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Jan.–Apr. 1984 · Vol. 13 No. 1–2 · pp. 3–15 

The Deadly Race

Wally Kroeker

Some of the suppressed people go underground and form guerrilla armies. Where do they get their guns? They capture them from the government armies. So today in the Philippines, if you visit a government military camp or a mountain guerrilla hide-out, you will see nothing but American guns. . . . So when we think of American arms exports, we think of Macli-ing Dulag, an eloquent leader in the northern Philippines who voiced his people’s opposition to a government hydroelectric dam project that would have flooded out tens of thousands of his tribal people. After nightfall on March 25, 1980, soldiers entered the village and fired eleven bullets into the body of Macli-ing Dulag, with American M-16 rifles. Our exports.
—Earl Martin, returned MCCer.

We presently have 40 little wars raging throughout the world with deadly potential at the cost of $700 billion per year, involving four million soldiers, and countless lives that are being lost. And, in too frequent cases, the United States of America is supplying both sides as the largest arms peddler in the world.
—Sen. Mark Hatfield, speaking at Fresno Pacific College, 1983

End the arms race, not the human race.
—sign carried by marcher at Manitoba peace march, 1982

These are just a few of the emotional sentiments one can hear expressed in a generation that lives enveloped in militarism. In today’s age of instant communication, it is impossible to escape the lengthening shadow of guns, threats and bombs. No sensible person today would dispute the allegation that we live amidst the greatest military buildup ever fashioned in peacetime by a civilized nation. When ABC Television broadcast The Day After, which described in understated fashion the effects of a nuclear bomb on one American city, the audience was one of the largest in communications history. The day after The Day After, the threat of the bomb was on everyone’s lips—schoolchildren, blue collar workers, executives, homemakers. If there was a consensus of any sort, it was that we all live under the shadow of militarism, a modern Damoclean sword, a new age that very likely will not go away. As Richard Barnet has written, {4}

Both superpowers are poised at a new stage of the arms race that promises to make the world of the 1970s look, in retrospect, like a Quaker village. 1

The late John F. Kennedy, speaking long before The Day After, was painfully accurate and prophetic when he said, “Mankind must put an end to the arms race or the arms race will put an end to man.”

But what precisely is the arms race? Is it only the amassing of sophisticated and deadly nuclear weaponry by the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union? No, the recent nuclear developments are only the latest and most obviously terrifying components of a militaristic race that goes far beyond the atomic bomb. The implications and effects of this race transcend the nuclear standoff between Reagan and Andropov that we see depicted in gallows humor fashion by editorial cartoonists. The arms race, even if it never results in a final holocaust, wreaks its devastation daily in the hungry corners of the world, in the economic malaise of participating countries, in the rising paranoia of the world psyche. The arms race is not only potentially deadly in that it threatens to produce a fiery inferno that will inhale all of humankind, it is also deadly on a subtle daily basis as it corrodes the economic, physical, emotional and spiritual well-being of a large proportion of the world’s population.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the far-reaching and currently existing effects of the arms race, to illustrate that the arms race is deadly even if by some miracle none of today’s nuclear weapons are ever used. The scope of this paper will thus include conventional as well as nuclear weapons, and will seek to show that the arms race utterly fails to achieve its chief purposes, namely that of preserving security and well-being for its collective participants.

This paper will also, of necessity and design, focus more heavily on U.S. complicity in the arms race. A number of reasons can be given for this choice beyond the obvious one of more accessible data. For one thing, it can be argued that the U.S. has in the past been the leader in nuclear offensiveness. A Soviet arms control specialist, partisan as no doubt he was, nonetheless was not far off target when he observed:

You must remember that from our perspective your country first built the bomb, your country first used the bomb, your country refused to negotiate when you were far ahead in the nuclear arms race, and your country refuses to declare that it will not use nuclear weapons first. 2

His view is shared by numerous American observers as well. Dale Aukerman has pointed out that

. . . chronologically it was the United States that first ‘broke {5} in’ with atomic weapons aimed and ready to fire; the Soviet Union was only later able to reciprocate. And the U.S. has led in every new development in the nuclear arms race. 3

Another reason why this paper can focus more heavily on U.S. complicity is simply because Christians and other readers in this country have a greater chance to influence the democratic process. Moreover, it is increasingly evident that American Christians have contributed to the arms race by their frequent support of aggressive militaristic policies. Most or many of the key leaders in the American arms race have been professing believers. The bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, bombs that were “prayed over” by a Christian chaplain, are still referred to in Japan as the “Christian Bombs.” 4

We live in an increasingly violent age. Between 1900 and 1941 an estimated 24 international and civil wars occurred. Between 1945 and 1969, a far shorter period of time that can be described as the era of the arms race, the world experienced no fewer than 97 wars. 5 The number of wars since the end of World War 2 had risen to 130 by the late 1970s. At this very moment there are some 40 wars of various magnitudes being fought around the world. Some analysts claim we will never again live in a period when there is no war. War is an ever-present fact of life.

