Towards
the Abolition of
Nuclear Weaponry:
A Theological Approach
International
Symposium fo Peace
Hiroshima, 3 August 2003
By
Johan
Galtung
Director and Founder,
TRANSCEND
TFF
associate
August 20, 2003
Lord Mayor, Hiroshima City, The Asahi Shimbun, Ladies,
Gentlemen,
We are 58 years away from 0815 in the morning of 0608
1945 when that B-29 dropped "Little Boy", and USA
committed nuclear genocide on Hiroshima, and then on
Nagasaki. The call for the abolition of nuclear weaponry
is as urgent as ever given the nuclear politics of USA,
North Korea, Israel, Iran and others. To understand
better the causes, we have to ask again why USA committed
this atrocity.
The decision was not made by any single person but by
a group so we are talking of collective motivation. Some
of the motivation was probably built around a desire to
bring the war to a quicker end and to impress the No. 2
contender for world power, the Soviet Union. But much
naivete is needed to assume that all motivation is
conscious, passes through the brain and in the collective
case is verbalized in a meeting and leaves a paper-trail
for historians to uncover, decipher and use as evidence.
For individual decisions we would readily assume deeper
motives, often unknown to the actor, located in his/her
subconscious, not articulated, leaving neither
sound-waves nor paper-trails. And that the verbal, oral
or written, serves to rationalize what comes from the
subconscious.
Why should collective decision-making be different?
Because they sometimes record not only conclusions but
even the premisses? But why should they verbalize
collectively shared motivations they sense but do not
articulate because they are taken for granted as normal
and natural and stored in the "gut-brain" rather than the
head-brain, in other words in the collective subconscious
or deep culture of the group? Why reiterate the obvious,
the trivial?
So the thesis is that the decision to drop the bomb,
not on an uninhabited island to demonstrate its
devastating power, but on a highly inhabited city,
derived from a deep culture in the deeper recesses of the
collective US elite mind. That act of genocide did not
spring only from a rational, political-military strategy
arrived at in ways open to public scrutiny and challenge
where deductions and factual basis are concerned. The act
was also justified in a theological discourse based on
irrational articles of faith, not open to scrutiny, and
certainly not to challenge:
[1] Americans are God's Chosen People;
[2] The President is their Chosen Leader,
hence semi-Divine;
[3] The USA is their Promised Land, with a
Manifest Destiny.
This was adapted for "New Cana'an" from Genesis
1:15-17. The similarity to Israeli self-conception from
the time of King David serves today as a basis for joint
Jewish-Christian fundamentalism, on the assumption that
Messiah/First Coming=Christ/Second Coming.
That elect position in the world puts the USA above
all other countries, accountable to nobody but God,
certainly not to the UN with so many non-God like
members, let alone an ICC. Their "laws" are laws for the
lesser fry, not for a country that close to God: "Being
elect is a theological notion that means: not as a matter
of merit but by a supernatural judgment, a free, even
capricious, determination by God a person is chosen for
something exceptional and extraordinary" (Milan
Kundera)
We are dealing here with a pre-Enlightenment,
pre-modern niche in US culture, brought across the
Atlantic on ships from England in the 1620s to what was
to become the USA, revealed to Cotton Mather the
theologian, and to John Winthrop the statesman, the first
governor of Massachusetts and the real founder of the
USA, sedimented in the deep culture as the civic religion
of the USA, very difficult to uproot. Like the nuclear
problem.
Such articles of faith are particularly meaningful
to
[1] the Anglo-Saxons in the USA, the people
originally chosen;
[2] the fundamentalist Christians like those
found in the Southern Baptist Convention in the US South,
and
[3] the military whose task it may be to enact
such tenets of faith, also most densely packed in the US
South.
In short, particularly meaningful in the US South
where these three categories are found in large
quantities. That part of the USA lost the Civil War on 9
April 1865 but is currently in power. Michael Lind, in
his Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern
Takeover of American Politics (New York: Basic Books,
2003) tells how. At present US deep culture = US surface
culture, comes forth with shock and awe clarity. The Bush
regime rests on Big Business Economics+Neocon
Geopolitics+Christian Fundamentalism
The Pilgrims of the 1620s referred to themselves as
"Saints"; the implication being that they were surrounded
by non-saints. They saw the workings of Satan everywhere.
