In recent years policy statements coming from the Holy See on nuclear disarmament have been made by Vatican delegation to the United Nations in New York. Thus, April 2002 Monsignor Francis Chullikat, deputy head of the delegation, told delegates of the NPT Preparatory Committee:

And he reiterated the Holy See's policy position:

Five years earlier Archbishop Renato Martino, permanent observer for the Holy See at the United Nations, told the First Committee:

He added:

In April 2003 Archbishop Diarmuid Martin presented the current views of the Holy See to a meeting of the NPT Preparatory Committee in Geneva. He stated:

Global security will only be guaranteed through global cooperation, within the framework of an authentically multilateral system.

"No use of nuclear weapons which would violate the principle of discrimination or proportionality may be intended in a strategy of deterrence."

"In the words of our Holy Father, we need a 'moral about-face.' The whole world must summon the moral courage and technical means to say no to nuclear conflict; no to weapons of mass destruction; no to an arms race which robs the poor and the vulnerable; and no to the moral danger of a nuclear age which places before humankind indefensible choices of constant terror or surrender."

In November 1980 the National Conference of Bishops (as it was then known) appointed a committee of bishops, chaired by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, to draft a pastoral letter on war and peace. The bishops reviewed two drafts and adopted the third and final draft on May 3,1983. A substantial part of this pastoral letter focuses on nuclear weapons. The summary is presented below. The complete pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, is available from USCCB at 800 235-8722, order number 863-0.

Summary

The Second Vatican Council opened its evaluation of modern warfare with the statement: "The whole human race faces a moment of supreme crisis in its advance toward maturity." We agree with the council's assessment; the crisis of the moment is embodied in the threat which nuclear weapons pose for the world and much that we hold dear in the world. We have seen and felt the effects of the crisis of the nuclear age in the lives of people we serve. Nuclear weaponry has drastically changed the nature of warfare, and the arms race poses a threat to human life and human civilization which is without precedent.


We write this letter from the perspective of Catholic faith. Faith does not insulate us from the daily challenges of life but intensifies our desire to address them precisely in light of the gospel which has come to us in the person of the risen Christ. Through the resources of faith and reason we desire in this letter to provide hope for people in our day and direction toward a world freed of the nuclear threat.

As Catholic bishops we write this letter as an exercise of our teaching ministry. The Catholic tradition on war and peace is a long and complex one; it stretches from the Sermon on the Mount to the statements of Pope John Paul II. We wish to explore and explain the resources of the moral-religious teaching and to apply it to specific questions of our day. In doing this we realize, and we want readers of this letter to recognize, that not all statements in this letter have the same moral authority. At times we state universally binding moral principles found in the teachings of the Church; at other times the pastoral letter makes specific applications, observations and recommendations which allow for diversity of opinion on the part of those who assess the factual data of situations differently. However, we expect Catholics to give our moral judgments serious consideration when they are forming their own views on specific problems.

The experience of preparing this letter has manifested to us the range of strongly held opinion in the Catholic community on questions of fact and judgment concerning issues of war and peace. We urge mutual respect among individuals and groups in the Church as this letter is analyzed and discussed. Obviously, as bishops, we believe that such differences should be expressed within the framework of Catholic moral teaching. We need in the Church not only conviction and commitment but also civility and charity.

While this letter is addressed principally to the Catholic community, we want it to make a contribution to the wider public debate in our country on the dangers and dilemmas of the nuclear age. Our contribution will not be primarily technical or political, but we are convinced that there is no satisfactory answer to the human problems of the nuclear age which fails to consider the moral and religious dimensions of the questions we face.

Although we speak in our own name, as Catholic bishops of the Church in the United States, we have been conscious in the preparation of this letter of the consequences our teaching will have not only for the United States but for other nations as well. One important expression of this awareness has been the consultation we have had, by correspondence and in an important meeting at the Vatican (January 18-19, 1983), with representatives of European bishops' conferences. This consultation with bishops of other countries, and, of course, with the Holy See, has been very helpful to us.

Catholic teaching has always understood peace in positive terms. In the words of Pope John Paul II: "Peace is not just the absence of war. . . . Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith." (Coventry, England, 1982) Peace is the fruit of order. Order in human society must be shaped on the basis of respect for the transcendence of God and the unique dignity of each person, understood in terms of freedom, justice, truth and love. To avoid war in our day we must be intent on building peace in an increasingly interdependent world. In Part III of this letter we set forth a positive vision of peace and the demands such a vision makes on diplomacy, national policy, and personal choices.

While pursuing peace incessantly, it is also necessary to limit the use of force in a world comprised of nation states, faced with common problems but devoid of an adequate international political authority. Keeping the peace in the nuclear age is a moral and political imperative. In Parts I and II of this letter we set forth both the principles of Catholic teaching on war and a series of judgments, based on these principles, about concrete policies. In making these judgments we speak as moral teachers, not as technical experts.

A. On War

1. Catholic teaching begins in every case with a presumption against war and for peaceful settlement of disputes. In exceptional cases, determined by the moral principles of the just-war tradition, some uses of force are permitted.
2. Every nation has a right and duty to defend itself against unjust aggression.
3. Offensive war of any kind is not morally justifiable.
4. It is never permitted to direct nuclear or conventional weapons to "the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their populations. . . ." (Pastoral Constitution, #80.) The intentional killing of innocent civilians or non-combatants is always wrong.
5. Even defensive response to unjust attack can cause destruction which violates the principle of proportionality, going far beyond the limits of legitimate defense. This judgment is particularly important when assessing planned use of nuclear weapons. No defensive strategy, nuclear or conventional, which exceeds the limits of proportionality is morally permissible.
   

B. On Deterrence

1. "In current conditions 'deterrence' based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable. Nonetheless, in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with this minimum which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion." (Pope John Paul II, "Message to U.N. Special Session on Disarmament," #8, June 1982.)
2. No use of nuclear weapons which would violate the principles of discrimination or proportionality may be intended in a strategy of deterrence. The moral demands of Catholic teaching require resolute willingness not to intend or to do moral evil even to save our own lives or the lives of those we love.
3. Deterrence is not an adequate strategy as a long-term basis for peace; it is a transitional strategy justifiable only in conjunction with resolute determination to pursue arms control and disarmament. We are convinced that "the fundamental principle on which our present peace depends must be replaced by another, which declares the true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms but in mutual trust alone". (Pope John XIII, Peace on Earth, #113.)
   

C. The Arms Race and Disarmament

1. The arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race; it is to be condemned as a danger, an act of aggression against the poor, and a folly which does not provide the security it promises. (Cf: Pastoral Constitution, #81; Statement of the Holy See to the Untied Nations, 1976).
2. Negotiations must be pursued in every reasonable form possible; they should be governed by the "demand that the arms race should cease; that the stockpiles which exist in various countries should be reduced equally and simultaneously by the parties concerned; that nuclear weapons should be banned; and that a general agreement should eventually be reached about progressive disarmament and an effective method of control." (Pope John XXIII, Peace on Earth, #112.)

D. On Personal Conscience

1. Military Service: "All those who enter the military service in loyalty to their country should look upon themselves as the custodians of the security and freedom of their fellow countrymen; and when they carry out their duty properly, they are contributing to the maintenance of peace." (Pastoral Constitution, #79.)
2. Conscientious Objection: "Moreover, it seems just that laws should make humane provisions for the case of conscientious objectors who refuse to carry arms, provided they accept some other form of community service." (Pastoral Constitution, #79.)
3. Non-violence: "In this same spirit we cannot but express our admiration for all who forego the use of violence to vindicate their rights and resort to other means of defense which are available to weaker parties, provided it can be done without harm to the rights and duties of others and of the community." (Pastoral Constitution, #78.)
4. Citizens and Conscience: "Once again we deem it opportune to remind our children of their duty to take an active part in public life, and to contributed towards the attainment of the common good of the entire human family as well as that of their own political community. . . . In other words, it is necessary that human beings, in the intimacy of their own consciences, should so live and act in their temporal lives as to create a synthesis between scientific, technical and professional elements on the one hand, and spiritual values on the other." (Pope John XIII, Peace on Earth, #146, 150.)
   

As bishops in the United States, assessing the concrete circumstances of our society, we have made a number of observations and recommendations in the process of applying moral principles to specific policy choices.

A. On the Use of Nuclear Weapons

1. Counter Population Use: Under no circumstances may nuclear weapons or other instruments of mass slaughter be used for the purpose of destroying population centers or other predominantly civilian targets. Retaliatory action which would indiscriminately and disproportionately take many wholly innocent lives, lives of people who are in no way responsible for reckless actions of their government, must also be condemned.
2. The Initiation of Nuclear War: We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear war, on however restricted a scale, can be morally justified. Non-nuclear attacks by another state must be resisted by other than nuclear means. Therefore, a serious moral obligation exists to develop non-nuclear defensive strategies as rapidly as possible. In this letter we urge NATO to move rapidly toward the adoption of a "no first use" policy, but we recognize this will take time to implement and will require the development of an adequate alternative defense posture.
3. Limited Nuclear War: Our examination of the various arguments on this question makes us highly skeptical about the real meaning of "limited." One of the criteria of the just-war teaching is that there must be a reasonable hope of success in bringing about justice and peace. We must ask whether such a reasonable hope can exist once nuclear weapons have been exchanged. The burden of proof remains on those who assert that meaningful limitation is possible. In our view the first imperative is to prevent any use of nuclear weapons and we hope that leaders will resist the notion that nuclear conflict can be limited, contained or won in any traditional sense.
   

B. On Deterrence

In concert with the evaluation provided by Pope John Paul II, we have arrived at a strictly conditional moral acceptance of deterrence. In this letter we have outlined criteria and recommendations which indicate the meaning of conditional acceptance of deterrence policy. We cannot consider such a policy adequate as a long-term basis for peace.

