Out now, my book: Fifty Problems for Atheists. It is timeto think about the Creator or Atheism, the Genesis one issue. Really, it is the biggest issue there is.
Fifty Problems for Atheists.
All posts by Alan Storkey
WE CHRISTIANS WORLDWIDE AGREE – WE MAKE PEACE ON EARTH
Sometimes the Christian faith is obscured by wider events, opinions and quarrels and the maelstrom of the secular media. So it is with war and militarism. We are in the middle of two intense wars in which both sides are right, but really wrong, causing devastation and untold deaths. Worse, there are other trillions of weapons, wars, 120m war refugees, half the world’s population under military dictators, perhaps 1bn with trauma, big military budgets, 28m armed troops and war and militarism spews massive CO2. The way we are going is broad and leads to destruction and we all need to stop, think again and turn to another road.
We have long had a range of Christian truths and principles shaping the different way. We have allowed them to be sidelined, but surely now we reaffirm them as the way the world should go, and seek to have them acknowledged by everyone. Here, roughly, are the key ones.
ALL HUMAN LIFE IS SACRED. It is God’s command that nobody should be killed and all lives require equal respect. Jesus says we should not even set out on the journey to killing with anger, quarrelling and enemies.
ARMING TO KILL IS WRONG AND EVIL. Arms aim to kill and destroy however they are dressed up. They are not neutral “defence”. Jesus says that if we go for arms against others, they will kill us too.
IN HUMAN AFFAIRS MIGHT IS A FALSE GOD. Might, in the form of the Superpowers, dominates much of the planet, but it is a false way. God will bring down the mighty from their thrones and the Lamb will govern our affairs.
WE CAN LIVE WITHOUT ENEMIES. We can love enemies and renounce the view that drives towards fear, threats, hatred and harm.
WAR IS JUDGEMENT AND PEACE IS BLESSING. Sometimes states go for war, but it finishes judging and destroying them. All lose in war. Living in peace is the way to go for the whole world.
THERE CAN BE JUSTICE AMONG NATIONS. As opposed to nationalistic self-righteousness, each claiming the other is wrong, there can be justice among nations, fair solutions without war. It requires acknowledgement of sins, facing injustice, restitution, fairness and becoming friends.
WE HAVE TO MAKE PEACE. Peace does not just happen. As Jesus taught, we have to make peace. We spread it round the world as good news. Peacemaking costs nothing and blesses us.
THE ROUTE IS SWORDS INTO PLOUGHSHARES. Mass arming has been the wrong direction. Disarmament makes us good neighbours without war. World-wide, arms are a big problem and need a big solution – Full World Disarmament. Anything less would be silly. It is practical, do-able and safe. As we are mainly disarmed within states and have few wars, so we disarm and police between states. The process is laid out below.
FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS. Christians act by faith and faith can move mountains. The Church can move mountains. A fraction of 2bn Christians could see this adopted at the UN if we acted together and affirmed these principles as the way to go. We move from passivity to living our faith.
JESUS LIFE and TEACHING GUIDES US. Jesus gave us this way of peace through to the Roman cross and the resurrection. It has local and world-wide consequences as we recognise the way of the Lamb on the throne and the blessings of peace on earth and the healing of the nations.
We each and all need to stand for and share this peace with those we know around the world until the way of peace opens up, as it nearly did in 1932. Signing and sharing this petition is a good way of building the momentum. We need to be practical, contacting others to get them to sign up, spend some time and work convincing others, organising churches and making it clear that we all will win world disarmed peace this decade.
APPEASEMENT – THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LIE
A. Hitler and Appeasement.
Even now around the world, “appeasement” is seen as the argument againstdisarmament and world peace. People vaguely see disarmament as the cause of War. The world now understands militarism through the supposed lesson of how World War Two started which is spelt out as follows:- You will always get people like Hitler. If you try to appease them by not arming, they will take advantage of you and rule the world. So, always be strong and arm against the next Hitler. The lesson of the 1930s is do not disarm. Stay strong, or another Hitler will get you. Being soft and disarming is not an option. The problem is clear. The arms companies are the good guys. They prevent war rather than cause it. They are always on our side. Be strong and arm and then we will all be safe.
This chapter is pure intense anger because the appeasement lie has become the “truth” and disarmament has been rubbished all our lifetimes. Here we look again at militarism between the wars and see that, as weapons caused WW1, so they caused WW2. More than that, real historical “Appeasement” is the opposite of the lesson above. It was the militarists acting together to arm and it brought on WW2.
B. WW1 Militarism carries on.
As we have seen, WW1 was caused by the build-up of arms and four arms races. It involved four years of horrific fighting, but war does not end with Armistice. It has consequences for decades. Marching soldiers carried on, traumatized, poor, looking for an income and believing myths. In Italy Mussolini formed Fascist Blackshirts, the Squadristi, who warred against Communists and anyone they did not like. There were some 200,000 of them. In October 1922 about 30,000 led the coup that made Mussolini the first Fascist dictator and later Hitler’s ally. In Russia the defeat and cruel occupation by Germany led to the Bolshevik Revolution and a long internal Civil War between White and Red forces. Churchill as British Minister for War contributed support to it. It lasted until 1923 and Poland also continued warring against the new USSR. Thus, Russia faced nine years of raw, devastating war, followed by famine. No-one can understand Russia who does not take that in. In Germany Hitler’s Brownshirts, the Sturmabteilung, were largely ex-soldiers recruited into a thug army. Other traumatized military units carried on war against Socialists in Germany, murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg the socialist leaders. Hitler and his thugs tried the Munich Putsch in 1923, which failed and landed Hitler in prison. Later, as we know, Hitler and his militias dominated Germany and directly caused WW2. In France the Croix de Feu and Action Française mobilised ex-military personnel and the same Fascist style into demonstrations of more than 50,000. There were a million injured soldiers in France, life spoiled by war, looking for redress. Others states copied military Fascism. In Britain Oswald Moseley marched his blackshirts around the East End spouting antisemitism with wide support. In Japan the World War One militarists moved into permanent dominance through to World War Two. Spain and Portugal had Fascist revolutions through to 1939. So, World War One and its militarism carried through to World War Two in many parts of the world. As so often, War causes War and only peace can heal it.
C. Reviving the Arms Trade.
The Arms Trade is quite precarious, and the most difficult time is after a war. Weapons have been produced on a vast scale to win, or lose, the War and then the War ends with no further conflict in sight and demand for arms drops to zero. This happened in 1918. Because everybody had fought in the World War, war ended for everybody. Actually, conflict did carry on in Russia and elsewhere, but that was with the vast surplus of weapons after 1918. The common-sense understanding was that no war or substantial armaments sales were thinkable for a decade. And die the arms trade did. Of course, they had vast, stored profits from the War. In Germany the end of arms production was required of Krupp and the others. In France and Britain demand dived and the industry suffered. Armstrong-Whitworth and Vickers merged with Government help. Schneider linked with Skoda in Czechoslovakia in a deal to keep going. In the States Du Pont, Singer, Remington and others were very rich, but suddenly without demand. Of course, they could buy up other companies (as Du Pont did General Motors), diversify or recreate a demand for arms. Groups of shareholders, politicians and militarists tried the latter, but with difficulty. Throughout the 1920s the arms trade was low.
