It is time for a real debate on War. There is one group that profits from wars and rumours of war and that is the arms companies. War is their business. They say, “The prevention of War is our business” while selling arms to everyone, and then look surprised when it breaks out. But arms lead to wars – Saddam’s arms, Gaddafi’s arms, Bush’s arms, Putin’s arms and Al-Assad’s arms. Of course, greed, vanity, military dictators and hatred play their part, but most of the serious hatred in the world comes from previous wars. The Culprits Of War have been hiding for a hundred years and it is time to flush them out, as Article 8 of the Treaty of Versailles nearly did in June 1919 at the end of the War To End All Wars. Let’s recall it.

THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES, ARTICLE 8
“The Members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations. The Council, taking account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, shall formulate plans for such reduction for the consideration and action of the several Governments. Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years. After these plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments, the limits of armaments therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council. The Members of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections. The Council shall advise how the evil effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the necessities of those Members of the League which are not able to manufacture the munitions and implements of war necessary for their safety. The Members of the League undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments, their military, naval and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as are adaptable to war-like purposes.”

You will notice a number of things. First, it is quite strong. Making weapons causes and results in evil. Preventing these effects is absolutely necessary, and peace requires reducing them to the lowest point consistent with national safety. They knew tens of millions who had been horribly slain and injured by weapons. They knew, too, that arms companies ran four arms races spreading distrust, hate (the Hun), the superiority of their wares and militarism to promote the threat and possibility of War. They knew that the War was not just Germany, but France encouraged by Schneider, Britain by Armstrong, Vickers, Mulliner and the Dreadnought Scare, Austro-Hungary and Skoda, the Kaiser and Krupp, Nobel, Du Pont and many others in what was now the biggest industry in the world. The merchants of death had sold war and pumped up armies and navies. Lloyd George knew that. He knew Germany was squeezed from two sides. President Wilson knew that he had entered the War because the British and French debts to the US from purchasing weapons were so great that the US had to be on our side. He probably also knew that his peace proposals back home would be savaged by a munitions/Republican cabal as his life drew to a close. The arms companies and the weapons were the problem of war – these statesmen saw this truth, and said it.

But you will also notice the bargained compromises already there. “The lowest point consistent with national safety” it says. If all are disarmed, all are safe. If disarmament is firm and staged, there is no discretion needed. But the arms companies have their foot in the door. And then there is the “due regard” for those who don’t make their own weapons. Why? So that arms companies can resume selling around the world, of course. And the “information interchange” opens the door to fudge and sliding away from real disarmament. There were quite a few military men at Versailles, some of them in uniform as you see in the picture above, and they were not going to allow their abolition. So real disarmament was compromised at the beginning.

THE USSR.
When the Russian Revolution took place, and the USSR withdrew from the War, it also repudiated War. The Statement is interesting. It includes the following.
The Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, created by the revolution of 24–25 October, and drawing its strength from the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies, proposes to all warring peoples and their governments to begin at once negotiations leading to a just democratic peace.

A just and democratic peace for which the great majority of wearied, tormented and war-exhausted toilers and labouring classes of all belligerent countries are thirsting, a peace which the Russian workers and peasants have so loudly and insistently demanded since the overthrow of the Tsar’s monarchy, such a peace the government considers to be an immediate peace without annexations (i.e., without the seizure of foreign territory and the forcible annexation of foreign nationalities) and without indemnities.
The Russian Government proposes to all warring peoples that this kind of peace be concluded at once; it also expresses its readiness to take immediately, without the least delay, all decisive steps pending the final confirmation of all the terms of such a peace by the plenipotentiary assemblies of all countries and all nations.
Invited ‘All belligerents to open negotiation without delay for a just and democratic peace […] a peace without annexations and amenities.

This was ignored by the other belligerents, but it posed deep issues for them. First, it was accompanied by a repudiation of the “Tsarist debt”; vast amounts borrowed from the United States, Britain and France to fund Russia’s military build-up was wiped off the slate. These countries were angry. It partly explains the Anti-Communism. Churchill famously led an attack on the Red Government to “strangle the baby in the cradle” and so War was being practised against the USSR even as the Versailles Treaty was being signed. But the USSR also pinpointed the link between capitalism and weapons, capital and colonialism and capital and War, as many other Socialists and Christians did. So, the military people were defensive. Because the USSR represented disarmament and anti-capitalism, disarmament could not be allowed to flourish. They would kill it.

THE POST-WAR MILITARY RECESSION AND DELAY.
The Great War was the biggest military bonanza in world history. Arms Companies became rich, expanded, opened up new products – especially tanks, submarines and warplanes – and received government money hand over fist in all the belligerent countries. At the end of the War, as after all wars, there was oversupply. Churchill helped address that by carrying on against the USSR across a wide front, and weapons were sold on to a whole load of dubious regimes across the world, but what were the arms companies to do? First, for a few years they kept their heads down. They learned to disappear. In the mid 1930s they were flushed out again by the “Merchants of Death” book and the Nye Commission in the States, but then it was too late. Second, they could sell around the world to places outside Europe to dubious regimes in the hope that conflict might break out sooner or later. The most promising area was China, Japan and the Far East, where China was breaking into rival warlords and Japan was dominated by the military. Third, with their allies in the military, the arms companies and their agents could sabotage all attempts at disarmament, and, fourth, they could work with all Fascist Parties and Governments which linked the military and the state tightly together (usually against Socialism and Communism) to promote their business. We have to remember that all states had Fascist, or proto-Fascist parties usually linked to wealth, the business of war and also to traumatized soldiers consumed with PTSD and hatred after the War. So, the arms companies went about recreating their business. In 1932 with the defeat of the Great Geneva Disarmament Conference and the later rise of Hitler to power, they were successful in Italy, Germany, Britain, Japan, the United States, France and the USSR. The United States funded and armed both Germany and the USSR in preparation for the Second World War. At the end of that War the military-industrial establishments both West and East, but especially in the West, moved into the Cold War to make sure that the permanently armed world emerged, as it has, dangerous, destructive, living with fear, threats, arms races and wars to validate the business of the arms companies. They and not the politicians have run the show and you and I have ignored them, because they are usually hidden or focussing on some supposed external threat.

THE VERSAILLES PEACE PROPOSALS WERE DEFEATED.
So, a hundred years later we could understand that the Versailles Disarmament and Peace Proposals were not tried. They were sabotaged by the arms companies, and they have been ever since, because turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Whenever disarmament is discussed, the military insist on being in charge, and strangle it. Mussolini and Hitler were funded by arms companies. They were, in substantial part, a product of this system, not its cause. Still we do not understand this basic point. Wars and rumours of War are mainly caused by those who profit from it, the military-industrial establishment, usually deep inside government.

WE CAN DISARM THE WORLD.
A hundred years later we need to realise why Versailles failed. We need to see that wars, refugees, the work of tens of millions of military personnel, a vast CO2 hungry, high tech manufacturer of destruction, a military costing trillions, the threatened destruction of the planet, terrorism and this industry of death are unnecessary, if the arms companies and their output are addressed. World disarmament is easier than armament and war. It enriches all of us. It is time for several billions of us to wise up and change the world.

THE PEACE-FREAKING SERVICE.

Westminster Abbey is holding a service to “Recognize Fifty Years at Sea Continuous Deterrent” on the 3rd of May. We are told this is a “peace keeping through the deterrent” Service. You may not understand what that means; it needs a little translation. “Continuous” says that every day a nuclear submarine with Trident missiles and multiple nuclear warheads is prowling the oceans. Capital C means that it is ready to attack if necessary. Capital D Deterrent means that nuclear weapons Deter other countries from attacking us and keeps us safe, and service means only for those who are invited. And Westminster Abbey is saying this is a good thing because it is “peace-keeping”. So prowling submarines with weapons which will kill millions are given a nice Anglican blessing for peace-keeping, and all is well. Except of course, this is not the truth. Westminster Abbey, is going along with the military-industrial establishment in a ceremonial event supporting a myth, although it will have many well-meaning people present. The service avoids Christianity, thought, principles and realism. Here we try to address these omissions in reverse order. First we look at four reasons why the supposed peace-keeping deterrent is a fiction, dreamed up by the arms companies for their benefit.