C. On Promoting Peace

1. We support immediate, bilateral verifiable agreements to halt the testing, production and deployment of new nuclear weapons systems. This recommendation is not to be identified with any specific political initiative.
2. We support efforts to achieve deep cuts in the arsenals of both superpowers; efforts should concentrate first on systems which threaten the retaliatory forces of either major power.
3. We support early and successful conclusion of negotiations of a comprehensive test ban treaty.
4. We urge new efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in the world, and to control the conventional arms race, particularly the conventional arms trade.
5. We support, in an increasingly interdependent word, political and economic policies designed to protect human dignity and to promote the human rights of every person, especially the least among us. In this regard, we call for the establishment of some form of global authority adequate to the needs of the international common good.
   

This letter includes many judgments from the perspective of ethics, politics and strategy needed to speak concretely and correctly to the "moment of supreme crisis" identified by Vatican II. We stress again that readers should be aware, as we have been, of the distinction between our statement of moral principles and of official Church teaching and our application of these to concrete issues. We urge that special care be taken not to use passages our of context; neither should brief portions of this document be cited to support positions it does not intend to convey or which are not truly in accord with the spirit of its teaching.

In concluding this summary we respond to two key questions often asked about this pastoral letter:
Why do we address these matters fraught with such complexity, controversy and passion? We speak as pastors, not politicians. We are teachers, not technicians. We cannot avoid our responsibility to lift up the moral dimensions of the choices before our world and nation. The nuclear age is an era of moral as well as physical danger. We are the first generation since Genesis with the power to threaten the created order. We cannot remain silent in the face of such danger. Why do we address these issues? We are simply trying to live up to the call of Jesus to be peacemakers in our own time and situation.

What are we saying? Fundamentally, we are saying that the decisions about nuclear weapons are among the most pressing moral questions of our age. While these decisions have obvious military and political aspects, they involve fundamental moral choices. In simple terms, we are saying that good ends (defending one's country, protecting freedom, etc.) cannot justify immoral means (the use of weapons which kill indiscriminately and threaten whole societies). We fear that our world and nation are headed in the wrong direction. More weapons with greater destructive potential are produced every day. More and more nations are seeking to become nuclear powers. In our quest for more and more security we fear we are actually becoming less and less secure.

In the words of the Holy Father, we need a "moral about-face." The whole world must summon the moral courage and technical means to say no to nuclear conflict; no to weapons of mass destruction; no to an arms race which robs the poor and the vulnerable; and no to the moral danger of a nuclear age which places before humankind indefensible choices of constant terror or surrender. Peacemaking is not an optional commitment. It is a requirement of our faith. We are called to be peacemakers, not by some movement of the moment, but by our Lord Jesus. The content and context of our peacemaking is set not by some political agenda or ideological program, but by the teaching of his Church.

Ultimately, this letter is intended as an expression of Christian faith, affirming the confidence we have that the risen Lord remains with us precisely in moment of crisis. It is our belief in his presence and power among us which sustain us in confronting the awesome challenge of the nuclear age. We speak from faith to provide hope for all who recognize the challenge and are working to confront it with the resources of faith and reason.

To approach the nuclear age in faith is to recognize our absolute need for prayer: we urge and invite all to unceasing prayer for peace with justice for all people. In a spirit of prayerful hope we present this message of peace.

Summary: The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise, Our Response © 1983 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc., Washington, DC. Used with permission. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced by any means without permission in writing from the copyright holder.

1. Unfinished Business: Nuclear Disarmament and Proliferation

   Our l983 pastoral letter focused special attention on the morality of nuclear weapons at a time of widespread fear of nuclear war. Only ten years later, the threat of global nuclear war may seem more remote than at any time in the nuclear age, but we may be facing a different but still dangerous period in which the use of nuclear weapons remains a significant threat. We cannot address questions of war and peace today, therefore, without acknowledging that the nuclear question remains of vital political and moral significance.

   The end of the Cold War has changed the nuclear question in three ways. First, nuclear weapons are still an integral component of U.S. security policies, but they are no longer at the center of these policies or of international relations. In 1983, a dominant concern was the ethics of nuclear weapons. Today, this concern, while still critically important, must be considered in the context of a more fundamental question of the ethical foundations of political order: How do we achieve Pacem in Terris' vision of a just and stable political order, so that nations will no longer rely on nuclear weapons for their security? Second, we have new opportunities to take steps toward progressive nuclear disarmament. In l983, the first task was to stop the growth of already bloated nuclear arsenals; today, the moral task is to proceed with deep cuts and ultimately to abolish these weapons entirely. Third, the threat of global nuclear war has been replaced by a threat of global nuclear proliferation. In addition to the declared nuclear powers, a number of other countries have or could very quickly deploy nuclear weapons, and still other nations, or even terrorist groups, might seek to obtain or develop nuclear weapons. Just as the nuclear powers must prevent nuclear war, so also they, with the rest of the international community, bear a heavy moral responsibility to stop he spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
   

1. The Moral Judgment on Deterrence. In 1983, we judged that nuclear deterrence may be morally acceptable as long as it is limited to deterring nuclear use by others; sufficiency, not nuclear superiority, is its goal; and it is used as a step on the way toward progressive disarmament.29
   
   Some believe that this judgment remains valid, since significant progress has been made in reducing nuclear weapons, including the most destabilizing ones, while at least some of those that remain are still necessary to deter existing nuclear threats. Others point to the end of the Soviet threat and the apparent unwillingness of the nuclear powers to accept the need to eliminate nuclear weapons as reasons for abandoning our strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence. They also cite the double standard inherent in nonproliferation efforts: What is the moral basis for asking other nations to forego nuclear weapons if we continue to judge our own deterrent to be morally necessary?

   We believe our judgment of 1983 that nuclear deterrence is morally acceptable only under certain strict conditions remains a useful guide for evaluating the continued moral status of nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world. It is useful because it acknowledges the fundamental moral dilemmas still posed by nuclear weapons, and it reflects the progress toward fulfilling the conditions we elaborated in 1983. At the same time, it highlights the new prospects - and thus the added moral urgency - of making even more dramatic progress in arms control and disarmament as the only basis for the continued moral legitimacy of deterrence.

2. A Post-Cold War Agenda For Nuclear Disarmament. While significant progress has been made in recent years, we believe additional steps are needed if nuclear policies and priorities are to keep up with the dramatic changes in world politics and if our nation is to move away from relying on nuclear deterrence as a basis for its security. Present challenges include the following:
   
   

3. The Role of Nuclear Weapons: We must continue to say No to the very idea of nuclear war. A minimal nuclear deterrent may be justified only to deter the use of nuclear weapons. The United States should commit itself never to use nuclear weapons first, should unequivocally reject proposals to use nuclear weapons to deter any nonnuclear threats, and should reinforce the fragile barrier against the use of these weapons. Indeed, we abhor any use of nuclear weapons.
   
   
4. Arms Control and Disarmament: Nuclear deterrence may be justified only as a step on the way toward progressive disarmament. The end of the Cold War, according to the Holy See, "challenge[s] the world community to adopt a post-nuclear form of security. That security lies in the abolition of nuclear weapons and the strengthening of international law."30 A first step toward this goal would be prompt ratification and implementation of the START I and START II treaties. Even once these treaties are fully implemented, there will still be more than 10,000 nuclear weapons in the world, containing explosive power hundreds of thousands times greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Therefore, much deeper cuts are both possible and necessary. The eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is more than a moral ideal; it should be a policy goal.
   
   The negotiation of a verifiable comprehensive test ban treaty would not only demonstrate our commitment to this goal, but also would improve our moral credibility in urging nonnuclear nations to forego the development of nuclear weapons. We, therefore, support a halt to nuclear testing as our nation pursues an effective global test ban and renewal of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Also, steps must be taken to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism. We must reverse the spread of nuclear technologies and materials. We welcome, therefore, U.S. efforts to achieve a global ban on the production of fissionable materials for use in nuclear weapons. Finally, one should not underestimate the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency as a forum for the discussion of these issues and as a force encouraging nations to take the steps necessary in this area.
   
   
5. Cooperative Security and a Just International Order: The nuclear powers may justify, and then only temporarily, their nuclear deterrents only if they use their power and resources to lead in the construction of a more just and stable international order. An essential part of this international order must be a collective security framework that reverses the proliferation of nuclear weapons, guarantees the security of nonnuclear states and ultimately seeks to make nuclear weapons and war itself obsolete. The United States and other nations should also make the investments necessary to help ensure the development of stable, democratic governments in nations which have nuclear weapons or might seek to obtain them.

   An active commitment by the United States to nuclear disarmament and the strengthening of collective security is the only moral basis for temporarily retaining our deterrent and our insistence that other nations forego these weapons. We advocate disarmament by example: careful but clear steps to reduce and end our dependence on weapons of mass destruction.

In our five-year report on The Challenge of Peace, we said: "To contain the nuclear danger of our time is itself an awesome undertaking. To reshape the political fabric of an increasingly interdependent world is an even larger and more complicated challenge."31 Now, on this tenth anniversary, we must be engaged in the difficult task of envisioning a future rooted in peace, with new institutions for resolving differences between nations, new global structures of mediation and conflict-resolution and a world order that has moved beyond nuclear weapons once and for all. We are committed to join in this struggle, to bring the Gospel message of justice and peace to this vital work.

New Nuclear Treaty and U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy

Pope John Paul II greets Bishop Wilton D. Gregory

On May 24, 2002 the Most Reverend Wilton D. Gregory, President, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a Statement on New Nuclear Treaty and U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy. This was the day on which President Bush and President Putin signed the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty between the United States and Russia. The Catholic bishops stated:

However, they added that

Bishop Gregory's statement cited four issues of particular importance.

