Speaking recently at Hiroshima, Japan, at the site of our atomic bomb’s widespread devastation and carnage in August 1945, (approaching 300,000 civilian deaths and counting still), Pope Francis forcefully and rightly condemned the very existence of nuclear missiles worldwide.
Today, there are 15,000 nuclear missiles worldwide, some in the U.S. that are 29 times more devastating. Ninety percent are divided between Russia and the U.S., with a thousand spread across seven other nations, including North Korea, which is building four to seven more each year, according to the James Clapper, former director of national intelligence.
Analyzing the medical needs arising from only one explosion upon any major city, the Physicians For Social Responsibility believe that the entire world’s supply of doctors and personnel would be overwhelmed by the hundreds of thousands of victims. Furthermore, if a mere 1% of all warheads were launched, not only millions would die either instantly or torturously slowly, but also a vast highly radioactive cloud would emerge, hovering over the globe, an invisibly macabre spirit (the very antithesis of the Hebrew ruah-spirit as described in the beginning of the Book of Genesis). The cloud would gradually poison the elements of water, wind and earth that sustain healthful life.
To borrow from John Milton’s magnificently insightful “Paradise Lost,” we would have then followed the scheme of arrogant Lucifer, whose outcome “made a hell out of heaven.”
To make matters worse, or even more ominous, the current president calls upon us to spend no less than a staggering $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to keep our stockpile the most efficient, the most toxic and the most deadly. The argument goes that these measures would act as a deterrent to any nation thinking of waging an all-out war. The only problem is that in so doing, no one escapes the invisible particles that would spread where wind deposits it, resulting in what is known as omnicide.
Unless we begin to take the pope’s apocalyptic assessment seriously, we will continue to remain helplessly inured, ceding authority over the lives of our entire civilization, to the myopic military-industrial complex, hell bent on profits for shareholders at any cost, even, as it would turn out, to themselves and their children’s children.
At a recent impeachment-investigation hearing, our White House expert on Russian matters, Fiona Hill, stated that given the shocking depletion of our present diplomatic corps by this administration, she is forced to conclude that, “I am not an alarmist. I’m a realist.”
The reality is that we must wake up and sound the alarm, declaring ourselves to be nuclear abolitionists; refusing to accept the potentially suicidal status quo of our military; pressuring Congress to enact Rep. McGovern and Lee’s H.R. 2419, to prohibit a first strike; exposing the 26 companies that produce parts for the assembly of warheads; and insisting that the U.S. take seriously the 2017 U.N. Treaty On The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, soon to make any nation’s possession an international crime.
Fifty nations must ratify it, 33 have already ratified it, and nearly 20 are close to doing so. Mechanisms would be in place for a safe and orderly global disarmament, as outlined in the treaty.
Like the present environmental emergency before us everywhere, there would be no reversing the damage already done. There is no return to normalcy, should a nuclear exchange break out, even if accidently. Pope Francis has sounded the alarm in obedience to the prophet Jesus, who would say of him and every nuclear abolitionist:
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called (daughters) and sons of God.”
The Rev. Peter Kakos lives in Northampton.