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In this book, scholars on opposite sides in the world's two greatest armed camps have assembled evidence that war must end. The book is in three sections: the nuclear imperative, the global thinking which must replace war thinking, and the process of change. Each section contains its own "overview." While every contributor may not agree with every word which is contained here, the fact that all are willing to be published simultaneously in the Soviet Union in Russian, and in the United States in English, is itself evidence of a breakthrough in communication between these two diverse societies. The story of the project, itself, overcoming the difficulties posed by these two frames of reference, is discussed under the heading, "Writing This Book."
War is the issue.
War, and the root causes of war. War, which at any time could escalate to total holocaust, end billions of years of development of our life-support system, end all children, all culture, all love, and all life.
War is the challenge to the modern mind as the collapse of slavery and serfdom were the challenges for Americans and Russians a century ago. Today, the failure of war calls us to change our view of the world even more profoundly than the discovery that the Earth is round five centuries ago.
War is the issue for this generation. War, indiscriminate and brutal, which destroys the fragile civil processes it is designed to protect, wastes and ravages everything in its path, and twice in our century has decimated a generation of young men. War, which after a long evolution of its own, has come to its last chapter in human history.
War has been made obsolete by the total, suicidal, destructive power of nuclear weapons. It has been made obsolete by the gradually increasing consciousness that cannons cannot produce social justice; only justice can produce justice; only compassion can produce compassion; only brotherhood can produce brotherhood.
War is the issue for this generation, and global thinking is the challenge.
Compelled by the threat of a nuclear Armegeddon, humans must now raise themselves to a new dimension, a new level of consciousness beyond war. They must move to a new and sunlit plain of human maturity. That is the challenge to change. It is a challenge to every human being to make a shift of evolutionary proportions.
The evidence is overwhelming that if we do not do this, the species will have a short tenure on this planet. Wars are raging in Central America, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Africa, and Ireland. The interests of the nuclear powers intersect in all the regions of the globe, and infect every small war with the potential to become the last, nuclear, war. No corner of this Earth is immune from great power interests, from war, or from the threat of war.
The book does not arise out of recrimination. There is no time for that. It is time to talk about mutual survival, physically, politically, and economically. Economics and politics are not off-limits here. But blame for the past is. This book is about the present and the way we can insure the future.
An effort such as this does not supplant what the leadership of the USSR and US has done at Geneva and Reykjavik, and which one hopes will continue in further meetings aimed at significant arms control negotiations. Such meetings and the proposed reductions of nuclear forces in Europe - an interim step - are a healthy sign. These writings are designed to support them and to urge those in leadership to continue and to accelerate their efforts.
The work to be done by this generation, however, is beyond arms control.
An unabashed passion for survival drove this project. It could not be summed up better than it was by the writer Ales Adamovich, of Minsk, who, as a young man of sixteen, fought with the partisans in his native Byelorussia, and who knows war from awful, personal experience: "We must change in every way. We simply have no other choice."
Nuclear explosives can be made with about one coffee cup of plutonium. This plutonium is being produced in the civilian power plants of thirty-six countries. By the year 2000, there will be enough plutonium in the world for at least 500,000 nuclear weapons. Someday, somewhere, a coffee cup full will be stolen, illegally sold, or taken by terrorists in a raid and made into a nuclear weapon by someone who is not bound by the treaties and customs of the civilized world.1
The rest is easier. The design and manufacture of nuclear weapons is not a mystery to the international scientific community. For the possessor of the material, turning it into a nuclear weapon that can be delivered by boat, train, or plane anywhere in the world would not be that difficult.
That such a detonation - in New York, London, or Moscow - would start an all-out nuclear exchange is not certain. But the risk is not negligible. This is one way that nuclear war could start.
There are numerous other ways.