The United States is implicated in a great many of these wars, if not by direct endorsement then at least by way of commercial involvement. According to the Center for Defense Information, the U.S. in 1980 sold weaponry (ranging from pistols to missiles) to 86 countries and private U.S. suppliers sold weapons to 127 countries. 6 Many of these countries have repressive regimes whose human rights policies American citizens themselves would not tolerate.

Of the 41 military-dominated governments of the world with records of violating citizen’s rights (e.g. arbitrary arrest, torture, summary execution), the United States has been a major supplier of arms to 28. 7

The U.S. involvement in the armaments of other countries pales in comparison to the amount of resources the U.S. expends in arming itself. In 1983 President Ronald Reagan proposed military expenditures of some $1.6 trillion between 1983 and 1987. Such figures are hard to grasp for ordinary people, most of whom do not even know how large a number a trillion is. Donald Kraybill tries to put the figure into perspective by calculating that over the same five-year period this amounts to about $4 a day for every man, woman and child in the United States.

Here’s another way to imagine $1.6 trillion. If you spent one million dollars each day since the birth of Christ, only half of it would be spent by now. 8 {6}

Ruth Leger Sivard, an authority of military spending, estimates that worldwide military expenditures already exceed some $600 billion a year. And they are climbing steadily.

By 1986 the U.S. Government plans to spend $342 billion a year on defense. This works out to $938 million a day; $39 million an hour; $652,000 a minute. There is no reason to believe that the Soviet Union is not spending similar amounts.

The enormity of this expenditure can be further understood when compared with other expenditures by nations around the world. In her annual publication, World Military and Social Expenditures, Sivard claims that the world arms expenditure is equal to the annual income of the poorest half of the world’s population. 9 The amount the world’s nations spend on weapons is twice what is spent on food and five times what is spent on housing.

Other observations:

  • Over the past 20 years the world trade in conventional weaponry has increased four times.
  • In 1982 the U.S. spent $187.5 billion on the military, while total spending for programs to combat hunger was some $21 billion. The $1.6 billion cost of a single Trident submarine would be enough to provide all federally funded children’s breakfasts for two centuries. 10
  • The world population of military personnel currently totals the combined populations of Mexico and Canada. 11
  • The world spends 2,300 times more for defense than for international peacekeeping.

    Not only do the superpowers allocate a major portion of their resources to increasing militarism, as the violence of the world increases, so do the arms races of underdeveloped countries. Many underdeveloped countries find themselves, by accident or design, caught up in the webs of international relations that make them think it is important and necessary to allocate their very limited resources for military weapons rather than for the development of their own people. Swedish diplomat Alva Myrdal says that Third World arms purchases doubled between the years 1970 and 1975. “The militarization of the world is progressing fast,” she notes. 12

  • Although the United States and Russia are the greatest armaments offenders, Canada, despite its middle power status, is not an innocent bystander. Canada is among the world’s top 10 armaments suppliers, and in some respects is closely allied with the U.S. defense industry. According to the March 1983 issue of the Ploughshares Monitor, Canada manufactured $1.67 billion worth of military related {7} products in 1982. Only 18 percent of that amount was for the Canadian military establishment. Europe and Australia received 12 percent of the production and Third World countries, 10 percent. The remaining 60 percent, about $1 billion worth, went to the United States. This is a considerable increase over 1978, for example, when military related sales to the United States represented about 25 percent of Canada’s production. Although this production is undertaken by private corporations, the Canadian Government is involved in helping negotiate sales as well as in providing development subsidies for new products, according to the Peace Section Newsletter, Sept.-Oct. 1983, p. 12. Canada’s total military spending, currently more than $7 billion annually, is expected to reach $10 billion by 1985. Moreover, recent developments concerning U.S. testing of cruise missiles in northern Canada implicate this country in the worldwide nuclear buildup.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union, of course, are the chief offenders in military brinksmanship. One can argue about which superpower has military superiority (probably without success, for Presidents Reagan and Carter have opposing views about which country is “ahead” in the arms race) and one can perhaps present reasonable arguments about employing technology to find ways to prevent a nuclear strike (better monitoring systems, neutralizing devices) but one is hard pressed to find reasonable arguments for further increasing present stockpiles. The two powers already have enough nuclear firepower to equal four tons of TNT for every person on earth. 13 All the bombs dropped during World War 2 do not equal the amount of lethal power that can be carried by one plane today. 14