IS THE “DETERRENT” REAL?

1. Who might attack?
Are our nuclear submarines and their weapons really a deterrent? No, because, during those fifty years no-one has remotely threatened to attack us as a nation. For over 80,000 days of prowling, there has been no alert and no danger, because no-one has thought of attacking us, just as no-one has thought of attacking Switzerland, Belgium, Poland or Denmark, which don’t have nuclear deterrents. Our Deterrent has been like a man sitting in a full suit of Armour in the park with twenty swords and machine guns, hoping no one would notice he has not been attacked and wishing at least a dog would growl at him. Strip away the MOD/MI6 hype pushed out most weeks to keep us in fear, and there is not a real nuclear threat or the semblance of a threat to us.. It is not even a feasible thing to do, for North Korea, Russia or Montenegro. Nobody wants to attack us with nuclear weapons; what would be the point? It is a hypothetical deterrent, a watch this space in case anything happens deterrent, a dog howling at the moon deterrent, a mislabelled wrapping of a non-deterrent. There is no enemy at the door, or down the street, or anywhere.

1b. What about the Cold War?
Ah, says someone, what about the Cold War? Yes, perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the Cold War. You may not have heard that during the fifties and sixties the US vastly exaggerated the USSR bombs, bombers and missiles when it was far ahead in the “arms race”, so that the arms companies could carry on overproducing their nuclear weapons and delivery systems. At the time Kennedy was elected President, the US had nine times as many nuclear weapons and delivery systems as the USSR, and of better quality, but Kennedy campaigned on being behind in the arms race. The arms companies had a vested interest in this kind of Cold War; it gave them massive orders. The USSR was trying to catch up with the US, because it was good for their arms companies. Actually, the biggest threat during the Cold War was when the US nuclear bombed itself four times in early 1961. In one of the bombs which fell 150 miles from Washington, near Goldsboro, North Carolina, three of the four firing mechanisms detonated, but the fourth, luckily, did not. That was really scary.

Listen for a moment to the leaders of the world superpowers – President Eisenhower, ex Supreme Allied Commander defeating Hitler Eisenhower, and the USSR’s Khrushchev. Eisenhower is talking to Khrushchev, then Khrushchev replies.

“My military leaders come to me and say, “Mr President, we need such and such a sum for such and such a program.” I say, “Sorry we don’t have the funds.” They say, “We have reliable information that the Soviet Union has already allocated funds for their own such program. Therefore, if we do not get the funds we need, we’ll fall behind the Soviet Union.” So I give in. That’s how they wring money out of me. They keep grabbing for more and I keep giving it to them. Now tell me, how is it with you?”

“It’s just the same. Some people from our military department come and say, “Comrade Khrushchev, look at this! The Americans are developing such and such a system. We could develop the same system, but it would cost such and such.” I tell them there is no money; it’s all been allocated already. So they say, “If we don’t get the money we need and if there is a war, then the enemy will have superiority over us.” So we discuss it some more, and I end up by giving them the money they ask for.”

The militarist tail was wagging the political dog. If the politicians did not toe the line, they were charged with putting the nation in danger, giving in to the enemy, or being a traitor to the country. It goes on all the time. Michael Foot, a pacifist and leader of the Labour Party, was accused of being a Russian spy by The Times; when it came to trial the libel damages bought him a new kitchen. Now Jeremy Corbyn just faces rumours and smears because he rightly sees this system as silly. So, the vast military-industrial establishments on both sides fed and feed the fear that kept them in business. By 1990 the immense military expenditure in the poorer USSR caused it to collapse. The Cold War was the barking of two dogs, each with its tail clamped in the jaws of the arms industry.

2. The Non-Independent Insignificant Nuclear Non-deterrent.
There is a second reason why “our” nuclear deterrent is not real. We are told our nuclear weapons are independent. Except they are not. They are bought from the US as a kind of virility symbol that puts us in the superpower class. Let us examine this relationship. US weapon systems have been thirty or forty times bigger than ours throughout this period, and in any international tensions, it is US power that features, not ours. The US has the mega-weapons and everybody, other than us, ignores us. We do not count and have not since Suez in 1956. We only count as the US poodle, in Iraq, Syria or wherever, though we did win in the Falklands. That our deterrent is independent does not matter, because we do not matter, and it is not. We would have to ask permission of the US through NATO to do anything. The egos of Thatcher and Blair have tried to make us matter, but we do not. Like France, another post-colonial nuclear power, nobody cares about our nuclear weapons. It is all ego, a Churchillian V bomber sign that has gone wrong, a useless national egoism that only stupid leaders like Kim Jong-Un in North Korea think of following, (and he might be genuinely scared of the US). So, the fact that we, the British are prowling the seas is of no interest to anyone who is grown up. For fifty years, it has been an empty ritual. It has contributed as much to peace as the robes of Anglican bishops contribute to holiness.

3. Nuclear Weapons do not deter conventional wars.
Because nothing justifies the use of nuclear bombs, they have not been used in conventional wars, and have not deterred them. Of course, they could not deter wars which we started. So, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere the conventional wars have gone ahead with our help, even though we have nuclear weapons. In dozens of other locations wars have not been stopped by the nuclear deterrent, because it will not be used. It cannot be used. Of course, again, wars tend to occur where arms companies sell conventional weapons, and when wars occur, arms companies have a bonanza, but that will not be in the liturgy of the Westminster Service. So the nuclear deterrent has had no impact on conventional wars, going back to Korea and Vietnam. They are not a deterrent, or a peace-keeping deterrent. The Anglican Service is icing without a cake. Nuclear weapons do not stop conventional wars.

4. The real reason nuclear weapons are not used is that they are evil.
We all know nuclear weapons are evil. Each warhead kills about a million people horrifically, like us or perhaps even us, more or less depending on circumstances. They have always been an indiscriminate people killer, not a strategic weapon. At Hiroshima some kids who were not killed immediately were running away holding their eyeballs in their hands. It is beyond evil. So the real reason why nobody thinks of using nuclear weapons is because they do untold evil. Really, they cannot be used, because they are too evil, and they haven’t been used. They wipe out everything, including probably, the human race. Really, this has been admitted for decades. Triggering Doomsday was unthinkable. Once nuclear warheads reached Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD for short, where they make the whole world uninhabitable for humans many times over, the stupidity of the nuclear race was beyond question. After all, the Dr Strangelove film was in 1964. Yet the show stayed on the road, because the arms companies needed it, and through the constant generation of fear. They won’t be used, but if you call them a deterrent, they can still be made, even though they are useless – bombs, submarines, missiles, bombers – trillions can be spent on them, provided you ramp up the fear and pretend they are a deterrent. Even when the USSR disappeared, the show stayed on the road, because it was always about funding the military-industrial complex. So we have the charade of deterrence kept afloat on the ramped-up fears of millions, so that we spend trillions on evil weapons which will never be used. And if disarmament is discussed, the military are in charge, so that nothing will become of it, because turkeys do not vote for Christmas. And then you get some plonking Anglicans to celebrate it. The Westminster Abbey line about peace-keeping panders to a military obscenity, trying to make what is evil good.

INTERNATIONAL PRINCIPLES AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
By what principles should we conduct international affairs? The principle behind nuclear weapons is that the threat is so severe that nobody will cross us. Christianity does not do threats. It has long championed reconciliation, sorting quarrels, meekness, non-retaliation and in Christ’s famous words, “loving your enemies”. It is a powerful way of conducting life. Enemies can be understood, their point of view seen. Acts of kindness and openness deconstruct tension and aggression. Such a view is beyond nationalism. Christians worldwide are the rainbow people of God, from every tribe and nation, equal before God. We have seen animosities in Europe change to friendship under this imperative. Go the second mile. So, the Christian Gospel takes co-operation all the way. Christ forgives those who crucify him, because they do not know what they do. They have not seen through the false hope in threats and aggression. It is not difficult to understand. If Fred puts a machine gun down on the table you will not have a good conversation with him. Threats destroy trust. Threats promise evil consequences to get their will. Threats induce fear, reprisals, the need to carry them out and trust in weapons rather than people. The Dean of Westminster should have been taught this in theological kindergarden. Nuclear submarines are the mother of all threats, and the Anglican Church is blessing them, not that Church of England blessings make one iota of difference. It is only God who blesses. So, this service rats on Christian teaching and relating in principle.