As we come to the end of the twentieth century, an intricate web of security systems is tied together more tightly than was Europe on the eve of World War I. Today's complex warning and weapons systems observe and react to one another, they are intricately interconnected. In such tightly coupled systems a perturbation in one part is quickly amplified throughout the entire system.2
When one great power system makes a move, the other is programmed to respond with its own increase in readiness. This, in turn, is observed by the first. Whether or not the first country originally planned to prepare for war, it is programmed to respond to the new suspicious conduct of its adversary. Since nuclear missiles could arrive virtually anywhere in the world from either side within minutes of launch, the second country has no choice but to step up its readiness. A continuation of escalations is thus preprogrammed by the nuclear powers. Lack of time or opportunity for human intervention may allow the escalations to spiral within a short time, and in the end to lead to a nuclear exchange, although neither power may know the actual first cause. The system responses to each other may cause the war, independent of the original triggering event.3
It is a fearful parallel that at the beginning of World War I, interlocking mobilization plans developed a momentum of their own. Today, interlocking warning systems carry the same potential, except that instead of requiring weeks to occur, they could escalate to planetary destruction within minutes.
A nuclear exchange could also be triggered by computer error. A flock of geese, a rising moon, a mismanufactured chip sets off an alarm, starts a series of computer-controlled events which humans have only minutes to intercept. False alarms happen on the average of almost three times a week in the US. It is reasonable to expect a more or less equal number in the Soviet Union. There were 1,152 "moderately serious false alarms" between 1977 and 1984, in US systems alone.4
To protect against unintended nuclear war, these systems have built-in redundancy. That is, there are systems to check on systems. There is also radar to check the readings of satellites, and satellites to verify the readings of radar, and if one does not confirm the other, then it is assumed there is no real attack. Nevertheless, the probability that satellite error will overlap radar error and create two wrong messages of missiles on the way cannot be at all excluded.5 In today's nuclear systems, complexity is built upon complexity. The very complexity increases the probability of error. At some point computerized complexity does not increase security but decreases it.6
Computer error is so common and overlapping, computer error so within the realm of possibility, design error so untestable, and specification omissions so unknowable, that technology provides an unsafe rampart behind which to rest the future of humankind. Once missiles have been launched, or are suspected, there is no time for adequate intervention of human intuition, no deliberation time, no calling into play the values of generations of social development. The human mind which has been trained for millenia to understand the body language of physical threats is now faced with the probability of decisions about the future of civilization which must be made in minutes against no visible enemy.7
Minutes are not enough. But minutes are all that an incoming missile will allow. "Mr. President, Kosygin wants to talk to you... on the hotline," remembers former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, about an incident that took place at seven-fifteen one morning: "What the hell do you mean?" asked President Johnson sleepily, and then, "What do you think I ought to say?" It was 1967, the Suez crisis, and Premier Kosygin was telling the president of the United States that if he wanted war, he would have it. 8
Did Kosygin know that the president of the United States did not like to be awakened in the early morning? Did he know, whatever his purpose, whether morning or evening would be a good time to send the message? If the matter to be discussed included matters of war and peace, certainly that would be a prudent thing to know. Likewise, did President Johnson know anything of Kosygin? "Why don't we say you'll be down in twenty minutes," McNamara suggested in response to Kosygin's call. If missiles had been on the way toward the United States, twenty minutes would have been too long. There was a small chance that nuclear war had already started.
Security depends on people. People have to make the decisions. People in group situations act differently than they do individually. They very often give up their independent judgment, support a leader, go for consensus. Or, in tension, they get rigid, minds become paralyzed. Fear numbs, the mind fails to respond to new information.9
An example: At the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1962, the president's advisors knew that the Cuban resistance to the invasion would vastly outnumber the invaders, that the invasion had little chance. The objective reports also said that there was little to hope for in the way of a popular uprising of Cubans to support the invaders. But the president's advisors, and the president himself, ignored those reports. They were some of the best minds in the country; bright, informed, rigorous professionals. In the moment of decision, they operated as a group going for a goal with such enthusiasm that rationality was swept aside. They were acting in a way which we now know to be a natural and dangerous - and classic - group response to crisis.10
Neither rationality nor objective judgment is a dependable resource in crisis.
Institutional networks of military systems, one reacting to another, escalating the ante, computer error, design error, software inadequacy, redundant systems which add complexity to complexity; humans who react sleepily in the morning, or angrily in the night; all these add up to hurricane clouds on the horizon.
Terrorist attack, someone asleep at the switch, a leader reacting in frustration, none of these has by itself a very high statistical probability of causing nuclear war. But each has a probability of its own. Cumulatively, they all add up. Together, whether it be because of one cause or another, there are too many potential causes to ignore. Combined, the probability is so great that sooner or later the holocaust is certain. That is the danger. All together, there are too many causes. No matter how improbable each may be individually, the cumulative probability that one or another will lead to war is not small at all. It is absolutely certain if we continue in our present mode.
