Nuclear moment

The world is closer to nuclear war than at any time in recent memory. The Israeli attack on the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing seven Iranian officers, promised to unleash a series of cascading events that could engulf us in even more deadly conflicts. The fact that the Israeli government seemed oblivious to the implications of this assault only underscored the dangers the world now faces.

After launching hundreds of drones and missiles in retaliation, most of which were destroyed before doing any damage, Iranian officials indicated they considered the matter closed and did not intend further escalation. The world was able to breathe a little more easily.

Then Friday morning, April 19, Israel again attacked a military base in Iran.  Iran has not retaliated. Both Israeli and Iranian officials seem to be saying this means an end to the current round in the long standing “shadow war” between them. But we have already entered a new stage of international tensions.

Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and its opposition to Israel’s existence, Israel and Iran have been engaged in deadly exchanges, including assassinations, battles by proxy, and military assaults. But the current series of attacks and counter attacks marks a dangerous shift to open military engagements. Both Iran and Israel are assumed to have nuclear capabilities. Certainly, their friends do.

Tensions are increasing at the very moment when the world seems unable to limit cruelty and terror. We seem incapable of establishing any moral constraints on state violence. The destruction of whole cities, mass killings by distant bombs and handheld machetes are normalized. Talk of tactical nuclear weapons and surgical strikes are offered casually by campaigners and commanders.

For most of the twentieth century there was a sustained effort to acknowledge and limit the horrors of nuclear war. Propelled by a generation born in the wake of the explosions of atomic bombs against civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the global anti-nuclear movement helped forge a public consensus toward disarmament. Nuclear war, we argued, should be unthinkable. 

Masses of people took to the streets, occupied political spaces, and stopped business as usual to force arms limitation talks. Calls for a nuclear freeze, for arms control, and for building cultures of peace animated our political consciousness.

As the twentieth century waned, so did our vigilance against nuclear weapons. The greatest accomplishment of the twenty first century seems to be the public acceptance of the possibilities of their use. 

With the beginning of this century, we have witnessed an intensification of brutality toward one another, justifying torture and torment of individuals and mass bombings of cities, villages, and towns. Today we witness the willful withholding of the most basic means of life from thousands of people in Gaza and the killing of those who would bring them aid.

We need to oppose violence in all its forms and to draw on the legacies of collective action to construct new ways of living together. We have reached the point where mutually assured destruction is conceivable because we have lost our capacity to see ourselves reflected in the lives of others. 

At such a moment, the only way forward is for us to create connections that tie us to each other and to the places that sustain life. People, acting together, moved us toward peace in earlier moments of great destruction and peril. There are still ways for us to claim a future rooted in peace and justice.