But the arms companies found their ways. One was bribery. Another was through scares. Another was through pressure on governments either from inside or though agents. One agent, employed to scupper the 1927 Geneva Naval Conference for $25,000, was William Shearer. He was largely successful and then tried to get $250,000 from his Naval Employers and went to court, so everyone then knew what was going on. Another was through exploiting tensions; even in 1919 the French were arming the Turks fighting the Greeks armed by the British. Lloyd George and Sir Basil Zacharoff helped set that one up. Another was through patriotic groups and pressure from the press, often part owned by military interests.
However, the real bonanza came with Japan. It was both into the business of equipping the Chinese warlords and then invading China through the Manchuria Incident. From about 1929 it was taking all the arms it could from British and French yards. Ships went almost daily from Hamburg, poorly disguised with weapons and ammunition. Exports from Britain, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Norway went to Japan. British arms exports were £12m officially between 1929-1931 but really more. Given these big sales, neither the French or British Governments were really going to sanction Japan for its invasion. Already before the Geneva Disarmament Conference the arms industry was off its leash and the arms trade was booming.[i]
D. Why? Money of Course.
We have already looked at the way the Disarmament Conference was defeated in 1932 just as the arms trade took off again. If you read the speeches and literature of the period, these were statesmen who on the whole came down in one overall political position, although they often disagreed and dithered. So, for example, in the Oxford Union debate of 9/2/1933 where it voted 64% for the motion: “This House would not in any circumstances fight for king and country.” They were not being unpatriotic, but were angry that the Government had made such a mess of Disarmament. By that stage they had let Hitler in and a lot of them would die in WW2. There was disagreement and mixed motives. Simon tried, not very hard, to stop the weapons supply to Japan and China and they agonized over peace, but the militarists and arms traders were really in charge.
Shortly we see a lot of them in Britain seeing some kind of link both with Germany and the Nazis. It included a lot of the British Establishment – the Dukes of Westminster, Buccleuch, Hamilton, Lord Rothermere, the Mitfords, John Amery, Archibald Ramsey, Lord Londonderry, Viscount Halifax, the Editor of the Times, Neville Chamberlain, Quentin Hogg and many more of the rich and landed. Often people focus on this as though it were some kind of wicked conspiracy, which occasionally it became with Sir Oswald Mosley, Lord Haw Haw and even Edward VIII, but usually it was merely a broader political position which we need to understand. The Conservative Right in Britain and elsewhere were rich with land, estates, town houses in London, servants, businesses, factories, banks and trade and a rich lifestyle which they considered necessary and normal. But it began to be threatened. The Communist Revolution had occurred in Russia in 1918 with the shock killing and fleeing of the royal family and aristocracy. Presumably it could happen elsewhere. In Britain the vote had been extended in 1918 to all men over 21 without a property qualification and all women over 30 where either they or their husband met a property qualification (two thirds of them). Suddenly the old governing class were outnumbered by the workers. Then in 1928 all men and women over 21 got the vote. The change was enormous. Previously property had ruled. Now it was universal suffrage. Even in 1923 the Labour Party was the strongest party. The fake Zinoviev Telegram, a wicked electoral fix, kept Labour out of power in the late 20s and the National Government of 1931 gave the Tories a massive majority of MPs and effective Government when they should have been in a minority. They were in power, but really Socialist reform was threatening much of their wealth and property.
Nationally, Tories looked to fight it, for example, in the General Strike of 1926 with the police, army and volunteer constables, sergeants, inspectors and commanders, or, later with Mosley’s Blackshirts. The Great Depression, caused by Wall Street Crash of 1929 and especially hitting the poor made the rich even more jumpy. Throughout Europe and the world the army and Fascist militias were seen as the answer for the rich to militant labour marchers and strikers. Hitler was funded from the beginning by a lot of rich people, like the mega industrialist Thyssen. They wanted property protecting. Thus, worldwide the link between the aristocracies and the industrial rich and Fascism and the Nazis was not conspiratorial at first but the mere business of protecting their money. Of course, it was dangerous, because Hitler the Servant become Hitler the Master, and the rich were very slow spotting that. In addition, the arms industry became in the Great War one of the chief ways of making money so it had its own momentum, but mainly the rich were worried about their money. Always money was there. The Apostle Paul said the love of money is the root of all evil. It is exactly correct in relation to militarism. In the 18th and 19th centuries European militarism centred around making money through world-wide colonialism. In the 20th century Fascist and Nazi militarism arose to defend money against socialism. Always the love of money lurked behind militarism and War.
E. The United States Fascist Coup Attempt.
The rich across the world with Fascist and Nazi militarism to protect wealth. Spain, Portugal, France, Poland, Greece and other European states had similar movements. We can see it in Japan, where the rich Zaibatsu companies destroyed democracy and set that great state on the warpath. In China the warlords were similarly rich and buying weapons. Fascism was present in Brazil, Argentina and throughout most of the world in Fascist parties and movements, but perhaps the most neglected is the United States, becoming now the dominant world economy.
In January 1933 Roosevelt became US President to address the Great Depression caused by the Wall Street Crash. In his inaugural address Roosevelt made reference to Jesus chasing the money-changers from the Temple. He was seen as a dangerous Socialist, especially by war-rich industrialists like the Du Ponts and J.P.Morgan. They therefore tried to arrange a Fascist Coup attempt. It involved marshalling half a million war veterans. They had earlier been on strike outside the White House in July 1932. There would be a march on Washington, taking over the White House using the veterans of the American Legion. It was modelled on Mussolini. Roosevelt would be declared too ill to govern and a dictator appointed to run the economy their way. Unfortunately, they chose General Smedley Butler to lead this and he turned out to be a principled democrat and blew the whistle to a Congressional Committee. Because many of the Wall Street backers controlled the Press, the news was downplayed but the Committee was convinced it was true. The Du Ponts then tried a different tack to bring down Roosevelt with the Liberty League. So Fascism, involving a military coup attempt, was also strong in the United States linking big money to marching veterans.
F. US Arms sales to the USSR and Nazi Germany.
The United States was also linked with a massive pattern of arms sales both to the USSR and Germany in the 1930s. Notice that this was not strongly ideological, otherwise US companies would not sell to the USSR. Chase Manhattan, the Caterpillar Tractor Company, Ford, Gulf and Western, Honeywell, Martin, Douglas, Pratt and Whitney, Du Pont and other US companies provided the USSR with the most up to date weapons factories on the planet, fortunately, because they were to defeat the Nazis. The USSR could pay in gold and the arms factories and equipment were sold and began production in the late 1930s.
Even stronger were the links to the Nazis in selling weapons. Again, given the false meaning of “appeasement”, you can hardly believe how this is ignored. The arms and manufacturing industry in the United States funded and armed Hitler. Listen to this. It is the US Ambassador, William Dodd, in Berlin writing to Roosevelt in October 1936.
But what can you do? At the present moment more than a hundred American corporations have subsidiaries here or co-operative understandings. The Du Ponts have three allies in Germany which are aiding in the armament business. Their chief ally is the I. G. Farben Company, a part of the Government which gives 200,000 marks a year to one propaganda organisation operating on American opinion. Standard Oil Company (New York sub company) sent $2,000,000 here in December 1933 and has made $500,000 a year helping Germans make Ersatz gas for war purposes; but Standard Oil cannot take any of its earnings out of the country except in goods…The International Harvester Company president told me their business here rose 33% a year (arms manufacture, I believe), but they could take nothing out. Even our airplanes people have secret arrangement with Krupps. General Motor Company and Ford do enourmous businesses [sic] here through their subsidiaries and take no profits out. I mention these facts because they complicate things and add to war dangers.[ii]
In other words big investment funds were going to Germany (through the Harriman Bank especially and Prescott Bush), to fund US arms firms producing for the Nazis and the money had to stay in Germany. The US was helping bankroll and arm the Nazis big time through to and even after the start of the World War. Ironically, both the USSR and Nazi Germany were using the weapons which had come from the United States’ sales of arms factories in the Spanish Civil War from July 1936 to April 1939. By this stage the arms companies throughout Europe were doing whatever they wanted and expanding like crazy, which of course, all wars were. Militarisation had taken over and was unchecked.