These ideas were further developed in Testimony on the MoscowTreaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 23, 2002. The testimony was presented by Fr. Drew Christiansen, S.J., counselor on international affairs, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Nuclear weapons, whether used or threatened, are grossly evil and morally wrong. As an instrument of mass destruction, nuclear weapons slaughter the innocent and ravage the environment....When used as an instrument of deterrence, nuclear weapons hold innocent people hostage for political and military purposes. Therefore, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is morally corrupt.

We call upon all states to put urgent negotiation of a nuclear disarmament convention at the top of the international agenda.

• We in the United States must take lead to stop the nuclear arms race.
  
  
• We must say to ourselves first and then to the world that we want a total and universal ban on the possession and production of nuclear weapons. All countries, starting with those that have the largest amount of nuclear weapons, should destroy these weapons. There should be a total ban on their production and testing. Nuclear technology should be used only for humanitarian and peaceful purposes.
  
  
• Islam stands for peace and protection of all human beings and their environment. Islam is against any war in which the innocent and the non-combatants are made to suffer.

1. Commend former President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for the leadership they demonstrated by the signing of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.
   
   
2. Commend President George Bush for taking significant steps toward limiting short range nuclear missiles and urge the American government to intensify its efforts toward achieving a START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) agreement, a comprehensive test ban, and a ban on weapons in space.
   
   
3. Express appreciation to the Roman Catholic Bishops and the Methodist Bishops for calling for a reassessment of the moral and strategic assumptions of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
   
   
4. Work toward elimination of long term reliance on nuclear armaments as a deterrent and adopt as our goal a multilateral, negotiated, verifiable arms control process to decrease and eventually eliminate all nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.
   
   
5. Support the concept of limited unilateral cuts in the U.S. arsenal which might encourage further similar cuts by the U.S.S.R. without eliminating a credible level of deterrence.

Statement by Rabbi David Saperstein

When the Joint Nuclear Reduction/Disarmament Statement by religious and military leaders was issued at the Washington National Cathedral in June 2000, Rabbi David Saperstein, director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, made a statement in which he said:

1. To pray regularly for national leaders who have in their hands the fateful power of nuclear weapons.

2. To become informed about the potential of nuclear war and the policies that move in that direction. We encourage congregations to find ways to study the issue and clarify their witness. Conference and churchwide peace committees can suggest helpful resources.

3. To declare our readiness, in the light of our faith in Christ, to live without nuclear weapons in our countries. The World Peace Pledge is one way to record and share this testimony.

4. To enter into discussion and study with other Christians in our communities. Many Christians who have not fully considered the way of love are asking questions about the meaning of the biblical message for issues of war and peace. As an aid for such discussions, we commend the New Abolitionist Covenant, which raises the faith question in regard to nuclear weapons in a manner similar to the way Christians two centuries ago began to question slavery in the light of the Word of God.

5. To invite men and women, including government leaders to that saving faith in Jesus Christ which provides ultimate security and frees from fear.

6. To consider ways to witness to the decision making process in our governments, urging alternatives to military confrontation and supporting the use of scarce resources for human need rather than armaments.

The United Methodist Church is a global institution with 8.3 million members in the United States and 1.3 million in other countries, including over one million in Africa. In the U.S. the United Methodist Church brings together churches from the Methodist and the Evangelical United Brethren traditions.

The United Methodist Church is governed by the General Conference, a body of elected delegates that meets every four years. The Council of Bishops provides episcopal leadership for the denomination. The General Board of Church and Society, based in Washington, D.C., implements UMC Social Principles and related policies adopted by the General Conference.

The United Methodist Church has a long history of speaking on issues of peace and war. This was reflected in a two year study on nuclear weapons by the Council of Bishops in the mid-1980s. When completed, the bishops issued a foundation document and pastoral letter, In Defense of Creation (1986). Among other things, the bishops stated:

The 1988 General Conference affirmed and supported statements of the Council of Bishops in "In Defense of Creation." Subsequent quadrennial General Conferences have passed resolutions on the subject. In 2000 the resolution was entitled Saying No to Nuclear Deterrence and indicated:

The resolution also laid out a set of actions necessary for achieving the goal of nuclear abolition.

At their spring 2002 meeting the United Methodist Council of Bishops took up the issue of nuclear weapons in a resolution entitled "In the Aftermath of 9-11".

In Defense of Creation In 1986 after two years of study the United Methodist Council of Bishops issued a foundation document and pastoral letter entitled In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace. In the pastoral letter, after summarizing a theology for peace with justice and the threat of nuclear weapons to the human family and planet earth itself, the bishops stated: Therefore, we say a clear and unconditional No to nuclear war and to any use of nuclear weapons. We conclude that nuclear deterrence is a position that cannot receive the church's blessing. In the foundation document the United Methodist bishops outlined a set of policies for a just peace, including: Comprehensive test ban to inaugurate a nuclear freeze. Consolidation of existing treaties and phased reductions leading to the eventual goal of a mutual and verifiable dismantling of all nuclear armaments. Bans on space weapons. No-first-use agreement as a transitional measure. Here is the pastoral letter in its entirety. A Pastoral Letter to All United Methodists From your brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, the Council of Bishops, to all those people called United Methodist in every land: Grace to you and peace in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.With hearts and minds open to Christ, who is our peace; In obedience to his call to be peacemakers;And in response to the biblical vision of a wholistic peace, shalom, revealed in Scripture to be God's will and purpose for all of creation: We, the bishops of The United Methodist Church, have been moved by the spirit of Jesus to send you a message that we have titled IN DEFENSE OF CREATION: THE NUCLEAR CRISIS AND A JUST PEACE, a message we believe to be of utmost urgency in our time. This message has been prepared over a span of two years during which time we have earnestly sought to hear the Word of God through the Scriptures. At the same time we have prayerfully and penitently reflected on the continuing buildup of nuclear arsenals by some of the nations. We have become increasingly aware of the devastation that such weapons can inflict on planet earth. We have watched and agonized over the increase in hostile rhetoric and hate among nations. We have seen the threat of a nuclear confrontation increasing in our world. We have been motivated by our own sense of Christian responsibility and stewardship for the world God created. This brief Pastoral Letter is an introduction to a substantial Foundation Document that we have produced as the major portion of our message. In our Foundation Document we have attempted to state with clarity the biblical basis for our concerns and our conclusions about the issue we are addressing. We have set forth a theology for peace with justice in our time the reflects our understanding of the mind and will of Jesus Christ. This theology for a just peace reflects also our understanding of those insights of both pacifism and just-war theory that speak with relevance to the issues of the present nuclear crisis. We write in defense of creation. We do so because the creation itself is under attack. Air and water, trees and fruits and flowers, birds and fish and cattle, all children and youth, women and men live under the darkening shadows of a threatening nuclear winter. We call The United Methodist Church to more faithful witness and action in the face of this worsening nuclear crisis. It is a crisis that threatens to assault not only the whole human family but planet earth itself, even while the arms race itself cruelly destroys millions of lives in conventional wars, repressive violence, and massive poverty. Therefore, we say a clear and unconditional No to nuclear war and to any use of nuclear weapons. We concluded that nuclear deterrence is a position that cannot receive the church's blessing. We state our complete lack of confidence in proposed "defenses" against nuclear attack and are convinced that the enormous cost of developing such defenses is one more witness to the obvious fact that the arms race is a social justice issue, not only a war and peace issue. Our document sets forth a number of policies for a just peace, including such disarmament proposals as a comprehensive test ban, a multilateral and mutually verifiable nuclear weapons freeze and the ultimate dismantling of all such weapons, and bans on all space weapons. However, the nuclear crisis is not primarily a matter of technology; it is a crisis of human community. We encourage independent US and Soviet initiatives to foster a political climate conducive to negotiations. We urge a renewed commitment to building the institutional foundations of common security, economic justice, human rights, and environmental conservation. And we make appeal for peace research, studies, and training in all levels of education. This message we are sending to United Methodist people is not meant to be a consensus opinion of our church or a policy statement of our denomination on the nuclear crisis and the pursuit of peace. It is given from the bishops to the church as both a pastoral and a prophetic word. It is pastoral in that we as bishops will seek to lead the church in study, prayer, and action related to this issue and this theme, using the Foundation Document as a basic resource and guide. It is prophetic in that the Foundation Document is our response to the Word of God. It faithfully states our understanding of that Word to our world at this moment in history. Our message is the result of many months of prayerful study, research, and reflection. It is not given to the church with any feeling that it should be the final word on this issue or with the hope that it sill silence all contrary opinions; but rather, we are sending this statement to the church seeking the fullest and fairest possible discussion of our understandings and convictions, together with an honest consideration of difference and critical opinions. Peacemaking is ultimately a spiritual issue. It is a sacred calling of Jesus. All dimensions of church life offer openings for peacemaking: family life, Christian education, the ministry of the laity, pastoral ministry in every respect, political witness, and the great fact of the church as a worldwide company of disciples that transcends all nations, governments, races, and ideologies. Now, therefore, we ask you, our sisters and brothers, to join with us in a new covenant of peacemaking; to use the Bible together with our Council's Foundation Document as basic resources for earnest and steadfast study of the issues of justice and peace. We call upon each local pastor and lay leader to give leadership in a local church study of the issues surrounding the nuclear threat. We ask you all to open again your hearts, as we open our hearts to receive God's gracious gift of peace; to become with us evangelists of shalom, making the ways of Jesus the model of discipleship, embracing all neighbors near and far, all friends and enemies, and becoming the defenders of God's good creation; and to pray without ceasing for peace in our time. Now we draw this Pastoral Letter to a close with prayers for all of you and for all the nations and peoples of the earth. We humbly pray that God will accept and use our lives and resources that we dedicate again to a ministry of peace. May the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the power of the Holy Spirit be among you, everywhere and always, so that you may be a blessing to all creation and to all the children of God, making peace and remembering the poor, choosing life and coming to life eternal, in God's own good time. Amen. From In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace by the United Methodist Council of Bishops © 1986 by Graded Press. Used by permission.

