Grieving for John
by Rachel MacNair
My first inclination when I thought about writing this post soon after the event was that I better not. It was a private event and my thoughts shouldn’t be broadcast for fear of invading privacy.
But it’s now been publicized in The Washington Post, which is about as public as it gets. And in that article, I’m conscripted into a supporting role I never agreed to. I wasn’t named, but I was part of a group that was implied to be supportive of what happened (visiting Quakers) when I’m actually appalled. So writing this becomes an obligation.
I listened in great consternation as John, over Zoom to my local Quaker Meeting, read the letter explaining to the Meeting his decision to do VSED – basically, starve and dehydrate himself to death, with medical comfort provided. He mentioned a fear of being stuck on a ventilator in ICU when he didn’t want to be. He listed disabilities he had that he didn’t want to live with.
He had been following the organization Compassion and Choices for years – an organization devoted to euthanasia, though of course they use euphemisms. I had never been able to talk him out of that.
We were good friends, fellow Quakers, and had been so since I was a teenager. He was already a long-time member of our Quaker Meeting when I joined in 1972.
I’m speaking with John at a Quaker Gathering
The jacket I’m wearing is one inherited from his wife.
I know his kids, and I have complete confidence that the idea that they might get their inheritance quicker or that there might be more of it if he did this probably didn’t even occur to them, certainly not in any way that would come out. No pressure whatsoever on him for that.
But of course not everyone is so lucky.
And he never cited lack of resources as a problem. He was White and male. No one was going to disrespect him for being otherwise.
But of course not everyone is so lucky.
I was one of the Quakers mentioned in the article that went and visited him. I was aghast, but I never said so to him. I knew he was determined, and the only thing I could do if I argued would be to make things worse for a dying man.
I visited him because that’s what one does when a friend is dying. The dying person steers the conversation. John wanted to reminisce mainly, and he asked some questions and chatted like normal. He was tired after about 20 minutes or so, so my son and I left.
But I do need to say in no uncertain terms that I am heartbroken. He was a man who went to prison during World War II for refusing to register for the draft because he wouldn’t kill people. He was a man who didn’t want the murderer of his son (in a senseless shooting spree of four people) to be executed, because he didn’t believe in killing people.
And then he ended his life by killing someone – himself.
Disabilities
First, on the fear of ICU, I do understand not wanting extraordinary life-saving measures taken for a 99-year-old man. But his contention that if he went into assisted living he’d be forced into such measures when he didn’t want them is entirely outside my experience. What would otherwise be medical care when consented to is assault and battery without that consent. And particularly for a man that old, hospital staff wouldn’t be surprised that he wanted to die in peace rather than be put on a ventilator and similar measures.
Yet the disabilities he mentioned having at the time were ones that large numbers of people live with.
He was 99 years old. He had mentioned several years back that he won first place for swimming in the 90-93 age group, which was easily done because he was the only person in it. Quite hale and hearty – as can be seen how long it took him to die without food and water.
But that goes along with his inordinate disdain for living with a disability. There is no bigotry greater than saying that someone is better off dead, and there’s no way to make that bigotry stronger than saying that you yourself would rather be dead than be such a person.
How devastating is this to people living with disabilities? How much does it sabotage their ability to make their case that they want to live, and to be treated with dignity? How much does it add to the pressure from others to have disdain for their own lives?
He was a deeply spiritual man. Had he approached the disabilities as a learning experience, and had more solidarity with other people going through such experiences, he would have had the spiritual resources needed to let it enrich his life.
Grieving
And it’s even worse than I realized, once I read the article: while one son was supportive and there to help his father with the medical comfort aspect – which I can testify to, I saw it – his other two sons were opposed to it. That’s all the article said. I haven’t spoken to them, but I do know from recent personal experience that grieving a father is hard, no matter how old.
In general, dealing with the grief when the death was a suicide is harder. I don’t know if it was for the other sons, or if they even saw it as a suicide at all.
But I do know that the topic never came up in all the discussion around “choice.” The callousness of not taking the grieving process for loved ones into account scares me.
Memorial
I couldn’t attend his memorial service (that is, among Quakers, Meeting for Worship with Attention to Memorial). It was blended, both at the Meetinghouse and on Zoom. My son attended on Zoom and said it was beautiful with so many good memories. What I did at the same time was go off by myself and spend the hour with my own good memories of John – there were so many.
But there had already been Friends in the Meeting that had said things indicating they thought what John did was courageous and even used the word noble. If any said that during the service, I would be put in the position of having to either stay silent – and anyone who knows me knows better than that – or to explain parts of what I’ve said above.
One doesn’t do that at a memorial service. It’s just plain wrong to start an argument on such an occasion. And my son confirmed that this problem did in fact come up, and I would have been in that impossible situation. So I was deprived of the proper send-off for a friend surrounded by other friends.
Once again, using death as a problem-solver is also drafting people to support death. The alternative is to refuse cooperation, and face the kind of hostility that noncooperation with killing often brings.
Conclusion
John, I remain so very fond of you. You did so much good in the world. May all that good through 99 years be what you are remembered for. The story of your death is so very much not the story of your life.
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For an example of an individual case applied to someone with disabilities, see:
#SayHisName: The Medical Murder of Michael Hickson
For more on this topic, see:
Figuring out Euthanasia: What Does it Really Mean?
How Euthanasia and Poverty Threaten the Disabled
Will I be Treated the Same Way Now?
A Process of Tender Understanding and Loving Closure when Life Ends
Euthanasia by Poverty: Stories from Canada
What’s Cruel for the Incarcerated is Cruel for the Terminally Ill
“She Is a Beautiful Person”: Parents of Children with Down Syndrome Speak Out
by Sarah Terzo
Babies with Down Syndrome are common targets for abortion. Estimates of the percentage of pregnancies involving children with Down Syndrome that end in abortion vary, but one study found that abortion has reduced the number of babies born with Down Syndrome by 30%.
Ethicist Joseph Fletcher described people with Down Syndrome as “sadly non-or un- or subhuman creatures.”1
In 2017, CBS reported that in Iceland, 100% of babies with Down Syndrome were aborted. On April 16, 2019, the Facebook page “Abort Ableism” compiled the following reactions to the news:
“Not everyone wants to deal with a 40-year-old toddler until they die.”
“I mean they aren’t going to contribute much to society, are they?”
“They are not special. They are a drain of families and communities. I worked with special needs children when I was in middle school . . . the world would be better off without them.”
“Once saw a kid with Down’s throw a little dog in some sticker bushes. They’re not all magical lmao.”
“We should follow their example.”
“Good for Iceland for killing the unwanted.”
In contrast to this hateful ableism, parents of children with Down Syndrome have written about what a blessing their children are.
Patricia E. Bauer’s daughter Margaret has Down Syndrome. At a dinner party, Bauer overheard a college professor say that parents have a moral obligation to abort babies with disabilities to spare their children suffering. When Bauer tried to share her experience as the mother of a disabled child, the professor “smiled politely and turned to the lady on his left.”
Bauer writes:
Margaret does not view her life as unremitting human suffering (although she is angry that I haven’t bought her an iPod). She’s consumed with more important things, like the performance of the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs and the dance she’s going to this weekend.
