by Steven Lloyd Leeper

In confronting the problem of nuclear weapons, we are being forced to confront far more fundamental questions. What kind of global system do we want to live in? Do we want to continue living in a political system that worships winning and power?

Never discuss religion or politics during dinner," they say. (I hope you're not eating.) But why this stricture against the world's most interesting topics? According to my grandfather, "argument is bad for digestion." We avoid religion and politics precisely because we are so apt to argue about them.

Given the tendency of religious discussion to lead to conflict, the mere existence of the World Conference of Religions for Peace appears as impossible as the flight of a bumblebee. Religions for Peace is a nongovernmental organization seeking to bring mutually contradictory religious bodies together in cooperation toward political ends. One can only assume that despite their differing claims about the nature of God and the laws of the universe, the religions involved have found "peace" to be a political objective they can agree to pursue together.

The world conference of Mayors for Peace is likewise impossible. This nongovernmental organization brings Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, Israeli, U.S., Iraqi, Iranian, Russian, Chinese, European, African, and Latin American mayors together across a broad political spectrum to pursue, despite mutually contradictory political ideologies and commitments, a genuinely peaceful world free from nuclear weapons.

In May 2009, these two impossible organizations formally brought religion and politics together in a joint effort to abolish nuclear weapons. The success of this venture will depend heavily on the ability of these NGOs to reach beyond their membership to activate the constituencies that stand behind those members.

The members of Religions for Peace are, officially, religions, but that, of course, means religious leaders or representatives of certain religious groups. To what extent can those religious leaders communicate with and mobilize the billions of lay members in their denominations, sects, churches, temples, mosques, and synagogues? The thirty-five hundred members of Mayors for Peace are mayors. To what extent can those mayors communicate with and mobilize the 600 million citizens they represent?

The vast majority of people and nation states on Earth wish to rid this planet of nuclear weapons. A recent opinion survey in twenty-one nations, including all the nuclear-armed states, found that 77 percent of the populations surveyed wish to live in a nuclear weapon-free world. Last November, Japan's resolution in the UN General Assembly calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons was supported by 171 nations and opposed by 2 with 8 abstentions. In 1996 the International Court of Justice, the highest court on our planet, declared that nuclear weapons are illegal under international humanitarian law and that all nations are legally obligated to negotiate their elimination. If the world were a democracy, nuclear weapons would have been gone decades ago. Somehow, the majority is unable to exert its will.

Here are the problems: (1) certain extremely powerful individuals, corporations, and other groups have been earning enormous profits from nuclear weapons for decades, (2) some of these powerful individuals and groups still believe they can use nuclear weapons to dominate the world, (3) many otherwise kind and reasonable people still believe in the old-fashioned and thoroughly discredited concept of nuclear deterrence, (4) the great majority have been hypnotized by the nuclear industry to believe that nuclear weapons are as inevitable as death and taxes (they would prefer a nuclear weapon-free world but do not believe such a world is possible), and (5) the hypnotized majority are completely asleep to the current nuclear weapons crisis.

These are the solutions: (1) the individuals and groups profiting from nuclear weapons can be given decent jobs cleaning up the radioactive mess they have made, (2) believers in deterrence can be asked to contemplate the deep implications of nuclear terrorism and nuclear winter, and (3) mayors and religious leaders can begin shouting in unison, "Wake up! Fire! Emergency! We're in trouble here!"

The Nuclear Weapons Crisis - Part I

Forty years ago, just after China got the bomb, five nuclear weapon states decided it was in their best interest to limit the number of nuclear weapon states to five. They approached the rest of the world saying, "We will be nuclear weapon states and you will not. In return, we will help you with peaceful uses of the atom, like electricity and medical applications. Okay?"

However, right from the beginning, the nonnuclear weapon states said, "No, that's not enough. In addition, you have to recognize that this agreement is a temporary solution. The real solution can only be the total elimination of all nuclear weapons." Thus, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), signed in 1968, includes Article VI, which calls for good-faith negotiations toward nuclear disarmament and, eventually, a nuclear weapon-free world. The nuclear weapon states have been promising for forty years to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.

