would have happened if Christians, now with more adherents than any other world religion, had continued to promote and live by their original convictions, Never do harm, never resist evil by evil means, never take up arms against your enemies.

Mahatma Gandhi, profoundly influenced by the teachings of Jesus, successfully led thousands of his nonviolent followers in overthrowing British rule at a cost of only one death per 400,000 of India’s citizens (Algeria, by comparison, won its independence using weapons, at a cost of one in every ten Algerians). The Catholic-affiliated and non-violent Solidarity movement in Poland successfully overcame Soviet rule, and the Berlin Wall eventually came down without the use of military force. 

In a July 3, 1940, letter to citizens in England Gandhi wrote,

Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. I want you to fight Nazism without arms. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them. 

This way of overcoming evil with good, and without resorting to violent and evil means, has not been tried and found wanting, but simply been found costly and seldom tried.

If civilization is to survive, good people everywhere must declare the barbaric practice of war obsolete, as they have cannibalism, slavery, religious persecution and human sacrifice.