Oh sure, she wishes she could learn faster and had better math skills. So do I. But it doesn’t ruin our day, much less our lives. It’s the negative social attitudes that cause us to suffer.
Ashley Engele’s first-born daughter has Down Syndrome. While pregnant with her third child, she discovered that baby also had Down. She chose life. She describes her eldest daughter:
Rilynn is just like any other precocious 4-year-old girl. She goes to preschool, loves Trolls, Barbie dolls and her “typical” younger sister. They are best friends, they love each other fiercely, and also have the classic sibling rivalry. We fight over what outfit she’s going to wear, or how she’s going to wear her hair for the day. Most of all, she loves other kids and babies . . .
We know how when we’re having a bad day, one smile from Rilynn can completely turn it around . . . She can make even the grumpiest or angriest people smile and win their hearts over in an instant.
According to Engele, “[O]ur lives are better with Down Syndrome in it.”
In a booklet encouraging parents of disabled preborn babies to choose life, Ellie describes her son Michael, who has Down Syndrome:
Today, Michael is a 12-year-old boy with a great sense of humor. He attends a regular classroom in his neighborhood school. Michael rides a two-wheeler bike, plays soccer, baseball and basketball and has lots of friends. He is more like any other child his age than he is different. The unconditional love that he gives is an example to all of us.2
She says, “I’m proud to be his mom.”
Jodi Reimer’s 13-year-old son Kellen has Down Syndrome.
In a letter to him, Reimer wrote, ” . . . I didn’t realize how fun and fascinating it would be to see your gifts, talents, and personality develop. Your sense of humor often takes me by surprise.”3
She reminisces about the day Kellen tried to go to school in a life jacket. Another time, right before the school bus was scheduled to arrive, Kellen dressed up as a pirate. She recalls, “Even though there wasn’t any time to spare, I just had to stop and laugh.”4
Tammi Hodson wrote about her son Parker:
Parker is more like my other kids than he is different. Yes, he is much slower in learning how to crawl. He is slower in learning how to talk. But like my other kids, he loves to be cuddled and tickled. He loves to be the center of attention. He wants to do what his brothers and sisters are doing. He loves to roughhouse and be thrown into the air by his dad. And he will do something that he knows is naughty and then try to use his heart melting smile to repent – the same exact smile and attitude that my oldest son uses so effectively to get his way. He is, in more ways than not, just a typical Hodson boy.5
Christine Allison said of her daughter with Down, “Chrissie is a blessing in a way a normal child is not. It is in describing her that the word ‘special’ rises from banality and comes grippingly alive.”
Shelley Burtt, whose son Declan has now passed away, recalls that he had “an infectious enthusiasm for life which illuminated any interaction with him, an ability to give and receive love that was uncomplicated by the egoism, self-awareness, or self-consciousness of a ‘typical’ child.”
Jeanette Bollinger wrote of her son Carter:
I began to notice that people had a very strong reaction when they met him for the first time. It didn’t matter what sort of mood or frame of mind they were in, as soon as they met Carter, they seemed happier and just wanted to be around him as much as possible. All he has to do is smile at a person once, and he has them wrapped around his cute little crooked pinky. He has a peaceful, happy presence that is very contagious.6
Bollinger says that when people ask her if she wishes Carter didn’t have Down, “My answer is always no, because that would mean changing Carter, and I would never want to change him.”7
Nancy Iannone writes of her daughter Gabriella:
Gabriella continues to amaze us as an adorable 17-month-old. She loves to sway to music, splash in the bath or the pool, and squeeze her sisters’ faces . . .
She is learning sign language at a pace that has amazed her sign teacher… Though I delight in her physical and cognitive progress, the true joy I receive is seeing her shining, laughing face, especially when she thinks she is playing a trick on me . . .
My baby is not a diagnosis, not a list of her potential woes. She is a beautiful person, full of laughter and grins.8
Emily Zeid found out that her daughter has Down Syndrome only after she was born. She refers to her six-month-old as “happy and healthy” and says:
She smiles easily and laughs often. She becomes more beautiful with each passing day. I now see the beauty in the differences that I used to believe were flaws. Her upturned almond eyes are filled with wonder, the flat space across the bridge of her nose is a favorite kissing place, and her low set ears show off her ponytails perfectly.9
Jim Hartman, father of Jesse, describes his son’s compassion for others:
[H]ow he just loves up on people, and how he loves them, and he hugs them and he listens, and he has a special intuition about what they need, and what they feel, and if somebody’s sad or they’re happy, he knows these things. [He has] almost an extra [sense] above what we have about those feelings…
Everybody’s his friend, and he’s got to go around – it takes us quite a while to go out of a place, because he has to go and give everybody their hugs, tell them goodbye, tell them how much he loves them. Being so expressive, he definitely is the life and the energy in a party. Just the way that he loves his dad is amazing. And he loves everybody else the same way.
These children are all unique individuals. They are not in any way subhuman but are precious human beings who are deeply loved by their families. Their lives have value and meaning.
- Joseph Fletcher, “The Right to Die: A Theologian Comments,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1968.
- Bernadette Zambri, Hope in Turmoil: A Guide for Decision-Making after Receiving a Difficult Prenatal Diagnosis Regarding Your Baby (2014), .
- Jodi Reimer, “On His 13th Birthday,” in Kathryn Lynard Soper, Gifts: Mothers Reflect on How Children with Down Syndrome Enrich Their Lives (Bethesda, Md.: Woodbine House, 2007), 17–18.
- Ibid.
- Tammi Hodson, in Soper, Gifts, 35, 36.
- Jeanette Bollinger, in Soper, Gifts, 53, 54.
- Ibid.
- Nancy Iannone, “A Hopeful Future,” in Soper, Gifts,
- Emily Zeid, “Loving Emma Jayne,” in Soper, Gifts,
Note: the pictures above came from Microsoft Word clip art; they aren’t photos of the individuals being described.
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For more on people living with disabilities, see:
A Lawyer’s Turnaround on Baby Doe with Her Own Down Syndrome Baby
How Ableism Led (and Leads) to Abortion
Abortion and People with Disabilities
The Christmas Truce of 1914
World War I was starting, and the war that was expected to be over by Christmas lasted for years. But on Christmas Eve and through Christmas Day, up and down the 500-mile front, about 100,000 soldiers out of a million had spontaneous truces. Christmas carols on one side were joined in by the other side, and there were even soccer games.
The culture of life and the culture of peace (which of course are the same thing) benefit from knowing this: people are quite capable of outbreaks of peace even under the most dire pressures from those in authority.
Articles
From Tony Magliano, one of our blog post writers: A Christmas Miracle – When Enemies Became Brothers • AUSCP
The Importance of the December 1914 Christmas Truce – World BEYOND War
This article lists several other instances where informal truces among enemy soldiers happened, showing that while the 1914 Truce is the largest and most well-known example, it’s quite believable it happened because it’s happened other times as well: BBC NEWS | World War I | The Christmas truce
Poetry Set to Music
John McCutcheon: Christmas in the Trenches (1984)
John tells the story of writing this song in this video before singing it. There’s a touching story about men who were part of the event letting him know how much that song meant to them.
Celtic Thunder: Christmas 1915
They have the wrong year for this, but the art of this still has the spirit of it.
