Waking up to ‘The Fate of the Earth’

Review by Bill Doughty––

“The Fate of the Earth” by Jonathan Schell (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982) is landmark book calling for nuclear weapons control. It was written 38 years ago –– and nearly 38 years after nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (pictured above) in order to end the war with Japan in WWII.

Schell asks Americans to open their eyes to a continuing danger of Mutually Assured Destruction that would be brought about by nuclear war, even if the war is started by accident.

“A society that systemically shuts its eyes to an urgent peril to its physical survival and fails to take any steps to save itself cannot be called psychologically well,” Schell asserts. Looking at the problem of mass extinction by nuclear weapons makes us sick, he says, but the true sickness is in not confronting what is real.

Schell contends there’s a new reality: nuclear weapons have made war obsolete. “By effectively removing the limits on human access to the forces of nature, the invention of nuclear weapons ruined war, which depended for its results, and therefore for its usefulness, on the exhaustion of the forces of one of the adversaries.”

Rickover

An icon of the nuclear Navy saw the new reality even during the Cold War.

“On the occasion of his retirement, Admiral Hyman Rickover, who devoted a good part of his life to overseeing the development and construction of nuclear-powered, nuclear-missile-bearing submarines for the United States Navy, told a congressional committee that in his belief mankind was going to destroy itself with nuclear arms. He also said of his part in the nuclear buildup that he was ‘not proud’ of it, and added that he would like to ‘sink’ the ships that he had poured so much of his life into. And, indeed, what everyone is now called on to do is to sink all the ships, and also ground all the planes, and fill in all the missile silos, and dismantle all warheads.”

This book is rich with history, context, and philosophy and includes numerous references to early thinkers (Socrates, Lucretius, Plutarch, and Pericles); historians and philosophers (Arendt, Burke, Camus, de Tocqueville, Bertrand Russell, Einstein, and Clausewitz); and the Bible (Genesis, Ten Commandments, Armageddon, and Jesus Christ –– “prince of peace” and “a servant to all”).

An early image of Jesus Christ: "not to judge the world but to save it."

In a presentation reminiscent of John Hersey’s spellbinding “Hiroshima,” Schell makes a disturbing analysis of the various ways humans would die during and especially after an all-out nuclear conflagration: radiation, fires, starvation, exposure, long-term illnesses, and short-term diseases –– all leading to possible extinction of our species.

“The weight of extinction, like the weight of mortality, bears down on life through the mind and spirit but otherwise, until the event occurs, leaves us physically undisturbed,” Schell writes.

“At present, most of us do nothing. We look away. We remain calm. We are silent. We take refuge in the hope that the holocaust won’t happen, and turn back to our individual concerns. We deny the truth that is all around us. Indifferent to the future of our kind we grow indifferent to one another. We drift apart. We grow cold. We browse our way toward the end of the world. But if once we shook off our lethargy and fatigue and began to act, the climate would change. Just as inertia produces despair –– a despair often so deep that it does not even know itself as despair –– arousal and action would give us access to hope, and life would start to mend: not just life in its entirety but daily life, every individual life. At that point, we would begin to withdraw from our role as both the victims and the perpetrators of mass murder. We would no longer be the destroyers of mankind but, rather, the gateway through which the future generations would enter the world. Then the passion and will that we need to save ourselves would flood into our lives. Then the walls of indifference, inertia, and coldness that now isolate each of us from others, and all of us from the past and future generations, would melt, like snow in the spring. E.M. Forster told us, ‘Only connect!’ Let us connect. Auden told us, ‘We must love one another or die.’ Let us love one another –– in the present and across the divides of death and birth. Christ say, ‘I come not to judge the world but to save the world.’ Let us, also, not judge the world but save the world. By restoring our severed links with life, we will restore our own lives.”

Schell presents a stark choice.