Today, the number of nuclear weapon states has almost doubled from five to nine, and many of the nonnuclear weapon states are deeply frustrated by the failure of the nuclear weapon states to take any convincing steps toward a nuclear weapon-free world. To them, it appears that first-rate nation status, national sovereignty, and even national pride depend on possession of nuclear weapons. How long, for example, can the Arab nations of the Middle East allow Israel to be the only one in the neighborhood with nuclear weapons? In fact, how long will the international community allow the five original nuclear weapon states to be the only permanent members of the UN Security Council and the only states with veto power over everything that happens at the United Nations? Thus, we stand at a perilous crossroads. In the next few months or years, the human family will decide whether to eliminate nuclear weapons or let everyone have them.

The Nuclear Weapons Crisis - Part II

But the nuclear crisis is deeper than the danger of proliferation. Nuclear weapons have always been controlled by the elite of the world, those at the highest levels of money and power. The elite enjoy the world as it is. The current political and economic system made them rich and powerful. They compete among themselves, but they have no desire to bring the whole system down. This elite self-interest, plus dumb luck, has prevented a third nuclear attack for sixty-four years.

Meanwhile, the current global economic and political system has created painful levels of poverty and violence for more than 50 percent of the human beings on this planet. The gap between rich and poor in the United States today is worse than it was in 1929 before the Great Depression and World War II. Meanwhile, we are entering an era of power realignment and intense resource competition, even as climate change destroys human habitat, plunging billions into chronic hunger and turmoil. Intelligent, well-meaning people around the world believe deeply that we are, simply by living the way we do, gradually making this planet unlivable. Thus, the number and the power of those who want to destroy the system are growing.

One reason we now have a real opportunity to eliminate nuclear weapons is that the elite are getting scared. They are starting to understand that as nuclear weapons spread around the globe, they become more likely to fall into the hands of someone who will use them. Those who want to destroy the system do not play the power game according to elite rules. If they were to obtain a nuclear weapon, they would use it. In fact, they would die to use it, and they would use it in such a way as to provoke maximum retaliation. People who are willing to die and hope to provoke retaliation cannot be deterred.

Desperation, rage, and self-sacrificing commitment render meaningless all power-game calculations based on dominance and rule by fear. Whether out of hunger, jealous rage, or a righteous desire to save the planet from its most destructive inhabitants, attack with a nuclear weapon would be the quickest and easiest way to bring down a system that billions of human beings experience as cruel, painful, and ecocidal.

The Nuclear Weapons Crisis - Part III

But the nuclear crisis is deeper than the danger of nuclear terrorism. According to F. William Engdahl in his book Full Spectrum Dominance, U.S. neoconservatives (those in power during the George W. Bush administration), along with powerful elements of the U.S. military-industrial complex, still harbor the delusion that with a good missile defense system, they can achieve "nuclear primacy," that is, the ability to launch a nuclear first strike anywhere on Earth, including Russia and China, without fear of reprisal. Once established, nuclear primacy would allow the United States to control all other countries, dominate the world's resources, and maintain the "American way of life" at the expense of the rest of the planet.

To readers of Dharma World, the pursuit of world domination may sound like science fiction lunacy, but such ambitions are the natural extension of the pursuit of dominance that has made human history a series of rising and falling empires. While slaves have slaved to avoid punishment, while peasants have struggled to feed themselves and pay their taxes, while soldiers have honed their fighting skills for the next battle, while craftsmen and merchants have sought wealth through production and trade, while administrators and clerical staff have kept records and filed papers in the right drawers, while scholars and scientists have studied nature, while artists and musicians have found and expressed new aesthetic concepts, while religious leaders have helped people relate to God and death - kings, queens, emperors, presidents, and CEOs have always plotted to expand their empires, bringing as many lands, people, and dollars as possible under their control. This is what the people on top have always done, and it is what they are doing now, but they have two big problems.