Christmas Truce of 1914
Dramas Imagine
Movie: Joyeux Noel
From Andrew Hocking, one of our blog post writers, a reflection on the movie’s significance: A Christmas Truce, Civil Religion, and Refugees.
Audio Drama: Christmas Eve 1914
Faith Communities Call for Christmas Truce for Ukraine
World War I’s Christmas Truce continues to inspire peacemaking efforts today. In the spirit of that earlier truce, the Fellowship of Reconciliation and other groups have organized a petition calling on policymakers to seek “a ceasefire and negotiated settlement” in the Ukraine-Russia war, “before the conflict results in a nuclear war that could devastate the world’s ecosystems and annihilate all of God’s creation.”
The petition signatories are leaders from various religious traditions and include Nicholas Sooy of Consistent Life member group the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. Members of faith communities are encouraged to ask their pastors or leaders to sign on to the petition.
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This is a list of holiday editions of our weekly e-newsletter, Peace & Life Connections.
In 2021, there was a somber topic, but one appropriate to the season: the Massacre of the Innocents, and its role in quotations and art that oppose massive violence of all kinds.
In 2020, given what was most on people’s minds at the time, we covered Pandemics Related to Christmas.
In 2019, we showed Christmas as a Nonviolent Alternative to Imperialism.
In 2018, we detailed Strong Women against Violence – Connected to the Holidays.
In 2017, we covered Interfaith Peace in the Womb.
In 2016, we discussed how “The Magi were Zoroastrians” and detailed how good the Zoroastrians were on consistent-life issues. The ancient roots of the consistent life ethic run deep!
In 2015, we had a list of good holiday movies with consistent-life themes – check it out for what you might want to see this season. We also had information on Muslim nonviolent perspectives.
In 2014, we offered a quotation from a lesser-known Christmas novella of Charles Dickens and cited the treatment of abortion in the Zoroastrian scriptures.
In 2013, we shared several quotations reflecting on Christmas.
In 2012, we had a couple of quotes showing the pro-life aspects of two prominent Christmas tales: A Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Scrooge, and the movie It’s a Wonderful Life. We also quote from John Dear about Jesus as peacemaker and Rand Paul about the 1914 spontaneous Christmas Truce; he then related it to the culture of life.
In 2011, we covered the materialism-reducing “Advent Conspiracy” and offered two pieces of children’s art: a 1939 anti-war cartoon called “Peace on Earth,” and the anti-war origins of “Horton Hears a Who,” whose tagline – “a person’s a person, no matter how small” – is irresistible to pro-lifers.
In 2010, we showed “It’s a Wonderful Movement” by using the theme of what would happen if the peace movement and the pro-life movement hadn’t arisen. We also had quotes from Scrooge (against respect for life) and a Martin Luther King Christmas sermon.
Becoming a Catholic Conscientious Objector
by Tony Magliano
Tony Magliano
A few years back, I was doing some serious soul-searching, trying to discern what God wanted me to write about. I walked into my 16-year-old son’s bedroom to discover a military calendar hanging on the wall. It highlighted young men and women in combat fatigues, fighter jets, an aircraft carrier battle group and plenty of American flags.
I knew from personal experience and previous soul-searching that hidden behind this calendar of military glitter was centuries of death and destruction. And as I removed this calendar, I knew exactly what God wanted me to write on.
Many years ago, as young man in my 20s, I found myself in the midst of U.S. military basic combat training at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
While firing my M-16 weapon at life-like pop-up targets, it occurred to me the army was not training me to hit pop-up targets – it was training me to kill some poor guy like me in a far-off country who got caught up in the propaganda of his own country’s war machine.
I came to realize this was all wrong. And I knew that in my desire to imitate the nonviolent Jesus, I could kill no one.
I spoke to my drill sergeant about these deep anti-war feelings I had and my desire to apply for conscientious objector (CO) status. He urged me to wait until I completed basic training and apply for CO status when I arrived at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, for Advanced Individual Training.
At Fort Harrison I was being trained as a broadcaster for Armed Forces Radio in Germany. But that inviting future did not deter me. My broadcast instructors tried to convince me that the chances of my having to shoot someone from a radio station were extremely remote. And although they were technically correct, I knew my role as a military journalist and radio disc jockey would be to boost the morale of those who would be pulling the triggers and dropping the bombs. And I knew that I could have nothing to do with this unholy enterprise.
In my appeal for discharge as a conscientious objector, I had to write a research paper stating my position from the perspective of Catholic teaching on war.
Unfortunately, the Catholic Church for the last 1,700 years – after the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. made Christianity a legal religion in the Roman Empire – has not fully been what is traditionally known as a peace church, renouncing all war as the Amish, Mennonites, and Church of the Brethren do. This made my case much more difficult. However, since total active nonviolence is at least a part of Catholic doctrine, as clearly exemplified by the first 300 years of its history, I was able to make my case.
After undergoing cross-examinations by a military officer and psychiatrist, being interviewed by three army chaplains, and having my appeal go up and down the chain of command several times, it was finally ascertained that I was a sincere conscientious objector, and I was granted an honorable discharge.
During the many years since then, I have been writing, teaching, speaking, protesting, lobbying, and praying for peace and active nonviolence. I have dedicated much of my life to actively protecting the dignity of all life, especially the vulnerable – that of the unborn, elderly, sick, poor, hungry, war-torn, homeless, migrants, and the earth and its other inhabitants.
Ben Salmon and family
My experience in appealing for conscientious objector status was relatively painless. But many Christians and other people with peaceful consciences have suffered harsh prison sentences like the late American Catholic Ben Salmon. And some COs have even been executed, like Austrian Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, rather than take the lives of others.
A deeply inspiring testimony of nonviolent Christian witness and heroic conscientious objection in the early Catholic Church can be found in the authentic ancient Roman trial of St. Maximilian.
As Maximilian said at his trial, “I will never serve. You can cut off my head, but I will not be a soldier of this world, for I am a soldier of Christ. My army is the army of God, and I cannot fight for this world. I tell you I am a Christian.”
icon with Maximillian in the center
Tony Magliano, a Consistent Life Network endorser, is an internationally syndicated Catholic social justice and peace columnist. He is available to speak at diocesan or parish gatherings. Tony can be reached at tmag6@comcast.net.
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For another of our posts from Tony Magliano, see:
Over 20 Million People Facing Starvation – And We Should Care!
For more on conscientious objection, see:
Conscientious Objectors (objecting to participating in abortion)
The Redemptive Personalism of Saint Oscar Romero
Culture of Conscience: Would You Pay Taxes that Fund Abortions if Hyde and Helms were Repealed?
Asking Questions about Miscarriage and Abortion
by Ms. Boomer-ang
While on a vacation in New York’s Adirondacks in September 2018, I ran into a family that included two gospel singers, a mother and a daughter. One day we ended up hiking together.
During the hike, the daughter said, “I have a little sister in heaven. That’s neat!”
The mother told her story: She had had an early miscarriage, and the doctor had sped it up surgically. I wondered if there was a chance that the fetus was still alive when the operation started.
Within the medical profession, the technical term for a miscarriage is a “spontaneous abortion.” Such an event is obviously very different from what doctors call an “induced abortion”—in other words, what we conventionally call “an abortion.” However, the similar language used raised questions for me about how doctors might be responding to women with medically complicated pregnancies.