THE ANGLICAN ESTABLISHMENT AND A BIT OF THOUGHT.
Then Christians are invited by Jesus to do a little bit of thinking. The world’s greatest teacher frequently says, “They say unto you, but I say unto you…” There are contending views. Christians, along with the rest of the world could question militarism. Its Founder said, two thousand years ago, “Those who take the sword, perish by the sword.” It is a pithy summary of a big theme. Now most people would understand that as a general principle. If you develop and use weapons, then you will get kickback; you will suffer. It is a warning that goes down the centuries. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Japan, the US in Vietnam and in Afghanistan. George W. Bush learned it when the CIA funded several billions of training and arms in Afghanistan, only to find that some of them had planned 9/11. Those who set out on militarism, pay the cost. Militarism does not work and Jesus laid it out two millenia back. You would have thought that a little bit of thought would convince our politicians, and our Dean of Westminster, that wars, especially nuclear wars do not work. Nuclear wars do not work, because everybody gets destroyed. Invasion is more or less impossible in the modern crowded world; going on holiday there is much easier. And most states which are attacked and bombed evidence three effects. The first is they often become failed states with governance breaking down. Second, they generate terrorists, because people want revenge for their homes and families being bombed and destroyed. Third, destroyed homes and cities create millions of refugees who have to migrate to other places and cannot easily be helped. So, the whole programme of wars and militarism is a failed agenda. This is not surprising when weapons by their very nature kill, maim and destroy. All sides lose wars and the obvious thing to do is not to prepare for them. Absent the arms companies and their fear machines and this would be blindingly obvious. Because the military establishment is in charge even this basic bit of thinking does not get done.

But then step up the Church of England. Now given the Church of England should listen to Jesus at least once a week, you would expect them to sit down and think, “Do weapons work?” and the evidence is that both the weapons and their use do not work. Indeed, many Anglicans have come to that conclusion, but the Anglican establishment seems not to have got there. The evidence on bishops blessing battleships before World War One is a bit mixed, but the establishment has long, with the exception of the interwar period, gone along with militarism without thought. The Anglican Establishment could think. They could say, “The UK nuclear weapon system should be closed down. That will save billions of pounds every year, encourage world denuclearisation and not affect UK security.” They could say, “Are we sure that having and selling all these weapons is a good idea; it seems to be creating failed states, refugees, terrorist, warming the planet and spreading conflict in previously peaceful areas.” That would be a thoughtful response to Jesus’ words and to the world situation. The Pope has come to that conclusion by thinking about Jesus’ words. But, No, the Anglican Establishment, partly reared in public schools with a cadet corps, and warbling around state events in Abbeys and Cathedrals, does not dare to challenge the political establishment and comes up with a service blessing nuclear submarines. Then there is the well-known Anglican habit of finding an ethical dilemma in every issue so that nothing will be done. They agonize over “Would you shoot a man with a bomb in a football crowd?” while ignoring the manufacture of millions of bombs for profit. So, the Anglican Establishment prevaricates and goes along with the powers that be, c, d and e. It is not good enough. In fact it is not good at all. It is not Christian. It is a faithless, craven response to a major world evil.

THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.
The Christian Gospel is a Gospel of peace. Christianity shows how peace works. Peace is spread without weapons or threats, through trust, forgiveness, loving enemies and addressing disputes. Racial, national and other tribalisms are out because we stand before the God of all people. Christ disarmed the fear of those who try to control by killing him on the cross and taught fearlessness. Peace is free. It is given by Christ and rests on those who follow him. His crucifixion nailed militarism to the cross and he is the Lamb on the Throne; we look for the triumph of non-militarism. Yet, this deep Christian understanding of peace and disarmament is scorned in this simpering support of a useless deterrent and the silly games of nuclear weaponry bought from the States. It is time the Anglican establishment moved over for the real Christian content of peace. Bruce Kent, who will probably be standing outside the Abbey, if the service takes place, should be preaching inside the good news of the Gospel of Peace. Indeed, the real lesson takes place outside. God has spent several billion years on the decay of radioactivity on our planet so that we can live here, and we retro-engineer a catastrophic throwback. How clever is that?
The service should be cancelled, not out of disrespect for good engineers and the hard work of service people, but because our nuclear weapons are not a deterrent in any sense; they reflect national vanity for which politicians and the electorate are responsible; they are not the way to relate in international affairs, and do not reflect the Christian Gospel. It is wasteful of billions and vast amounts of energy and is a threat to world peace.

It is time the Anglican establishment quit this role of providing a tinsel halo for what the state does irrespective of the Christian Gospel. The issue is even bigger. Rather than promoting peace, UK Governments, following the US, have been one of the world’s chief warmongers, creating failed states in the Middle East, provoking terrorism and leaving millions of refugees. The west has championed the selling of weapons world-wide, manufacturing wars and tensions. Christian policy of reconciliation, disarming and confronting the power systems needs steady faithful witness against militarism from the Church of England. We must stand and fight for peace with the gentle armour of God rather than the kit of militarism. We need to show the stupidity of militarism in the modern world, wasting trillions on useless wars, burning vast amounts of CO2 and manufacturing destruction. It is time for the Archbishops to acknowledge they have got this wrong, and why they have got it wrong.

The Westminster Abbey Service must be cancelled or reversed. Of course, people can meet God anywhere and the words of Christ speak through every barrier, but clothing the idea of nuclear deterrence in the mantle of peace, and pretending that it has done good when it has merely reflected our national vanity, cloaks the lie. If we give up our nuclear deterrent, it would do inestimably more for world peace, and fight for multilateral nuclear disarmament and full world disarmament. The Dean could say that, but he may not. Christ is not really invited to this commemoration of nuclear bomb “deterrence”. The event is by invitation only, and he has probably not been given a ticket. But he tends to turn up again and again.

We have a fifty years at sea continuous independent nuclear deterrent. Every day at least one nuclear submarine prowls the seas around the world, ready to launch nuclear missiles with multiple warheads at any country which might attack us. These weapons keep us safe and have for fifty years. Except they do not. They were conceived in vanity and have deterred nothing. They are zilch, a money plughole into the arms business and BAe Systems in particular.

The idea started with Winston Churchill who was keen to be nuclear and a superpower. Churchill’s life was fighting; he had one very good fight and a lot of bad ones. He wanted to be a nuclear power and gradually the US let us in the club. It was run by US arms companies. In the 1950s and 60s they exaggerated the nuclear bombers and missiles the USSR had to that they could sell more nuclear bombs, bombers and missiles. It was a highly successful ploy for the military-industrial complex; the USSR was hardly likely to announce that it had a fraction of the weapons the US said it had and the Cold War grew around the arms industries in the US and USSR.

Britain was an also-ran superpower. We had expensive failures with nuclear bombers – the four V bombers – although they looked good. Then we flirted with buying various US missiles and then asked to buy the US Polaris system. We needed to buy US nuclear reactors for the subs, the nuclear weapons and the missiles. Harold Wilson described it as not British, independent or a deterrent. We moved on to the US Trident system. The Cold War ended, and the only vaguely potential enemy disappeared, but we still motored on with this supposed deterrent. Let us examine this idea of deterrence. The military industrial complex say, without any evidence, that our deterrent has been a success. It has deterred nobody, no-where, at no time for four reasons.

First, the United States has had a vastly bigger force than Britain – say 40 times more nuclear warheads and delivery systems – and so no-one was going to take any notice of us. We were a me-too poodle and have not counted in any international situation or problem.

Second, everyone has worked out that nuclear war destroys the planet. Killing tens of millions of people through blast and radiation is wicked and cannot be done. The “deterrent” says we would use it, but the obvious evil requires nobody does. That is why nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945, not deterrence.