The twin threats of nuclear weapons and environmental disaster are challenging the very concepts of dominance, enmity, victory, and rule by brute force. Nuclear weapons make it impossible for the United States or any other entity to dominate the world. (Anyone with a nuclear weapon can destroy the whole system the dominators are trying to dominate.) At the same time, these weapons and several looming environmental crises are forcefully raising the question of collective survival, and this question lies at the heart of the choices that human beings must now make as a species.

Not long after the bombing of Hiroshima, a Japanese philosophy professor named Ichiro Moritaki revealed the deep meaning of the atomic bomb: human beings can no longer resolve their conflicts through all-out contests of destructive power. Long before any talk of climate change, Moritaki realized that to survive on Earth human beings would have to find new ways of resolving their conflicts. To do that, he argued, we would have to graduate from the civilization of power and build a new civilization of love.

Today, the need to move beyond enmity and cutthroat competition is obvious to all but our aggressive, competitive, selfish war-culture leaders. While they continue to fantasize about winning a nuclear war, the rest of us know that such a war will lead to utter ruin. While they continue to protect the profits they gain from oil, gas, and coal, the rest of us know we need to put the environment ahead of profit. We are a single human family. We will live or die together. And yet, some continue to think only of themselves or their families, tribes, religions, or corporate sponsors.

In confronting the problem of nuclear weapons, we are being forced to confront far more fundamental questions. What kind of global system do we want to live in? Do we want to continue living in a political system that worships winning and power? Must we continue to prop up an economic system in which the vast majority of human beings are condemned to lonely, painful, fearful lives of back-breaking work, violent competition, and suffering while those with capital let their money do the work while they enjoy leisurely lives of extravagant opulence? Do we believe that peace and prosperity will come when the United States, Russia, China, or some other state or group of states finally establishes firm control of all of the world's oil, water, and other resources? Do we believe that competition, dominance, and weapons can keep our oceans alive, replenish the oxygen in our atmosphere, and stop global warming?

Or would we prefer to live in a system where the collective goal is happiness for all? Can we learn to see conflicts as problems to solve to the benefit of all parties? What if all parties were making every effort to meet the needs of all other parties? What if all companies were nonprofit, working for the benefit of society rather than the further enrichment of a few rich people? What if we rejected violence completely and considered anyone resorting to violence for any reason to be a criminal or mentally ill? What if all military establishments were dismantled and those funds devoted to unmet human needs?

What kind of leaders can guide us into a civilization of love? Should we admire, trust, and follow those who accumulate great wealth and control of others? Or those who learn to control themselves and demonstrate an ability to live on next to nothing? Should we follow those who promise to kill for us? Or those who would die to avoid killing? Should we follow those who work hard to create a heaven on Earth for themselves or those who work hard to make Earth a heaven for all?

In the next year or two, as the human family decides what to do about nuclear weapons, we will simultaneously be deciding whether to solve our global problems through dialogue, treaties, and international law or by means of a bloodbath that will make World War II look like a picnic. By allowing the existence of nuclear weapons, we grant to a few highly aggressive, competitive warriors the power to terminate human evolution, thereby ending all hope of graduation from the culture of dominance and war to a culture of partnership and peace. If, on the other hand, we take those obscene weapons away from our warriors, we will simultaneously initiate the most profound elevation of human consciousness since the development of language. We will be telling our leaders, our warriors, and ourselves that partnership, not dominance, is the key to happiness and survival.

The question is called. It is time to choose. Mayors for Peace requests that you visit www.citiesarenottargets.org, where you will find the materials you need to ask your mayor to join Mayors for Peace. We also ask you to pay attention to the nuclear crisis and play an active role in the 2020 Vision Campaign. Religions for Peace asks you to promote Arms Down! a new campaign launched by religious youth demanding nuclear and general disarmament (a 10 percent reduction in military expenditures). You could help them meet their goal of fifty million signatures. Both organizations will be doing their best to mobilize peace-loving people around the world. Will they succeed? In part, that's up to you.