Deliver Us from Evil

When George W. Bush addressed the United Nations this past week, I couldn’t help but notice how much has changed. Specifically, I noticed how far our government has come from where it used to be—and from where our Church still is. You can get an idea of this change by revisiting John F. Kennedy’s address to the UN, which just happened to be 40 years ago this week, on September 25, 1963.

Then as now, the world was in crisis. Less than one year after the Cuban Missile crisis, the threat of nuclear annihilation (a far graver threat than today’s Terror) was fresh in people’s minds. Then as now, the UN's role was in jeopardy. Less than two years after the death of Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN risked being overwhelmed by the Cold War rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. Then as now, the UN had its detractors as well as its champions. John Kennedy counted himself among its champions. Two years earlier, he had called an effective UN “the only true alternative to war—and war appears no longer as a rational alternative.”

Kennedy’s vision of the UN's role in building a peaceful world rested on three points. First, he saw his era as a time of unprecedented promise and unprecedented risk:

“Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world—or to make it the last.”

Second, he saw peace-building as a collective, multi-lateral task, which the US should not monopolize: “The task of building peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition.” This task required above all the willingness to seek peaceful solutions rather than use force. “We need a much better weapon than the H-bomb—and that better weapon is peaceful cooperation.”

Third, Kennedy saw peace-building as a dual mission built on (1) worldwide disarmament by all nations and (2) the creation and strengthening of international institutions to administer justice and enforce peace. “To destroy arms is not enough. We must create…worldwide law and law enforcement as we outlaw worldwide war and weapons.” JFK clearly saw the UN as the unique agent for this mission: “The conventions of peace must pull abreast and then ahead of the inventions of war. The United Nations...must be developed into a genuine world security system.”

It is striking to me how close Kennedy’s vision came to the vision emerging that very year at Vatican Council II—a vision Pope Paul VI shared with the UN just two years later when he became the first Pope to visit America in order to address the General Assembly himself.

Like Kennedy, Pope Paul and the world’s bishops saw our time as uniquely promising but uncommonly dangerous, and urged all people of good will to counter the instruments of power (weapons, money, tyranny, racism, hatred) with the resources of wisdom (cooperation, consensus, dialog, prayer). Like Kennedy, they saw peace-building as a task possible only through international cooperation, and they too saw the UN as its chief agent. Indeed, Paul VI actually compared the UN’s mission to the mission of the Catholic Church:

Now, you represent all peoples...The edifice which you have constructed must never fall; it must be perfected and made equal to the needs which world history will present. You mark a stage in the development of mankind from which retreat must never be admitted, but from which it is necessary that advance be made. You are a bridge between peoples. You are a network of relations between states. We would almost say that your chief characteristic is a reflection, as it were, in the temporal field, of what our Catholic church aspires to be in the spiritual field: unique and universal. Your vocation is to make brothers not only of some, but of all people.

Finally, Vatican II and Paul VI clearly saw the same double challenge Kennedy named: worldwide disarmament and stronger institutions of international justice.

George Bush by contrast, did not present himself as a champion of the UN, or of international law. On the contrary, his UN address refers repeatedly to “our coalition” acting in Iraq, and only later mentions the role of the UN to “assist” in the aftermath—as if a self-deputized “coalition of the willing” is a legitimate alternative to true collective action under UN auspices. (Anyone who grew up watching TV Westerns knows the difference between the sheriff’s posse and vigilantes).

Second, whereas Kennedy warned that the very existence of “outlaw weapons” in anyone’s hands was a “horror” that triggered their proliferation, and called for all nations to disarm, Bush was merely concerned with the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by “outlaw regimes.” Bush thus asserted a double standard, where “outlaws” must disarm while others (like the US) can continue to build, sell, and even use the world’s largest stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He seems blind to the obvious fact cited by the bishops at Vatican II: such arms and their sale—no matter who has them—fuel fear, mistrust, and thus promote proliferation.

Finally, Bush makes no mention of international law or justice—naturally so, since the very courts Kennedy called for now exist, but are largely rejected by the US.

Rather than realizing that peace will come only when the world develops strong and reliable alternatives to war, Bush sees the world as two camps—“those who seek order, and those who spread chaos…those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters.” In his view, peace will come when only the innocent survive. Kill the bad guys, and the good will enjoy peace. This means: only those after “peaceful change” are allowed to go to war. The key to security, then, is to make sure that “my WMDs are bigger than your WMDs.”

This myth about good and evil camps is not new; for generations, it has allowed governments to deny their own flaws, and their own part in blocking peace. This myth has served to “justify” every war in history. It is this myth that our faith rejects, since Catholics believe that the capacity for evil lies within all of us. It is this myth of the double standard that both Vatican II and Kennedy rejected in calling for universal disarmament and a global justice system. Why? Because they had learned the lesson of history and the truth of human nature. George Bush, it appears, remains blind to both.

It is remarkable that, even at the height of the Cold War, John Kennedy kept his eye on the way to peace. Kennedy was right to say that “the underpinnings of our national power” include “not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.” Amid our new War on Terror, when friendship matters even more, George Bush has instead undermined that foundation by a vision that makes millions see us as a threat, since his pretence of America's total innocence frightens millions around the world. In 40 years we have come from the dream of peace to an acceptance of permanent weapons, permanent fear, and permanent war.