Today 68% of Americans believe in Satan as an active
force (in the South of the USA also as the force behind
the UN and the European Union) as against 34% believing
in the theory of evolution. A heavy, deeply entrenched
pre-modern niche, preserving Old Time culture. Such
niches are found as enclaves in all countries, like the
17th century French spoken by many in the province of
Quebec, Canada. But this niche, bypassed by
Enlightenment, is in the deep culture of WASP elites,
defining the civic religion, spreading all over the
nation.
The rest is simple: a God-like country will worship
God-like weapons capable of carrying out God's=USA's
wrath and punishment:
"The fires came forth from Jehovah's hand and burned
up the two hundred and fifty men who were offering
incense" (Numbers 16:35). The Japanese had attacked a
Sacred Land, so multiply by 1,000 to come closer to the
number of Hiroshima-Nagasaki victims.
To be mandated by a covenant to enact Divine
punishment is not revenge/retaliation. Revenge is for
conventional countries, and to be carried out with
conventional weapons. Non God-like, let alone satanic
countries, should never possess god-like weapons.
The production of new nuclear weapons and doctrines,
known only to the President and His circle, follows, as
do wars on those who are non God-like with uppity
attitudes against the USA, like Iran and North Korea,
suspected of (close to) nuclear capability.
To God-like countries God-like weapons. And if God has
chosen only one country, that country has to have weapons
like no others. Nuclear disarmament is possible, but only
if alternative weapons inspiring shock and awe, tremendum
fascinans, are already developed and possessed by the
God-like country. And that country, accountable to God
only, decides over such matters itself, not a group of
ordinary ambassadors, foreign ministers etc.
The same applies to world public opinion, like the 10
million+ manifestation on 15 February 2003 in 600 places
around the world of a clear NO! to the foretold US/UK
attack on Iraq. Even a world parliament would not count.
The US Congress matters, however, because only Chosen
People, Americans, vote. But even Chosen People may be
misled by Satan, so they may also have to be properly
informed of God's Will - and TV spots cost lots of
money.
A God-like country is condemned to exceptionalism,
having not only the right, nay, the duty to step
unilaterally out of treaties and conventions with mutual
rights and obligations for ordinary countries if they
prevent God's own country from exercising its divine
mandate properly. God = USA is causa sui, its own cause,
its own decision-maker, unbound by commoners.
Exceptionalism and exceptional weaponry for an
exceptional country.
That nuclear weapons are special, transmilitary,
instruments of destruction is not only a US theme.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Pakistani leader later executed,
referred to a Pakistani bomb as an "Islamic bomb". The
general drift for Bomb tests is eastward: from the US
Protestant bomb 1945, the Soviet Orthodox/Communist bomb
1949, the UK Anglican bomb 1952, the French
Catholic/Secular bomb 1960, the Chinese Confucian bomb
1964, the Israeli Judaic bomb l965(?), the Hindu test
1974, and the Islamic bomb 1998.
In this perspective nuclear proliferation is an effort
to preserve and assert civilizations, an existential sine
qua non rather than as part of an actio-reactio arms race
with one bomb stimulating another across conflict
faultlines. Militarily nuclear bombs are problematic,
better for having than using, even when miniaturized and
even when the energy profile is more EMP/kinetic.
This process was started by the Most Chosen Nation
(unlike the Most Favored Nation of international economic
discourse not the be extended to others). We also note
that from a world religion point of view the Buddhist and
Shinto bombs are missing. And the (dirty) bombs of the
lesser, not "world", civilizations.
The Buddhist bomb sounds like an oxymoron, but state
Buddhism might produce such a thing. Meanwhile India
offended Buddhists by the outrageous codeword for its
1998 detonation of a nuclear bomb, this time not only a
"nuclear device": "The Buddha has smiled".