All these sources of risk stem from a single mind-set, the mind-set of war: War is possible, even acceptable, if need be. That mind-set breeds a multitude of preparations, no one of which is great in its risk, but which together make the risk overwhelming.
That is the new reality of the nuclear age.
Yet we plunge ahead, push the ships of state ever faster into a heading wind, ignore the warnings; redouble our weapons, plan weapons for the sky, radars to check radars, computers to check computers, hold the course. Steady the course, forward into the hurricane, dead ahead into the hurricane. On this course, the probability of nuclear war is what statisticians describe as "probability one." "Probability one-half" would be a 50 percent chance. Probability one is 100 percent. It is certain.11
That is the imperative. In the nuclear age if we do not respond to nuclear weapons by eliminating our reliance upon war, we will use them. Probability one. And if we use them, civilization - perhaps all life on this planet - will end. That is the challenge to change.
...we ought to recognize each other's humanity, as we move move to solve today's complex problems dealing with political relations, economics, and social life.12
The most important message is that changes in human values, modes of thinking, and visions of the future are needed for us to live more sustainably and harmoniously - indeed to survive - in an interdependent world.13
The nuclear imperative is the setting for modern times. It drives us to take account, to take inventory. It calls us to examine our fundamental perceptions concerning our loyalties and allegiances. It summons us to lift our sights. It provokes us to ask what we have learned in history which will put us on a safer course, and what we are learning from science which will provide for our security more surely than has war, or the mentality of war.
To get us out of the present situation, new thinking will have to be more than a slogan. It will have to take into account these new nuclear dimensions of human life as surely as did Copernicus's discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun. In the same way, new thinking will have to guide new conduct.
Global thinking begins with the beauty and the simplicity of the unity principle discovered by the cosmonauts and astronauts during their flights in space.14
"What strikes me, is not only the beauty of the continents...but their closeness to one another...their essential unity." Yuri Gagarin15
"From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it is so beautiful." Russell Schweickart16
There is one, unique, fruitful life-support system. All depend upon it. None can live without it. Men do not breathe differently in Omsk than in Omaha. If that is so, and surely it is so, then what damages the pure air for one part of the planet damages it for all. A nuclear reactor accident in one part of the world is an accident for us all. We are bound, beyond ideologies and religions, by an overwhelming number of common biological and physiological needs.17
In the old perspective, before one could see with the help of television and astronauts all the way around the whole globe and back into one's own soul, blame for any predicament could always be placed on the invisible enemy over the sea, or across the mountains, in some strange land. From the new perspective, from the eye of the spaceship, there is no far-off place. There are no far-off people. All war is civil war. All humans are partners in a common endeavor.18 There is not some other place where people are responsible for ozone damage, or soil erosion, or injustice. In the new thinking, "everyone is responsible for everything."19 "The new thinking requires a radical change.... It means basic alterations in everything we think and do. It involves assuming a feeling of personal and historical responsibility for everything on the planet."20
Such thinking produces a powerful change, and the promise of great improvement in the way we all treat each other.
To be "responsible," for example, means to avoid the conduct of lying. Stereotyping of another country, calling its people and leaders derogatory names, is deceitful and irresponsible.21 "They" are not vicious animals who live on the other side of the ocean, they are people. Of course we are culturally and politically different. But there are limits to our differences; and we are more alike than was apparent, or was the fact, before the age of international travel and global communications.
It is simply not truthful to blame life's disadvantages, history's inequities, failures of our economic systems, or failures of our foreign policies on any outside "enemy." It is simply not accurate to consider that all contradictions and conflicts among social groups and cultures can be explained by an evil which is found outside one's own society, but never inside.22 The view of the planet as a whole produces a more unified, comprehensive picture, a profoundly important fundamental premise: We are all responsible. And there is a more profound opportunity. We all can help to solve any problem.
In the prenuclear world, before the global perspective, it would not have been so dangerous to be completely self-centered, or solely self-motivated. Today, that view transferred to nations has us on the brink of disaster. The view must shift to one which consistently responds to the question: What in the long run is best for everyone involved? And what are the means, consistent with that end, which I must choose?23
Thinking globally requires discovery of the right relationship between the individual and the global community. Neither is insignificant. There has to be a healthy relationship between the community, the social order, the whole, and the individual.