Seymour Melman, an industrial engineer with Columbia University, calculates that the U.S. has 9,500 nuclear warheads but has only 220 Russian cities of more than 100,000 population to aim that at. The Russians, meanwhile, have a similar weapon-to-target ratio. Thus “the American and the Soviet governments can each overkill the other’s population-industrial centers more than 40 times over.” 15 Sen. Ted Kennedy has wryly observed that even after absorbing a Soviet strike, the U.S. would still have enough nuclear weaponry “to make the rubble bounce from Leningrad to Vladivostock.” 16

Yet the race continues, not only the race to arm more and more of the world’s smaller powers (thus making them big powers) but also to multiply the overkill possibilities for themselves and thus for all humankind.

The rationale for proliferation is as mystifying and invincible as fission itself: China needs the bomb because America (later Russia) threatens the Asian continent; India needs it because China has it; Pakistan wants it because India has it, and so it goes. 17 {8}

Donald Kraybill has strikingly described the nuclear contagion in layman’s terms:

Nuclear weapons are contagious. Nations who control nuclear weapons have power—power to threaten and bully other nations, power to get what they want. In the fifties and sixties the world was like a street corner where two of the teenagers had machine guns and all the other kids had sticks and stones. The two machine gunners ran the show. The kids with sticks and stones wanted machine guns in the worst way so that they too could act tough, run the show, and get what they wanted.

Today their wish is coming true. The bullies have lost control as the nuclear machine guns spread around the world . . . It was one thing when two superpowers had a kind of gentlemen’s agreement they wouldn’t use these terrible weapons. But it’s quite another ball game when ten countries have nuclear weapons in their closets. The nuclear club is growing. Six countries have nuclear weapons now. Ten more could build them within three or four years, and sixteen additional countries could construct bombs by the early 1990s. 18

The superpowers, says George F. Kennan, former U.S. ambassador to Moscow,

have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new levels of destructiveness upon old ones, helplessly, almost involuntarily, like victims of some sort of hypnotism, like men in a dream, like lemmings headed for the sea. 19

What will happen when dozens of countries have the nuclear weaponry that the U.S. and Russia have developed and marketed? In a conflict, says Sidney Lens,

The tendency then will certainly be for the losing power to use everything it has, including nuclear weapons, and for the winning power to try to checkmate its enemy by delivering the coup de grace first. 20

Even conservative and avowedly non-pacifistic institutions such as Christianity Today expect an unbridled arms buildup to end in holocaust. The magazine recently observed editorially that “Some frightened or insane person will someday push the button, and that will be the end of America, the Soviet Union, Western Europe, and the world.” 21 {9}

Completely aside from the threat of holocaust, however, militarism itself erodes the fabric of humankind in myriad ways. Never before in the history of military violence has humankind’s violent pursuits so clearly and comprehensively threatened existence in so many different ways. This can be demonstrated by a brief review of the ways militarism’s tentacles stretch into the world’s natural and social environment through effects on development, the environment, the economy and the psyche of its victims.

The development of Third World countries, those who are least able to afford intrusions into their fragile economic systems, is among the areas hardest hit. Third World countries caught up in the arms race devote an increasing share of their resources for weapons rather than for the economic development of their own citizens. Military expenditures by governments around the world outpace by two-thirds the amount spent on health care for the world’s four billion people. 22

The enormous outlay for arms represents a gigantic theft from the mouths of the world’s development—always seen as one way to preserve peace for the future—goes hungry. The economic burden of the arms race, says Alva Myrdal, “represents a tragic denial of possibilities for satisfying the crying needs of the poor multitudes of humankind.” 23 Seymour Melman calculates that “the arms race outlays by the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the last quarter century would have financed 75 years of world economic development.” 24 Moreover, he notes, this massive outlay of resources “has not improved the military security of either nation.” 25

Mark Hatfield has observed:

One half day (of the world’s military expenditures) could erase malaria from the face of the earth—the most debilitating of diseases that strike humankind. What we spend on one modern tank could provide one thousand classrooms for 30,000 children who will never receive an education in the third world. What we spend on one modern aircraft fighter could build 40,000 village pharmacies to deliver elementary health care to people who will never have access to health care. What we spend as a world on arms in two simple weeks could feed, clothe, house and educate every poor person on the face of the earth for one year. 26

Other effects on developing countries include the draining of raw materials of less-developed to industrialized countries to fuel their own industrial purposes, including weapons production; national leadership is militarized and assigned to unproductive pursuits; the growth of the Christian church suffers a setback because the “Christian west” is so often connected, at least in the minds of many, with the western military {10} machine.” 27 Dwight Eisenhower summed it all up well in his oft-quoted comment of 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. 28

Even in wealthy countries the arms race takes its economic toll, leading Senators Kennedy and Hatfield to the opinion that “the two greatest issues of our time—the prosperity of the economy and the probability of survival in the nuclear age—are inextricably intertwined.” 29

One of the first victims is inflation. Many economists argue that heavy military expenditures generate buying power without producing an equal supply of useful materials. Military goods have no economic value, thus diverting huge amounts of money to their production actually increases inflation. As Kraybill puts it,

We can’t eat bombs, wear missiles, or drive submarines. When we work, we produce goods or services that can be sold in the marketplace. We then take our wages and use them to buy products that we need. The normal balance between the demand for goods and the supply of goods is disrupted by high military spending because military production doesn’t put toasters and basketballs on the shelves of Sears and Roebuck. Tanks and missiles sit on Pentagon “storage shelves” until they’re obsolete. Massive amounts of natural, industrial, and human resources are sunk into products that no one can buy. At the same time, employees working in the armed forces and for military contractors get wages which increase their purchasing power. So in the end there’s more demand chasing fewer goods, which means higher prices and more inflation. 30

Thus the prestigious Wall Street Journal has noted,

Defense spending, in this sense, is the worst kind of government outlay, since it eats up materials and other resources that otherwise would be used to produce consumer goods. 31

Another area of economic devastation is employment. In the U.S. alone, the arms race “diverts thirty-two million people in uniform and twenty-five million civilians from productive work.” 32 It has been estimated that 11,600 jobs vanish for every $1 billion increase in the U.S. military budget because this kind of spending produces only half as many jobs, proportionately, as the same amount of money if spent {11} on other enterprises such as health and public services. This kind of spending “wastes nonrenewable resources, increases inflation, reduces consumer goods production, and retards economic growth.” 33

What has changed is the technological character of the defense sector. More and more of the defense dollar goes into technology, machinery and materials and less, relatively, into the wage bill. This has meant declining potency of the defense dollar. It sustains work forces in hostage communities, but creates fewer and fewer jobs. . . .

If defense dollars are a poor economic choice for communities that depend on them, they are even less useful for those sectors of American society that are highly unemployed today. The highest rates of joblessness are found among minorities, women, younger workers, less skilled workers and inner city dwellers. This work force is located far from most defense contractors and is largely unaffected by their spending. 34

The peace issue, then, goes far beyond nuclear weapons themselves, because, in the words of jobs coordinator Carrie Graves, “we have a whole economic holocaust that’s going to explode within our cities.” 35 The United States, as well as the Soviet Union, are thus risking economic chaos, perhaps even bankruptcy, in the interest of maintaining a monstrous military machine.

The entire free enterprise system, the protection and preservation of which seems to be the chief aim of America’s aggressive military posture, suffers from militarism. John Kenneth Galbraith has said:

The arms race has a deeply damaging effect on the free enterprise economy, and we may assume that this is equally true for the socialist system. In our case the results are sadly visible—our industrial plant starved of capital, weakened in relation to our competitors, world prestige lost—all from the diversion of capital to the arms race. 36

Thus it is no surprise that Christianity Today concedes that the military build-up “is grinding down the people of the Soviet Union, and will eventually grind us down, too, as well as our partners in Western Europe.” 37

All this in the name of security. Yet it can be persuasively argued that aggressive militarism actually increases insecurity rather than making people feel more secure. The arms race increases fear, distrust and frustration among the world’s citizens. As these emotional anxieties rise, crime and other forms of violence often rise accordingly.