Third, the UK has had no potential aggressors. The USSR has no interest in aggression against us, nor does China, India, North Korea (Theresa’s May’s fall-back), France, Paraguay, the Maldives or the Isle of White. Throughout these fifty years we have had no potential aggressor against us, or conceivable potential aggressor but only a general fear that something might crop up. We have been like a man in a full suit of armour with twenty swords and machine guns, sitting in the park hoping a dog would growl at him and no-one would notice that he has not been attacked. If things get really quiet, the militarists bring a dog along to growl and make it seem dangerous.

Fourth, nuclear weapons do not stop conventional wars, especially ones, we start. We have been involved in wars in Suez, the Falklands, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, but in none of these has nuclear deterrence affected anything. For all these reasons our nuclear deterrence has done nothing in the last five decades. They cannot be used; there is no reason to use them; ours do not count and conflict is different. So, we have had a continuous, at sea, British nuclear pointless and useless non deterrent. It’s rationale is really just to provide funding for the arms industry, especially BAe systems, and jobs in Barrow in Furness. With a little thought, good, useful shipbuilding in Barrow could be redesigned and continue. But why do we continue with pointless?

You, me, everyone have been brainwashed by scares and the presumed danger out there; drummed up fear keeps you in your place. In addition the control of the military-industrial establishment over the political system has been complete. Even after the Cold War ended, the nuclear deterrent was retained to deter, er, someone. We have been duped. We have been scared off thinking. There is no nuclear deterrent. The deterrent is not. It is a dead deterrent. There are merely several submarines prowling around doing nothing for fifty years – dangerously. You and I agree to this because a rich arms industry has pickled our brains. Time to close it down, because threatening to murdering millions is wrong and upsets people, and costs billions, and because those who take the sword do die by it.

Around the world the Nazis are understood as the personification of evil, and rightly so. The Holocaust was the most evil act ever and the people who did it are beyond understanding, because entering in to understand them, let alone provide an excuse for them, is to give evil a rationale it cannot have and to grieve the Jewish people who mainly carried their arrogant hate. But this descent into hell had a backstory as they now say. It included the extreme forced labour of the War, the persecution of Jews from 1933 onwards, after earlier hostility and abuse. It included the failure of the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the impact of the Great Depression on Germany, the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic. It included the funding from Fritz Thyssen and other arms merchants and rich industrialists, and the funding of Thyssen by the Harriman Bank and Prescott Bush, the provision of weapons from the States, the early backing of Henry Ford, another anti-Semite, and of Ludendorff, who pretended that the Wehrmacht had been stabbed in the back. It also included a hardening against God and obedience to the Sixth Commandment. This history has been worked over by many historians and all these contributions show aspects of how evil develops. But there is one area, perhaps a crucial one, which has perhaps not been fully recognised.

Shell-shock, or PTSD, as it now tends to be called comes from traumas like being engaged in war, bombing, fighting, sexual violence, devastation and destruction. Estimates of the number of combatants effected run from 5-30%. Given the nature of the Great War, especially in the trenches, the numbers then are not likely to be below 20%. Given 50 million fighting, there were an estimated ten million shell-shocked soldiers. Some were just gibbering wrecks because shell explosions were in their brains. Others, the more gentle ones, retreated into silence and often suicide. We need to know how real this is. A BBC documentary last week said eleven US veterans a day commit suicide. In the UK it is about one a week. Fine loving men end their lives, because war has done it to them. Some stay with hate and aggression, for that is what war, and the Great War is about. Germany, attacking and attacked on all fronts, had some 13 million under arms, and 20% of these is at least two million suffering PTSD. Let us say that 10% of these take the aggressive form of this illness. This is some two hundred thousand who are available to the early Nazis.

Hitler, of course, was gassed and injured in the thigh in WW1. He was probably suffering PTSD, and hardened into hate and fixated self-belief in his Fight. He then gathered up the aggressive shell-shocked, those still locked in fighting. They wanted to march, to have weapons, to find the enemy, to attack, because that was the only sense available to them. Hitler gathered money from the rich, including Henry Ford until 1923 and others who wanted an army to fight revolutionary socialism, and gave these men a pittance every day so that they could survive. He gave them the Jews and Socialist to blame, and the same answer as was available during the War – to hate and kill. All of this occurred in a poverty ravaged country, with rampant inflation caused by the borrowing of war to finance the arms companies like Krupp and Thyssen, with limbs missing, sex suddenly predatory, young workers dead, a vast army disbanded and a nation in chaos through war defeat, famine and lethal flu.

We cannot see what it was like, except through the work of George Grosz, a great artist who shows us the horror of that time. We are remembering the Armistice of the Great War, the War to end all Wars. The emphasis is on the sacrifice. We are sentimental about the end of the war. But wars do not end war. Those who take the sword continue to die by it. One hundred years ago, inside the heads of tens and hundreds of thousands in Germany, France, Britain, Russia, Turkey, Italy and elsewhere the War went on, as PTSD or War Trauma, expressed in Fascism, funded by the Rich. This was the entrenched seat of the cancer of hate which could not be shifted. The tragedy, as I note in War or Peace, is this generation, the World War One PTSD people, would have been through the political system in a few years’ time, old men damaged by the Great War but now not shaping world events. Sadly, that did not happen because the great Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932 was sabotaged by the arms companies. The frozen rage of WW1 PTSD erupted into the Second World War and the Holocaust.

The warning is that our bombing in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen is repeating the same process.

The text today is Jesus’ words. “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.”

WE HONOUR THE WAR DEAD.
We are gathered here to remember and honour our dead and injured in the Great War, perhaps a million dead and 1.6 million wounded. We remember and honour them, in particular those on our Memorial. We think of their bravery, care for one another, selflessness, concern to protect us and sacrifice themselves, even unto death. As Jesus said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lays down his life for his friends.” Many of these men and women sacrificed themselves all the way for us, and we honour them, and we are grateful to all the British Legion does for present veterans of the armed forces.

CAN WE ALSO CRITICIZE WAR?
Does honouring these people make it impossible to criticize War? Perhaps not, for five reasons.

1. THE MEN THEMSELVES DID. Volunteers had been told they would be home before Christmas; the real long war was very different. The Christmas Truce suggested by the Pope taught many that playing football across No Man’s Land with the Huns, was far more sensible than being dismembered in the rat-infested trenches by a thundering barrage of explosions. Many resented being cannon fodder and wanted out. Nothing justified the Somme, Verdun, Passchendaele and men going over the top to be ripped apart by machine guns. Patriotism was, as Wilfred Owen called it, “ The Old Lie”. Also, millions of mothers, sweethearts, children knew that the war was not honestly presented or worth it for those they mourned. It promised winning, but all sides lost.

2. THE SILENT ONES. We also owe it to two silent groups. First, those who died. After death, they had no voice, no votes. We have been silent, remembering them, for two minutes, but they were silenced for ever. They went to fight, not to die, and even those who faced death willingly for his country, like our neighbour, Rupert Brooke, might see things differently when the time came; he died on the way over to Gallipoli. These people are silent in our history.

So, too, were many of the shell-shocked, the PTSD, people. We do not see the scale of this problem. Now PTSD is identified in 5-30% of combatants in various studies. Say we look at a conservative figure of 10-15% of 50 million unkilled combatants – that is 5-7.5 million shell shocked or PTSD soldiers. WW1 was possibly the worst of all wars for this. Sometimes these people were gibbering wrecks or just silent. Sometimes they fumed into hate, like shell-shocked Hitler, who was injured and gassed. Last week a US veteran killed 12 people gratuitously. PTSD can be dangerous.

Indeed, we should recognize the contribution PTSD made to the NAZI Movement. Hitler gathered people like himself, made them a quasi-military movement, with weapons, gave them objects of hate and a pittance of daily pay that he received from the rich. My guesstimate is that Germany had one to two million PTSD soldiers and perhaps 100-200,000 with anger and aggression problems, an ample number of feed Hitler’s vicious movement. Look at the pictures and writing of George Grotz; it is recorded there. The Nazi stormtroopers institutionalised WW1 shell-shock anger and aggression and turned it on the Jews. War begets war. Those who take the sword continue to perish by the sword.

But often the shell-shocked remained in silence, covering the hell they had experienced, seeing murder, being ordered to murder and living on the edge of death. They too were and are unheard. Recent documentaries mentioned that one British ex- soldier a week commits suicide and eleven US veterans a day. We will remember them and their experience of war.

