Apocalypes: nuclear catastrophe in world politics
- Chicago University of Chicago Press 1982
- 315 p.
For as long as the people of Earth were organized into groups, it is apparent that these groups were in conflict. To protect themselves, the groups appear to have engaged in the creation of ever-more terrible implements of destruction. By continually threatening to use these implements against other groups, each group seems to have felt that it was pursuing peace. After the time which earthlings reckoned as their seventeenth century, the largest of these groups-which were called states or countries-elevated this threat system to the stature of law. To preserve the peace, they prepared for war. This was the guiding principle of states; the idea which be came the cornerstone of their relations with each other. Yet, despite the fact that this principle was proved false again and again by successively more destructive wars, the people of Earth clung stubbornly to their curious logic. By the end of the time which they called the twentieth century, the principle of "Peace through Strength" brought Planet Earth to the point of no return. What happened? It appears that earthlings might some. how have unlocked the secrets governing the nucleus of the atom and used those secrets to obliterate their own habitat. While much of this may sound incredible, the evidence through which we have sifted so carefully and systematically supports no other conclusion. The organisms that once lived on this desolate planet annihilated themselves by steadfastly holding to the view that safety springs from terror. We must conclude, therefore, that these beings were entirely ignorant of the laws of reason. This is, of course, a fictitious account. But as a fable for tomorrow, it describes an event that is all too likely-a ther monuclear holocaust that has burned the world into oblivion. Unless the people of Earth are quick to understand that a system built upon the threat to use nuclear weapons can never produce peace, they will surely have nuclear war. The fable will become fact.