Dear friends and family of the preborn child,
The pro-life community understands that LIFE is of paramount importance because without life there is nothing. We are the guardians of the Gift of Life given to Preborn Children yet to be – our nation’s children and grandchildren. But all of this presupposes a world intact and in one piece to be born into.
Nuclear war could change all that. Hence the pro-life community has a paramount interest in eliminating the threat of nuclear war.
Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, came up with the Nobel Prize to assuage his conscience for having created the greatest explosive force known to man at that time.
After the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Albert Einstein felt so guilty about the part he played in the creation of the atomic bomb that he spent the rest of his life working to prevent nuclear war.
In 1955, Einstein learned that he had an inoperable aneurysm of the stomach that could burst at any time. As he was entering the last weeks of his life, it is fitting that he focused on matters most important to him.
On April 11th, he signed the Einstein-Russell Manifesto. As Bertrand Russell later declared, “He remained sane in a mad world.” Out of that document came the Pugwash Conferences in which scientists and thinkers gathered annually to discuss how to control nuclear weapons.
Along with other scientists, Einstein signed on to a manifesto by scientists for the abolition of war sent to Einstein for his approval on April 5, 1955, and issued globally July 9, 1955. The concluding part of the document reads:
“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize and to acknowledge publically that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them consequently to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”
Even Einstein could not figure a way out of the morass the world was in over nuclear weapons. In Walter Isaacson’s biography, “Einstein: His life and his Universe”, Isaacson states in pertinent part at page 693:
“What Einstein envisioned was a world ‘government’ or ‘authority’ that had a monopoly on military power – he called it a supranational entity, rather than an ‘international entity’ because it would exist above its member nations rather than as a mediator among sovereign nations. The United Nations which was founded in October 1945 did not come close to meeting these criteria Einstein felt.”
Einstein noted that Alfred Nobel had created the Nobel Prize “to atone for having invented the most powerful explosive ever known up to his time.” Einstein went on to opine that he found himself in a similar situation:
“Today, the physicists who participated in forging the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all time are harassed by an equal feeling of responsibility, if not to say guilt.”
These sentiments caused Einstein in May of 1946 to take on the most prominent public policy role of his career. He became chairman of the newly formed “Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists” which was dedicated to nuclear arms control. In a fundraising telegram that month, Einstein wrote, “the unleased power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and thus we drift towards unparalleled catastrophe.”
As Einstein later put it, “Our generation has brought in to the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man’s discovery of fire.” He added, “This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms.”
One might respectfully proffer, however, that we are never going to do away with “narrow nationalisms”. Each country truly trusts only in themselves. The laws of human nature are opposed to any one country ceding power to another entity.
Ronald Reagan, in his fireside chats with Soviet Union President Gorbachev, at the time made great strides toward nuclear disarmament, but even he never abandoned ‘peace through strength’ or ‘trust, but verify’.
So where do we find ourselves today? Russia has long ago backed away from the disarmament treaties that Reagan and Gorbachev entered into. Nuclear weapons have proliferated among the nations. China, North Korea -both nuclear powers – have joined with Russia in an ‘axis of evil’.
Scripture tells us that there will always be wars and rumors of wars. Relying upon the Truth of Scripture we can never hope to achieve Einstein’s ideal of the “the elimination of war”, and given the laws of human nature, we will never get individual nation states to cede their sovereignty to a supra-national entity no matter how devised, to alone possess nuclear weapons and serve as an arbiter between nations.
Our only hope lies in the reduction, if not the elimination, of nuclear weapons in the world. Our only hope of achieving such phasing out of nuclear weapons is to offer something in return – each country gets something they need in exchange for reduction or elimination of nuclear weapons.
All countries need to eat. Russian and China right now depend upon imports of grain to feed their millions.
At the time of Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan while Jimmy Carter was President, I wrote a letter to the President suggesting that he cut off all shipments of our wheat to Russia and Russia would back out of Afghanistan. He did and Russia did.
In my letter, I pointed out that Russia raises more grain than anyone on the planet but they eat it and they have a shortfall. President Carter’s order cut off a shipment of 13 million metric tons of wheat out of the Port of New Orleans to Russia. To visualize this amount, if you had an imaginary train (each car holds 100 metric tons), the length of the train would stretch from the east coast to the west coast and halfway back.
As I remember, at that time Carter succeeded in also getting the cooperation of Canada and Australia in the wheat embargo against Russia, but we were the big player. Time magazine ran a front cover entirely made up of a picture of a golden field of grain with the caption “Grain as a weapon”. America had flexed the muscle of its grain and discovered its strength. Later I received a letter from Ed Meese on White House stationary (close confident and advisor to Ronald Reagan) and I believe they quietly used the clout of America’s grain in their successful negotiations with Russia.
Approximately 20 years ago, I read a piece in the Washington Post where a former member of President Carter’s cabinet was reminiscing about his days in the Carter Administration. He said that the President walked in to a cabinet meeting one day after Russia had invaded Afghanistan and surprisingly announced that he was going to cut off all grain to Russia. They told him that he could not do something like that; that America had never used agricultural products as a weapon and they said to him, “Mr. President, let us get you a study first.” to which the President replied, “I’m doing it! Get me the study later.”
In today’s world, Russia still needs to feed its millions and is dependent upon grain imports. Indeed they are presently after the bread basket of the Ukraine. (It is about more than ‘Restoring the boundaries of the old Soviet Union) China is dependent on imports of American grain and soy beans to feed its millions. The other nuclear powers are in the same boat.
We need to offer other countries more than the ‘ideal’ of nuclear disarmament (Reagan got as far as we are ever going to get pursuing a mutual “ideal” and he needed a willing head of the Soviet Union who shared his vision and ideals – but when they were both gone it didn’t last long.)
Food is something we need day by day and year by year. We need to make it the quid pro quo in future nuclear disarmament. We need to use Einstein’s vision of a supra-legislative world body but make it a body elected to oversee import and export of grain, foodstuffs and other essential commodities including oil – not a world government. The U.S. could take the lead in setting it up along with Britain, France and Germany.
Other nations wishing to obtain grain and food stuffs would have to meet the terms of this Supra-legislature body including joining same and agreeing to a phase out of nuclear weapons to include inspection and verification (Reagan’s trust, but verify). Can it be done? It MUST be done!
You don’t threaten nuclear war to obtain much needed grain (if you blow up the country that won’t give you the grain, you blow up the grain and leave it irradiated not fit for anyone’s use). ‘Peace through strength’ needs to become ‘peace through the strength of America’s and the free world’s grain producers (to include such countries as Canada and Australia)’. A supra-intending supra-world elected body needs to be put in place to accomplish this with its charter limiting its powers to world grain and essential commodity distribution for peace and the phase out of nuclear weapons – not a so-called ‘world government’. It is not a world government but rather it is the servant of all governments of the world seeking peace.
Can it be done? It MUST be done!
Let us pray.
With a new administration taking over January 20th will come new ideas. Perhaps this can be one of them.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Martin Palmer