When women are told they are going to miscarry and then rushed into a procedure to complete the miscarriage efficiently, how likely is it in these cases that the fetus was still alive when the procedure began? How likely was the woman herself to have survived without the procedure? What chance did the pregnancy have of continuing until the live birth of a viable baby, with the mother surviving too?
Sometime between 1995 and 2010, a woman wrote in the Washington Post that she had signs of trouble in the first trimester of her pregnancy. The doctor told her she was miscarrying. She could wait and see if her body expelled the fetus naturally or have it taken out immediately by surgery. So the woman agreed to surgery. This meant going to an abortion facility and having the same procedure as an abortion.
Since apparently she did not oppose abortion, she did not mind doing that. She said one or two other women there at the same time were also there to complete miscarriages. But she noted that she was the only woman in the recovery room not crying.
The New York Times reported this September that when pregnant women come to doctors with “miscarriages or hemorrhaging,” abortion is the established standard care. It quotes Dr. Alison Haddock attacking the prospect of restrictions on abortions with, “Do we wait until the fetus is definitely dead?…[H]ow much bleeding is too much?”
That made me wonder if in many, if not most, cases where women are rushed into “miscarriage completing” procedures, the fetus is still or probably still alive. In some cases, could the pregnancy have been continued, without endangering the mother?
Surgery may be necessary in ectopic pregnancy, but what about other types of situations?
If a woman is suffering life-threatening hemorrhaging, then the bleeding must be stopped in any way possible, but does removing the fetus—which may require cutting—really ease the bleeding?
I am not a doctor, so I am not certain. However, with a medical culture that both wants natural processes sped up and values abortion, how much bleeding are doctors—even pro-life ones—now trained to regard as too much?
Furthermore, when the fetus is dying or becoming detached and cannot be saved, making the mother “complete” the miscarriage immediately through a surgical abortion has similarities to killing patients because they are terminally ill and to regarding the dying as already dead.
Are there cases where the doctor does not want to know if the fetus is alive? In many cases, is it an instance of not wanting to “reduce efficiency” by taking a step considered extraneous? In others, is distinguishing between the dying, the possibly dying, and the dead considered too nitpicky?
Doctors should be better trained in handling a pregnancy with complications to ensure the survival of both mother and baby. Have doctors forgotten how, when encountering possible miscarriage symptoms, to save both mother and baby? Are younger doctors taught that is impossible? In order to learn how to save the life of both the mother and the baby, will doctors have to get training in countries where abortion is still illegal?
And women should definitely be told if there is a chance that the fetus is still alive before being rushed into “miscarriage completion.”
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For more of our posts on similar topics, see:
Is an Embryo More Important than a Woman?
For more of our posts by “Ms. Boomer-ang” (pen name), see:
“Shut Up and Enjoy it!”: Abortion Promoters who Sexually Pressure Women
Political Homelessness is Better than a Wrong Political Home
The Need for Peacemakers: Two Urgent Dangers That Require a Response
by John Whitehead
Peacemaking is urgently needed today. Peacemaking is needed in response to a variety of ongoing violent conflicts in the world. I will highlight just two conflicts that my own country, the United States, is currently involved in and that demand particular attention from peacemakers.
The first is the ongoing conflict with Russia over Ukraine. The United States has responded to Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine with various types of support for the Ukrainians in their struggle, including substantial military support. As a result, the United States is now engaged in a kind of indirect or proxy war with Russia.
The second conflict of note is the United States’ intensifying rivalry with China. This conflict is luckily not yet overtly violent but it clearly a major focus of US policymakers today. The Biden administration’s recently released National Security Strategy identifies China as the United States’ primary rival. Competition with China is given the highest priority, even higher than that given to the conflict with Russia. The National Security Strategy identifies China by name as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge” ( p. 11).
The conflicts between the United States and two powerful nations that also possess nuclear weapons pose very serious dangers to the lives and well-being of untold numbers of people. These conflicts are dangerous for an obvious reason and a less obvious but still important one.
The Danger of Hot War
The obvious reason is that the United States’ conflicts either with Russia or China could escalate into direct war between the United States and these countries. Open war with Russia or China could and probably would lead to the use of nuclear weapons, which would be a catastrophe for all humanity.
The danger of open war is more severe in the US-Russia conflict over Ukraine. In Ukraine, war is already being waged, with both the United States and Russia as participants. Because the war has gone badly for Russia and Vladimir Putin now faces the prospect of total defeat for his ambitions in Ukraine, Putin has resorted to at least the implicit threat of using nuclear weapons. He has he will use such weapons in response to “a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people.”
Since Russia is now claiming parts of occupied eastern Ukraine as Russian territory, Putin’s promise implies that he will use nuclear weapons rather than accept defeat in Ukraine. (A more recent official statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry suggests the Russians might be slightly backing away from the threatened use of nuclear weapons, but the threat is still very much present.)
Kings Bay 7
Statements made over here in the United States are not much more encouraging. Some notable current and former public officials have proposed open war with Russia as a real possibility. A sitting US senator and former presidential nominee, Mitt Romney (R-UT), suggested this spring that if Russia used a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the United States and NATO should consider direct military intervention in Ukraine with the possible goal of “obliterating Russia’s struggling military.” This fall, the former director of the CIA, General David Petraeus, also suggested that NATO might get directly involved in the Ukraine war if Russia resorts to nuclear weapons.
Such comments are not official statements of US policy, but they give a sense of what is being contemplated within the larger policymaking community. My own prediction would be that if Russia used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, de-escalating the conflict after the nuclear threshold had been crossed would be extraordinarily difficult. The more probable outcome after a nuclear weapon is used would be further escalation of the violence. President Biden as much as this fact publicly a few weeks ago when he said that it would be very difficult to “[use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
The current situation with Russia is very dangerous. The US-China rivalry is not yet as dangerous, because it does not involve open violent conflict. If hostility between the United States and China continues to grow, however, a military confrontation comparable to the one we are currently seeing with Russia could flare up.
An American confrontation with China might flare up over competition for influence in the Pacific region or over territorial disputes between China and its neighbors in the East and South China Seas. Above all, military confrontation might flare up over the very contentious issue of Taiwan.
The Danger of Cold War
The risk of open war with Russia or China is the obvious danger we are facing today. The less obvious danger these conflicts pose to human life is still a dire one. Long-term conflicts between the United States and other great powers threaten to divert vast amounts of resources away from urgent human needs.
This danger of wasted resources is most apparent in the bipartisan policy of “modernizing” the United States nuclear arsenal: building a new generation of nuclear weapons and the infrastructure necessary to support them. The recent National Security Strategy affirms continued pursuit of this goal.
Nuclear modernization is not cheap, however. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that nuclear-related activities by the Defense and Energy Departments will cost the United States $634 billion over the coming decade. That’s $634 billion spent on new weapons of mass killing. Further, even this massive amount of planned nuclear spending is dwarfed by overall US military spending, which is currently projected to top roughly $800 billion for the coming fiscal year alone.
Spending these obscene amounts of money on preparations for war harms human beings even if, as we must all hope and pray is the case, actual war never occurs.
