One alternative to nuclear planetary suicide1

Abstract

It is certainly not news that our planet and all the people on it are threatened by the incredible build-up of nuclear arms. This threat has led to vigorous efforts in a great many countries to halt the arms race—the production, testing, and deployment of the increasingly deadly missiles. It seems strange and tragic that we may destroy our global culture and most of life on the planet at the very moment when technologically and psychologically we have the capability of moving into a new era in which we could all live richer lives. It needs to be recognized that in the last analysis it is not nuclear arms that pose the threat. A missile resting in its silo is not a threat. It is the intercultural and international feuds, the hatreds between groups, the religious animosities, the interracial bitterness, the hostile feelings of the have-nots toward the haves—it is these social tensions that endanger us since any one of them might trigger a nuclear war. In our own country, and in others as well, it seems that the primary method of dealing with these tensions at the international level is through force of the threat of force. Intimidation appears to be the mode