And as to the Shinto bomb: there is no scarcity of
high ranking Japanese itching to fill that gap, thereby
"normalizing Japan", like they once wanted to normalize
and "modernize" through empire-building. The third
criterion of world upper class status, a permanent seat
in the Security Council, is, of course, also pursued by
the same type of people, and not only in Japan.
But the similarities between the USA and Japan are
deeper. Once also a God-drunk nation Japan was convinced
that the Emperor, the tenno (heavenly?) was the
biological descendant of the Sun Goddess,
Amaterasu-omikami, and the Japanese the instruments of
divinely inspired action. "A divine country centered on
the Emperor" in ex-Prime Minister Mori's memorable words,
letting the collective subconscious come forth without
passing his brain where a moment's reflection would have
triggered warning lights. A solid niche of non-modernity
and not-Enlightenment that one, similar to the US niche,
good reason for launching them on collision courses.
A Chosen, but defeated, People Japan had a theodise
problem. If chosen, why were we left by the wayside by
the Divine? One interpretation is that the Chosen People
did not merit protection, not having fulfilled its part
of the sacred covenant. Another would be that the Divine
had not fulfilled its part and hence no longer merited
that people's devotion. Either way Japan was left with a
gaping hole in its cosmogony: a dechosen people in the
wilderness, with the position as Divine Guiding Light
vacant.
The Sun Goddess-Tenno-Japanese people constellation
having been beaten by the God-US President-American
people constellation made the USA an obvious candidate
for that vacancy, with democracy making the elected
elect. And thus Japan became a monotheistic country, with
God having a name. The name of God: the USA.
Having committed the Hiroshima-Nagasaki double
genocide Japan now had one more theodise problem to come
to grips with. Like a disaster visiting a Christian
community the local parson may have to make up his mind
quickly: is this God=USA punishing us for our sins? Or
God=USA trying to test us or teach us something? Or - lo
and behold - could USA be Satan at work and not God at
all?
Maybe the first interpretation became the majority
view: we Japanese have sinned, as evidenced by the fact
that we were defeated, in our idolatry, our devotion to
false gods, and fully deserve being stripped of both
divinity and the right to wage war. Democracy and Article
9 became their mantra, the latter supposedly ushering in
peace the more frequently it is chanted.
But a growing proportion started picking up the second
interpretation: God/USA is teaching us something. This is
what you can achieve if you have such weapons. What we
did unto you, making you submit, you can do unto others.
"Normalizing Japan" became their mantra, eagerly
imitating the Great Master, USA.
The third interpretation, USA as Satan, was picked up
both to the left and to the right of the Japanese
political spectrum. The left saw Hiroshima-Nagasaki as
Satan's Empire-building, rejected USA=God, and is still
searching for a new God. The "realist" right saw USA as
Satan's tool to impede Japanese Empire-building, but also
as God's Way, Shinto, for Japan, in a Satanic world.
Those who see the USA as Satan may find interesting
support in standard Christian theology. God punishes by
sudden acts of decreation, eliminating the life of which
He is the Prime Creator. God does not torture; Satan
does, in Hell. But USA=God used for punishment a fire
that included secondary radioactivity, exposing thousands
to the slow, agonizing death brought about by tissue
damage. Does God really do such things? It certainly
happened. So what do true believers do faced with this
massive cognitive dissonance? Denial, of course,
selective inattention. The US- imposed tabu on reporting
radioactivity can be understood as a way of preserving
the purity of God's motive. And this, then, spills over
into under-reporting radioactivity everywhere.
We would assume such deep culture themes over time to
recede from conscious layers in Japanese elites to
subconscious recesses. The theme will then come forth
under the 3C conditions of Crisis, Complexity and the
need for Consensus. After 9/11 Nostradamus was often
consulted on amazon.com in the USA. And Japan obediently
added occupation to the US/UK illegal aggression. India
not.
But Germany had also adopted USA as a God-substitute
after the Second world war, but chose another course: no
German soldier in Iraq. How can we explain that? And EU
reluctance in general?