3. MILITARISM AND WAR IS THE BIGGEST FAILED EXPERIMENT ON THE PLANET.
Again, on most assessments, Militarism is the world’s greatest failed experiment. From the Great War there have been some two hundred million war dead and even more seriously injured, mainly the young. Some 10-20% of all economic activity has been wasted. Destruction, poverty, and tens of millions of refugees have been visited on the planet. We have committed to militarism because the arms companies have pushed it, but we have been destroyed by it. We have taken the sword and perished by the sword. WW1 was followed by a flu epidemic started among the troops and spread as they returned home across the world. It killed 50-100 million more people, tragedy upon tragedy. WW2 was worse, and we have only to remember George W. Bush’s stupid Mission Accomplished Speech about Iraq in 2003; the region is still in chaos. Contrary to what the arms companies say, wars do not work and they are devastating the world. Militarism is a lie, as real soldiers and the bombed know. It pollutes the planet with 10% of our CO2 and disperses poverty, famine and death. It is the Four Horses of the Apocalypse – Conqueror, War, Famine and Death.

4. WARS NEED NOT HAPPEN. Wars are not fought for territory since the end of empires. They are fought over weapons. “Those who take the sword perish by the sword.” The First World War was preceded by four arms races pushed by the arms companies; one of them sparked and the War blew up. The role of the arms companies in WW1 has been suppressed almost completely in our remembrances. We and the French armed Russia, so that Germany faced hostility from both sides, as Lloyd George recognised. Our arms companies repeatedly lied about German rearmament to increase their own contracts. Hear Lord Edward Grey, possibly the best authority on why the war started. “The enormous growth of armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This is the warning to be handed on.” Hear Lloyd George, “Thus great armaments made war.” Dozens of great people, including Gladstone, Campbell Bannerman and Keir Hardie identified the problem of the arms and naval companies pushing people towards war. The false Dreadnought scare “We want eight and we won’t wait” became a public frenzy.

Ah, you say, “What about World War Two?”. There were more than a hundred American companies in Berlin selling weapons too the Nazis in 1935 and the Americans were even paying for Hitler’s arms with vast loans. And that was after the arms companies had strangled the Great Disarmament Conference of 1932 when it was moving towards success and would have prevented Hitler coming to power. Hitler was supported by Fritz Thyssen part of the German arms machine, as the Kaiser had been supported by Krupp. Arms companies need wars, but they can be prevented. We armed Saddam and he went to War. We disarmed Saddam and we went to war because the arms companies wanted it. So, these vast millions need not have died. The arms companies, militarists and politicians pretend not, but wars can be stopped. We have convinced ourselves that individual murder is a crime, but been brainwashed to accept mass murder is OK. We are taught that militarism is realistic and peace is idealistic, but actually the opposite is true. No weapons: no War. Peace works in Coton without us each having guns under our pillows. Stopping war requires closing down weapons, and it can be done.

5. OUR MEMORY OF THE WAR IS ROMANTICIZED. Finally, we remember our dead. There were 888,246 poppies outside the Tower of London. But we do not remember or add up those we killed, probably a similar number or more; in all the memories of today they will be hardly mentioned. Soldiers are trained to kill; it is practised on the firing range up the road. Thankfully there are standards and principles of warfare, but the enterprise is organised murder. Usually soldiers do not want to kill, but they are following orders – our orders. Britain has been an aggressor in most of the countries of the world and has killed there on a vast scale.

So, the whole world-wide enterprise of militarism, fermented by the arms companies and the militarists, is a vast destructive failure. We have been brainwashed by them into buying this $5-10 trillion a year tragedy across the globe. We gloss the reality with nostalgia, and bury the truth. Out of respect for the dead, the Great War and all our wars, cannot be sanctified. More than that militarism must be fully ended. The planet requires that it is.

The prophet, Isaiah, already saw the problem and solution two and a half thousand years ago. It requires swords into ploughshares and that people do not learn war any more. It requires unconditional respect for God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. The tools of killing, armaments, are similarly evil, always destructive and never capable of good. But it is to Jesus that we must look, far beyond the warning that those who take the sword are destroyed by it.

SO WE LISTEN TO JESUS FOR THE FULL PICTURE. For Christian peace is a whole worldview. It dethrones power as control, domination and the threat of attack. Right at the beginning Jesus resisted the temptation to go for control and power over the kingdoms of this world and charted a different way.

We are to love our enemies and try to understand what the other side is on about; perhaps they are terrorists because we have bombed their countries to bits.
We are to settle quarrels early as the Sermon on the Mount teaches us.
We are to make peace; it is an active, blessing process.
We are to allow our peace to rest on others, to establish relationships of peace. We will never threaten, the common currency of today’s politics. Giving peace and being trusted costs nothing and can go round the world.
We are not to fear those who kill our bodies, but only fear God. This disarms the hold the militarists try to have on us through fear. “Do not fear.” insists Jesus.
We are to put away weapons, disarm, turn swords into ploughshares, refuse conflict, reconcile with one another. As Paul added, The armour we put on is justice, peace, truthfulness and faith.
We are to live law-abiding lives, as Bush and Blair failed to do when they invaded Iraq.
We are to understand that power is the power to do good and serve rather than control. Worldwide, we dismiss superpower self-importance and the military games they play, and recognize that the gentle Lamb is on the Throne, a threat to no-one.

Over two billion Christians world-wide implicitly understand this. Now we must be explicit for world multilateral disarmament.

World Disarmament is far easier than our present World Armament. It saves death, trillions, cuts poverty, restores economies, cuts CO2. It is God’s way for us. We all agree to cut military expenditure by 10% a year for a decade until it is all gone, policed by the UN. We all quit weapons. It nearly happened in 1932. It can happen now. There are 2.3 billion Christians around the world and we could do it. Faith can move mountains. We need the gentle rule of Christ to replace the aggressive superpowers and arms interests who run world politics. We little people must do it, because the arms companies and the military are inside most governments. Supreme Allied Commander and then President Eisenhower, a Christian, said it. “I believe that the people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than any governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days, governments had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

Those who pay lip-service to Christianity but do not do it in world affairs need to be held to account. We owe it to the dead we now remember. We need to mobilize Christians for disarmament across the globe. “My peace I leave with you”, said Jesus. Already we are two thousand years late.

THE CHURCHES CHOKE ON PEACE.

Nobody can doubt that Christianity and the Bible major on Peace – peace with God, peace with yourself, with your neighbour, and nation shall speak peace unto nation. Christians follow the Prince of Peace. They are called to be peacemakers, pass peace on one to another, love enemies and get rid of weapons. But the Church has lost its voice for peace, especially peace between nations and disarmament. Why is this so? There seem to be four inadequate reasons and we consider each of them in turn.

(a) FOR COUNTRY AND MAYBE GOD.
The first is Patriotism. Nationalism has dominated much of the history of Europe for five hundred years, and frequently it has asked people to put the State first, before God, before what is right, and before the Christian faith – my Country, right or wrong. When wars have come, bishops, archbishops and churches have trimmed their sails to the patriotic cause. For god and Country becomes a loyalty call and god is on our side. The God of the whole earth is presented as pro-British or pro-American. God and My Right, says the motto, as if god was My Left. There have been fights over patriotism, but usually the churches have toed the line, siding with the nation, accepting arms, war and even going along with the conquest of empire and strategic interest. A line of Christians have been courageous in opposing patriotic nationalism and its evils, but often even “nonconformist” churches have concurred when their loyalty to the State is questioned. The Church of England and other national and established churches all too easily compromise into the national agenda, providing (good) chaplains to the forces and accepting the fear and aggression of modern military policy as necessary statecraft. Overall the christian faith has been subdued into patriotism as its greater loyalty rather than to the teaching and ways of Christ. We put aside the Gospel evidence showing Jesus as an unpatriotic Jew who demanded the deeper loyalty to God, himself and to people of every race and nation.