In 1988 the General Conference, the official governing body of the United Methodist Church, affirmed and supported In Defense of Creation. As part of a resolution on "Christian Faith and Disarmament", the General Conference stated:

We especially affirm and support the statements of the Council of Bishops in their 1986 pastoral letter, "In Defense of Creation", and the accompanying foundation document. We urge our bishops to keep this concern before the Church. We request that the General Board of Discipleship produce new and updated educational materials for children, youth and adults to study the issues of peace and justice and the effects of the nuclear weapons crisis:

Saying No to Nuclear Deterrence

The 2004 General Conference of the United Methodist Church, its official governing body, reaffirmed its support for the abolition of nuclear weapons and adopted the following resolution.

In 1986, the United Methodist Council of Bishops, after nearly two years of prayerful and penitent study, adopted a pastoral letter and foundation document entitled In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace.

The bishops' statement was deeply rooted in biblical faith. They wrote:

At the heart of the Old Testament is the testimony of shalom, that marvelous Hebrew word that means peace. But the peace that is shalom is not negative or one dimensional. It is much more than the absence of war. Shalom is positive peace: harmony, wholeness, health, and well-being in all human relationships. It is the natural state of humanity as birthed by God. It is harmony between humanity and all of God's good creation. All of creation is interrelated. Every creature, every element, every force of nature participates in the whole of creation. If any person is denied shalom, all are thereby diminished....

New Testament faith presupposes a radical break with the follies, or much so-called conventional wisdom about power and security, on the one hand, and the transcendent wisdom of shalom, on the other. Ultimately, New Testament faith is a message of hope about God's plan and purpose for human destiny. It is a redemptive vision that refuses to wallow in doom.

Based upon this faith, the bishops in their pastoral letter stated unequivocally that "we say a clear and unconditional No to nuclear war and to any use of nuclear weapons. We conclude that nuclear deterrence is a position that cannot receive the church's blessing."
Based upon this faith, the bishops in their pastoral letter stated unequivocally that "we say a clear and unconditional No to nuclear war and to any use of nuclear weapons. We conclude that nuclear deterrence is a position that cannot receive the church's blessing."

The implication is clear. If nuclear weapons cannot be legitimately used for either deterrence or war fighting, no nation should possess them. Accordingly, in the foundation document the bishops indicated:

We support the earliest possible negotiation of phased but rapid reduction of nuclear arsenals, while calling upon all other nuclear-weapon states to agree to parallel arms reduction, to the eventual goal of a mutual and verifiable dismantling all nuclear armaments.

In 1988, the United Methodist General Conference affirmed and supported the statements of the Council of Bishops contained in In Defense of Creation. Four years later, in a resolution entitled "Nuclear Disarmament: The Zero Option," the 1992 General Conference stated that "now is the time to exercise the zero option: to eliminate all nuclear weapons throughout the globe," and the conference offered a series of concrete actions for achieving this goal.

Our Commitment

We reaffirm the finding that nuclear weapons, whether used or threatened, are grossly evil and morally wrong. As an instrument of mass destruction, nuclear weapons slaughter the innocent and ravage the environment. When used as instruments of deterrence, nuclear weapons hold innocent people hostage for political and military purposes. Therefore, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is morally corrupt and spiritually bankrupt.

In contrast to the goal of total nuclear disarmament, policy of the United States government has moved in the opposite direction in recent years. A series of policy documents --"Nuclear Posture Review" (January 2002), "National Security Strategy" (September 2002), "National Security Presidential Directive 17" (September 2002), and "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" (December 2002) -- have called for the development of new nuclear weapons, preparation for renewal of nuclear testing, targeting non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons, and using nuclear weapons in response to biological and chemical weapons. Policy statements have asserted the right to take unilateral, pre-emptive action, including the use of nuclear weapons, against emerging threats by states and terrorist groups before they are fully formed.

These policies undermine the intent of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and increase the risk that nuclear weapons will actually be used. We deplore these dangerous and retrogressive policies.

Therefore, we reaffirm the goal of total abolition of all nuclear weapons throughout Earth and space.

Recommended Actions

Because we unequivocally reject the use or threatened use of nuclear weapons, we call upon all possessors of nuclear weapons to carry out the following actions as soon as possible:

1. renounce unconditionally the use of nuclear weapons for deterrence and war-fighting purposes;
2. pledge never to use nuclear weapons against any adversary under any circumstance;
3. immediately take all nuclear weapons off alert by separating warheads from delivery vehicles and by other means;
4. embark upon a program to systematically dismantle all nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles as soon as possible with adequate safeguards and verification, carried out under multilateral treaties and through reciprocal national initiatives;
5. ratify and implement the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
6. cease all research, development, testing, production, and deployment of new nuclear weapons and refrain from modernizing the existing nuclear arsenal;
7. halt all efforts to develop and deploy strategic antimissile defense systems because they are illusory, unnecessary, and wasteful;
8. respect the requirements of nuclear weapon-free zones where they exist;
9. enter into a multilateral process to develop, adopt, and carry out a nuclear weapons convention that outlaws and abolishes all nuclear weapons under strict and effective international control;
10. develop and implement a system for control of all fissile material with international accounting, monitoring, and safeguards.
11. We call upon all nations that do not possess nuclear weapons to:
    (1) cease all efforts to develop these instruments of mass destruction and their delivery systems;
    (2) ratify and carry out the provisions of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
    (3) adhere to all provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty; and
    (4) respect the requirements of nuclear weapon-free zones and extend this approach to other nations and continents.

Implementation

To promote the achievement of goals and objectives specified in this resolution:

1. We ask the Council of Bishops to transmit a copy of the resolution to the heads of states of all nations possessing nuclear weapons.
2. We ask the General Board of Church and Society to publicize the resolution with appropriate governmental officials, legislators, the media, and the general public.
3. We call upon the Council of Bishops and the General Board of Church and Society to provide leadership, guidance, and educational material to United Methodists, congregations, and conferences in order to assist them in understanding and working for the goal and objectives of nuclear abolition.
4. We request that the General Board of Church and Society prepare an annual "report card" to be included with Peace With Justice Sunday materials in relation to: a) countries that possess nuclear weapons and their compliance with the recommended actions in this resolution, and b) countries that do not posses nuclear weapons and their compliance with the recommended actions in this resolution.

Conclusion

We fervently believe that these recommendations will greatly enhance global security by eliminating the possibility of nuclear war. Furthermore, the resources of human talent, production capacity, and money released can become available to deal with urgent human problems around the globe. Nuclear abolition provides great hope for global peace and prosperity.

_____

In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace, the United Methodist Council of Bishops (Nashville: Graded Press, 1986).
Ibid., page 24.
Ibid., page 28.
Ibid., page 92.
Ibid., page 76.
The Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist Church, 1988, page 503.
Ibid., page 601.

From The Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist Church 2000 © 2000 by
The United Methodist Publishing House. Used by permission

Bishop Sharon Brown Christopher is President, United Methodist Council of Bishops for 2002-2003.

At their semi-annual meeting on April 28 to May 3, 2002 the United Methodist Council of Bishops considered the effects of the "war on terrorism" upon the quest for nuclear disarmament. They concluded that "ethical restraint has been compromised". Here is their resolution: Whereas, the events of September 11 have changed the political atmosphere and the maintenance of world peace, and Whereas, the United Methodist Church in its Social Principles has previously addressed the ethical issues of nuclear weapons, ABMs, and utilization of first strike nuclear weapons, and

Whereas, we now witness: (a) the potential development and testing of new nuclear weapons; (b) the cancellation of the ABM agreement, and (c) the threatened utilization of first strike nuclear weapons, and

Whereas, under the heading of "war against terrorism," ethical restraint has been compromised;

Therefore Be It Resolved that:
A. The Council of Bishops will be persistent in seeking an audience with President Bush to share with him the voice of the U.M.C. on the concerns noted above, and as articulated in our Book of Discipline 2000, and our Book of Resolutions 2000.
B. We urge all bishops, active and retired, to seek ecumenical and interfaith venues to express and embody the values, principles and positions of The Book of Discipline 2000 and The Book of Resolutions 2000.

Bishop C. Dale White served as co-chair of the Episcopal Initiative of the United Methodist Council of Bishops that produced In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace in 1986. In this address he reflects upon nuclearism as the peak of the "pyramid of violence". Conventional weapons are at the heart of the pyramid, proliferating worldwide and fueled by the industries of the "arms merchant of the world", the US. At the base of the pyramid, the runaway proliferation of automatic weapons and handguns infect our violent urban streets and even filter into our schools. Bishop White challenges the morality of war-making systems that produce these results. He concludes by discussion the role of communities of faith in opposing nuclearism.

We gathered in the Nevada desert at the entrance to the nuclear test site. As usual, we gathered before dawn. We wanted to be at the site to bring our witness to the employees as they came to work. We were part of the Nevada Desert Experience. Starting small years ago, with only the faithful Franciscan religious standing in a prayer vigil week after week, the witness has swelled to thousands. As many as 5,000 pilgrims have come at times. Protestants of all stripes have made pilgrimage there, as well as Roman Catholic and Orthodox believers. Jewish groups have come, and Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus and Jains. Devotees of the world's great religions have arrived to bear witness and to pray. Many Japanese delegations, some survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have traveled across the globe to bear witness to the madness of nuclearism. On this day, we are solemnly processing, with representatives of most of the organized religions of the world carrying symbols of their faith. I brought a large cross. The Shoshone religious leader, who never tired of reminding us that the government was illegally squatting on their land, brought a smoldering sweet-grass torch. We place our symbols on the altar, a great pile of stones gathered from sites affected by nuclearism all over the world. Some cross the cattle guard onto the nuclear grounds to be arrested.