We are all different in that each human is an original. But we are tied together, in that there is one global system in which the activities of each of us affect the lives of each other. We are separate in that each of us treasures different cultural and family values. Between these two realities, the whole and the individual, there is always tension. When the right relationship exists, the tension is worked out so that both the whole and the parts are healthy. When the relationship is wrong, war and violence are efforts to resolve that tension by imposing unity, one nation imposing its view upon another.
For centuries, war has been increasingly less effective as a means to reconcile the tension between unity and diversity. At least that has been true since the Augsburg Treaty in 1555, when a long series of battles to impose religious unity in Germany failed.24 The effort failed again during the Thirty Years War which ended in 1648. And the twentieth century has been replete with war's failure. Finally, in the nuclear age, war is utterly useless to resolve that tension. Large portions of the world have actually settled into a pattern of stable peace, a testament to the fact that war is accepted as unthinkable in those parts of the globe.25
The mind-set that, in a complicated world, one side can be eliminated is therefore totally obsolete. The new thinking must include, at a minimum, recognition of the reality that within global unity, diversity is a given.26 The threat of nuclear war now backs us up against the wall and demands that we live with that paradox, because to deny it will kill us. The long-term parallel continuation of capitalist and socialist systems is a given. There will be both global unity and diversity. We are one human species. But we are also all different. Not only will there be long-term differences between capitalists and socialists, there will be differences between forms of socialism, and between forms of capitalism.27 It is the destiny of this generation to determine how such differences will evolve by nonviolent means.
Humans don't have to like each other, or even understand one another, to cooperate. Soldiers in the trenches in World War I - who were conditioned to hate each other, and ordered by their commanders to fire at each other on sight - often stopped firing at dinner time. They just stopped. They let each other get up out of the trenches and go behind the lines and eat. Not just a few times, but regularly. When soldiers had been in one place in the lines opposite each other for a long time, they began to act differently toward each other. When they expected to be in those same trenches indefinitely into the future, it made sense for each side to ease up a little on the other, if the treatment was reciprocated. Both would live longer. Under those conditions, they evolved their own rules. They started to evolve civilization, while above and behind them commanders continued to push for noncooperation.28
The soldiers discovered that cooperation evolves when the parties expect to be in a relationship - even if adversarial - for some time. They are nicer to each other when they expect to meet again - as the soldiers in World War I expected to meet again the very next morning. And they are nicer when they are dependent upon each other to survive. The parallel is clear. Nations which expect to do business again will learn to cooperate. Acceptance of long-term coexistence between capitalists and socialists is a precondition to cooperation, and an essential ingredient of global thinking.
Faced with the expectation of a long-term future together, it is simply common sense for all sides to keep the ends and means consistent.29 Repeated contacts will go better if that is so. Faced with a common future, it also pays to take care to preserve food and resources for future generations.30 The vision of global thinking is therefore of people who are dependable, interested in cooperation and right conduct, and caring. They are this way not because they are exhorted to be so, or bound by duty, ideology, or religion, but because it is human nature to find that way when the necessity demands. And - threatened by nuclear extinction -necessity now demands the highest level of exertion and consciousness.
There is a discipline imposed by the goal of coexistence. There are requirements. Humankind is at the crossroads. We must choose. Something must be decided for, something left behind.31
If we choose mutual survival, unilateral security is a concept to be left behind. 32 From Nicaragua to the Middle East, from Grenada to Afghanistan, the military powers have sometimes acted as if they could decide independently what should be the course of Third World development. But development cannot be controlled by capitalist, socialist, rich, or poor states alone.
In a totally mixed and interdependent world, where no nation is free to take unilateral action, security can only be multilateral, universal. "Security in the nuclear age means security for all."33 Which means that there can be no "just" war. Not of any kind, for any purpose. Not anymore. "The superpowers must take this into account as they presently engage in small wars such as those in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Iran-Iraq, and Africa," says resistance fighter of World War II Ales Adamovich.
It is the diversity of interests and systems which is the source of strength for the peoples and economies of the globe. The doctrines of exclusive interest, messianic doctrines that only one politico-economic system has the right to exist, are a thing of the past.