Making the enemy afraid does not make us more secure. The history of relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union show that each country, as mutual distrust soars, will match the other plane for {12} plane, tank for tank, missile for missile. As Kraybill says, the two superpowers are like “bickering giants” who, “the more they threaten and snarl at each other, the more they scare each other and perpetuate a cycle of fear.” 38 We are caught in the ironic situation of increasing our insecurity in direct proportion to our increase in military expenditures. Increased precautions rarely reduce insecurity. Safety measures, as important as they may be in some cases, also function to continually remind people of the possibility of threats. 39

Besides being unsuccessful in preserving security, it can also be argued that military might invites aggression rather than deterring it. Metta Spencer, a sociologist from the University of Toronto, claims that those countries with above average military expenditures are 30 times more likely to get involved in war within the next five years than those countries with below average military expenditures.

We cannot buy security with guns. On the contrary, says Ruth Sivard, “by straining the world economy and fostering the neglect of social needs, the arms race has amplified instability and insecurity. It has itself become the major threat to international security.” 40 Clearly, the arms race by its very nature serves to reduce the quality of life among earth’s inhabitants.

So no shot need ever be fired, and no missile launched for millions of people to be hit by the destruction and devastation brought about by the arms race. The tragedy of the race is not only the risk of a nuclear holocaust; it is violence against God’s human creation and against God himself. 41

All this to preserve a machine that does not seem to work anyway. The usefulness and effectiveness of the enormous U.S. arms arsenal was called into question again and again during the Vietnam era when the U.S. forces were repeatedly humiliated by guerrilla forces that did not have the sophisticated might of a superpower. The absurdity of the arms race was in a small way demonstrated by these small bands of dedicated soldiers who had military staying power despite their lack of heavy weapons, naval or air power.

The inability of the most elaborately equipped armed force in the world, backed by the world’s largest military technology research and development network, to overcome the guerrilla forces of a small, poor country defines a major limit in military technology. 42

Underlining the folly of this single-minded military race is the awareness that the U.S. Government does not employ a single person whose task it is to find a way of reversing the arms race. It is as if the Pentagon leaders do not even care to explore the possibility that there may be other ways to deal with international tensions. Melman observes {13} that “The establishment’s refusal even to try for this alternative may go down as the crime of the century—if there is anyone around to know it.” 43

By now I hope it has been demonstrated that the arms race serves no useful function. It threatens to grow into a holocaust that could destroy the entire planet. Like an army of hungry termites, it is already eating away at the foundations of society by breeding insecurity, mistrust and fear. It costs jobs and inhibits economic growth. It leeches raw materials that could be used for more productive purposes. It serves no useful function because the faster the arms race progresses, the more dangerous our lives become. We have collectively laid ourselves open to the judgement of God as warned in Hosea 10:13-15: “Because you have plowed wickedness and reaped injustice, trusting in your way and in numerous warriors and not in God, a tumult will arise and many of your people will be destroyed.”

Christians have a compelling example to work towards arms reductions in the model of Jesus who “disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them” (Col. 2:15). When Christians bear witness to that truth, they also bear witness against the madness of the arms race and to the possible redemption through him who has disarmed other powers.

Christians can through concerted effort make a difference. H.R. Haldeman’s memories, The Ends of Power, claimed that the enormous outpouring of anti-war sentiment during the Vietnam era was a significant factor in persuading then-President Richard Nixon against using nuclear tactics against Vietnam in 1970.

Up to now, Christians have more applauded than booed the escalation of the arms race. Aukerman claims that a majority of professing Christians in the west “have given a vigorous or a reluctant Yes to the Bomb.” 44 Robert Johansen is more specific:

Because of the way that the U.S. and Soviet governments imitate each other’s armaments, a vote by any U.S. citizen for an increase in U.S. military capability is also a vote for an increase in Soviet military capability as well. 45

How then shall we bear witness so that we “make the water of the giant tap flow backwards,” as Sidney Lens has stated? 46 A place to start is to call a halt to the assent that thus far has been given by the Christian church.

The great playwright Anton Chekhov said that if a gun is hanging on the wall in the first act of a play, it will surely go off before the end of the third. Figuratively speaking, we have guns hanging everywhere on the walls of our national and international stages. We are already {14} well into the first act, perhaps even the second, and too many of us have been applauding the players. The louder we cheer, the greater the chance of hearing the gun explode in the third act. A chorus of booing would be a restraint.

The next step is to support any treaty that “halts the arms race and gives us a chance to breathe.” 47 Kraybill favors current FREEZE and START proposals. (A very helpful 28-page guide titled “You can do something” appears in his book.) In short, Kraybill suggests that we “jump onto any bandwagon that promises to nudge the whole process closer to the goal of abolishing nuclear weapons.” 48

Only that way will we be able to make the water flow backwards. Only that will help disarm the big guns on the wall.