Because the German elite, with deep support from the
German people, had another God, a new God: the European
Union. Maybe it is like in science: a theory is not
discarded merely because the propositions derived from it
are not all confirmed. A theory is discarded because a
new theory has emerged even if that new theory also may
produce a number of unconfirmed, even disconfirmed,
hypotheses. The USA has non-God like, even satanic,
features. But that can always be denied or become the
object of selective inattention till an alternative
Guiding Light becomes sufficiently strong, even if also
with facets demanding heavy inattention.
This points to two complementary alternatives to
US=God for Japan in general, and for the Japanese elite
in particular.
The first is an East Asian Community, of China and
Taiwan, South and North Korea, Viet Nam, Japan and
Okinawa, possibly with the latter as a center. For this
Japan has to learn equality.
The second is a United Nations with a democratic
People's Assembly and a Security Council more like the
ECOSOC, enlarged, no veto powers and with the General and
eventually People's Assembly as ultimate authority. For
that Japan also has to learn equality. Women, youth,
NGOs/NPOs are ready. When will Tokyo follow?
But back to the USA and nuclear weaponry. The problem
is theological more than military/political. The hard,
fundamentalist Christian theology of certain WASP circles
has to be abandoned in favor of a softer, gentler
perspective, Christian or not. As long as USA sees itself
as God's trustee on earth, licensed to kill and dominate,
they are forced to pursue omniscience through CIA, NASA,
Office of Reconnaissance &c; omnipresence through
globalization; and omnipotence in the shape of ultimate
weapons, such as nuclear weaponry and other forms of WMD.
And as long as that happens the world will be a US Empire
and not a family of thriving nations.
The USA in general, and the US South in particular,
have been through this at least twice before, and with
positive outcomes.
The US South was convinced that slavery was their
right and their duty. The Bible mentions slaves without
rejecting slavery. And Antiquity, in Greece and in Rome,
combined slavery with the most exquisite in cultural
production. Greek columns, slavery, magnolia and
moonlight --. But a distinct culture came not from them
but from the Black slaves, drawing on their African
cultures.
Slavery was doomed because of doubts about legitimacy
more than from the civil war or treaties and conferences.
Even Reagan said that "nuclear arms must never be used",
possibly because of the strong opposition from the
Catholic church and the Methodists, from 1983, the very
same year when Reagan gave his Center of Evil and Star
Wars speeches. The key author of the powerful Catholic
pamphlet once told me that it was above all about a God
loving His Creation as opposed to a stern Puritan God out
to punish.
That struggle has to be both from the inside and the
outside of the USA, hand in hand. And possibly with the
Mother of Anglo- Saxons, England, playing a leading role,
like she did for slavery.
So the basic thesis of this paper is that we have to
rethink our thinking about nuclear weapons in general and
their abolition in particular given that the USA with its
atavisms is the kingpin.
The key lies in the word "abolition" because it
directs our thought, our discourse in general, toward
slavery and colonialism. And slavery and colonialism were
not abolished by tit-for-tat negotiations and maneuvers,
"I (slave-owner, colony-owner) cut down this much (on
slaves, colonies) provided you cut down that much, so
that neither of us gains any advantage by any unilateral
abolition." Western slavery and colonialism were based on
an entitlement, a right, legitimized by that particular
culture in general and its deep culture in particular, to
possess individuals and entire peoples, with their lands,
as property, like cattle or land, for agricultural or
mineral exploitation.
And abolition was not based on questioning,
challenging that right but rejecting it as totally false,
dead wrong, a blasphemy, fighting violently or
nonviolently against such evil institutions. Abolition
did not come about through a negotiated deal between
slave/colony-holders but by denying any entitlement to
possess slaves/colonies. There was nothing to negotiate
about because freedom, like survival, is
non-negotiable.
If the cause of abolition had had recourse to a
negotiated deal at the top only, then the two
institutions would probably still have been with us,
possibly in a slightly modified, "humanitarian" way. The
thesis about nuclear weapons is the same: the arms will
be with us at least as long as we try to deal with them
by way of Tokyo Forums, NPT, CTBT, and similar
instruments.
Like for slavery and colonialism the theological base
has to be challenged. And like for them this calls on all
peaceful forces.
©
TFF & the author 2003
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