"...it is impossible to export revolution. Revolutionary transformation cannot take place unless favorable conditions exist inside that society. Rejecting the aggressive messianic approach is consistent with this understanding. To go out with aggressive messianic fervor and try with force to impose revolution upon other societies against the will of the people won't work.34
This then must be included in new thinking: Dogmatic arrogance and messianic fervor, whether capitalist or socialist, are no longer realistic. "Following the past is far from realism."35
The overwhelming experience of this century is that war is obsolete. It failed to solve the distribution and equity problems that preceded World War I. It failed to achieve an empire for Hitler, or for the Japanese. War in this century has not quelled the cries of the cultures, the languages, the religions of the globe for expression through democracy and economic well-being. Nor is it working now in Central America, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, in Africa, nor in Ireland. War is a blunt and brutal tool. War thinking is the opposite of new thinking.
"New thinking," concludes Professor Anatoly Gromyko, "stands for a process where we ought to recognize each other's humanity.... We live on the same planet Earth, our common home.... it is impossible to secure a unilateral advantage for oneself to the detriment of the other side without ultimately impairing one's own interests." Gromyko quotes from Leo Tolstoy:
Misinterpreters of the truth usually say that reason can't be trusted because it speaks differently in different men....But such a claim is quite the opposite of the truth. Reason never speaks differently. It always speaks alike in all men....Whether God is said to have appeared in a pillar of fire, or Buddha to have ascended on sunrays, or Mohammed to have flown to the heavens, or Christ to have walked on water...rational men, always and everywhere answer in a similar manner: This isn't true. But, to the questions "Is it right to do unto others as you would they do unto you? Is it good to love and forgive them, do good to them?" The reason of all men throughout time has said: "Yes, it's right and worthwhile."36
Humankind is on the move, emerging from a chain reaction of cause and effect that stretches back for billions of years. Now this species has the power to affect its own evolution by conscious choice.
The choice is not one which can be built upon fantasy or utopian hope about war. But the choice, if it is made, can have a solid foundation. It can be built upon a confidence in the capacity of the human to be responsible, the will of the human to do right when to do so is required to survive, the experience of each human with every alternative to ending war, the love of the human for home, and the recognition - which is the hallmark of this century - that this whole planet is now home.
We are at a threshold, not only because of the nuclear threat, but because our planet is circled by unprecedented new means of communication. The people know more now than ever before. Radios, televisions, computers, telephones, and copiers have spread across the globe in a century. No generation ever had these to add to newspapers, magazines, and the arts. Ours is a time of unlimited possibility for exchange, interaction between cultures, travel, and learning.
Such communication gives us an opportunity as big as the challenge. Where there are pockets of people who are not aware, we should not hide the facts from them, but begin the process of making the facts known.37 Awareness of the need for change can be furthered by leadership, and it can be spread by the mass media.38 Democratization in the USSR and building public support in the US are essential. Openness is crucial.39 Most importantly, the spread of a new idea depends upon building connections among people who have the new information. People listen to their peers.40
Everything we know about the human tells us that the species has the capacity for change. That is why we are alive and well in Siberian cold and Arizona heat, in Moscow highrises and in Sierra high valleys. Although no two nations start in the same place, culturally or socially, the capacity for adaptation and change is present everywhere.
The Soviet Union is now engaged in one of the most intensive efforts to bring about change in its history. "Glasnost" and "perestroika," openness and restructuring, are intimately related. The movement of Soviet society toward decentralization is revolutionary.41
There are multicandidate elections going on at local party levels, elections of managers in factories, multicandidate elections for local soviets. There are newspapers engaging in criticisms of officials as part of the new democratization. There are plans to introduce cost and price accounting into state enterprises, to decentralize the economy, and to release new creative and competitive impulses.42 Such moves have been deliberately made to involve the people. Without their help and widespread democratization there is no hope for the next step forward in growth and modernization of Soviet society. Without strong support by the people, there can be no hope of economic rebirth.43
In the US the challenge is the reverse of that in the USSR. It is to form consensus, to convince millions to come to a common view, and to act upon it. In the US, innovators who are the first to take on a new idea, are often not opinion leaders. But, as a strategy to build consensus, the innovators must find a way to reach the opinion leaders and through them, the majority. The idea of a world beyond war must be broadly publicized, networks of working volunteers must be assembled, personal relationships built with new people who have not thought about the subject before.44
For Americans, the problem is to consolidate a constituency from 250 million separate, independent-minded building blocks. When that can be done, as it was done in support of the ABM treaty, for example, changes in USÐUSSR relations have been possible.45
There is, therefore, a constant challenge to the people of the US to exercise the democratic rights they have. There is an important and revolutionary effort being made in the USSR today to learn democracy. In each case, change depends upon engagement of people.46
What will cause people to decide about war? What will cause them to fix on the highest goal of all, the goal of survival of life?