The need in our world today is very great. We need to address the urgent problems of poverty and of climate change, which can combine to harm vulnerable people. We see the lethal effects of poverty and extreme weather events unfolding today, for example, in the disastrous flooding in Pakistan this year. We see these lethal effects in the Horn of Africa, where a severe drought, along with other factors, currently threatens access to adequate food supplies for tens of millions of people in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Beyond poverty and climate change, the last few years have indelibly shown us the terrible consequences of global pandemics. Our experience of Covid-19 should impress upon us the necessity of investing in international public health and global cooperation to prevent and respond to future pandemics.
Meeting these urgent human needs is not served by wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and investing political will in international rivalries with other nations. The world clearly cannot afford a global hot war. Beyond that, though, the world cannot afford a global Cold War, either. We need to find a way of working together, across national boundaries, to address our common problems.
This is why we need peace activists. We need people to advocate in the short-term for a cease-fire in Ukraine. A genuine, just resolution to the current conflict is probably too much to hope for at this stage, but we can at least seek to stop the immediate fighting and freeze the conflict so it does not escalate to the nuclear level.
We also need people to advocate in the long-term for a more conciliatory US policy toward China and Russia, one that emphasizes diplomacy, avoids direct confrontation, and manages potential points of conflict so they don’t spiral into more disastrous wars such as in Ukraine. We need people to advocate for radically reducing our grotesque military spending, above all our spending on nuclear weapons. We need people to advocate for international cooperation to address poverty, disease, and climate change in our world.
I urge people to get involved in peacemaking. Get involved in groups such as the Consistent Life Network, Pax Christi, and Rehumanize International, which are working to defend life from war, poverty, and other threats. Let’s contribute to making our world a more peaceful one.
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For more of John’s posts on nuclear weapons, see:
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
Wasting Money on Instruments of Death: Nuclear Weapons in the 2022 Budget
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
Fallout at Home Base: Nuclear Testing within the United States
A Personal Reflection on a Just War
by Fr. Jim Hewes
Presidents and others over the years have tried to make the case to the American people (including those of us who are Christian) of what constitutes a necessary war or “just war.” As we form our consciences about war, let us keep in mind several points when someone is talking about a “Just War.”
The Just War Theory was never taught by Jesus (nor does the theory even mention Jesus) who in fact taught a non-violent love of one’s enemies. There is no appearance of the Just War Theory in all of the New Testament. For the first three centuries, those followers who were closest to Christ did not participate in war because they saw it as incompatible with Christ’s life and teaching. Christians in the early Church did not become involved in war because they knew that this life wasn’t all that there is – they knew the reality of eternal life.
Many Christians today would justify defending their family from a violent intruder. This then spills over to defending a wider “family” of their country being attacked, and the justification for war follows. But among the early Christians, men, women and children were being dragged off and tortured and killed. But the early Christians didn’t pick up arms or even form a group (like the Zealots) to defend themselves. They refrained from doing this because of their strong conviction that this life wasn’t all there was, but that there was awaiting them an eternal life (“No one has ever seen this. No one has ever heard about it. No one has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” I Corinthians 2:9). It wasn’t about merely ethically opposing war in theory; it was the real-life situation that these early Christians faced where they did not defend their loved ones or themselves or engage in a war because of their following what Jesus taught and lived and His promise of eternal life.
If this life is all there is, then justified violence and war make sense, but if there is more than just this life, then one can lay down one’s life rather than pick up a sword. In fact, this Just War Theory does not appear in Christianity until over 300 years after Christ. Christians in that era of the church, if they were ever to participate in a war, knew that these standards would have to be strictly and completely followed. The Just War Theory is not a dogma of the Catholic Church. St. Augustine (after St. Ambrose) in developing the Just War tradition never said there could be a just war, but rather he stated that if Christians were even to consider participation, the moral presumption was always against war and in favor peace.
If there ever were to be a just war, all the conditions for the just war (Just Cause, Proportionality, Serious Prospects of Success, Being the Last Resort after all other means had been exhausted, etc.) had to each be rigorously and completely upheld. The evil that one causes has to be morally certain to be less than the evil that one is supposedly preventing. For example, one of the conditions of a just war is that the lives of innocent civilians must never be taken directly, regardless of the reason for doing so. If non-combatants were targeted in a war for any reason, the war is unjust. It is a sad fact that in the last 50 years, a large percentage of those killed in wars and conflict have been non-combatants.
No Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox hierarchy has ever declared one of the wars of its own nation unjust while the war was going on. If the Just War Theory has ever been applied at all, it has been selectively applied to justify one’s own position. This is why no nation has ever prepared its military strategy on the basis of these rigorous standards (which would be seen as an unnecessary burden rather than a moral guide). They simply have ignored them. St. Augustine developed the theory to limit Christian participation in war, yet it is continually used to justify and expand the violence of war. For if one was to follow these standards exactly and fully, one would conclude that in reality a just war is impossible.
The notion of a just war is an illusion that has seduced and lured Christians to try to appropriate a divine approval (God is on our side rather than God is God for all nations and people) that is clearly contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus. The idea of a just war has allowed Christians to be major destroyers of life in wars in the last 1700 years. In fact, it was just this type of teaching, pervasive in the Christian Churches of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, that justified the horrible violence that took place during that time. The increasing use of justified violence creates insensitivity to the dignity of life and impairs the efforts of those who might try to apply the Just War Theory the way St. Augustine intended it. In our modern times Martin Luther King, a follower of Christ, put this well: “The choice today is no longer between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence.”
I have great respect for individuals who are veterans. I am in awe of the courage and dedication that they have displayed, as well as their willingness to sacrifice so much, even their lives. Our president and congress send soldiers to war in our name. But Christians must form our own consciences as followers of Christ in order that our loved ones will not be sent to war or commit violence that will not only destroy an enemy, but destroy themselves as well. A “necessary” or justified war is merely a way to perpetuate the cycle of violence that moves us farther and farther from the nonviolent way Jesus lived and taught.
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For more of our posts from Fr. Jim Hewes, see:
Death Penalty and other Killing: The Destructive Effect on Us
Abortion and Other Issues of Life: Connecting the Dots
The Case for Abortion as the “Preeminent Priority”
The Consistent Life Ethic: My Christian Perspective
Reflections from My Decades of Consistent Life Experience
Consistent Life History: Being Across the Board
For more of our posts reflecting on war not being justified, see:
The Civil War Conundrum, 150 Years Later
The Darkest Hour: “Glorifying” War?
Would Nonviolence Work on the Nazis?
What Just Happened!?! Becoming Consistent Life Despite Myself. Part 1
by Thad Crouch
There I am. Army infantry veteran and a Louisiana State Trooper scholarship recipient because I’m the criminal justice major with the highest GPA at McNeese State. It’s halfway through the spring semester. I’m staring at my raised hand, thinking, “What Just Happened!?!” The professor asked who was against the death penalty, and my hand shot up on its own! Somehow, I just know, in my bones, that I’m absolutely against the death penalty. But when did this change!?! A few classmates stare at me.
Thad Crouch
During the previous semester, I had told the class it was a shame to waste tax-payer money to execute scumbags. I suggested our state raise money by allowing the highest bidder to execute a murderer by any method of choice: hanging, shooting, burning. I had actually proclaimed, “Clip their toenails up to their chins, I don’t care.” Some students were flabbergasted and looked at each other as if to say, “What a sick bastard!”