During the 1980's, the communities of faith overcame their "nuclear numbness" and spoke again and again to denounce the nuclear arms race. The historic peace churches issued their 1980 New Call to Peacemaking. In the same year the Presbyterian Church (USA) released Peacemaking: The Believers' Calling and organized a national action program for peace. The next year the World Council of Churches held its Amsterdam Public Hearing. In 1983, the Roman Catholic Bishops issued The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response, a remarkable study of nuclear issues and a pastoral letter detailing the moral and spiritual impact of nuclearism on the faith. In 1986, the Council of Bishops, after two years of intensive study and debate, released In Defense of Creation, declaring:

"We write in defense of creation. We do so because the creation itself is under attack. Air and water, trees and fruits and flowers, birds and fish and cattle, all children and youth, women and men live under the darkening shadows of a threatening nuclear winter. We call The United Methodist Church to more faithful witness and action in the face of this worsening nuclear crisis. It is a crisis that threatens to assault not only the whole human family but planet earth itself, even while the arms race itself cruelly destroys millions of lives in conventional wars, repressive violence, and massive poverty. Therefore, we say a clear and unconditioned No to nuclear war and to any use of nuclear weapons. We conclude that nuclear deterrence is a position that cannot receive the church's blessing."

In concert with communities of faith world wide, we declared the deterrence doctrine, the only rationale for holding nuclear weapons, morally bankrupt. Over and over again, in language unique to their ethnic and religious traditions, people of faith have over these decades insisted that the holding of nuclear weapons and the threat to use them violates every value of the spiritual wisdom of the ages. Then the Cold War was over; the Soviet Union collapsed. "Now that is behind us", we said, "we can think about other things." The foundation money for peace action dried up. We spoke of a "peace dividend". We drifted back into "nuclear numbness". Nuclearism was last century's issue. Now see what has happened while we looked the other way!

In February, 2002, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of the "Doomsday Clock" from nine to seven minutes to midnight, the same setting at which the clock debuted 55 years ago. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, this is the third time the hand has moved toward doomsday. The Board of Directors declared:

We move the hands taking into account both negative and positive developments. The negative developments include too little progress on global nuclear disarmament; growing concerns about the security of nuclear weapons materials world wide; the continuing U.S. preference for unilateral action rather than cooperative international diplomacy; U.S. abandonment of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and U.S. efforts to thwart the enactment of international agreements designed to constrain proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; the crisis between India and Pakistan; terrorist efforts to acquire and use nuclear and biological weapons; and the growing inequality between rich and poor around the world that increases the potential for violence and war. If it were not for the positive changes highlighted later in this statement, the hands of the clock might have moved closer still.

The Atomic Scientists listed troubling trends: More than 31,000 nuclear weapons are still maintained by the eight known nuclear powers, a decrease of only 3,000 since 1998. Ninety-five percent of these weapons are in the US and Russia, and more than 16,000 are operationally deployed. Even if the US and Russia complete the announced reductions over the next 10 years, they will continue to target thousands of nuclear weapons against each other.---Most of the US warheads being removed from the active stockpile will be placed in storage rather than dismantled. Russia seeks a verifiable, binding agreement to destroy those weapons----Despite a campaign promise, the Bush administration keeps enough weapons on alert status to incinerate more than 2,000 Russian targets in as little as 30 minutes.---U.S. weapons laboratories are hard at work refining existing warheads and designing entirely new weapons, while the U.S. government refuses to recognize the overwhelming international support for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and refuses to participate in international meetings to discuss implementing the treaty.---Russia and the U.S. continue to maintain enormous stockpiles of fissile material, much of it in Russia poorly guarded, with growing cadres of terrorists eager to get their hands on it.

The New York Times of March 12, 2002, carried the startling caption: "America as Nuclear Rogue". The editor wrote: "If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state."

The editorial was in response to a new Pentagon planning paper, The Nuclear Posture Review. It recommends to the President that the number of nuclear weapons be reduced, but that the number of countries considered nuclear targets, the "Axis of Evil", be expanded. The report went on to encourage the development of a new class of nuclear weapons, deep-burrowing weapons designed to "hold at risk" any nation's hardened, underground nuclear or biological weapons and laboratories. One official held that the weapons are needed "to make sure there is no safe place to develop nuclear and biological weapons, and to discourage countries from even trying."

A follow-up op-ed piece by David Sanger in the Times on March 18 carried the caption "Thinking the Unthinkable, Again". He writes that the discussion now ensuing in Washington is to create a specialized weapon "harnessing a nuclear blast to dig deep underground and cause a seismic wave that would collapse an underground nuclear site". The idea would be to penetrate even deeper into a bunker than the B61 Mod 11 gravity bomb can do, and at the same time to "keep nuclear fallout to a minimum." Critics raised the warning that such thinking treats a nuclear weapon as just one more weapon available in the arsenal.

Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to calm the waters by insisting that the American nuclear policy has not changed. The United States would never use a nuclear weapon preemptively against a state that had promised not to build nuclear weapons of its own. Such an act would be a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But administration officials, preserving a stance of ambiguity, said all bets would be off if a country that has signed the treaty, such as Iraq, secretly built a nuclear weapon. But President Bush said that it is important to keep "rogue nations" guessing. It has long been an aspect of American policy to "keep them guessing". President Bush said: "We've got all options on the table, because we want to make it very clear to nations that you will not threaten the United States or use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies."

Critics of the "Nuclear Posture Review" were not reassured by the administration's insistence that "nothing has changed." Jim Wallis wrote in Sojourners, May-June, 2002: "Reversing more than two decades when nuclear weapons were seen as a last resort, to be used only if the nation's existence were threatened in a doomsday confrontation with another superpower, the new approach changes everything. It clearly plans the 'first use' of nuclear weapons, targets them against non-nuclear states, integrates 'nuclear capacity' into conventional military strategies and foreign policy objectives, and virtually erases any former restraints against their use by now justifying nuclear war against contingencies as vague and unspecified as 'surprising military developments'." Such recommendations clearly cross the nuclear threshold. Nuclear weapons are themselves weapons of terror, since they erase all distinctions between military and civilian casualties. This violates a central requirement for a Just War, deliberately targeting civilians.

How can we possible understand the mad, mad, mad resurgence of nuclearism? We need to reflect on the nature of all military systems. Military systems are domination systems. The term comes from Dr. Walter Wink's three-volume work on "principalities and powers", as defined in the New Testament. In warning of principalities and powers, he says, the early Christians were "discerning the actual spirituality at the center of the political, economic, and cultural institutions of their day." They intuited the demonic inner spirituality of the repressive and cruel institutional life of the Roman Empire. The people suffered terribly from the taxation that bled their resources, the totalitarian reign that stifled all attempts at reform, the sacred emblems of the Romans that violated their religious sensitivities. Their cosmology forced them to project the evil in the system in visionary form as a spiritual being residing in the heavens. Today we would withdraw the projections and see that the powerful and cruel spiritual forces we intuit emanate from the actual institutions that oppress us. The demons are not up there, but over there in the actual corporate entities and social mores that come under the control of exploitative power centers. They reflect the inner life of social and economic systems gone wrong.

Domination systems are truly demonic; they are mass killers. An analysis of the powerful systems threatening justice, peace, and the integrity of creation reveals the characteristics of domination systems: Deviant values of greed, lust for power, and brutality are the operative forces driving them, crushing all hope for human advance. These systems take on a destructive, self-generating life of their own, so powerful that they seem almost beyond human control. The early Christians knew that the demons disguise their true identity; they hide behind self-justifying mythologies that so permeate a culture that they seem to be absolute truth. Domination systems seduce, beguile or force decent people to do beastly things. Domination systems finally assume the guise of an idolatrous religion, a deviant belief structure that attracts zealous and influential devotees. (Navy War College in Newport, R.I.-Learning to do with great efficiency what shouldn't be done at all.)

If the word "demonic" seems too strong in describing these interlocking systems, recall the atmosphere in the nation in the late 80's that led to the Council of Bishops' study In Defense of Creation. The word "nuclear winter" entered our lexicon, as 100 scientists gathered in Washington after two years of study to warn that in a major nuclear interchange, smoke and dust would rise rapidly on the fire storm and circumnavigate the globe, blocking sunlight over much of the earth for weeks and threatening all life over much of the planet. Boutros-Boutros Ghali, Secretary General of the UN, cried: "What right does the US and the Soviet Union have to decide the fate of mankind?"

Powerful voices were crying alarm, as the firepower of a million Hiroshima's was poised and ready not only to incinerate millions of people, but also to threaten civilization and even the biosphere. We began to speak not only of genocide, but omnicide and biocide, all in the name of the great god "national security."

Dr. Bernard Lawn of Harvard, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for the International Physicians for Social Responsibility, said: "This build-up is like a cancer, the cells of which multiply because they have been genetically programmed to do no other. Pointing nuclear-tipped missiles at entire nations is an unprecedented act of moral depravity." Bertrand Russell wrote: "Our world has sprouted a weird concept of security and a warped sense of morality. Weapons are sheltered like treasures while children are exposed to incineration." George Kennan, receiving the Albert Einstein Peace Prize said: "We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile….We have done this helplessly, almost involuntarily; like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea."

We need to reflect that nuclearism is the peak of the "pyramid of violence". Conventional weapons are at the heart of the pyramid, proliferating worldwide and fueled by the industries of the "arms merchant of the world", the US. Our country sells over 70 percent of all the weapons purchased by developing nations, 90 percent to undemocratic states. At the base of the pyramid, the runaway proliferation of automatic weapons and hand guns infect our violent urban streets and even filter into our schools. What is the morality of this vast system of death-making devices?

Military systems thrive on lies.

As is often said, "The first casualty of war is the truth." We can also say that truth is in jeopardy in any society that is engulfed in preparations for war. Chinese General Sun Tzu said more than 2,000 years ago: "All warfare is based on deception."