(b) THE CHURCH IN A BOX.
Second, christianity has been pushed into a church ghetto by Secularism. Christians do worship, prayers and stuff in church services, but the christian faith is to be kept in the building. Peace is peace in your hearts and a peck or handshake for the Christian sitting next to you, not PEACE out there in the big wide world. Theology becomes individual theology of conversion, atonement and sanctification, and God becomes a private thought. Everywhere else Christians must be secular. We have been put in a box and have closed the lid ourselves. Especially, “religion” and politics don’t mix. So, defence, weapons, war and politics are not the explicit concern of Christianity, but just in some outpost called ethics or staecraft. The Church of England is allowed to do some public rituals, but should keep out of everything else.

This position has emerged over a long period. It has been done to us. Politicians have often needed to cut out public issues of conscience, sin, evil, pride, judgement, fairness, guilt, repentance, confession, restitution and forgiveness. The Church represented these and had to be pushed from the public square. Autocratic rulers – hating accountability before God – have sought to silence the Church, and by and large they have succeeded. Judgement has still happened in war after war, but at least they have avoided facing it before God for a while. Or rather, since judgement is often what we do to ourselves despite the warnings of God, the rulers have been able to justify failures time and again without recognising what was wrong, and history has become one damned war after another. Prophets were not popular in the Old Testament holding rulers to account, and the Church has been similarly banished and pushed from the public political arena. We should not be surprised. But we have acquiesced and become timid and polite. We willingly call a spade a large flattened teaspoon. We think ourselves daring when we remember casualties (that bogus word) on all sides, not just our own. So, gradually the churches have learned to be irrelevant, light candles and argue about styles of worship.

(c) WE REMEMBER THEM IN SILENCE.
Third, there is Remembrance Day. The Church of England does Remembrance Day, though, as bishops complained at the time, there was no cross on the Cenotaph. All over the country We Remember Them in their tens and hundreds on war memorials in churches and churchyards throughout the land. The British Legion, rightly concerned with the honour of the dead and the needs of injured and needy soldiers, poppifies the event. Remembering the dead is difficult. Especially the loved ones need to believe their dying was a valid sacrifice, otherwise they might rail in madness. We quickly put the label sacrifice over all deaths in war, with an echo of Christ, and the churches maintain this sacred ritual.

Silently, “We Remember Them”, wrapping their loss in reverent Anglican rituals. Two minutes of inarticulate silence wraps up the War Dead of a hundred years in unqualified respect and national honour. This year we re- remember the 994,138 British dead of The First World War, perhaps the further sixteen million who also died and the twenty two million seriously injured. We think of the fifty million, minimum, who died of flu induced and spread by the poverty and famine of War and perhaps include the shell-shocked survivors. We are numbed into silence, seemingly for a good reason. You cannot honour soldiers and rubbish war. The Church of England chooses to do the former with dignity and restraint and not the latter.

Except millions of those who fought did do both. They were brave, but not unto death. They hated war and industrial murder. They knew their “enemies”, were also trapped in the War; for they had shaken hands in the Christmas truce. For almost all the millions of dead, nothing was worth the dying; it was forced on them by orders, often senseless, and by shells, gas, mud, rats, bayonets and bullets, the tools of death promoted by the merchants of death. The boundless optimism and patriotism of 1914 and Rupert Brooke had bittered into “When this bloody War is over.” Our sacred Remembrance is not theirs.

But it was more than this. Millions knew the Great War was unnecessary and should not have happened. The list includes Lloyd George, Keir Hardie, Lord Grey, Pope Benedict XV, Woodrow Wilson and many more. They knew that the escalation of arms, scares and the work of the munitions people with politicians had generated the confrontation. They knew the War, every War, was blindingly stupid and therefore built disarmament for all into the Treaty of Versailles. The horror of war, the waste of people, families, homes, infrastructure, work and living caused by war meant it should be banished from human affairs. Often, of course, those who knew war was pointless lost their voice because they were dead or shell-shocked. The Post War Wise know the truth. But the bishops and churches remain stuck on “We Will Remember Them” with a reverential silence and do not engage with militarism, disarmament and weapon capitalism, now a world-wide epidemic.

(d) PACIFISM OR JUST WAR THEORY?
Fourth, there is church thinking. For a century and more church thinkers have discussed Pacifism and Just War Theory. Either you reject war, weapons, and fighting and become a Conscientious Objector, or you support Just War Theory, accepting war is sometimes necessary when it is justified by the aggression of others. Most Anglicans are the latter, and pacifists become those who do not pull their weight and leave others to fight. And so, the two groups trade ethical points at the corner of a field while the action is elsewhere.

But notice what has happened. The powerful have learned to ignore both positions. War can always be justified in one way or another, and the just war theorists are pushed aside. Much of the problem is Just War Theory thinks only about War when it is an immediate issue and not about the Militarism which is going on all the time. Do you really think all the militaries around the world can be practicing war all the time, and war not happen? Would millions practice football without sometimes playing football? To carry on the analogy, Just War Theorists are like someone turning up at a football match a minute before the start, saying a linesman is missing, and ignoring the match practice, the travel, the league and the rivalry; the match will go on.

And it is not as though the Church is clear. When Tony Blair was invading Iraq in a war which was illegal under international law against an unarmed foe based on a lie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, spoke up, but the rest of the Anglican establishment was as a wet rag. Just War theory is only wheeled out after the vast Military Industrial Complexes across the world are ready, a cart among tanks, and the War is starting anyway. Perhaps just one more war will sort it out…

At the same time, pacifism has become an individual protest, an act of conscience, of withdrawal from the scene. Pacifists are merely a gnat which needs swatting. They can easily be dismissed as the wet ones who will not pull their weight, who run away from the fighting, who ignore the realities of the situation. Compared with the realities of armed forces, missiles, espionage, terrorism, superpowers and war itself, pacifists are flies on the windscreen, distractions which need wiping away. Thus, the Church can be easily ignored; we debate two bankrupt positions seemingly of no influence.
So, the Church of England and others churches – too ponderous, it seems, to act decisively in any area of public policy – have been pulled into ineffectiveness on peace and disarmament by these and other factors. It is a severe indictment, yet the more so because militarism and war is steadily engulfing the world. We need to wake up, think strategically, recover the full Gospel understanding of peace and mobilise for what peace fully means.

THE REAL PACIFIST WARFARE AND CHRIST.
I still remember the shock of meeting real Pacifism. Tolstoy is the world’s greatest novelist, but he did not care. It was as nothing to the teaching of Christ on peace. He ripped into the stupidity of the military system – teaching mass murder as a great virtue – while individual murder was the greatest sin. He paraded the military vanity of the Kaiser claiming the loyalty of his troops to kill even their families, because he commanded them. He held the waste of war and arming up like shit on a pitchfork, and he wrote about the obscenities of the Crimean War as they were and the emptiness of military prowess. A man looks down and, lo, his leg is gone. Well done, War. We spend billions injuring one another and then billions more patching people up and giving them war pensions. He honoured the Doukabours who had a party and bonfire to burn the Tsar’s rifles and turn down being conscripted, and wrote his greatest novel, Resurrection, to rescue them. Tolstoy and other great Pacifists addressed the frenzy of madness which is war and the venality of those who promoted it – the arms companies, the merchants of death. How do we fall for it – marching out to get shot and have a cheap posthumous medal? Pacifism is not an individual withdrawal, but addresses the stupidity and destruction of the whole military enterprise.

Then we realise that Pacifism, as Christ taught it, similarly demolishes the whole military system into the heap of garbage it is. Jesus puts an earthquake under militarism. Right at the beginning he turns down the gain of any Kingdom based on doing evil – the greatest political temptation of all. He nails the consequences of going for violence: “Those who take the sword will perish by the sword.” The Romans are put in their place – “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s (a small coin) and render unto God what is God’s – everything.” He requires his followers to take up the cross, the instrument of Roman domination, and carry it. He negates the militarists’ central power. “Do not fear those who can kill the body.” He requires us to love our enemies, cutting out the silly and disastrous national enmities out of which wars grow and let peace be with us.

