Bumbling Into Armageddon Was Not This Soviet Officer's Cuppa Tea
"Pax Americana" Does Not Mean World Peace
Arthur Clark, World Citizen
Should we give priority to human survival and human well-being; or should we prioritize instead “the national interest”? This question can be made explicit when we discuss world affairs. A closely related choice was expressed by Martin Luther King, Jr., “We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools.” Personally I prefer the first option.
“The national interest” is a “good cause” for which ardent nationalists are willing to kill lots of people. Historically, such good causes have provided the pavement on the road to hell, and we are certainly on that road at the time of this writing.
When an irresponsible American president escalates the cycle of threats that have long been part of US – North Korean relations with his “fire and fury” diatribe, it is dangerous, obviously. But that danger is always there, and the inflammatory rhetoric from a US president can call our attention to it. North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons is a predictable response to threats it has faced from the United States for more than half a century https://www.thenation.com/
The governments of militarily powerful states – the United States, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, you name it – have always had their good causes for which it was okay to kill millions of people. ISIS grew in the fertile soil of that history, and has its own “good cause.” Today we find ourselves exactly where you would expect, given that operating principle of militant nationalism: It’s okay to kill lots of people for a good cause.
Nationalism has become an apocalyptic anachronism. It evolved long before we had nuclear weapons. Now we have them and we haven’t put aside our militant nationalism. With the combination of the technology and the ideology, we can extinguish life on earth very quickly. Do you want to go there? That’s for you to decide.
In fact it was nationalism that led to the development of those apocalyptic weapons. The national interest is a good cause for which the patriot should be willing to extinguish life on earth. That’s worth keeping in mind as you consider making your personal choice between learning to live together as human beings or perishing as fools.
The United Nations Charter and related instruments of international law came down on the side of learning to live together as human beings. The Charter begins with its overarching purpose, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” making reference to the world wars that had “twice in our lifetime brought untold sorrow to mankind.”
The United Nations Charter includes among its signatories the United States. The United States Constitution includes Article Six, which makes “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States” part of the supreme Law of the Land. But the Constitution and the United Nations Charter are pushed aside by a militant nationalism that has led to a murderous U.S. foreign policy – millions of lives destroyed in Viet Nam, in Iraq, and elsewhere – all for our Good Cause (or our “good cause” of the moment). If we do it, it’s okay.
But the principle doesn’t stay put. In the case of nuclear weapons, they quickly “got out of hand” after they were created and used by the United States in 1945. Now others have them too. Following that same line of thought, you might ask yourself whether you want drone missiles hovering over your neighbourhood (or your children’s) a decade or so from now. Drone missiles controlled by small groups of people in the United States are hovering over places where other people live. Other states already have drone missiles. Why shouldn’t they use them? There’s that principle again: If “we” do it, it’s okay. But who is “we”? If it’s okay to do it, then that’s the principle, and the “we” ten years from now will be…well, we’ll see.
So we don’t really even need John Bolton (former US ambassador to the United Nations) to make U.S. contempt for international law explicit, or Henry Kissinger to tell us “The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer.” The record speaks louder than words. “Pax Americana” is a concept descendant from the Pax Romana centuries ago when the level of political violence was somewhat reduced from a more violent interlude that preceded it. It bespeaks an arrogance of power. But the Romans didn’t have nuclear weapons. That arrogance now threatens every human being on Earth. The Pax doesn’t last forever.
We had better look where we’re going, or we are liable to wind up in a place we don’t want to be.
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