Winston Churchill is reported to have said: "Lying finds its highest expression in war-time, when truth must be shielded by a body-guard of lies." Unfortunately, when we spin a fabric of lies to deceive an enemy, we end up deceiving ourselves. The General Accounting Office assessment of the first Gulf War concluded:

"The smoke the Pentagon blew in Mr. Hussein's eyes wafted back to the US. Many of the stories about infallible, invisible, almost invariably accurate weapons--selectively detailed, carefully crafted tales told to the American people and the Congress--were at best 'noble lies.'"

The GAO concluded that the reports of the military and the arms-makers were "overstated, misleading, inconsistent with the best available data, or unverifiable." The Pentagon response is that the GAO Report is outdated, since all of the defects in weaponry it reported have "now been fixed."

The Pentagon uses the phrase "perception control" for its "noble lies". It is nothing new. In the 1950's the Air Force warned of a "bomber gap" and a "missile gap" in order to win the budget presumably to fill those gaps. In 1961, General Eisenhower said the gaps were a "fiction", and made his solemn warning of a "military-industrial complex" which had taken on a life of its own, bereft of public accountability or even rationality. To justify continuing to spend billions of dollars on the ill-starred "Star Wars" projects, the Pentagon staged fake tests. Their purpose: "To justify future weapons spending."

Helen Caldicott, in her recent book The New Nuclear Danger, says the spoke from the Pentagon is wafting into our eyes again. She describes "a second 'Manhattan Project'-a massive scientific undertaking costing 5 to 6 billion dollars annually for the next ten to fifteen years, to design, test, and develop new nuclear weapons under the guise of ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S.'s current stockpile of nuclear weapons." (p. 4) She argues persuasively that this project, due to cost twice the outlay of the original Manhattan Project, is not only in violation of international treaty obligations, but is built upon a foundation of lies.

"Funny, they don't look like guinea pigs!" Beverly Walker used those words on a poster of her children that she showed us in a Symposium on Nuclear Radiation and the Environment in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Beverly, a pastor's wife and a professional archivist, grew up near the Hanford Nuclear Complex. The poster was part of a campaign to alert the public to the health crises emerging among those who were children during the years when pink clouds of radioactive smoke were released into the atmosphere from the Hanford Complex. Beverly said that as children they loved to play in the pink snow, and even make ice cream from it. "They lied to us!" Beverly exclaimed. "They told us it was safe!" Beverly told us of the birth defects her children had suffered, and the multiple health problems she and thousands of others continue to suffer.

We were briefed on the medical work the Houston Methodist Hospital Complex is doing with hospitals in Kazakhstan. In the Semipalatinsk region of Kazakhstan the Soviets had exploded some 500 nuclear warheads, 300 of them in the atmosphere. More than 400,000 persons were exposed repeatedly to radiation released into the atmosphere or seeping into the ground water. The people were told there was no danger. The medical consequences of the fall-out have been horrendous. All forms of cancer proliferate in the region; stillbirths, retardation and other birth defects are of epidemic proportions.

Slovoj Zizek, in the January-February, 2004 Foreign Policy, offered a tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the rationale for invading Iraq: "To understand why the Bush administration invaded Iraq, read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, not the National Security Strategy of the United States….To illustrate the weird logic of dreams, Sigmund Freud used to evoke a story about a borrowed kettle: When a friend accuses you of returning a borrowed kettle broken, your reply is, first, that you never borrowed the kettle; second, that you returned it unbroken, and third, that the kettle was already broken when you borrowed it. Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments, of course, confirms precisely what it endeavors to deny: that you, in fact, did borrow and break the kettle.

"A similar string of inconsistencies characterized the Bush Administrations' public justifications for the U.S. attack on Iraq in early 2003. First, the administration claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which posed a 'real and present danger' to his neighbors, to Israel, and to all democratic Western states. So far, no such weapons have been found (after more than 1,000 U.S. specialists have spent months looking for them). (Note: David Clay recently concluded that the Administration was wrong). Then, the administration argued that even if Saddam does not have any WMD, he was involved with al Qaeda in the September 11 attacks and therefore should be punished and prevented from launching future assaults. But even U.S. President George W. Bush had to concede in September 2003 that the United States 'had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th. Finally, there was the third level of justification, that even if there was no proof of a link with al Qaede Saddam's ruthless dictatorship was a threat to its neighbors and a catastrophe to its own people, and these facts were reason enough to topple it. True, but why topple Iraq and not other evil regimes, starting with Iran and North Korea, the two other members of Bush's infamous 'axis of evil.'

"What were the real underlying reasons for the attack? Effectively, there were three: first, a sincere ideological belief that the destiny of the United States is to bring democracy and prosperity to other nations; second the urge to brutally assert and signal unconditional U.S. hegemony; and third, the need to control Iraqi oil reserves.

"The second reason is the most important: The urge to demonstrate unconditional U.S. hegemony. The National Security Strategy calls for translating America's 'position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence' into 'decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty'. Thus the administration is using Iraq as a pretext or exemplary case to establish the parameters of the new world order, to assert the right of the United States to launch preventive strikes and thus to cement its status as the sole global policing power."

Iraq was already a secular state. "What is likely to emerge as a result of the U.S. occupation in Iraq is precisely a fundamentalist Muslim anti-American movement, directly linked t such movements in other Arab countries or countries with a Muslim presence. It is as it, in a contemporary display of the 'cunning of reason', some invisible hand of destiny repeatedly ensures that the U.S. intervention only makes more likely the outcomes the United States sought most to avoid."

What happens when government systematically lies to its people? Cynicism and alienation tear the fabric of democracy. The truth is the "oxygen" of democracy. When government lies, many decent people drop out of the political process altogether. They leave the field under the control of highly disciplined one-issue coalitions or ideologues of extreme persuasion. Civility becomes a casualty to strident, destructive rhetoric. Not only governments lose credibility; corporations that manipulate public opinion for their own greed cause a loss of confidence in all large corporate systems. Hate groups begin to proliferate. As we saw in Eastern Europe and the Philippines, the people may rise up en masse and declare a lying government illegitimate. It is disturbing to read the article by Robert Kagan in the March/April Foreign Affairs, under the title "Crisis of Legitimacy".

Military systems fatten on greed.

The Congressional Budget Resolution of 1997 provided an extravagant $266 billion for defense, some $12 billion more than the Pentagon requested. As children we were taught that we are unique among great nations. Our military is under the strict control of the civilian branch of government, we were told. For years now we have seen a reversal of this principle. Defense contractors and others who profit from military systems pressure the Congress to manufacture weapons systems, even over the objections of Pentagon strategists. For instance, the Salt II Treaty for a nuclear weapons role-back was strongly supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but opposed by the President and the Secretary of State.

Again and again local commercial interests have supported unwise military procurements. For many, the military is seen as a jobs program. Deliberately distributing sub-contracts for the production of strategic weapons systems into a range of congressional districts, the Pentagon garners political support. Large donations to the re-election campaigns of members of congress from arms manufacturers are clearly a conflict of interest. Read Helen Caldicott's book The New Nuclear Danger to see a thorough documentation of the interlocking systems of the military-industrial-scientific complex at work, in the chapter on "Corporate Madness and the Death Merchants."

Even before the terrorist attack, and the fear mongering that is driving the vast re-arming of America, the Pentagon, with its political and corporate supporters, insisted that we should continue wartime spending for the military so that we can "modernize our forces in order to retain technological dominance in weaponry." The credibility of that claim vanished with the demise of the Soviet Union. The Pentagon insists that we must be ready to fight two major wars at the same time, with no help from our allies. Who are these enemies? What happened to the allies who have supported us in every major war in this century? The late Admiral Eugene Carroll of the Center for Defense Information wrote, "Now it appears that America is engaged in an arms war with itself!"

Whatever happened to the Peace Dividend? Why are we spending so much on the military when we are trying to balance the Federal budget and reduce huge deficits, while at the same time insisting that we can no longer support the safety net for the poor? Admiral Carroll offers an answer:

"The not-so-hidden agenda of many members of Congress is delivering federal spending to their districts, and there are few better ways to do that than fattening the Pentagon budget and ordering expensive new weapons systems. The cold war provided political cover for this wasteful practice, but it is now indefensible."

If we need any further proof of the influence of greed on military systems, think only of Abdul Khan enriching himself and his cronies by secretly transporting nuclear secrets and technologies to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Military systems are driven by pride.

For generations, the Church has warned of the venal sin of "hubris"; pride leading to disaster. Is it possible that the strongest military power in human history might be brought down by its own hubris?

Now commentators are speaking openly, warning of America's Age of Empire. The newly announced US National Security Strategy doctrine, the "Bush Doctrine", according to Todd Gitlin in the January/February issue of Mother Jones, "is internationalism imperial-style-as in Rome, when Rome ruled. Its scope is breathtaking. There were large parts of the world that Rome couldn't reach, but the Bush doctrine recognizes no limits.

"The government of the United States will ask not so much as a by-your-leave. It will know when threats are emerging, partly formed, and it will not have to say how it knows, or be convincing about what it knows. The doctrine affirms all of the comforts and recognizes none of the dangers of empire. It ignores the costs of unbounded deployment and war. It acknowledges no danger that reckless swashbuckling helps recruit terrorists. It forgets that all empires fall-they cost too much, they incite too many enemies, they inspire contrary empires. The new imperialists think they are different. All empires do." (Pew Global Attitudes Project-the US is alienating 19 of 27 counties polled-not only Moslem countries, but Canada, Britain, Germany, South Korea. All admire our values, and hate our policies.)

Michael Ignatieff writes in the January 5th, 2003 New York Times Magazine, "With a military of unrivaled might, the United States rules a new kind of empire. Will this cost America its soul-or save it?"