G. Munich and Peace in our Time.
As this commitment to the arms industry and to world-wide militarisation gathered in the 1930s once again the calculations like those before World War One emerged. Stalin knew his danger from Hitler and tried to ally with Britain and France, but the Tories were not going to line up with the Soviets. Although the USSR, France and Britain together could have stopped the Nazis, the Tory leaders, the ones who had destroyed the Geneva Disarmament Conference in 1932, now backed Hitler as their best ally. Appeasement was Right Wing militarist Tories in the UK lining up with the Nazis in a supposed alliance. They hoped for, as Neville Chamberlain stated when returning from Munich, “Peace in our Time.” Hitler of course ignored peace, and occupied Czechoslovakia. It gave him the kit for War. As he pointed out in a speech, Germany gained 2,175 field guns and cannons, 469 tanks, 500 anti-aircraft artillery pieces, 43,000 machine guns, 1,090,000 military rifles, 114,000 pistols, about a billion rounds of small-arms ammunition, and 3 million rounds of anti-aircraft ammunition.[iii] It armed about half the Wehrmacht. He also gained the giant Skoda works, the biggest arms factory complex in Europe. Munich merely completed the Nazi capacity to wage World War. Appeasement was the militarists miscalculating on one of their own kind.
H. Appeasement is the world’s biggest lie.
The idea that appeasement is not arming and caused the Greatest War is thus complete fiction. It is worse than fiction. It is like having a complex murder whodunit on stage with multiple conspirators who contribute to the foul crime, and then right at the end the murdered corpse stands up and says, “I done it.” The ancient prophets realised thousands of years back that politicians can say “Peace, peace” when there is no peace, but they did not see that politicians could blame peace for war. When people disappeared into the vortex that was World War Two for a decade or so of horrors, there were sufficient militarists around at the end to assert that appeasement caused war and to suggest we needed a Cold War. That is why it is the world’s biggest lie. It has shaped our lives for fear, destruction and war for another eight decades. It has destroyed and wasted quadrillions of dollars.
The cause of both World Wars was the same – the expansion of armaments. The appeasement “lesson” is pure moonshine. The Second World War happened because the arms companies, the Merchants of Death, were once again let off the leash and the killing industry was dominant. Now we all do the sensible thing and close it down.
[i] H.C.Englebrecht and F.C. Hanighen The Merchants of Death (NY:Dodd,Mead and Company, 1934) 228-234
[ii] Edgar B. Nixon, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, Vol. III: September 1935-January 1937 (Cambridge:Belknap Press, 1969) p 456 quoted in Anthony Sutton Wall Street and the Rise of the Nazis Introduction
[iii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement#German_invasion_of_rump_Czechoslovakia
MILITARISM MESSES UP AFRICA
Small Arms Militarism.
We need to see how militarism corrupts a Continent. Africa contains no superpowers. It a vast continent of smallish and some bigger states with a more rural economy that others on the planet. It was largely colonially controlled through to about 1960. Aside North Africa it was largely outside the two World Wars and involved in none of the big armaments confrontations of nuclear weapons, bombers, missiles, warships and tank warfare. Yet still militarism has dominated Africa. In the last sixty or so years governments have been marked by a high degree of military interaction and we need to ask why. First we undertake a quick survey of the evidence that militarism is tangled in African governance. Countries are presented in alphabetical order.
It corrupts most African Governments.
In Algeria General Gaid Salah is in charge of the government. He ousted the President. In Angola a long civil war fuelled by US-Soviet military input left 4m people, a third of the population, displaced. Some kind of stable politics is emerging though with flawed elections. Burkina Faso has a military junta in power and has had ten coups since independence. In Burundi a 2015 coup attempt has de-stabilised the system. The Central African Republic has armed groups and mercenaries in control of areas. General Mahamet Déby now controls Chad. The Republic of the Congo has had a recent civil war, army control and a ceasefire in December, 2017.The Democratic Republic of the Congo had military rule by Mobutu and a civil war in which 5m died. Kaliba became leader with military power vested in his office and since 2008 a major war has raged in Kivu Province. Its rich resources lead western multinational companies and militias to run much of the country in their own interests. In Ivory Coast a civil war in 2011 led to President Quattara backed by the military. In Egypt in 2013 President Morsi was removed from power in a coup d’ état. El Sisi now governs through military control. Ethiopia is a one-party state with no opposition MPs in Parliament, a Civil war in Tigray Province and is fighting in Eritrea, another totally destabilised state. Ghana is now a democracy with a strong regional military force. Earlier, Nkrumah was evicted from power in a coup, possibly with US involvement. There were a series of coups through the 60s to 80s. The Guinea National Assembly did not meet for five years 2008-13 through army control. More recently, there were doubtful elections and a 2021 military coup. Liberia has had two civil wars involving the notorious military figures James Doe and Charles Taylor and now has the former warlord Joshua Blahyi running the state. Libya was run by Colonel Gaddafi after a military coup in 1969 through to the Civil War in 2011. He was heavily armed after an agreement with Blair and Berlusconi, lost the Arab Spring conflict through western involvement and the state has been in military chaos since. Madagascar has had two decades of disturbance and a military uprising. In Mali there was a military coup in 2012 and two in the 2020s with the military in charge now. In Mauritania a military coup in 2008 rumbles on. Niger has had many military regimes, but more recently, sound elections, despite a coup attempt in 2021. Nigeria had military dictators from 1966 to 1999 and has moved over to more stable democratic governments, though subject to Islamic-Christian tension. In the north Boko Haram have run a terrorist campaign for more than a decade, killing, kidnapping, displacing and destroying. They are now linked to ISIS. Ruanda had a Civil War involving genocidal murders.. It now has elections but has effectively become a one party state under Kigame. Its army has operated in the DRC in relation to expensive western mineral extractions and has destabilised the area. Sierra Leone had an eleven year Civil War. In 1998-9 a coup led to UN peacekeeping forces trying to stabilize government. Somalia has had a long insurgency, torrid relationships with the Ethiopian military and a substantial breakdown and fragmentation of civil government. Sudan had a long Civil War between the North and the South involving deep disruption of the South until it became independent. Half a million people lost their lives. When the South became independent, it too had a Civil War killing a further 300-400,000 people. There have been coups in 2021 in the North and instability in the South. Togo has been governed by a Father-Son monopoly backed by the military in a total package of control. Uganda has been a military dictatorship more or less since independence under Idi Amin and Yowere Musevene. Parliament is highly paid and docile. The LRA in the North creates additional problems. Zimbabwe had white colonial military control and then the military dictatorship of Mugabe and a strong military presence since he was ousted.
On any reading of the situation this is a deep pattern of destructive interference in the life and politics of Africa, and it needs explaining, addressing, and eradicating. Nothing less is acceptable. The cost is enormous. Perhaps five million children in Africa under the age of five died as a result of armed conflict between 1995 and 2015.[i] Many states have been paralysed.
African Military Establishments.
How are they formed? There are probably several contributions.
- Colonial Military Training.