But now, I lower my hand. I can’t hear the professor over my internal dialog. What could have changed my mind?
The professor’s voice penetrates my thoughts, “Is there anyone who would still be against the death penalty even if I proved it was a deterrent to murder?”
My hand goes up again. One of only two in the whole class.
“Thad!?! Really? Why?” the professor puzzles.
“Damn it!” I think. I just discovered my new position three seconds ago, and now I’m being asked to improvise my thoughts in front of everyone. “Because – ” I bellow. “Because – because,” I weakly say as I scramble to articulate. “Because human life is precious!” I exclaim with power. “Why would we do that!?!”
Now I’m flabbergasted, yet confident and resolved, while inarticulate. My classmates see my surprised expression. They pore over me with confused wonder. The professor’s jaw gapes.
“I mean – I get it if we catch someone in the act of murder or multiple murders and we have to kill him to prevent another murder, but – c’mon! We’ve already apprehended the murderer! He’s – he’s in custody. He’s in prison! He can’t kill anyone else. He’s not a threat. People are safe! Why would we do that!?! It’s just – it’s not necessary.” Why would we want to put another family through such pain!?! I don’t understand. I do not understand! I do not understand why anyone would do that!
Many intrigued fellow criminal justice majors gawk, then look to one another, seemingly asking, “Isn’t he that sick bastard from last semester?”
I don’t know what happened the rest of that day. I only recall scrutinizing my memory for anything I might have read, discussed, or pondered that influenced me. Then it hit me. I wasn’t the one who changed my mind.
A couple months earlier, at about 1:00 AM, January 26th, I was driving home on a dark empty section of Interstate 10, after seeing a film version of Hamlet. Alone on the road, I reviewed the scenes that prompted emotion, especially Hamlet flipping the script on his so-called friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hamlet found their secret letter from the corrupt Danish king, asking the English king to execute Hamlet. Hamlet wrote a new letter asking for their execution and sealed it with his royal seal. Yeah, I thought. Those @$S%@<#s deserved that! They betrayed Hamlet’s friendship. That’s what they get!
Then my mind shifted to some of the things I had done and what I deserved. I had abandoned James to go to a party and see that girl. I had physically hurt and humiliated Jimmy when he tried to fit in just because I wanted to show off. I had punched my brother Brett when I was angry at my cousin Edward.
I had taken advantage of my fellow soldiers, Nunez, “Catfish,” and Moore, when I knew something was about to change and kept them ignorant. I thought of them as dumb and uneducated. I chuckled when I manipulated them into thinking I was doing them favors. All three were men of color.
Even though I hadn’t arranged for anyone’s death, I had just delighted in the concept of retribution toward Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I now saw that could easily apply to me. I didn’t deserve the forgiveness of those I hurt, nor God’s forgiveness. I certainly didn’t deserve all the endurance of suffering the sinful dehumanizing system inflicted upon Christ. They killed him for simply and competently demonstrating a new way of life that attracted others. His way prioritized the love of God and fellow humans above selfishness, retribution, race, sex, age, nationality, disease, ability, or even enmity itself.
I wept. I prayed for forgiveness. I confessed I had been going down the wrong path and asked God to put me back on the right road.
I realized I had inadvertently taken the wrong highway exit. At 1:00 AM there was no traffic. I literally backed up the van and returned to the right road home. I became overwhelmed with gratitude for forgiveness. Then, I asked a profoundly dangerous question, “God, what could I possibly do to repay you for all the love you have shown me?”
I actually heard an answer! An audible voice said, “Give your life for the Church.”
What!! I was afraid for a split second. I thought someone else was hiding in the van. I turned my head quickly to scan for an attacker. The Army had psychologically conditioned my fight, flight or freeze, reaction to default to fight. This tendency nearly caused me to veer off the literal right road while on an overpass about thirty feet high.
“What Just Happened!?! Did God speak to me? Give my life for the Church!?! What does that even mean? Am I supposed to be a celibate priest now? I can’t be a priest. I’m dating Jenny, and Jenny is so hot!”
Before that moment, I would have scoffed at anyone who suggested I spend more than five minutes a day praying my self-serving Santa Claus wish list to God. After that moment, I spent years pondering what giving my life to the Church might mean. For the next 2-3 years, I spent 1-3 hours a day in verbal, meditative, and mostly contemplative prayer. I didn’t even know what contemplative prayer was! I just wanted it. I craved it. I dreamed about prayer and prayed in my dreams. Sometimes my prayer would be hours of neither talking nor listening to God. Often not even thinking much, just sunbathing in the light and warmth of love from the very Source of Love itself. It was a spiritual honeymoon.
Indeed, nothing I read, heard, discussed, or even thought about the death penalty had changed my mind. That change was just one fruit, one significant outcome of contemplative prayer. That warm, bright love penetrated my heart and my conditioning. It revealed who I could become. It pointed to who we can all become beyond the sinful dehumanizing system’s conditioning.
I didn’t change my mind about the death penalty. Prayer transformed my heart. God told my heart something beyond rational thought; it’s called love. The professor’s question required rational thought. My heart raised my hand before my mind could articulate a fraction of love’s surprisingly new information into rational thought.
Within months of that 1:00 AM moment, I became a Catholic youth minister and volunteered on many retreats. Jen dumped me to explore becoming a nun mere seconds before I could dump her to explore diocesan priesthood. We hugged and laughed. Within a year, I declined a scholarship the financial aid office described as “getting paid a lot of money to stay at McNeese.” I became a religious studies major at Loyola University New Orleans and explored priesthood for a couple of years.
At Loyola I began understanding what I now call the dehumanizing system of discrimination, denigration, destruction, and death. I learned it in classrooms. I learned it from women, African Americans, children, refugees, torture victims, and one reformed murderer in New Orleans. I also learned from former “enemies” I briefly lived with in Haiti and Nicaragua.
I see that system as the cumulative, organized sum result of humanity’s sinful tendency to prioritize ourselves to the detriment of other people and creation as we desecrate our connection and relationships with each other and with the God of love and relatedness itself. I also know religion is not required to notice that Jesus was killed for spreading love and truth by institutions of this pervasive dehumanizing system.
Here in the U.S., I see the system’s expert propaganda has most of us fighting over which side of our bi-polarizing duopolist political paradigm should dominate the U.S. branch of a dominating system. The two sides argue over which categories of humans can be partially or fully dehumanized, to the point that some humans aren’t legally persons, while non-human corporations are fictionally granted legal personhood. We argue over subsets of dehumanizing propaganda while perpetuating overarching ideas which maintain dehumanization. This is why I see a consistent life ethic as vital not just for life and human rights, but also for freedom.
My value for human life has become tempered with humility due to realizing I’ve participated in dehumanizing ideology, destruction, and violence. I once proudly wore one of its uniforms and promoted its lies.
I’ve seen the system’s existence is contingent on a considerable portion of people either supporting, acquiescing in, or being too fearful to dismantle it. A new way cannot fully replace the system as long as those who want to end the system think it can be dismantled by insulting, “cancelling,” or using violence against those who hold the system in place. Such well-intentioned incompetence also holds the system in place. In other words, defeating dehumanization requires a humble commitment to rehumanize ourselves and others who dehumanize. That’s secular talk for “Love your enemies.”