Jesus was deliberate; he replaced the Roman warhorse conqueror coming into Jerusalem with a parody – himself with his feet scarcely off the ground on an immature donkey, but it was more than that. The deliberate reference was to Zechariah 9: 9-10
See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken.
He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the and from the River to the ends of the earth.
This was no local change but a world-wide transformation aimed at empires and conquest. Jesus addressed not just aggression, but the anger out of which aggression comes. He set up a model of peace – replacing marauding soldiers collecting taxes. The disciples were to go out passing out peace to households. If they were willing peace was to rest on them. Peace was to spread – simple, costless, one by one. Only the way of peace makes sense. Peace can be made, passed on and the whole world can put the LAMB on the throne. Peace, the peace of Jesus, can be with us, spread, and our sins, real as they are, can be addressed without the further evil of weapons. It is not even very complicated. The Gospel of peace for all is inescapably part of the Christian message and it is big.

But it also involves conflict. Matthew 10 describes the character of it. Christians go out as sheep among wolves, innocent as doves, but wise as serpents. The fight is about the principle of power. Is it the great false principle of control, intimidation, military conquest, slavery and accumulating wealth or the gentle power of God’s spirit of love, peace, service, meekness and wisdom? Are leaders servants or those who demand service and subordination? So, Christ fights, not with a sharp two-edged sword, but with the words which come from his mouth. We see this conflict escalate in the Gospels where the Roman, Herodian and Temple rulers, relying on killing and violence, decide they have to kill this Man of Peace, and so they do. The cross of military power is defeated in the Resurrection of Christ and the coming of the gentle Kingdom of God – no domination, but the handshake kingdom where nation speaks peace unto nation. Peace is not an ideal, but the only sensible way to live, and the way in which all good communities do live. Peace can spread to every tribe and nation, we just deliberately pass it on and do it. Now more than two billion people trust and follow this man. Unlike the F35 fighter, peace does not cost $1 trillion a throw – peace, law, making friends and sorting out quarrels without threats just works. Of course, the militarists will portray peacemakers as a danger, but we are called to stick with it as sheep among wolves and end this blot on humanity. Pacifism is out to close down the whole militaristic show and that is why it is feared; obviously being nice to one another is more dangerous than competitive nuclear threats.

CLOSING DOWN DISARMAMENT TALK WORLDWIDE.
Extraordinarily, this pacifism, the true pacifism, has been slowly chased off the scene. It begins with Jean Jaures being assassinated to allow WW1 to proceed, continues with the intimidation of Conchies, with Pope Benedict being ostracized and vilified for suggesting the Great War might be a tragedy and proposing the Christmas Truce. We see it after the Great 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference had been sabotaged by the militarists. We see it after Hitler had been plied with American loans to help him arm, after the Reds Under the Bed scare guaranteed we continued to have an enemy after 1945 and Paul Robeson and many others were seen as a danger to the United States for being friendly with Russia. We see it with Churchill, the great militarist, naming appeasement as the ultimate sin in all modern history. We see the Cold War talked up, and lied up, by the militarists. We see it after the militarists have done everything to make pacifism unthinkable to ordinary people, because it could kill their business dead. They talk complex military languages and arm themselves to the teeth in and talk in a sophisticated way about weapons in the understanding that they are safer when everybody is armed, while the silly ol’ people of Norwich walk about the city thinking they are safer without guns. Real Pacifism has been scrubbed off the map, and the churches have colluded in this. Christ’s great Good News of peace blessing ordinary people everywhere has been closed down by the military-industrial complex, fat cats making vast profits everywhere, and employing every sales move in the book from bribery to fear. Every war is a public relations triumph: “See you need more weapons.” Not, “Weapons inevitably precipitate wars.” Real Pacifism must not be talked about.

Yet, in reality we now live in an interdependent world where wars of conquest and occupation are mainly unthinkable. The global warming caused by militarism and war damages the planet. The waste of militarism runs into many trillions each year, but we must not think about disarmament and peace, because the arms people have sewn up world politics. But, really, their way is precarious and dangerous, and it need not be like this.

THE CHURCH CAN BE STRATEGIC.
Most church people are nice. They aim not to offend, confess their sins once a week or more and try to live a good life, to be innocent as doves, as Jesus asked them to. But Jesus also invited them to be as shrewd as snakes, to be aware and ready, to read the times. Often we nice Christians ignore this emphasis – a very strong one in Jesus’ teaching – to be strategic. I’ve spent fifteen years studying this area and am going to suggest a strategic overview, so that we know where we are going and can act fast. The points are not particularly original or difficult to agree with, but taken together they point to the strategic conclusion we might be seeking..

1. MILITARISM IS GROWING. World military spending is now some 70% higher than at the end of the Cold War and looks to increase further. Sophisticated arms industries in the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Japan and other states are expanding and supplying most countries with lethal arrays of weapons. Companies push their wares avidly and expansion has come mainly through creating chaos in the Middle East and resuming the Cold War.

2. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS INSIDE GOVERNMENT. The military and arms companies are (undemocratically) inside most governments, especially the heavily armed members of the UN Security Council. The military-industrial complex is in political and media control, and shapes most of the public reporting with scares, distrust, nationalist themes and rumours of wars.

3. ARMS ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION. THEY CAUSE MOST WARS. Arms, not territorial gain, cause most wars. WW1 was precipitated by four arms races. Arms pressure in the 1920s and 30s opened the way for Hitler. The Cold War was about arms. The flooding of the Middle East with arms (for oil) has made much of it into an area of failed, war-ridden states. Both Iraq Wars were caused by arms. ISIS was founded on looted western arms. More arms mean more danger. If nothing is done, arms sales and macho politics will cause more wars, deaths and devastation. Refugees (50-70M now) and dire poverty will be even more serious and insoluble. Big power confrontations could destroy much of the world. Buying and selling the problem (arms) just causes a bigger problem.

4. MILITARISM IS THE BIGGEST FAILED EXPERIMENT ON THE PLANET. Yet this direction is an obvious catastrophic failure. It has caused 200 million deaths this last century and wasted perhaps 10-20% of all economic activity on the planet. Most people, given space to reflect, know wars and arming do not work especially if they have direct experience of war. All sides lose wars. All States waste vast resources through militarism; military expenditure brought down the USSR. The power to destroy is no power at all to thinking people. All countries, except the US, have a policy of internal disarmament because it is safer; the same policy can apply internationally. In an inter-dependent world, militarism is tragically stupid; weapons have shot their bolt.

5. MILITARISM IS NOT AS STRONG AS IT SEEMS. Militarism seems very successful – new weapons, new technologies of war, scares about terrorism, wars which last decades, the military inside governments, but it is not as powerful as it seems. First, its products can only destroy and have to be sold through scares, hype, bribery and intrigue. Second, the bogus hype around the Iraq War means some/most people have some distrust of the system and see the manipulation on which the arms system runs. Third, everyone now through television can see the damage of weapons and war, and fourth any halt in arms purchasing stalls the business strongly; it is prone to periodic recession. Like Dagon gods fall, and the blind god of military might is due a toppling.

5. MOST OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS, OR COULD BE, FOR PEACE AND DISARMAMENT, were they not frightened by the militarists and told peace is not practical. Vast industries of fear, east and west, keep this fragile militarism in place, while the old nationalist and patriotic idea of enemy is merely a myth for the military while the races mingle. In November 2018 the World’s population will reflect on the War to End all Wars and the possibility of peace. Football across no man’s land is now much more sensible than going back to the trenches.

6. FULL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT – ARMING DOWN – IS EASIER AND MORE PRACTICAL THAN ARMING UP. If all nations disarm together, threats, dangers, costs and damage fall for all, and no-one needs “defence”. A clear proposal for DECREASING MILITARY SPENDING IN ALL STATES BY 10% A YEAR FOR A DECADE UNTIL IT IS ALL GONE creates the framework. It makes eminent sense for all, except the militarists. It needs backing by open and required inspection, a (decreasing) UN police force and a subsidized end to arms production. Immediately, the peace bonus kicks in for all countries, and threats diminish. Evaders can be punished. Deliberate world-wide disarmament is not difficult if the major powers back it together and work with the United Nations.

7. THE MILITARY MUST NOT BE IN CHARGE. Disarmament was proposed seriously in 1899, 1907, 1918, 1932 and the 1960s, but never actually tried, because the military-industrial complex sabotaged it and dominated political leadership. Especially in the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference the military establishment and arms company agents stopped President Hoover’s radical disarmament plan. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. The military-industrial complex will try every which way to stop disarmament. Disarmament will be a fight against them, but not to kill and maim. Similarly, the militarists cannot be in charge of implementing it; They will create problems to break it down, though they owe it to their soldiers not to. Reliable political control of the military is a necessity.