The colonial powers, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal and Italy trained “native” soldiers and militias to run their colonies for a century or more. They were trained, well paid and used to being in charge. When independence came some of them became Prime Minister or President, either through leading independence movements or as transitional figures. Links were retained with the colonial militaries and suppliers of arms, and the militaries became close to a central establishment which was well off, could exploit business deals and the wealth at the centre. They were the natural focus of continued colonial-independent contact and used to imposing military acquiescence on populations.
Western Military Equipment after Independence.
The European powers were keen to continue training the military after independence and to supply them with arms, sometimes in competition with the USSR. Arms deal were often accompanied by bribes as were commercial deals with multi-national corporations, and this solidified a class intent on staying on power, very well off and using their soldiers to impose no change politics.
- Corruption through multi-national Corporations.
Africa has a lot of natural resources, especially in states like DRC and Angola. Western companies which want to extract these are keen to do deals, either with governments or with militaries which control an area. Obviously the commodity, geography and kind of deal varies, but often the military can be close these deals and they money made from them.
- The Proliferation of Small Arms. Mainly the big arms have been absent from Africa, and it has concentrated therefore mainly on soldiers, rifles and small arms. These move in unregulated transfers both from Russia and the West, and also though more production in Africa’s main industrial centres. They are low cost, threaten people in large numbers and are very destructive of life and national cohesion as in Nigeria, DRC, Sudan, Ethiopia and many other states.
- Islamic Militarism. The Islamic- western confrontation in the middle east has been transposed by terrorist groups into north and Central Africa again causing disruption, death, refugees and military responses.
Africa can fully demilitarize.
The effects of all these processes has been to produce this widespread endemic small scale militarism affecting most states and shaping their political formation. All the attempts to address it have been piecemeal, mainly because the Russian and Western powers, multinationals and arms people do not want reform upsetting their profits, neither do most of the entrenched African politicians or militaries. It mirrors the issue we address later, namely that the established powers are militarist and will not bring about change through reform while they are dominant. Any sane person who thinks will agree that Africa should be fully demilitarised. So let us do it, removing weapons and the destructive power of weapons for all Africa’s people. It can transform the continent for great good immediately. It requires a mass popular movement which will insist on bringing it about. It is of course, a totally popular policy, perhaps the most popular on the planet, and the challenge in Africa, as in the rest of the world, is to make people aware it can be done. It can. We discuss it later. A great continent, crippled by militarism and military establishments, waits for reform….
[i] Zachary Wagner et al. “Armed conflict and child mortality in Africa: A geospatial Analysis” Lancet 30/8/2018
THE PEOPLE WHO DECIDE ON WAR
The people who decide on war
keep well away from the front door.
They sit and talk and laugh and sigh
While all the pawns charge and then die.
Wars come and go. The other side
is all to blame, and those who died
will be sent off by the top brass,
a lot of crosses in the grass.
For we are statesmen, know that arms
Are more important than our farms.
The destiny of all us great
Is to decide the nation’s fate.
Without these wars the state becomes
a welfare state for loads of bums.
We give the nation victory
so you can drink your cups of tea.
They’re wrong. We’re right. So, we must win
And throw the loser in the bin.
We must be safe to use our might
Because we know our truth is right.
You must be led by us, for we
Always will have an enemy.
They war, like us, we know not why,
Prepared to let their people die.
The mighty talk they know not what.
They, not our soldiers, should be shot,
Or rather, all their bloody plot
Of fighting needs to be forgot.
Arms made to kill must be closed down
As they have been in Bungay town.
“You don’t shoot me”, said Fred to Tom
“And I know you don’t have a bomb.”
Yew wastin’ words, say Tom to Fred.
Why buy to kill your neighbour dead?
Let’s think aboot a bit a fud.
Them sossidge rolls taste hoolly good.
THE TORY LEADERSHIP ELECTION AND THE JUDGEMENT OF GOD.
Christ on his knees washing hot feet – his teaching moves fast – the king/ruler of Israel and the world – going to the centre of political rule to teach us. Rule is service, doing the common good, for the poor first and everyone before God, accountable, the servants in Westminster who die to selves and do only the politics of truth and bringing it all into the light. Law is submission to what is right and good. It is for all and the elimination of favourites, elites, riches and the worship of rulers. Herod, throwing his weight around and looking for adulation, was eaten by worms and died. Christ’s servant politics – the only hope for the whole world – insists we all die to Selves (the lifeblood of Leviathan). He walked to the conqueror’s cross, where all sin including the viciousness of empire and autocracy is held by God and forgiven. Christ holds human self-worshipping power to ridicule with the resurrection and gently turns the world upside down, or really the right way up, as some two billion people have realized one way or another. This is politics.
“Ah”, says Thatcher, “The real point about the good Samaritan was that he had the wealth to pay the innkeeper.” Do you really hear that twist? And there is “Wealth Creation” when only God creates and we receive blessings. “Wealth creation” was sacking workers and telling the others to work harder. “Wealth creation” was taking about a trillion of public assets and selling them cheap to your friends. Wealth creation was cheap labour in China and from immigrants and rewarding the south east. So, year after year the nation was brainwashed into believing in wealth. It was not just local, but worldwide as Reagan-Thatcher bestrode the world as figureheads under which the rich could grow richer. Bankers, who merely rearrange money in drawers, got massive rich. Everyone started talking about ladders, without asking what piss stupid people swaying at the top of ladders could do. Mammon had arrived as the “new” great god, and everybody was required to worship it, despite Paul’s warning that it is the root of all evil.
Mammon required Militarism, because concentrations of Wealth need defending. Enemy thinking makes money and arms companies profit round the world by selling weapons. Especially after Reagan-Thatcher, all the world was armed, so that, even after the collapse of the USSR under the weight of its militarism, when it too was handed over to rich oligarchs, the world was full of wars and rumours of wars, hollow in a culture of saying, Peace, Peace, while pursuing the opposite. The hypocrisy of militarism, from winning the Falklands War to the US posturing on the unnecessary Cold War inhabited our minds and language and dragging the world towards destructive wars in the 21st century.
The Biblical Judgement of God is often superficially understood. It is not God acting against us, but is largely being left to our own devices. I did it my way. The UK, potentially wise, was dragged into Tory greed. Blair turned out to be merely another version, more generous to the NHS, but prepared with Bush to back a war in Iraq against a disarmed foe on the basis of lies against the UN and international law which would render much of the Middle East in destructive turmoil. Then Blair was gone and our own devices were running the show.
What were our own devices? One was self-promotion and leadership. The New Testament shows us Peter’s training through failures, the slow routes to wisdom, but suddenly “iconic” Conservative leaders appeared. Cameron appears in the arctic promising the Greenest Government Ever while the great bonfire of the rich carries on. Suddenly, Eton supplies our leaders from the born rich brigade again. Now the truth, hollowed out by the Cold War and the lust for “power”, becomes mere presentation, spin and the rhetoric of Now. Truth is, Say anything and do nothing”, ready for Boris. Now the only Tory principle is keeping wealth in power and one other – Nationalism, selfish Nationalism, self-adulatory Nationalism – “We will lead the world.”
Now we are through Boris – the lying about the EU, the side of a bus, the corrupt Desmond-Jenrick deal followed by dozens more, the gravy train where the rich throw crumbs to their political puppets, the politics of Prime Minister’s Performance Time, the rubbishing and assassination of Corbyn, the purging of the older some-principles Tories, the lies, holidays, bluster, emptiness, “our nation”, never allow taxing the rich to be discussed, hollow, “we will fight them on the beaches”, Boris era, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Throughout the Boris rule, which has also marginalized Parliament further, compromised the rule of law, hidden truth, promised emptily, undermined the UN, championed militaristic nationalism and falsely presented most policy issues, we have been doing Brexit, effectively saying goodbye to Friends. Brexit does nothing.