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For more of our posts on personal journeys, see:
On Being a Consistent Chimera / Rob Arner
Peas of the Same Pod / Elena Muller Garcia
Why Conservatives Should Oppose the Death Penalty / Destiny Herndon-de la Rosa
Coming to Peace and Living a Consistent Life After Military Service / Eve Dawn Kuha
My Personal Journey on Veganism, War, and Abortion / Frank Lane
Off the Fence and Taking My Stand on Abortion / Mary Liepold
Sharon Long: My Personal Pro-life Journey / Sharon Long
Nukes and the Pro-Life Christian: A Conservative Takes a Second Look at the Morality of Nuclear Weapons / Karen Swallow Prior
Abortion on the Ballot
by Lisa Stiller
In the state I live in – Oregon – over 50% of the people are underinsured according to a 2017 report by the state. A 2020 report puts our estimated homeless population at 14,655 on any given day. The state poverty rate is currently about 9 percent.
We have three very contentious Congressional races right now. And a very tight governor’s race.
What are most of our candidates campaigning on? At least the Democrat and Independent candidates? Abortion. No, not about those reasons – such as poverty – why people might seek abortion. Just about abortion.
And the Guttmacher Institute reports that 73% of women seeking abortion do so at least partly because they’re afraid they can’t afford a baby.
Just recently, President Biden also put abortion on the ballot by promising to “codify Roe” first thing if Congress remains in Democrats’ hands.
Candidate X will make sure that all people who want an abortion in this state will have one, or will ensure that Congress protects the right to abortion. That is the lead in most of the ads. Some go on to mention other issues, such as homelessness and housing, and gun safety.
The Republican candidates’ ads mostly address crime and homelessness and the fear that people will lose their guns. They don’t mention abortion.
I’m sure other states are experiencing the same types of ads.
When the license to kill becomes the number one issue candidates put forth in their ads, it’s time to examine how our culture of death has permeated the mainstream – and how we can fix it.
Most of all, it puts pro-life progressives in a very troubling position. Our Republican candidates want to cut funding to those programs that reduce poverty and homelessness, statewide and nationally. They want to make cuts that would affect access to health care and reduce spending on education. They don’t want to fund programs that could actually reduce abortion rates.
A Republican governor won’t be able to do much about abortion here, as we’ll continue to have a Democratic majority in our legislature. The “right” to abortion was codified in the state constitution in 2017. A Republican governor isn’t going to get that reversed. And too many Republicans are against a national law opposing abortion for that possibility to become a reality any time soon.
So why are our candidates so focused on this? They know it will get out the vote.
Abortion is on the ballot, claim the ads of all our Democratic and Independent governor candidates, and all our Democratic Congressional candidates. Life-giving, life-affirming issues take a back seat.
Why don’t our candidates feel that the fact that we have close to 15,000 homeless individuals in the state, almost one out of ten people living in poverty, inspire people to vote?
Maybe, sadly, the question should be why don’t these facts inspire people to vote as much as “protecting access to abortion” – which isn’t even at risk here?
Abortion is so much “on the ballot” that it has now become a part of other issues we should be supporting. Phrases like “protect our democracy” and “protect our freedoms” are code for protecting the “right to choose.”
We should be supporting voter protection and fighting voter suppression. We should be supporting legislation that will help prevent another January 6, 2021. But when abortion becomes part of that campaign, how can we support the campaign?
Lisa Stiller
The same thing has been happening with the single payer health care movement, which is now demanding that the right to “abortion care” be protected. Universal health care should not be a partisan issue. Inserting abortion “rights” into other issues adds to the toxic, divisive environment we are living in post Roe. How can I support those issues so important to me when they have taken on advocacy for the right to kill?
An emphasis on individual freedom (“my body, my choice”) and the fear of losing this freedom seems to be a huge motivating factor, despite the fact that the fear is largely unfounded. When did Democrats lose their emphasis on helping the most vulnerable, on addressing poverty? On helping people lead a more productive life, on raising the minimum wage?
And how do we vote? Voting for candidates who make abortion access their central issue poses some moral questions. But so does voting for candidates who want to cut funding to the programs that help reduce poverty, access to health care and affordable housing, and who oppose reasonable gun safety legislation. And not voting doesn’t feel like a good option, as we fear our democracy depends on our voting to help it thrive.
I hope I find an answer before Election Day. But meanwhile the right to kill is still on the ballot.
We need to speak up about this. I have emailed our Democratic and Independent candidates, asking them to put those issues that affect so many of us up front: inflation, housing, more people slipping into poverty, higher medical costs preventing people from accessing care. I hope they listen.
We need to find a way to make a culture of life, not a culture of death, take priority in our elections.
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Since referendums give a much cleaner way to vote directly on issues, we have several that we’re tracking:
For more of our posts on voting, see:
Pro-life Voting Strategy: A Problem without an Answer
Elections 2020: Three Consistent-Life Approaches
My Difficulty in Voting: Identifying the Problem
What History Shows: The Consistent Life Ethic Works for Pro-life Referendums
How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting
A reminder: The Consistent Life Network doesn’t necessarily endorse everything said in its blog, since we encourage individual writers to express a variety of views. This is especially so when analyzing elections.
Stepping Back from the Brink: The Cuban Missile Crisis and Lessons for Today
by John Whitehead
We are now 60 years away from the Cuban Missile Crisis. The October 1962 confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba was a moment when the world came perilously close to nuclear war.
This crisis’ anniversary has new significance in 2022, as the world faces a new confrontation between the United States and Russia that poses a similar danger. US President Joseph Biden recently said that for the “first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon[s].”
The current situation gives special importance to remembering the 1962 crisis and learning whatever lessons from it that can be useful in avoiding war today. (I rely here primarily on Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali’s “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 [New York: Norton, 1997].)
Two Cold War Problems
The Cuban Missile Crisis can be interpreted as arising from two overlapping Cold War problems:
Nuclear Arms Race. The United States, being the first nation to build nuclear weapons, by the early 1960s possessed a larger number of nuclear weapons and more technologically sophisticated weapons than the Soviet Union. The United States also had nuclear weapons stationed outside its borders, in various US-allied countries from which they could reach the Soviet Union relatively quickly.
Given that even a very small number of relatively low-tech nuclear weapons can be devastating in war, such numerical and technological imbalances supposedly shouldn’t matter. However, according to the paranoid logic that nuclear deterrence can encourage, these imbalances can be interpreted as giving one side an advantage. Imbalances raise the question: Could the other side use its superiority to strike first in an effort to destroy our nuclear arsenal before we can retaliate? By this logic, the Soviet Union had a problem.
Cuba. A 1958 revolution overthrew the US-backed dictator of Cuba and brought to power a new, left-wing regime led by Fidel Castro. Cuba’s relationship with the United States deteriorated, and the new regime sought closer ties with the Soviet Union, which provided Castro with military aid.
As the United States pursued covert efforts to undermine Castro’s power, Nikita Khrushchev, the preeminent Soviet leader, made repeated public pledges to defend the island against the United States. In 1960, Khrushchev even implied the Soviets would defend Cuba with nuclear weapons.