“Two paths lie before us. One leads to death, the other to life. If we choose the first path –– if we numbly refuse to acknowledge the nearness of extinction, all the while increasing our preparations to bring it about –– then we in effect become the allies of death, and in everything we do our attachment to life will weaken: our vision, blinded to the abyss that has opened at our fee, will dim and grow confused; our will, discouraged by the thought of trying to build on such a precarious foundation anything that is meant to last, will slacken; and we will sink into stupefaction, as though we were gradually weaning ourselves from life in preparation for the end. On the other hand, if we reject our doom, and bend our efforts toward survival –– if we arouse ourselves to the peril an act to forestall it, making ourselves the allies of life –– then the anesthetic fog will life; our vision, no longer straining not to see the obvious, will sharpen; our will, finding secure ground to build on, will be restored; and we will take full and clear possession of life again.”

He imagines mechanisms that would prevent the threat of nuclear war: destruction of weapons, destruction of the factories that manufacture them, and clear-eyed verification as part of international cooperation as we realize our ignorance in order to achieve greater reverence for the “swollen power” to destroy ourselves as a species. 

At first, Schell's thesis may come off as overly hopeful or even naive, but he realizes the importance of first strengthening international cooperation in order to achieve mutually assured survival. "The present-day United Nations," he says, "is the empty husk of those irresolute good intentions." 

As usual, education and critical thinking are key to understanding and wisdom.

“We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now pose to the earth and to ourselves.”

In his more recent “The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger” (Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company; 2007), Schell ties the nuclear threat to another existential danger: climate change.

“The two perils have a great deal in common. Both are the fruit of swollen human power –– in the one case, the destructive power of war; in the other, the productive power of fossil-fuel energy. Both put stakes on the table of a magnitude never present before in human decision making. Both threaten life on a planetary scale. Both require a fully global response. Anyone concerned by the one should be concerned with the other. It would be a shame to save the earth from slowly warming only to burn it up in an instant in a nuclear war.”

Will 2020 be a turning point for world cooperation in starting to deal with global climate change, a worldwide pandemic, and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons?

Schell’s “Fate of the World” was written on the eve of President Reagan’s historic meeting with leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, so in “The Seventh Decade” he focuses on the potential as well as the missed opportunities during and after the Cold War.

Reagan and Gorbachev

Reagan and Gorbachev tried to have nuclear weapons “dispatched to history’s graveyard. Superior power was no longer the route to dominance. Certainly, global empire was out of the question,” just as all-out war itself had been made obsolete.

The Republican Party of 2020 has no platform, stating, “Resolved, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention,” and “the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” Despite no mention in a formal platform, President Trump has boasted about upgrading and building more nuclear weapons.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party’s extensive platform says, in part, “Democrats believe the United States has a moral responsibility and national security imperative to prevent the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, and eventually secure their elimination.”

President-elect Biden's platform also resolves:

“Democrats believe that the sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal should be to deter—and, if necessary, retaliate against—a nuclear attack, and we will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with our allies and military. We will work to maintain a strong, credible deterrent while reducing our overreliance and excessive expenditure on nuclear weapons. The Trump Administration’s proposal to build new nuclear weapons is unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible.”

Notably, the platform echoes President Reagan’s commitment to reducing nuclear dangers by returning to talks and treaties. 

“Democrats commit to strengthening the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, maintaining the moratorium on explosive nuclear weapons testing, pushing for the ratification of the UN Arms Trade Treaty and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and extending New START. Just as was the case during the height of the Cold War, it’s in our interest to work with Russia to verifiably limit and reduce our nuclear stockpiles. We will build on this foundation to negotiate arms control agreements that reflect the emergence of new players like China, capture new technologies, and move the world back from the nuclear precipice.”

The position to eventually eliminate nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons comes in a section of the platform called “Renewing American Leadership,” which says, "We can only be strong in the world when we are strong and united at home. We believe that a healthy democracy, just society, and inclusive economy are essential prerequisites for effective American leadership abroad. And we believe that the ultimate measure —and purpose—of our foreign policy is whether it protects and advances America’s security, prosperity and values—and delivers results for all Americans.”

Schell demands an eyes-wide-open examination of the global threats we face. He challenges us to think differently about the future in order to preserve the future –– and our species.

Then-Vice President Joe Biden meets a Sailor aboard Nimitz-Class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Biden and Dr. Jill Biden visited San Diego in 2009.