The current leadership election by Tory MP’s and members (if it gets that far) is about their and our own devices, rhetorics constructed to win. A deep truthful examination of taxation would yield a very different discussion from the ones we have had. It is an election devoid of Christian content, principles, priorities and concern for peace and stewardship. The way of Christ is replaced by a rich spat with arguments driven by winning the next election for the rich. Naming it’s hollow content is the first step to addressing the depths of our failures.
1. NO PORKIES POST – The UK Current Account Problem.
Boris’s rhetoric of economic success is dangerous. When the UK overall trade weakness is exposed, millions will ask, how could things have got so bad so quickly? It has got bad slowly, been ignored and the problem has accumulated. It could have been corrected with a bit of humility, wisdom and a lower £, not a jolt.
The Current Account is the main measure of our overall trading position in relation to other countries – an important indicator. We are weak in manufacturing, import much food and many other goods, and have a surplus in financial services. A quarter of our non-financial business is owned overseas in a long buy-up process since Thatcher. So our international trading position is not strong.
It shows throughout this century a long decline in paying our way. Now the Current Account Deficit – roughly earnings abroad minus spending – is (minus) 7%, and it has declined with bumps since 2000. Crudely, we are not paying our way by say £1,000 a year per household and we will be held to account sooner or later. There is about £1 trillion of our debt which holders overseas could offload.
Good commentators see this is a real problem now. There is no understanding of when this weakness will be exposed, otherwise the markets would be already moving, but later or sooner, it will happen. The £ will fall, the cost of living increase, markets falter and our economic weakness will be exposed.
POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE ON THE PLANET
Elaine and I have just had a discursive chat which may be important, though it was not full of laughs. We were discussing the scale and scope of trauma in the lives of people we have known, studied and read about. Obviously, our experience began after WW2 and included Jewish and other fighting horrors. It continued through the second and later generations. We discussed Wittgenstein whom we both studied. He went through a hellish WW1 and was violent towards kids he was teaching and weird, as the normal portrait shows. But then there were millions of others when we were growing up, at university, in each generation, through multiple causes and different wars. We think of “normal” people, but the scale of suffering that has resulted from sin and evil is vast and the tragedies are clear – suicide, drink, aggression, taking it out on others, insensitivity, murder and more. Many soaps and films reflect trauma and it plays a part in life, national politics, social care. States can do collective trauma. Art is full of it – Blaue Reiter, the Scream or Otto Dix.
Of course, trauma has many causes. Personal abuse, violence, hate, oppression, poverty, pain, isolation, exclusion and military attack – shooting, explosions, destruction, killing, injury, refugee status, famine, rabid fear. Those of us who have had an easy life rarely understand the suffering involved, the triggers, the depression and the weight of memories. Jesus understood it. The need for a full Christian understanding of it now is great.
I have been aware of it in relation to my war and militarism studies and realized how big it is involving one or two billion people last century. There is the collective Jewish trauma from the great evil. Poland, Russia (twice) and all occupied countries have been through it. We see the problem across generations when we realize that Hitler and Stalin had it. World War Two occurred when traumatized and vicious Nazis were old enough to be close to power. Military trauma repeats itself endlessly.
The military hide it. In the US for years after the Iraq war twenty veterans a day were committing suicide. Our western armed forces are full of it and it plays out in military families. Killing and facing death takes its toll. But, of course, for every military trauma, serious though it is, there are ten or more who are traumatized by militarism. There are perhaps 200,000 Russian soldiers who are traumatized now but twenty million or more Ukrainians whose lives are blighted, including children who will live into the 22nd century. We cannot hide it any more, because we can see it. It is also happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, Congo, Sudan, Libya, Palestine, China, Syria, Eritrea and in other places of repression involving untold millions. It is the central world fact, caused by pursuing weapons and militarism. Of course, militarism unaddressed could destroy the planet anyway, but perhaps you will stand against this blot on humanity, the system that does not work, this commitment to destroying good human lives.
Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.
THE OLD TESTAMENT FOR NOW
It might seem strange that the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee should lead to a rereading of the Old Testament and much of history, but I have just been through that adjustment and want to share it.
The Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, reveal the Jews as a special nation. Their formation from the time of Abraham is outlined, and they are people beyond mere biology into God’s purposes. Their exodus from Egypt is a triumphal formation of the nation. They enter into the lands their forebears had occupied and become the children of Israel living as a nation. Gradually they move towards an heroic king, David, the people of Israel is established and its kings are chronicled and they become the people who have a special relationship with God, living in God’s law, with awesome prophets who give us the greatest narrative in early human history by far. They are a special people, helping form Judaism, Christianity and Islam, perhaps half the world’s population. They are described as God’s chosen people, and, of course, they produce Jesus of Nazareth, whom I and some two billion others look to as our Rabbi and Lord.
Without denying that history at all, let us chart a different story namely of the failures of the children of Israel. As you will see, this is in no way anti-Jewish. The failures (in bronze and iron age people) are many and they are carefully recorded. Soon after the children of Israel leave Egypt, they worship the golden calf in an act of paganism. They then fail in following Moses, in obedience to the law and fall into the tribalism recorded in the book of Judges. Their great King, David, aside his failures of adultery and murder also produces a catastrophic succession of rulers who fail to obey the law, abuse rule, undertake oppression and have the wrong kind of relationships with other nations. Eventually this leads the Israelites into a national split North and South and then into exile in Babylon. On any sober reading of the Old Testament the Israelites are a failure and surrounded by a good deal of tragedy. This is recorded in depth in books like Lamentations and Jeremiah’s reflections on the state of his country.
I have long been impressed with the searing honesty of this political history. I dwell in it. Everywhere, national histories are self-adulatory, but here is failure after failure and then exile, from exile to exile. I have travelled through the Jewish ethnic problem as my own – the chosen people of God, but exile and then eventually the Holocaust. How before God could the Holocaust happen? Clearly, the Holocaust is Nazi evil, and evil in other states, earlier and later, and the Jews must not carry this ethnically when it came from others. Real good and evil favour none if seen properly. It is also clear that the Jews are not chosen in the sense of being favourites, or preferred by God, or the opposite, under some kind of judgement. Perhaps with greater knowledge comes greater responsibility for all of us.
Turn briefly to the Jubilee Celebrations. They turn out to be mainly sincere gratitude to the Queen for her service, no more. Apart from the Flypast, Trooping of the Colour and a few other bits, it has been free of the triumphalism and self-adulation we get from Boris and old white British history, and with good reason. The Queen’s family has failed in a number of ways. Many of her roles have been reconciling across divisions and basic respect for other nations and she has done a good job mainly in spite of the grandeur of the monarchical establishment and the repeated failures of her governments. And, really, to anyone who is awake and studies colonialism, slavery and war, Britain has often been more parasitic than glorious and is becoming the Disunited Kingdom. This morning I listened to an honest radio programme showing the mental distress caused the Windrush Generation. This celebration is not “Send her victorious, happy and glorious.” Our real history is as messy as the Israelite history of the Old Testament and not just ours. It is not difficult to see Putin, Bush, Ibn Saud and Boris in the same league as Rehoboam, Ahab, Sennacherib and Nebuchadnezzar. Nor is it difficult to see states – Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Poland, Yugoslavia, Eritrea, Sudan, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Libya, DRC, Angola, Mozambique, Nigeria, Ruanda, Argentina, Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba, Northern Ireland, Algeria and more who have been through it, with millions traumatized. So, suddenly, the Old Testament history is our history, requiring an honesty before God and towards ourselves which has been absent from the triumphalist West.