Some weeks ago, I saw Bill Moyers interviewing Robert Woodruff, author of Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. Woodruff quoted from his book: "As I write, the United States is at the supreme moment of its power. Not far from where England was in 1897, when Rudyard Kipling wrote Recessional, as a reminder that power leads to arrogance and arrogance to a fall: "The tumult and the shouting dies, the captains and kings depart, still stands thine ancient sacrifice and a humble and a contrite heart. If drunk with the sight of power, we loose wild tongues that have not thee in awe, Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, be with us yet."

War-making systems turn on their masters.

War-making systems are Frankenstein monsters; once unleashed, they run an unpredictable course. Jesus said, "Those who live by the sword will die by the swords." Often, sad to say, they die by their own sword. This is the "boomerang effect" so often discussed.

Against the Soviets, for instance, we armed and trained the Mujahedin in Afghanistan. Now the weapons we provided are being used to destabilize the Punjab in India. The explosives we provided and the explosives experts we trained are in the hands of terrorists, many of whom see the United States as the enemy. As of this writing, Kabul has been over-run by a rebel group using arms left over from the East-West struggle. Now a million people, who long enjoyed one of the most liberal ways of life of any Muslim community in Central Asia, is under the control of a fanatical faction. A repressive code of conduct is being ruthlessly enforced. Women's rights are now a fiction; they are no longer allowed to hold jobs; they are covered from head to toe with the "chedori" when venturing out. Even the most ardent supporters of our involvement in the Afghan war can hardly believe this was our dream for the Afghan people.

Long ago, President Eisenhower said: "It is a question how far we can go in defending ourselves from without, without destroying ourselves from within." For centuries, war-making elites have devised ways to protect their own societies from brutalization as a result of their military adventures. As we ponder the gun-fetish on television, the unbridled power of the National Rifle Association, the growth of illegal militia, the violence on urban streets and in the homes of America, is it not clear that in brutalizing others we have brutalized ourselves?

War-making systems war against the earth.

The venerable watchdog of the planet's life-giving systems, the Worldwatch Institute concluded that the world's armed forces are the single largest polluters on earth. Modern warfare devastates vast areas. We need only to look at the effects of defoliation in Vietnam, or remember the burning oil wells in the Persian Gulf to confirm the Institute's judgment. Or we might ponder the horrifying, lingering effect of 100,000,000 land mines left over from conflicts in Africa and Asia to concede the point. The cost in malnutrition and even starvation in areas where thousands of acres cannot be farmed adds insult to the grave injury of thousands of men, women, and children who have lost limbs or life.

Moreover, the production, testing, and maintenance of conventional, chemical, biological and nuclear weapons generate enormous quantities of toxic and radioactive substances, and contaminate soil, air, and water. Vast areas in Eastern Europe are wastelands, with water and soil so polluted that they cannot support human life.

According to the World Watch Institute, the military use of aluminum, copper, platinum and other non-renewable resources exceeds the entire Third World demand for these metals. The US military burns enough fossil fuel each year to run the entire mass transit system in America for 14 years! This is a sobering thought, since the Institute predicts that within the lifetime of young people today, fossil fuel costs will rise beyond the purchasing power of even the wealthier nations.

Clearly we must make hard choices, and make them now. The biosphere cannot sustain forever our over-heated, highly militarized industrial economies. We often say that war is bad for children and other living things. War-making systems are also bad for the life-giving forces of Creation on planet earth.

The Role of Communities of Faith.

My message today is this: as leaders and prophets of communities of faith, we dare not let our people "be at ease in Zion" until they become involved in movements to free our people from the idolatry of systems of violence. What do we have to offer? History is replete with illustrations of the vital role church groups have played in awakening civil society. --Christian disciples are well equipped to confront the false theology of idolatrous institutional systems. --We are skilled in articulating coherent visions for new futures, guided by the accumulated wisdom of the ages. --We symbolize in our very being the finest values of the human experience. --We can call upon a host of committed and courageous persons of good will. --Constant litanies of repentance and forgiveness keep us in touch with the sinfulness of the human condition and the wonders of God's grace. --Most of all, prayer focuses our attention on the hurts of the human family, softens our attitudes of even our "enemies", and empowers us both to expect and to envision new futures.

Gary Gardner wrote a provocative article in the State of the World 2003, the annual publication of the World Watch Institute: "The quickening of religious interest in environmental issues suggests that a powerful new political alignment may be emerging that could greatly strengthen the effort to build a sustainable world." Science can write an objective story about "what is", but we need an emotive story of "what ought to be", the strength of religion. "A sustainable world cannot effectively be built without full engagement of the human spirit."

Gardner says that communities of faith bring at least five strong assets to the effort to build a sustainable world: the capacity to shape cosmologies (worldviews), moral authority, a large base of adherents, significant material resources, and community-building resources. Religions are experienced at informing our perspectives on issues of ultimate concern. They know how to inspire people and how to wield moral authority." Thomas Berry points out that religion is one of the major societal drivers of change in the world, along with education, business, and government.

Clearly Walter Wink was right on target when he wrote: "Churches, which continually complain about their powerlessness to induce change, are in fact in a privileged position to use the most powerful weapon of all: the power to delegitimate. But it is a spiritual power, spiritually discerned and spiritually exercised."

The Council of Bishops agreed: "The Church of Jesus Christ, in the power and unity of the Holy Spirit, is called to serve as an alternative community to an alienated and fractured world-a loving and peaceable international company of disciples transcending all governments, races, and ideologies; reaching out to all 'enemies'; and ministering to all the victims of poverty and oppression." (In Defense of Creation, p. 37.)
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Note: A fuller discussion of the moral nature of military systems may be found in my volume Making a Just Peace: Human Rights and Domination Systems (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1995).

 

April 25, 2001

The Honorable George W. Bush
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We understand that the strategic review which your administration now has underway is encompassing a review of the U.S. nuclear posture. We note that Congress, in mandating a nuclear posture review, specified that consideration should be given to "the relationship among United States nuclear deterrence policy, targeting, and arms control objectives." We believe, therefore, that the final product should contain a multi-year plan for nuclear disarmament on equal terms with specification of deterrence policy and targeting.

The law of the land in the form of Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) commits the United States and other nuclear-weapon states "to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament." President Lyndon Johnson and then President Richard Nixon signed this treaty, and the U.S. Senate ratified it in March 1969 by a bipartisan vote of 83 to 15. Affirmative votes were registered by Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen and by two future Senate Republican leaders, Senator Howard Baker and Senator Robert Dole.

The United States and other nuclear-weapon states recommitted themselves to Article VI when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was extended indefinitely in 1995. The United States concurred with the Final Document of the 2000 NPT Review Conference, which contains a commitment to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals."

Voices of Religion

Numerous faith-based organizations and religious leaders join in the call for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Thus, the Sixth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1983 stated
We believe that the time has come when the churches must unequivocally declare that the production and deployment as well as the use of nuclear weapons are a crime against humanity and that such activities must be condemned on ethical and theological grounds. Furthermore, we appeal for the institution of a universal covenant to this effect so that nuclear weapons and warfare are delegitimized and condemned as violation of international law.

Speaking for the Holy See at the United Nations in 1997, Archbishop Renato Martino, the Holy See's Permanent Observer at the UN, stated:

Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek for the 21st century. They cannot be justified. They deserve condemnation. The preservation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty demands an unequivocal commitment to their abolition....The world must move to the abolition of nuclear weapons through a universal, non-discriminatory ban with intensive inspection by a universal authority.

In a message on January 1, 2000 His Holiness the Dalai Lama called for a step-by-step approach to external disarmament. He stated, "We must first work for the total abolishment of nuclear weapons and gradually work up to total demilitarization throughout the world."

Many denominations in the United States have official policies calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. For instance, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1993 indicated that "today, the moral task is to proceed with deep cuts and ultimately to abolish these nuclear weapons entirely." They further stated, "The eventual elimination of nuclear weapons is more than a moral ideal; it should be a policy goal."

The United Methodist General Conference, the denomination's official governing body, in May 2000 stated the moral case against nuclear weapons.

We reaffirm the finding that nuclear weapons, whether used or threatened, are grossly evil and morally wrong. As an instrument of mass destruction, nuclear weapons slaughter the innocent and ravage the environment. When used as instruments of deterrence, nuclear weapons hold innocent people hostage for political and military purposes. Therefore, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is morally corrupt and spiritually bankrupt.

Therefore, we reaffirm the goal of total abolition of all nuclear weapons throughout Earth and space.

In June 2000 an interfaith group of 21 religious leaders joined 18 retired admirals and generals in a statement issued at the Washington National Cathedral in which they said:

We deeply believe that the long-term reliance on nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear powers, and the ever-present danger of their acquisition by others is morally untenable and militarily unjustifiable. They constitute a threat to the security of our nation, a peril to world peace, a danger to the whole human family.

They further stated:

It is...time for a great national and international discussion and examination of the true and full implications of reliance on nuclear weapons, to be followed by action leading to the international prohibition of these weapons."

Practical Steps

Thus, the voices of religion and the nations of the world as expressed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty agree on the long-range goal of the total elimination of nuclear weapons. The question is: how do we achieve that goal in a practicable manner? The 2000 NPT Review Conference provided an answer by specifying in its Final Document a series of "practical steps for systematic and progressive efforts to implement Article VI." These steps include:

• Early entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
• A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions pending entry into force of that treaty.
• Negotiation of a multilateral treaty banning the production of fissile material.
• Early entry into force and full implementation of START II and the conclusion of START III as soon as possible while preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability.
• Further efforts by the nuclear-weapon states to reduce their nuclear arsenals unilaterally.
• Further reduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons.
• Concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems.
• A diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimize the risk that these weapons will ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination.
• The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear-weapon states in the process leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons.

Many of these practical steps were also recommended by the 2000 United Methodist General Conference in the attached resolution, "Saying No to Nuclear Deterrence".

