"After about 1850 the peace movement on both sides of the Atlantic gave way before the coming of war. In Europe the Crimean War, the Polish Revolution, and the wars for the unification of Italy and Germany brought the collapse, and in America peace was laid aside, if not forgotten, in the mounting tension over slavery. Dearer than their pacifism to many of those who protested against the Mexican War was their devotion to the cause of abolition. As we have seen, many former peace advocates turned militant over the 'Crime of Kansas' or the execution of John Brown. When the Civil War began, Theodore Parker, in a letter to a friend, epitomized this shift of opinion: 'I think we should agree about war. I hate it, deplore it, but yet see its necessity. All the great charters of humanity have been writ in blood, and must continue to be for some centuries.'"
"...must continue to be for some centuries," Theodore Parker wrote over a hundred years ago.
As i write this introduction to my book, the "Euromissiles" elimination treaty is before the
U.S. Senate for ratification (or rejection). What comes to mind is a statement strangely
similar to Parker's, by Dr. Andrei Sakharov, "the father of the Soviet bomb," in his "open
letter" to Dr. Sidney Drell a number of years ago, published in the Winter-1983 edition of
Foreign Affairs as: 'THE DANGER OF THERMONUCLEAR WAR'.
In examining scenarios for possible nuclear war and trying to determine how to prevent any of
them from becoming reality, Dr. Sakharov noted that the world nuclear weapons stockpiles
stood at "50,000" (according to United Nations experts in 1980).
What Dr. Sakharov wrote to his friend Dr. Drell was:
"Of course I realize that in attempting not to lag behind a potential enemy in any way, we condemn ourselves to an arms race that is tragic in a world with so many critical problems admitting of no delay. But the main danger is slipping into an all-out nuclear war. If the probability of such an outcome could be reduced at the cost of another ten or fifteen years of the arms race, then perhaps that price must be paid while, at the same time, diplomatic, economic, ideological, political, cultural, and social efforts are made to prevent a war."
The 1987 American-Soviet "Euromissiles" elimination deal would reduce the world nuclear stockpiles by approximately 1 to 2%.
It's not hard to understand that we have a long way to go yet before "all of us" can rest assured that it will not be a nuclear war that is the reason for our individual or collective demise.
Conflict/war between humans with differing ambitions never in history was either begun or
settled by a single event on a single day.
From this perspective, it isn't at all unreasonable to believe that Mikhail Gorbachev
deliberately maneuvered to have the 1987 Soviet-American Summit begin on the forty-sixth
anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour.
So, it becomes clear, the struggle for true and lasting peace has not been settled by the
products of that summit alone.
The only major agreement struck is but one "new" step in our "New World."