"Activity and talking," says Academician Natalia Bekhtereva, of Leningrad, quite simply. "The social process," meaning the conversation between peers or networks of friends, says Professor Everett Rogers of Los Angeles.
In inactivity, we can be numbed into accepting the probability of nuclear war and continue to do nothing. Depression can understimulate or fear can overstimulate the mind; in either case it will function less well. It can settle into a pattern of low function, which is ineffective, tolerant of impending trouble. The cure? Talking about the problem.
It seems too simple a place to start. The process of change, of course, depends upon thinking. Obviously, the mind needs information, must distill and weigh facts, cannot decide on intuition alone. But the studies of the human mind in the USSR and the subsequent study of the social process done in the US reinforce one startling conclusion: merely having the information and dwelling upon nuclear facts in silence can be a depressing trap. To engage the discouraged mind, it helps to start talking. Talking is itself action. Talking heals the mind. Talking is taking the initiative.47
Activity directed toward the source of negative emotion can be especially effective. Large numbers of people engaged in discussions and actions to prevent the extension of the arms race and the extinction of humanity would help assure the creativity and the goodwill to achieve a world where humanity's survival is assured. 48
It may be of profound significance to realize that it is the activity, the talking, or the discussion, which accomplishes the change of mind.
Mass media channels are more effective in creating knowledge of innovations, while interpersonal channels are more effective in forming and changing attitudes toward an innovation and thus in influencing the individual's decision to adopt or reject the innovation....Diffusion [of an idea] is essentially a social process, involving social relationships among individuals in a system.49
It is not so clear therefore, as one might have imagined, that the change of mind precedes the talking. Rather, the engagement in the issue is itself a factor in the change of mind. Knowledge, awareness, must precede the change of mind. But the knowledge, by itself, is insufficient. Even with the knowledge, the brain may achieve a stable pathological state, may decline into psychic numbing. To break out requires more than a minor perturbation. We must take the knowledge to the step of action and verbalization if it is to become an idea which is held with conviction.50
Nothing is as important, therefore, to the psyche of the individual as participation. Participation is required not only for good government, but also to preserve one's own sense of well-being. And the sense of well-being overcomes the feeling that an individual is powerless to make a difference.51
The challenge in both countries is to find citizens who will move the world across a phase boundary from unstable to stable peace.52 It can be done. The requirement to make it happen is to act:
Act, by getting the information, making a decision about war. Act, by making the ends and means in personal and national conduct consistent.53 Act, out of moral commitment, in excess of what even law requires.54
Act, by talking about the problem, engaging it, vigorously embracing it. 55 Act, by talking to one's neighbors, peers, friends, building networks of discussion.56
Act, by battling stereotypes and resisting the temptation to form images of the enemy.57 Act, by telling the truth to children.58 Act, through a love of our fellow man.59 Act, by accepting strangers and diversity between systems and cultures as a given, a benefit, a strength of life on planet Earth.60 Act, by insisting that the psychology of the nuclear age be reoriented, changed, faced about to become a psychology of survival.61
Act, by proposing and encouraging new standards of conduct, building security "regimes," as they are called, customs of civility between nations.62 Act, by insisting upon reality as the basis for security calculations, calling truth to bear on the spiraling arms race.63
Act, by breaking through the temptation to hide behind old ideals, as an excuse for inaction. Think, as if in the moment of death, about the seriousness of the human condition, and do not be satisfied with any separation between the real and the ideal in one's own life. Act, to put our ideas for the future into practice today.64 Act, as if in the moment of death, with a passion and fire in the belly. Act, because all of life depends upon overtaking and halting the momentum of war, and all the generations to come and all the generations we remember, all literature, all love, all art, all humor depend upon men and women of passion speaking truthfully and forcefully.65
Act, by building an arms control constituency, an informed, constructive, politically aware public to be reckoned with by all governments, everywhere.66
Act, in any of these ways. But act. Acting will change the mind. And changing the mind is the key to more action, and more action is necessary to end war. An aroused public, firmly possessed of a new idea, is itself a material force.67
The challenge to change is to act. The dream, bigger than any other, is to act as individuals who have chosen a new and higher level of human consciousness. Prevention of war is the imperative. Global thinking is the response. The individual is the engine of change. And survival can be the outcome.