Nuclear Posture Review

In the current nuclear posture review the United States now has an opportunity to translate its treaty commitment for the elimination of nuclear weapons into specific policies and a schedule of concrete steps. Although we share the view of the United Methodist Council of Bishops, who in 1986 said "No" to nuclear deterrence, we recognize that official U.S. policy is unlikely to immediately and totally reverse its 50-year commitment to nuclear deterrence. However, we ask that U.S. nuclear policy reaffirm the treaty commitment to nuclear disarmament and specify "a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies". This diminishing role should include a no-first-use policy by the United States as a transitional measure on the way to total elimination.

With these basic commitments established the U.S. nuclear policy should outline a program of practical steps that will be carried out in the next four years and for another four year period beyond that. These should encompass (1) de-alerting the entire nuclear arsenal by removing weapons from hair-trigger alert, (2) deep cuts in the strategic arsenal through treaty negotiation and unilateral initiatives, (3) expanding the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program (Nunn-Lugar) to help Russia dismantle its nuclear weapons and achieve secure storage of fissile material, (4) vigorous international control of fissile material and ballistic missile technology, (5) use of diplomacy and financial incentives to curtail development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles by small nations, (6) maintenance of the nuclear testing moratorium and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and (7) preservation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty because of its restraining influence on strategic missile deployment.

We believe that this agenda is a far superior way to achieve security of the United States from nuclear attack than national missile defense, which your administration is so vigorously pursuing. We agreed with the United Methodist General Conference which has issued a call to "halt all efforts to develop and deploy strategic antimissile defense systems because they are illusory, unnecessary, and wasteful."

Public Participation

Finally we recommend that there be full public participation in the nuclear posture review, including public hearings by the Department of Defense and by appropriate committees of Congress. We ask that a draft nuclear posture statement be published for widespread public discussion with provision for ample feedback before it is finally adopted.

With the United States leading the way the world can move away from outmoded, 20th century reliance on nuclear weapons and can free the 21st century from the curse of human existence threatened by these terrible instruments of mass destruction. This would constitute true moral progress for humankind. Mr. President, please use the opportunity of the nuclear posture review to provide global leadership for this worthy, achievable goal.

With best regards,

Howard W. Hallman
Chair

Nuclear Posture Review: A Flawed Proposal
by Howard W. Hallman

In January 2002 the U.S. Department of Defense sent to Congress a secret report on the results of its comprehensive Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Mandated by Congress, the NPR lays out the direction for American nuclear forces for the next ten years and beyond. For the general public the Pentagon released only a bare outline of its recommendations. In March the Los Angeles Times got hold of the classified version and divulged greater details.

The fuller version reveals a set of policies that has some positive features but also contains serious flaws, some quite disturbing. The greatest flaw is the belief that nuclear weapons should remain forever. In contrast, the voices of religion say that possession, threatened use, and actual use of nuclear weapons is immoral and that all nuclear weapons should be eliminated.

Reductions Insufficient

On the positive side the Nuclear Posture Review offers the goal of 1,700 to 2,200 operationally deployed strategic warheads for the United States by 2012. This is a reduction from the approximately 6,500 warheads now deployed and the goal of 3,500 by 2007 under the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), which has never gone into effect. This is a step in the right redirection. If achieved, it will be a worthy improvement over the lack of reductions during the Clinton Administration, deadlocked as it was with the Republican-controlled Congress.

Deeper analysis, however, reveals that this reduction is not as significant as first appears. Previous arms control agreements, such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by President Reagan, and START I, signed by President George H.W. Bush, provided for the destruction of delivery vehicles (missiles, bombers) taken out of service. In contrast, the Nuclear Posture Review reveals an intent to preserve the delivery vehicles and warheads for possible redeployment

This goes against the principle of irreversibility that the United States agreed to during the 2000 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Also, it will encourage Russia to keep in reserve warheads and delivery vehicles take out of service. Because Russian security of nuclear weapons and fissile material is sometimes lax, this increases the risk that terrorist organizations could gain access.

A much wiser course would be to dismantle all downloaded warheads and their delivery systems. Moreover, reductions should be accomplished at a much faster pace and should go much deeper that now being considered by President Bush and Russian President Putin.

MAD Continues

The Nuclear Posture Review speaks of an intention to encourage and facilitate a new framework for cooperation with Russia. It indicates that the Cold War approach to deterrence is no longer appropriate. It declares a desire to end the relationship with Russia based on mutual assured destruction (MAD). In speeches and news conferences President Bush has repeatedly stated an intent to move away from MAD. So have Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that the "deterrent of massive retaliation, or MAD -- mutual assured destruction -- did not do anything to deter the Korean War or the Vietnam War or Desert Storm or dozens of other events."

Their words about moving away from MAD are contradicted by the level of the nuclear force to remain deployed and held in reserve. Administration officials explain that nuclear missiles will no longer be aimed at any particular target but will be available for whatever contingency might arise. But experts indicate that all of the contingencies specified in the NPR beyond Russia -- China and five non-nuclear states (see below) -- would require only a few hundred missiles to deal with if worse comes to worse. The only possible targets for the balance are in Russia.

As Secretary of State George Shultz under President Reagan observed, states design policy not on the basis of intention of other states but rather on their capabilities. Because Russia retains the capability of launching a massive attack on the United States, the U.S. must maintain a counter capability. This means that mutual assured destruction remains in effect between two nations now said to be friends.

The only way to end the MAD doctrine is to substantially reduce capability far below the numbers considered in the Nuclear Posture Review, perhaps to fewer than 200 or 100, and eventually to zero.

Expanded Role

As the United States built up its nuclear arsenal after World War II, the primary role for nuclear weapons was the deterrence of nuclear attack by another state possessing nuclear weapons. The second role until the Cold War ended was deterrence of a Soviet attack on Western Europe. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States made a commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any nation not possessing nuclear weapons or allied with a nuclear weapons state.

The Nuclear Posture Review of the Bush administration changes this. It indicates that nuclear strike capability should be available for various contingencies. It specifies: "North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya are among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies." The NPR also indicates that nuclear weapons should be used to deter attack by biological and chemical weapons. It adds that nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack, such as, deep underground bunkers and bio-weapon facilities.

When asked about this at a news conference, President Bush explained, "We've got all options on the table." This is a dangerous approach. The expanded role for nuclear weapons suggests greater legitimacy and encourages other nations to respond in kind. Moreover, it is immoral, for all options should not be on the table. Genocide is not a legitimate option. Slaughter of the innocent is not an acceptable option.

Testing and New Weapon Development

The desire to expand the role of nuclear weapons leads the Nuclear Posture Review to give consideration to return to nuclear weapon testing and development of new nuclear weapons. Although the NPT affirms President Bush's commitment to a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, it calls for the Department of Energy to reduce the time it would take to resume testing from the current two to three years to one year or so. Comments by the Pentagon spokesperson at a press briefing on the NPR and statements by other officials suggest that the Administration is looking toward the end of the test moratorium within a few years.

The NPR indicates that the current nuclear force is projected to remain until 2020 or longer. Meanwhile the Department of Defense will study alternatives for follow-ons. This could include a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to be operational in 2020, a new SLBM (submarine-launched ballistic missile) and a new SSBN (ballistic missile submarine) in 2030, and a new heavy bomber in 2040 as well as new warheads for all of them.

Thus, the Bush Administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces for at least the next 50 years. This is clearly in conflict with the goal of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is contrary to the recommendation of numerous religious bodies to achieve the global elimination of nuclear weapons.

A Faith Response

Because of such concerns, representatives of 25 national religious organizations have urged President Bush to send the Nuclear Posture Review back to the drawing boards. They propose that it should be reconfigured to incorporate nuclear disarmament components and specify a declining role for nuclear weapons in U.S. foreign and military policy.

An excellent disarmament agenda is available from the Final Document of the 2000 Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It encompasses a number of practical steps, such as: reduction in operational status of nuclear weapons system; continued moratorium on nuclear-weapon-test explosions; entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; irreversible reductions of strategic offensive weapons and also tactical nuclear weapons; increased transparency; engagement of all nuclear-weapon states in the process of achieving the total elimination of their nuclear weapons.

For some, this may sound too idealistic and impractical. It isn't. Numerous admirals and generals in their retirement have told us that nuclear weapons have no military utility. In June 2000 eighteen of them joined 21 top religious leaders in a statement, issued at the Washington National Cathedral, saying that "the long-term reliance on nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear powers, and the ever-present danger in their acquisition by others, is morally untenable and militarily unjustifiable. They added, "National security imperatives and ethical demands have converged to bring us to the necessity of outlawing and prohibiting nuclear weapons worldwide."

This is moral response for a moral nation. This is the correct nuclear posture for the United States.

National security does not rely on military strength. More arms mean less security for ordinary people. Increasingly, armaments serve to secure the positions of those in power. Military expansion by a country or group provokes similar expansion by others, and reliance on threats tends to increase the hostility and distrust that lead to war.

We believe that nations need to move toward general and complete disarmament, both domestically and internationally. We urge both gun control and arms control to reduce the dangers of personal, conventional and nuclear weapons.

Arms proliferation is rooted in the false premise that one can control one's enemy; it is also perpetuated by immense profits in arms sales and unhealthy dependence on military employment. We urge negotiated worldwide disarmament, supported by conversion of military industries to peaceful production and political settlements under world law. At the same time, based on our understanding of Christian principles, we urge unilateral disarmament, believing that other nations will respond affirmatively. We are prepared to take the risks of such a course, convinced that they are far smaller than the risks involved in the current course of endless weapons development.

eliminating all nuclear weapons and any nuclear power projects which could contribute to weapons production. Testing of nuclear weapons by both explosion and simulation should be permanently halted worldwide, as should the development and production of fissionable materials.

• New nuclear weapons development.
• De-alerting the nuclear arsenal
• Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty
• Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
• Missile defense