A More Hopeful Path: Working for Peace in a World at War
by John Whitehead
The following is adapted from remarks given November 9th, 2024, at the quarterly peace vigil in Washington, DC, sponsored by the Consistent Life Network.
We are here today to witness for peace and for the protection of human life. We are here today to oppose the greatest threat to peace and human life in our world, the threat from nuclear weapons.
As we reach the end of 2024, the threat of nuclear weapons being used in war is a very real and pressing possibility. Today, wars are raging in our world, wars that might turn nuclear weapons’ threat into a terrible reality. The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues, with no clear end in sight. The Gaza war and larger conflicts within the Middle East also grind on, again with no end in sight.
Because the Ukraine war puts Russia into conflict with the United States, the Ukraine war has the potential to flare up into a direct war between these two nuclear-armed nations. Such a direct war between Russia and the United States might well not stop before it leads to global nuclear war.
The violence from the Gaza war has already spread across the Middle East, leading to more violence in Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. The Gaza war has the potential to flare up into a direct conflict between Israel and Iran or even between the United States and Iran.
Even if a regional war doesn’t break out, current tensions between the Israel and the United States on one hand and Iran on the other are likely to spur Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, adding yet another nuclear-armed nation to our world.
We need to turn away from this terrible, and terribly dangerous, path that the United States and other nations are currently on. Amid the bleak world situation are some signs of hope for a turn away from this self-destructive path.
Work is underway in the world to reduce the threat from nuclear weapons. One crucial effort is the Back from the Brink campaign.
Back from the Brink is a grassroots campaign to reduce the danger of nuclear war through a series of crucial measures. One measure is taking nuclear weapons off the high level of alert that allows nuclear weapons to be used at a moment’s notice. Another measure is making it impossible for nuclear weapons to be used only by the decision of a single human being, the president of the United States. A third measure is cancelling current US government plans to spend an estimated $1.7 trillion dollars on building new nuclear weapons.
The Back from the Brink campaign has received important support from the Congress of the United States. In 2023, members of Congress introduced House Resolution 77, which calls on the United States to embrace the measures advocated by the Back from the Brink Campaign. The introduction of House Resolution is a rare hopeful sign for peace, and we should support efforts to adopt the resolution. Back from the Brink has valuable resources for advocacy on behalf of House Resolution 77.
Efforts specifically targeted at reducing the threat from nuclear weapons are vitally important. As important as those efforts are, though, and as enormous as the task of reducing the nuclear threat is, I think we are called to an even bigger task right now in 2024. This larger task is closely intertwined with efforts to reduce the nuclear threat. This larger task is to make peace in our world.
Vigil November 9, 2024
If we want to end the nuclear threat hanging over us, we need to end the wars that currently threaten to spiral into nuclear catastrophe. We need to seek peace in the Ukraine and Gaza wars. We need to replace foolish and destructive efforts to resolve these conflicts by some kind of supposed military victory with efforts to de-escalate the conflicts, to stop the fighting, and to bring aid to the innumerable people harmed by these conflicts.
Ending these wars will help reduce the nuclear threat, while also protecting the lives of many people currently being killed in these wars.
The tasks before us are immense, and I appreciate how daunting they must appear. We should not lose hope, though, and I think the example of history gives us reason to hope.
Our vigil today falls on a significant date: November 9th. November 9th is a significant date because it reminds us both of how great the nuclear danger can be and how quickly that danger can be diminished.
Roughly forty years ago, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union could not have been colder: hostility and suspicion were high, the nuclear arms race was escalating, and tensions were at a fever pitch. The leaders of the Soviet Union were convinced then that the United States was poised to launch a nuclear attack against them.
Those fears of a US nuclear attack could have ended the world 41 years ago today, on November 9, 1983, when an American-led military exercise was mistaken by the Soviets as the possible beginning of a nuclear attack. Nuclear war through misunderstanding could have broken out then; the world could have ended on that November 9th.
Of course, the world did not end then. The crisis passed without war breaking out. A couple years later Mikhail Gorbachev became the head of the Soviet Union, and the United States and Soviet Union began to de-escalate tensions and restrain the arms race.
Within a few more years, the Cold War was effectively over. The end of the Cold War was marked by the nonviolent fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th, 1989: 35 years ago today, and only six years after the superpowers stood on the brink of nuclear war.
The lesson is clear: the world can change. We are not doomed to destroy ourselves, however bleak the current situation may seem. A better, more hopeful path forward is possible.
Strengthened by this knowledge, let’s work to end the nuclear threat, by reducing nuclear weapons, by changing the policies that dramatically increase the danger from these weapons, and above all by making peace in our world.
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For more of our many posts from John Whitehead on nuclear war, see:
Apocalypse Imagined: The Urgent Message of Nuclear War: A Scenario
Are We Finally Waking Up? Signs of New Awareness of the Nuclear Threat.
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
Another hopeful sign of the nuclear danger being broadly recognized is the attention given to it by the Nobel Committee, which awarded this year’s Peace Prize to the Japanese nuclear disarmament advocacy group Nihon Hidankyo. And a few years ago, the prize went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
I only hope the global spotlight on such organizations lasts as long as is needed – because on the less hopeful side, President Biden’s recent weapons authorization, an escalation in the war in Ukraine, is alarming. Although the authorization doesn’t include nuclear weapons, it does increase the risk of a confrontation between the two countries with the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons. And Trump seems more interested in financial interests than in de-escalation or peace. If anything, a sense of urgency about helping Ukraine during the US lame-duck period should be compelling ceasefire negotiations, not escalations.