US efforts to destroy Castro’s regime culminated early in President John F. Kennedy’s administration. In April 1961, Kennedy supported an attempted invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro forces with the intention of overthrowing Castro. The invasion at the island’s Bay of Pigs ended in disaster, but it underlined for the Soviets the danger their Cuban ally faced. Soviet-Cuban military ties increased after the invasion, while the Kennedy administration continued working against Castro, even plotting his assassination.
US-Soviet relations worsened during 1961-62. Kennedy and Khrushchev had a hostile summit meeting in June 1961. The Soviet Union resumed nuclear testing in 1961, after a years-long moratorium. The United States soon resumed its own nuclear tests.
Amid this tense international situation, Khrushchev decided in early 1962 to station Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. This step could address both problems: being able to quickly strike the United States seemingly evened out the US-Soviet nuclear imbalance, and Castro’s regime would be protected from invasion. To his inner circle, Khrushchev commented, “the only way to save Cuba is to put missiles there” and that just as US weapons stationed close to the Soviet Union “are aimed at us and scare us,” Soviet missiles in Cuba would “give them back some of their own medicine” (Fursenko and Naftali, 182). The Soviet leadership agreed on May 21, 1962 to put missiles in Cuba.
The Crisis
The Soviets carried out their plan over the summer and early fall. By early October, Soviet forces in Cuba had over 30 missiles. Each could be armed with a 1-megaton warhead and each could hit a wide swath of the southeastern United States. The Soviets in Cuba also had 12 tactical nuclear weapons they could use if the United States attacked the island.
The crisis erupted when an American surveillance plane spotted the missiles. Kennedy learned about the missiles on October 16 and for almost a week secretly consulted his advisors on what to do. They considered trying to get rid of the missiles by bombing or invading Cuba. However, some argued the Cuban missiles had no military significance, given US nuclear superiority. Others pointed to the comparable presence of US missiles close to the Soviet Union, in allied countries such as Turkey.
Two crucial restraints helped prevent a US attack on Cuba. One was uncertainty about the missiles’ status: were any ready to launch? Could one be launched before the United States destroyed them? Another restraint was the fear the Soviets would retaliate with military action against West Berlin, a US-aligned outpost deep in Communist East Germany.
Kennedy instead chose an option that he announced in a televised speech on October 22. Calling the missiles “a definite threat to peace,” he urged Khrushchev to remove them. The United States would impose a naval blockade of Cuba to prevent further “offensive military equipment” being sent there. Although his tone was confrontational, Kennedy was effectively playing for time, warning the Soviets without yet taking action against the Cuban missiles.
The Soviets responded in kind. Khrushchev sent messages to Kennedy defying the blockade, while the Soviet military raised its level of preparedness. Alongside these threatening signals, though, the Soviet leadership decided first to curtail and then stop any further military shipments to Cuba, so as not to violate the US blockade.
Behind the scenes, Americans and Soviets looked for a diplomatic resolution that would allow both sides to back down without losing. As early as October 17, Kennedy had been considering withdrawing US nuclear missiles in Turkey in exchange for the Cuban missiles’ withdrawal. Following Kennedy’s October 22 speech, US policymakers sent various messages, via a private channel, to the Soviets proposing this swap.
Khrushchev and his inner circle agreed to propose their own deal: they would withdraw the missiles if the US guaranteed not to invade Cuba. Khrushchev sent this proposal to Kennedy October 26. Khrushchev later added the Cuba-Turkey missile swap to his proposed deal.
Despite the mutual search for a peaceful resolution, the situation remained quite dangerous. Some US policymakers still advocated attacking Cuba. Had the United States done so, Soviet forces might have used their tactical nuclear weapons in response.
People lower down the chain of the command also could shape events. The Soviets had submarines armed with nuclear weapons near Cuba; on October 27, one such submarine got into a confrontation with US blockade ships. The submarine commander apparently reacted to American depth charges (intended as warnings) by considering use of a nuclear missile. He was overruled by another officer.
Probably the crisis’ most dangerous moment occurred because of unauthorized action far removed from the top policymakers. The morning of October 27, two Soviet officers in Cuba learned of an American surveillance plane overhead. They feared the plane was gathering information for an imminent US invasion, and they could not reach their commander to get instructions. They opted to shoot the plane down, killing its pilot, Rudolf Anderson. When he learned of the incident, though, Kennedy crucially decided not to retaliate.
A meeting between the president’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin finalized the terms of a diplomatic deal. The Soviets would withdraw their missiles from Cuba, while the United States promised not to invade Cuba and would withdraw its missiles from Turkey (the Turkish missiles part of the deal would be a secret, though). The Soviets accepted the deal on October 28.
By year’s end, all Soviet nuclear weapons were removed from Cuba. By early 1963, the US missiles left Turkey. That same year, the two nations reached an agreement to limit nuclear testing.
Lessons
Despite their justifiable mutual suspicions, fears, and hostility, policymakers on both sides were ultimately able to defuse a confrontation that could have spiraled into nuclear war. I will suggest a few lessons from the episode that are applicable today, including to current US-Russian relations.
Show caution. War could have broken out had either side acted recklessly or tried to force a showdown. The US decision not to attack Cuba and the Soviet decision to avoid violation of the blockade helped prevent such consequences.
Communicate. US-Soviet communications, both official and private, were essential to a resolution. Private communication was especially important in reaching agreements that couldn’t be discussed publicly. Recognition of communication’s importance led to the US and Soviet Union, in 1963, establishing a special “hotline” for 24-hour communication.
Leave an exit. Resolving the crisis required that each nation get something that allowed its leaders to claim a victory. As Kennedy later said, “nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
Beware uncontrollable situations. As the killing of Major Anderson showed, events can overtake policymakers. Large-scale, high-tension military confrontations raise the probability of violence breaking out because of minor incidents that escalate. This probability is a reason such confrontations should be avoided and quickly cooled down if they do occur. As Kennedy wrote to Khrushchev after the crisis, “I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were approaching a point where events could have become unmanageable” (quoted in Richard Reeves, President Kennedy: Profile of Power [New York: Touchstone, 1993], 425).
All these principles are worth bearing in mind in future international relations. And I will add one more, the most important:
As long as nuclear weapons exist, humanity is in grave danger. The destructive power of nuclear weapons means international conflicts, even ones that start relatively small, could kill billions and devastate our world. A confrontation over Cuba had the potential to end civilization, just as the present confrontation over Ukraine does.
This last lesson should give us fresh motivation to try to end the nuclear danger, or at least try to reduce it to the lowest level possible. We won’t always have the good luck we had in 1962.
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For more of John Whitehead’s posts on nuclear dangers, see:
A Global Effort to Protect Life: The UN Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons
The Persisting Threat of Nuclear Weapons: A Brief Primer
Nuclear Disarmament as a Social Justice Issue
The Danger That Faces Us All: Hiroshima and Nagasaki after 75 Years
Catastrophe by Mistake: The Button and the Danger of Accidental Nuclear War
“The Affairs of a Handful of Natives”: Nuclear Testing and Racism
Lethal from the Start: Uranium Mining’s Danger to the Most Vulnerable
Wasting Money on Instruments of Death: Nuclear Weapons in the 2022 Budget
A Hidden Cost of the Ukraine War: How Russia’s Invasion Encourages the Spread of Nuclear Weapons
Unholy Trinity: The Terrible Consequences of the First Nuclear Test
Fallout at Home Base: Nuclear Testing within the United States