8. THE ROUTE TO WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT, SIDE-STEPPING MILITARY CONTROL, IS POPULAR WORLD-WIDE DEMOCRATIC PETITIONS.
Nobody can really disagree with world multilateral disarmament. It is a commitment to disarm if everybody else does, and does not involve the “danger” of unilateralism. The closest the world came to multilateral disarmament was in January 1932 at the great Geneva Disarmament Conference when petitions of tens of millions were collected. It was thwarted by the arms companies and military interests, despite a very strong and popular proposal from President Hoover to cut world arms immediately by a third. If the disarmament proposal had passed, Hitler would probably not have come to power in 1933. This time we can do better.

Petitions are the strategic route, gathering democratic opinion. Not “petitions” in the sense, “we beg you”, but petitions in the sense, “We the undersigned insist this should happen.” We go round military control of the system. These petitions can grow in every nation, east and west, and we, the little people, can say, “This is where we stand – disarmament for everybody.” Democracy has often become a passive preordained choice every four or five years. With military establishments in charge no normal change will bring disarmament. Petitions, representing voting intentions and solid policy conclusions, can become majority viewpoints and move world-wide. They are solid levers for change and fit the Christian position of standing by faith, rather than “attacking”. When they gain traction, there will be problems with military dictators, superpowers, fearmongers and terrorists, but these problems are far smaller than weapons and war, and can be handled under the rule of law. President Eisenhower stated the possibility in 1958. “I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.”

The Churches must do this thing before it can become a common thought, calling congregations to sign up and creating a solid backing for action. Church structures need to act fast, mobilise ordinary people, make quick decisions and have bold aims to get this on the national and world agenda. There will quickly be allies. The precise action is a request for the UK Government to initiate worldwide multilateral disarmament proceedings at the United Nations. Then, with other initiatives, Christians in Europe, Asia, Africa, South and North America can make worldwide multilateral disarmament hum. Peace must be made, as Jesus said, and we can make it. Faith can move mountains, even the one of world militarism.

9. NOVEMBER 2019 IS A CRUCIAL TIME. The First World War was to be the War to End All Wars, and Disarmament for All was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It was frozen out by the military-industrial establishments and not tried, opening the way for Hitler. Now is the time to plant again, one hundred years late, the deep lesson of this Pointless War and disarm the nations. We, little people, have to do it and you, in your own way, with your friends and contacts, are invited to take it on by word and action. Each person counts for peace. This petition may be the start. You are invited to sign this proposal to the UK Government, multiply signatures to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, a million until it cannot be ignored and set the ball rolling. Here’s the petition:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226728

It’s time for Christ’s churches to make peace and to allow the two billion plus Christians worldwide to begin the disarming of the world.

The Vision of the Secretary of State for Defence, Gavin Williamson.

Perhaps you missed the announcement about Britain’s new fighter. You, just a single little person, do not really need to understand these things, because we are the experts. You do not want Britain to be invaded, like nearly happened in 1940 at the Battle of Britain, and we will defend you. This article will explain this new project to you simply, so that you can support our Minister of Defence in all that he is doing. His name is Gavin Williamson and he may well be your next Prime Minister.

Britain needs a new fighter so that we can defend ourselves. The Fighter is going to be called “Tempest”, which follows “Typhoon” , not in the alphabet, but as our present national British Fighter. As the present Prime Minister has said we need to defend ourselves against North Korea and other countries, like, er, Guatemala or even Belgium if they invade. To defend yourself you need to attack; to attack you need a fighter. Anything can happen. Aliens may attack us from the air. Therefore, we need a new Fighter.

Combat Air Strategy explained.

Britain leads in Combat Air Strategy, ever since the Spitfire. Combat Air Strategy is where fighter planes in the air fight against other fighter planes in the air, so that the best fighter planes can knock out the other fighter planes, which then need to be produced again by our superb fighter planes manufacturers including BAe Systems. New fighter planes include advanced technologies. We will recall that we have stealth bombers and fighters. To you these planes are very noisy, but they can deceive the radar of other planes and nearly disappear; radar does not hear very well. So we embrace stealth technology. Fighter planes fighting keeps you safe. Most of the time they do not fight, but fly around practising fighting to keep you safe. You may like nice peaceful sunsets, but we have to fill the sky with advanced fighter planes to keep you safe, and our best scientists are employed in making these mean killing machines for the common good. So now you understand Combat Air Strategy.

The Concept Fighter and its spiffing Technology.

This new fighter, Tempest, is not yet a fighter, but a concept. The cost of the concept is £2 billion, a bargain for getting all these aerospace defence companies including BAe Systems together to discuss a new concept plane. After the concept they will start working on design and building, which might cost a bit more. We are not sure how much. One thing they will be discussing is whether to make it a drone, with advanced technology controls from home. Drone may sound boring to you, but to us it is exciting. That has the superb advantage that if our fighter is shot down the pilot will not die while if their fighter is shot down he will die. We can replace it by providing more work for our weapons manufacturers including BAe Systems and other companies. It will take a lot of technology to make pilotless planes. Our technology is software enabled in an increasingly complex electromagnetic environment and world-leading in next generation capability. We already have a reusable and open core mission system architecture and a suite of reusable, functional software components being developed by the UK for current and future systems, so it should be a doddle to build. Companies including BAe Systems will ensure delivery of an Initial Operating Capability by 2035 and it will work sometime thereafter. We, the UK Government, are investing in the concept. Of course, we already have missiles which are pilotless, but missiles cannot fight other fighter planes who might fight our fighter planes.

Some Money Talk.

You may feel that £2 billion is a lot to pay for a concept, but you need to see the full picture. The American F35 has cost over a trillion dollars, or $1,000,000,000,000 if you don’t know what a trillion is. That is a lot of money. When we had built our two aircraft carriers and started to think about what planes to put on them, we were persuaded by the Americans to use F35s, but they cost a lot of money. That is why we need our own planes and we will make them cheaper, although there may be cost overruns.

Commercial Sense.

Of course, part of the point of these new state of the art fighters is to sell them to other countries and make big profits for British industry like BAe Systems. The countries likely to buy them are states thinking about war who are rich, and when you sell to them, then you can also sell to the other side, especially if they are actually fighting a war. Of course, no-one likes war, but selling arms is a commercial priority. Usually, these wars happen somewhere else, and when it occurs the people who attack with our weapons can be attacked with our our weapons. So in Syria the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia are attacking the terrorists who stole our weapons and attacked us, an ideal outcome.

A Bit of Politics.

These announcements are always slightly political, and now we are leaving Europe, or rather the European Union. At present we have the Typhoon which did so well bombing the runways in Libya after their planes had been destroyed, but they are a joint European Project, and with Brexit this may come to an end. The Europeans are doing their own fighter, as the US always does, and Russia, and we want our own too. We are in the First Division; we punch above our weight, as we say in defence. So, we want our own fighter, and first our concept fighter, so that we, and our arms manufacturers like BAe Systems, can keep in the First Division. Without this the Queen would not be able to have tea with President Trump, which she so much enjoys, and our leader could not be strong and stable.

You are convinced.

You, little person, should be grateful that the concept Fighter is being bought for you. £2 billion is a bargain. Now you have had some of the key points explained to you, you will not have to think while the full expenditure is rolled out, and you will be able to remember what an awesome Defence Minister we had in 2018. Everyone can see that to defend you have to fight and sell arms to others, even if they might fight us. The Tempest will lead us to peace and to win the war against peace without pilots. It will help us to punch above our weight and you will be secure as the fighters fight above Britain while BAe Systems and other companies make even more planes to replace those which are shot down. You can let your little mind go to sleep thankful that your Government is defending you against the Belgians and other invaders who will not attack, at least after 2035-40, if we have not sold the new fighter to them first, and we have more fighters than they have made by BAe Systems and other companies.

[Could you add here that BAe Systems did not put any pressure on the Department of Defence for this initiative and it was a complete surprise to us.]