Really, there was a rhetoric in the last century that we had got rid of Hitler and now things would get better and better, the great modernist hope. It enabled us to interpret even quite big failures as mere problems that need to be overcome. Democratic politicians promised well and may have underperformed, but things will get better. The last thing we would think is that we are evil, that we are the problem, that to use the stick in the throat word, we should repent. But suddenly our history is on a par with the biblical history. There are the wars. We do not see them in the West when it is Vietnam, Congo, Iraq or Afghanistan, but we cannot ignore the Ukraine invasion. It is evil and it devastates a vast nation. Putin is an evil militarist, but so too are we in the West. Through NATO we are complicit and have been in the middle-east and elsewhere. This is military bullying on a par with Syria and Babylon in the Old Testament.
Many nations develop their own heroic history to which they romantically become attached but which do not tell the truth about their lives together and the way they develop. The time has come to be honest, cut out self-promoting, to humble ourselves, to face the past and the present in terms of what is wrong with us and hear those who cry out against us. Christian readers of the Old Testament, should do it normally as part of their faith. We should see the idolatries of Mammon, Militarism and Political Control around on all sides. We should identify the self-justifying untruths. The empire builders in politics, business and finance should be exposed. Equality before the law should win over interests, and the superpowers should eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar. Somewhere this re-formation, this outbreak of facing truth with humility, should break out across the world, and in begins with each of us facing the failures in our personal and national histories, especially in the light of the Old Testament.
FROM WAR TO PEACE: 1
Chapter One: Winning the War and losing the Peace.
Defeating Evil and Winning the Second World War.
Winning the Second World War was perhaps the greatest war victory in history. Hitler and the Nazis were evil, dominating and terrorizing first the German folk, and then the other conquered nations into their own will. They were shaped in the cruelty of the Great War. They murdered and used people through militarism to their own self-worship. They wanted military domination, forced labour and unrelenting totalitarian control of people’s lives, faith, families, education and thought. In 1940-41 it looked as though they had succeeded in subduing Europe to their collective will. In their Genocide of the Jews, Gipsies, Homosexuals, Christians and other groups, their deliberate baseless hate was carried into extermination in an act which enhorrors us now. The Holocaust was perhaps the most cruel mass evil in human history. “Our will be done” bestrode the globe, and it was to slaughter and enslave. It still warns of the potential evil of human beings, selling their souls to conquest and empowered by weapons.
And, of course, militarism and its arrogance was their downfall. Those who use weapons perish by them. The attack on the USSR carried the false invincible militaristic hope of victory and conquest, but the USSR stood against them, gradually overcame the aggressor through magnificent victories, and, with the help of the United States and Britain, won the War. When the extermination camps were opened, the measure of the world victory over Nazi evil was established. The fanatical military conquest and subjugation of peoples was itself defeated. Millions of soldiers, sailors and airmen fought with valour to defeat the Nazis and many died heroically in the task. As the evil was great, so those who gathered against it were greater, to the blessing of humankind. This will not be gainsaid. But evil is more complicated than only that.
The Nazis were not merely a lone political group. Rather, Fascism was a world-wide ideology against popular socialism and communism supported by the rich in most countries of the world. It was also a western economic problem; as we saw in War or Peace? The Nazis were supported by Ford, Thyssen, American financiers and a whole range of Fascist sympathisers in France, Britain, the United States and elsewhere and especially by the arms companies and other military interests. They were successful because of the military support they gathered around them. When the Nazis were defeated, this group quickly faded away from publicity around their support of Nazism, but they did not necessarily retreat from their capitalist, military and right-wing views and continued to have influence in the late 40s and fifties in many countries. We need to look at these people carefully, for in fact they helped generated the fully armed world economy.
The Fascist evil was influential in many other states than Germany. In the East, Japan had similarly succumbed to intense militarism and a Fascist lust for empire, especially directed against China. It had hoped for a victory strike against the United States at Pearl Harbour as a result of its military dreams of domination, and then committed appalling atrocities in China, the Philippines and much of East Asia in imposing its military will. We note the inner link between military attack and atrocities, the latter are necessary to make military domination accepted and routine. Atrocities establish the dominance of fear, just as the crucifixion did in the Roman empire. This Japanese wickedness also generated its own reprisal in defeat and suffering as the Allies fought, bombed and then occupied Japan. Again, the aggressor became the one who suffered defeat.
So, too, Italy, led by the bombastic, vain Mussolini, had espoused frog-marching Fascism, driven by the false ambition of winning a war and colonies in a pathetic echo of the Roman Empire. It, too, was defeated twice. First, it was overrun by the German Army unhappy with the Allied advance through Italy, and then it was defeated by the Allies. There were Fascist tendencies in many other countries, and the evils of control and kill were practiced by many of them. Thus, those who took the sword, perished by it. The destroyers were destroyed. In this deep sense, aggression was defeated world-wide, in this, we hope, greatest of all wars.
Yet, evil does not have simple boundaries. The Allies were drawn into, or were already inhabiting, their own evils. The history of Soviet Socialism was tortured. It had faced the Civil War within and after the Great War, with support for the Whites from Churchill and other western states. The birth of the USSR was bathed in blood and it continued with famine and purges, and a fear of foreign sabotage. Stalin, the steel one, had been undertaking internal purges against his supposed enemies which involved some 1.6 million deaths and he knew when Hitler came to power that the USSR would be attacked. The purged army suffered as the Nazis moved east occupying much of Russia. Gradually they were pushed back, but the Soviet march to Berlin was marked by retaliatory killings, rape and a reign of terror against the Poles and Germans. Stalin was totalitarian, evil, ruthless and facing a totally devasted state across a vast area. No-one in the West really understood the horror of the Soviet WW2 devastation; but the victors practised evil against Poles and Germans as they advanced to victory too.
The British also had their revenges and colonialisms, including the treatment of famine victims in Bengal. They were happy with revenge bombings to flatten German cities and Churchill was playing Roosevelt and Stalin to his own interests. Americans were handy with the pay-back gun and the nuclear bomb. When you fight a war, you are corrupted by it. Revenge, gratuitous fear and total war devoid of humanity become the order of the day. The good guys bombed Dresden and also killed to make those suffer by whom they had suffered. Evil destroys and then destroys again, if it is not stopped. At the same time, on all sides there were those who honoured people, fought lawfully and did their best for their enemies. Many, too, were trapped in the war by coercion, through fear for their loved ones and by where they were living. Others, through false propaganda, ideology, youth and ignorance became part of that which they did not understand. No-one really knows how long recovery from evil really takes.
One form of western evil was the Atomic Bomb development, the Manhattan project. Its scale was amazing, a project involving 130,000 workers and costing at least $2 billion in wartime dollars; it was a major new industry in formation led by Du Pont, Raytheon and other munitions companies, but directed by the United States’ Government. The bomb would vaporize tens of thousands of people, rip the flesh off tens of thousands more and kill others by radiation death. The actual accounts of those who suffered the attack are of an obscene destruction of friends, schoolmates, parents and colleagues in a city that was largely obliterated. The bomb was planned for the Germans or the Japanese. It was the necessary evil that would end the War. “Necessary Evil” was the name of the B-29 Super-Fortress plane used in the Hiroshima attack. When that kind of killing is a necessary evil, how far down the road to hell have we come? The complexity of violent evil, its virulence, should stop us all dead in our steps, so as not to allow it to weed the world.
