Pray with the Pope: For Peace, Do Away With Weapons

Every month Fr Chris Chatteris SJ reflects on Pope Francis’ prayer intention

Intention: We pray for the spread of peace and non-violence, by decreasing the use of weapons by states and citizens.

According to the US psychologist Stephen Pinker, humanity is safer now than it has been at any time in history.

In his book The Angels of Our Better Nature, Pinker crunches a lot of numbers to persuade us that modernity has brought a far greater stability and state of security than in previous ages.

Not everyone agrees with him, but even his critics would not want to return to the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. And refugees generally head to those kinds of societies which Pinker says provide the greater level of safety which his statistics demonstrate — societies with a reasonable degree of order and where the rule of law is generally respected and enforced.

Pinker accepts that this progress in the lessening of violence over the sweep of history is not inevitable. It is possible, he admits, that things might fall apart in the future and we might regress to a state where violence returns to the levels of, say, the Thirty Years War in Europe or the Mfecane here in Southern Africa.

Terrifying destructiveness

The current war in Ukraine and the rearming of the world as a result of this shocking conflict is a sure sign that we should not be complacent. The reach, precision and sheer destructiveness of the weapons being used in this war on the Steppes is utterly terrifying.

Apart from the civilian and military casualties, the capacity of these weapons to lay a land waste should be something to concentrate responsible minds.

Present weapon systems are bad enough, but consider this: the Russians have developed a nuclear torpedo which they claim can create an artificial tsunami that would inundate a coastal city and drown vast numbers of its inhabitants. Or consider a future battlefield in which autonomous drones do the killing and the decisions about the killing are taken by artificial intelligence.

If such cold killing machines are let loose upon enemy soldiers and civilians, then we are in a situation where the restraint of human moral consciousness is removed.

There are always rules of war, even if they are not always observed. The Geneva Convention is an attempt to regulate the conduct of war, but the challenge is to keep it up to date with the advance of military technology. Moral philosophers and moral theologians have their work cut out.

Weapons in the wrong hands

One of the reasons why governments are often reluctant to arm other warring states is the long-term effect of large quantities of arms. The problem is what to do with these arms when the war is over, and how to prevent them falling into untrustworthy private hands.

It is notoriously difficult to disarm a population once it has been armed, because weapons make certain types of people feel more secure, even if this sense of security is illusory. Imagine what would happen if the South African government were to propose a completely gun-free South Africa. Fear is a powerful negative emotion.

However, despite the grim climate, we must continue to hope and pray that Stephen Pinker is right and that the arc of history, despite obvious deviations, is bending towards a world with fewer arms in the hands of individuals and governments.