- The Editors
* This section summarizes they key ideas of the articles in this volume and all of its references refer to these papers.
1. Theodore B. Taylor, "Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons." In this Challenge to Change section, references refer to articles appearing in this book.
2. Paul Bracken, "Instabilities in the Control of Nuclear Forces."
3. Boris V. Raushenbakh, "Computer War."
4. Linn I. Sennott, "Overlapping False Alarms: Reason for Concern?"
5. Sennott.
6. Alan Borning, "Computer System Reliability and Nuclear War."
7. Marianne Frankenhaeuser, "To Err Is Human: Nuclear War by Mistake?"
8. Einar Kringlen, "The Myth of Rationality in Situations of Crisis."
9. Frankenhaeuser, and Natalia P. Bekhtereva, "Dangers and Opportunities for Change from a Physiologist's Point of View."
10. Kringlen.
11. Martin E. Hellman, "Nuclear War: Inevitable or Preventable?"
12. Anatoly A. Gromyko, "Security for All in the Nuclear Age."
13. John M. Richardson, Jr., "Messages from Global Modeling about an Interdependent World."
14. Beyond War, Richard T. Roney, ed., "Beyond War."
15. Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. (Also see "Beyond War" article in this book for a complete quote.)
16. Apollo 9 astronaut Russell Schweickart. (Also see "Beyond War" article in this book for a complete quote.)
17. Richardson, and Beyond War.
18. Ales Adamovich, "Problems with the New Way of Thinking," and Gromyko.
19. Andrei V. Kortunov, "Realism and Morality in Politics."
20. Adamovich.
21. Jerome D. Frank and Andrei Y. Melville, "The Image of the Enemy and the Process of Change."
22. Frank and Melville.
23. Beyond War.
24. Kortunov.
25. Kenneth E. Boulding, "Moving from Unstable to Stable Peace."
26. Vladimir S. Ageev, "Similarity or Diversity?"
27. Fyodor M. Burlatsky, "New Thinking about Socialism," and Gromyko.
28. Robert Axelrod, "The Evolution of Cooperation."
29. Beyond War.
30. Richardson.
31. Beyond War.
32. Alexander I. Nikitin, "The Concept of Universal Security: A Revolution in Thinking and Policy in the Nuclear Age."
33. Nikitin.
34. Alexander I. Belchuk, "Restructuring of Soviet Society."
35. Kortunov.
36. Gromyko.
37. Stanislav K. Roshchin and Tatiana S. Kabachenko, "Young People and Nuclear War."
38. Everett M. Rogers, "Diffusion of the Idea of Beyond War."
39. Burlatsky.
40. Rogers.
41. Burlatsky and Belchuk.
42. Burlatsky and Belchuk.
43. Burlatsky and Belchuk.
44. Rogers.
45. Sidney Drell, "The Impact of a US Public Constituency on Arms Control."
46. Drell, Rogers, Burlatsky, Belchuk, Adamovich.
47. Bekhtereva.
48. Bekhtereva.
49. Rogers.
50. Bekhtereva.
51. Bekhtereva.
52. Boulding.
53. Beyond War.
54. Kortunov.
55. Bekhtereva.
56. Rogers.
57. Frank and Melville.
58. Roshchin and Kabachenko.
59. Adamovich and Gromyko.
60. Ageev and Burlatsky.
61. Andrei Y. Melville, "Nuclear Revolution and the New Way of Thinking."
62. Gromyko and Nikitin.
63. Steven Kull, "Nuclear Reality: Resistance and Adaptation."
64. Zamoshkin, "Nuclear Disarmament: Ideal and Reality."
65. Adamovich and Beyond War.
66. Drell.
67. Belchuk.
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