There was another great dynamic of evil. Trauma carries evil across relationships and through generations. As the Nazis pushed east into Poland, the Ukraine and Russia they committed unmentionable atrocities. The suffering of the USSR during the Nazi invasion in terms of hunger, cold, destruction and death is unimaginable. There was also effectively genocide of many people in the region, so that German populations could move east and settle there. Then the tide moved the other way and the Soviets swept back with their own pattern of revenge. Rape as a weapon of war and direct physical attack were wanton during this period leaving the whole region raw with inhumanity. Poland lost 17% of its pre-War population, the highest of any nation involved, and perhaps 38% of the remaining population suffered PTSD in one form or another.[i] No-one can understand Poland who does not dwell with the suffering of that great nation.
Evil, if it is to die, needs the long healing of receding suffering, love, patience, empathy, carrying burdens, forgiveness and non-retaliation, and for many communities this was the abiding task from 1945 onwards along with physical recovery. There was the hope that the next generation, my generation, would be different. But would the defeat of the Nazis be the victory of peace?
The End of the European War – 1945.
The War rushed towards a close. In January, 1945 in the East the Soviet army pressed through Poland and Hungary towards Berlin and liberated Auschwitz and the other extermination camps. The western Allied forces fought the last “Battle of the Bulge” in Belgium sending the German Army in retreat, this time without any resources. Hitler, whose mind was really dominated by losing the First World War, must have frozen on the fact that he had also lost the Second; his life hope was in tatters and the German people had let him down. The pathetic egomaniac was done. In the Far East the Americans were freeing Manila and the Philippines. On the 4th February, 1945 Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill met at Yalta in the Crimea to plan what should be done in Germany, Poland, the Far East, and by setting up the United Nations after the War, a justly famous meeting. Roosevelt’s journey there was heroic, because he was weeks away from death. In February, the push through the Rhineland began. The Allies moved through northern Italy Dresden and other cities were bombed, and fierce fighting took place as American forces pushed north and east. In March Allied forces crossed the Rhine, a Communist Romanian Government was established, and Soviet troops moved into Austria. On March 5th The Nazis started calling up 15 and 16 year olds. German subs sank daily. On the 22nd March the largely undefended final push from the West over the whole front above and below the Rhine into Germany took place. Hitler was now ignored. The European War was closing and the Nazis were ratting off to save their skins. In April US forces captured Okinawa, the island on the way to Japan. The Axis powers were imploding and the worst war in history would end.
Then, on 12th April, 1945 President Roosevelt, the linchpin of the western fight against Fascism, died. The wheelchair President, the handicapped one, the thinking Christian politician, had had a massive cerebral haemorrhage. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt probably knew it was coming and was calm. Graham Jackson, a Negro who had played his accordion many times for F.D.R., stood with tears streaming down his face, and played one of the President’s favourite hymns, “Nearer, my God, to Thee” one more time, and it was sure true now.[ii] It was a great job nearly done by one of the greatest statesmen of all who had fought Fascism at home and abroad.[iii] He was succeeded by Harry Truman, a short, no nonsense, small town untried man, three weeks before the war would end. It should have been Henry Wallace who, like Roosevelt, was a world statesman, but he had been removed from the Vice Presidency by the right-wing cabal in the Federal Government who were disturbed by Wallace’s attacks on capitalism. Truman would end the War.
Hitler, now a rabbit in a hole, committed suicide in Berlin on the 30th April, ending the thousand-year Reich nine hundred and eighty six years prematurely to the relief of everyone. Adolf was also not good at prediction. The great USSR push from the east met the American and British push from the West, and unconditional surrender took place a week or so later among delirious celebrations in Moscow, Washington and around the world. Victory in Europe, or VE Day, was on the 9th May, 1945 after nearly six years of European war. The humble George VI and Churchill, who, at this stage of his life, could write history in a million words or with two fingers, V-signed victory from Buckingham Palace, and people danced knowing that the War was over. The celebrations were heart-felt, and widespread, as the world recognized that this victory was a great good for humankind, and they also took relief from the end to a killing and destruction unequalled in human history, for some 85 million people had died through war and a similar number been injured.
The Fight for Peace: The Insight of Paul.
Victory was ambivalent in another deeper way. The end of the war was a victory in war, but it was not necessarily a victory over war, a victory for peace. We can see this insight if we look at a two thousand year old Christian argument, one of the keys for this whole book. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians in its conclusion contains a description of the armour of God. It is often treated only as great Christian rhetoric, signalling the place of salvation, righteousness, faith, truth, peace and the Spirit of God in the life of the Christian. Though this is centrally true, it ignores the obvious Pauline intent in using this metaphor. Paul deliberately replaces the powerful kit of the average Roman soldier – helmet, sword, breastplate and shield with mere spiritual qualities of life. He uses the Roman method of fighting, standing in tight formation, to emphasize the Christian fight, but to fight against what? The passage is a deliberate demilitarization, a replacement of weapons, an insistence on a different way of doing things. Paul requires the understanding that “we do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers”. To his hearers and to us his words are really quite strange, because the Romans fought against people, as did all the millions of combatants in the Second World War. Of course, you fight against people. The point of armour and weapons is to fight other soldiers without being killed yourself. It is so obvious we do not usually even think about it. Yet Paul requires us to. He is requiring us to fight wearing the armour of God, but what is he fighting? Paul insists on not fighting against people and makes sure that the fight is not to be so construed. Christianity is not a fight against flesh and blood, but a fight against fighting; we love our enemies and see beyond the agenda of conflict. In every situation where we might resort to conflict against people, against flesh and blood, there is a longer view, an outlook which puts people on the same side, not in conflict, but in amity. Christianity breaks down the dividing wall of hostility.
The phrase, “principalities and powers”, has been much studied and commented on. It has an obvious general connotation of systems standing against God and the ways of God. But the theme of the whole passage seems to make it abundantly clear Paul is talking about the armour of God in part defeating the armour principle, the militarism, of the Roman soldier. Rome was, of course, the dominant power, the principality of the era for hundreds of years and its guiding principle was militarism, the relentless sword and shield which crushed all before it. The Caesars, the conquerors, were their god. Paul’s statement of what we are fighting against is by no means limited to militarism, but it is quite focused on militarism. Paul is out to replace Roman armour as we would say, quite aptly, lock, stock and barrel. He is looking to the God of peace. We do not fight against flesh and blood, but we do fight against the principalities and powers which would intimidate and cower people into submission by the sword. The fight is not one of aggressor against others, but a principial one. Having our feet shod with the Gospel of Peace is to go in a different direction which is the true one for humankind. Crucial, as in the teaching of Christ, is not giving way to fear of those who would intimidate and kill. And so, in our long history, this war against fighting did go on beyond headline facts like Christians being thrown to lions and retreating to the catacombs. Roman militarism decomposed and its power lost sway. Over time the British Isles faced “Unrule Britannia” as Christianity came in peace, with missionaries, to Iona, Lindisfarne, the flat estuary of Bradwell on Sea and other places, but later the British then followed Rome rather than Paul and started hacking out an empire and singing crude patriotic songs.
All of this is by way of addressing what was happening at the end of the Second World War. There was an understandable sense that the Allies had been fighting against the Nazis, the Japanese, and the full Axis powers and had defeated them. It was good winning against evil. They were fighting against flesh and blood and had achieved victory. We won the War. But this victory was not the Pauline victory against the principalities and powers of militarism and other such evils. Indeed, because weapons, armies and air forces had grown so much during the War into the world’s greatest industry, the deconstruction of militarism had become more difficult as so many were caught within it as their normal working pattern. Millions of soldiers happily went back to civvy street, but many did not, and militarism east and west was not going to disappear so easily. Not many saw the problem with Pauline clarity. Fighting the battle for peace and against the powers of militarism required a certain kind of insight and the new set of weapons that Paul so carefully describes. But 1945 was the best of all times to do it, and nobody, absent Roosevelt, was in place to do it. Let us dwell on the kit of peace for a while.
There is the belt of truth, the truth that Jesus claimed when before Pilate as the basis of power in the kingdom of God in contrast to Pilate’s military power. Can truth be more important and powerful than weapons? Well, Yes. The truth is that war does not work, that fear is not a good way to run states and that killing people is wrong. Truthfulness before God is the foundation of all good politics. Yet, propaganda and the construction of false understanding had spread through Goebbels, had been radioed to populations, and was now loosed on the world as a systematic direction of thinking. Those who wanted to compel people to think their way were trained up. So, the victory over Propaganda was won, but also lost. We are to buckle on the breastplate of righteousness, or right, law-abiding and just living. Can that be the basis on which society functions rather than fear of the sword? Well, Yes. It is far more efficient. Indeed, no society can function without its law-abiding people. It gives the best state that has ever been devised. Law-abiding democracy was entering its golden era, but still the swords would proliferate. We can wear the Good News of Peace on our feet, bringing peace wherever we go, rather than war. Christians took off on missionary journeys rather than patterns of conquest. The great Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932 was nearly successful for peace, and meeting on the road and shaking hands is a great way to live. We can have immigrants and emigrants, holiday visitors and hotels, rather than conquering armies. Invade France or have a holiday in Paris? Take your pick. So, we fight the soft fight for peace. But it did not really win in 1945. Within months we were into the Cold War. And we take up the shield of faith. When tension, quarrels, misunderstanding and opposition occur we can see through to resolution and concord and even to the Lamb on the throne, the Christian vision of where history will go. The Lamb on the Throne? The slain one was not defeated. There were to be wars and rumors of wars, and plagues, but also the healing of the nations. So, we have faith in the Lamb on the throne and little bits of faith for peace in our daily lives to build and not break down. Faith can move mountains. Then, deep cutting under the whole conception of conflict lies the Christian understanding of salvation – the helmet of salvation. With war, evil is always on the other side, and we construct the self-righteousness which justifies hatred and violence, but when we all wear on our heads the knowledge of our sin, our need of forgiveness before God and its gift to undeserved grace to us, the confession of our faults and the peace with God which banishes hostility, then wars will cease and nation will speak peace unto nation. So, there is another way, another kit for fighting fighting, and it is quite ordinary and cheap. As millions of soldiers left the battlefields and went home to cups of tea and precipitating a baby boom, they knew something of it, but its Christian fullness was not told and many did not dwell with the Spirit of God and pray the prayers of peace which would bring about the full healing of the nations. Blessed are the peacemakers, said Christ. We have to make peace. And there was opposition, stubbornness, the arms industry, the militarists, the secret service people and they did their thing and knew how to be in the right position. They were dressed in militarism. Nor was the War fully over. There was a civil war in China, trouble in Vietnam, the early shivers of the Cold War. Calculations about weapons carried on dominating world politics. The Pauline lesson was unlearned; the full fight for peace did not take place. We still need a World War For Peace fought with these weapons, and we are going to have it. But in 1945 War was not defeated.
The “Super-powers”?
So, the world hung at the end of a cataclysmic conflict looking where it should go. We, knowing the actual path it took, often presume that it would be like this, but perhaps it need not so have been. Indeed, it was stacked the other way. At the end of the Second World War there were two world “superpowers” – the USSR and the US. Really there was only one. The GDP of the American Economy was four times the size of the USSR and it had increased by 184% between 1938 and 1945. The other economies were UK 115%, France 54%, USSR 96%, Germany 88%, Italy 65% and Japan 85% of the 1938 figure. But the US and UK were the dominant military powers. Neither Stalin or Roosevelt had any real interest in external military aggression. The Nazis by attacking the USSR and Japan by attacking the US at Pearl Harbour set up their involvement in the War. Both these great states were reluctant fighters. Indeed, Hoover, Roosevelt and the Soviets were avid for peace and disarmament at the Geneva Conference in 1932. Thus, the major allies had arrived as superpowers without immediate rancour against one another. Both countries armed against a known and obvious aggressor when they had to rather than initiating their own militarization.
The further irony was that neither the USSR nor the United States had any need for aggression or military conquest on several major counts. Both powers had vast tracts of space which could be taken up by immigrants or expanded populations; they of all countries were not looking for more living room or conquest of territory. Second, they both had mineral and agricultural resources beyond what they could exploit already on their own domain, and development of these was the priority, unlike little Britain, or Belgium. Third, they were both preoccupied with internal economic reformation – the United States since Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1932 and the Soviet Union through the Five Year Plans. In addition, the USSR, the nation that suffered on a vast scale the devastation of war, had to rebuild with desperately reduced resources and manpower. It was a nation on its knees. Finally, both were seen as invincible after the Second World War and the victories each had achieved in that War meant they were unassailable for decades. The aggressors Germany and Japan had been more thoroughly defeated and had internalized that defeat more thoroughly than in 1918; for them war was unthinkable. The USA and USSR had no conceivable rivals on the planet and were separated by thousands of miles from each other. For all these reasons in 1945 they had no need of weapons or armies and could relax from militarism for the forseeable future. Indeed, as we shall shortly see, they nearly decimated their forces and proceeded on this path of domestic reconstruction. The only hope for militarism was that they could be pitted against one another.
Yet, the USSR and the USA had become vast military states. But even if you walk backwards into being a superpower, the direction of your walk is towards militarism, and the word “superpower” had arrived. William Fox wrote a book, The Superpowers: The United States, Britain and the Soviet Union — Their Responsibility for Peace. It was written in 1944, coining the word and identifying the problem in the title. Britain did not really count; there were the two. How can superpowers, based on military might, be responsible for peace? The philosophy of Nietzsche with its emphasis on power as the formative drive in human history had inhabited Fascism, especially in Germany. Yet, those who fought Fascism were now also used to thinking in terms of divisions, hundreds of bombers, tanks, guns and deaths. Fascism had been, and would continue to be, part of the philosophy of the West. We believed in freedom and democracy, whatever they meant, but power, military power, was still in the driving seat. The calculus of military power had been practised by thousands of leaders in outcomes across the globe and they could not easily forget their modus operandi. They were trained in and used to military power as the currency of human affairs, and it was going to be difficult for them to stop the old ways. So, the world sleep-walked towards the idea of the “Superpowers” without much thought about what that move entailed and perpetuated the vast manufacturing military machines the greatest war of all had constructed. Military might trundled on, even when billions of dollars of military equipment was becoming useless, because it was not decisively faced and a few powerful people had a vested interest in it. We shall look at the detailed history, but always this was the underlying failure in the narrative. Though the argument for disarmament, untried in 1932, was as strong, and even stronger, militaries around the world, and especially in the States, had a vested interest in all the aspects of their trade – weapons, war, domination, rivalry, threats and the military establishment – and especially in the US it came to be in control, not automatically, but because the power brokers did their work.
[i] Eur J Psychotraumatol. 2018; 9(1): 1423831
[ii] http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/fdrdeath.htm
[iii] See War or Peace? Ch. 21 especially.