We must act immediately so that we can appropriate the wisdom of the ancient writer who said, “Some boast in chariots and some in horses, but we will remember our Lord” (Ps. 20:7).

REFERENCES

  1. Richard Barnet, “Ultimate Terrorism,” A Matter of Faith: A Study Guide for Churches on the Nuclear Arms Race (Washington: Sojourners Fellowship, 1981), p. 6.
  2. Don Kraybill, Facing Nuclear War (Scottdale: Herald, 1982), p. 132.
  3. Dale Aukerman, Darkening Valley: A Biblical Perspective on Nuclear War (New York: Seabury, 1981), p. 133.
  4. Ibid., p. 140.
  5. Sidney Lens, The Day Before Doomsday: An Anatomy of the Nuclear Arms Race (Boston: Beacon, 1977), p. 20.
  6. The Defense Monitor, Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C. Vol. XI, No. 3, 1982, p. 7.
  7. Ibid., p. 7.
  8. Kraybill, Facing, p. 25.
  9. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures 1981 (Leesburg: World Priorities, 1981), p. 5.
  10. Art Meyer, “Military Expenditures—Do they Affect Today’s Economic Conditions?” Mennonite Central Committee News Service, Feb. 11, 1983.
  11. Ruth Leger Sivard, “The High Cost of Insecurity,” A Matter of Faith, p. 29.
  12. Alva Myrdal, “An ‘Outsider’s’ View of the Arms Race,” Ethics and Nuclear Strategy?, Harold P. Ford and Francis X. Winters, eds. (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1977), p. 90.
  13. Senators Edward Kennedy and Mark Hatfield, FREEZE! How You Can Help Prevent Nuclear War (New York: Bantam, 1982), p. 67.
  14. Ibid., p. 77.
  15. Seymour Melman, “Limits of Military Power for National Security,” U.S. Defense Policy, Christopher Kojm, ed. (New York: Wilson, 1982), p. 31.
  16. Robert Ball, “Nuclear Weapons: Suppose We Froze,” The Nuclear Freeze Debate, Christopher Kojm, ed. (New York: Wilson, 1983), p. 203. {15}
  17. Sidney Lens, “A Spreading Madness,” A Matter of Faith, p. 16.
  18. Kraybill, Facing, pp. 26, 27.
  19. Kennedy/Hatfield, FREEZE!, p. 98.
  20. Lens, “Spreading Madness,” p. 16.
  21. “A Proposal to Tilt the Balance of Terror,” Christianity Today, April 9, 1982, p. 18.
  22. Urbane Peachey in Preface to What is Militarism? by Ernie Regehr, published by Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section.
  23. Mardal, “Outsider’s View,” Ethics and Nuclear Strategy?, p. 90.
  24. Melman, U.S. Defense Policy, p. 29.
  25. Ibid., p. 29.
  26. Mark Hatfield, speech to Fresno Pacific College graduation, 1983.
  27. An Agenda on Militarism and Development, adopted by Mennonite Central Committee, Jan. 27, 1979.
  28. Quoted by J.M. Klassen, letter from Mennonite Central Committee (Canada) to Members of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence, Parliament of Canada, Feb. 24, 1982.
  29. Kennedy/Hatfield, FREEZE!, p. 133.
  30. Kraybill, Facing, p. 214.
  31. “Burning Up $1 Trillion,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 22, 1980.
  32. Maynard Shelly, New Call for Peacemakers (Newton: Faith and Life, 1979), p. 19.
  33. Charlie Lord, The Rule of the Sword: A Study Guide on Technological Militarism (Newton: Faith and Life, 1978), pp. 59, 60.
  34. Gordon Adams, “America Held Hostage,” Nuclear Times, April, 1983, p. 19.
  35. Michael Kazin, “Deployment Or Employment?”, Nuclear Times, April, 1983, p. 16.
  36. Quoted in Peace Section Newsletter, Mennonite Central Committee, JanuaryFebruary, 1982.
  37. Christianity Today, “Balance of Terror,” p. 18.
  38. Kraybill, Facing, p. 117.
  39. Frank Trippett, TIME Essay, Aug. 30, 1982, p. 91.
  40. Sivard, “Insecurity,” A Matter of Faith, p. 31.
  41. An Agenda on Militarism and Development.
  42. Melman, U.S. Defense Policy, p. 33.
  43. Ibid., p. 37.
  44. Aukerman, Darkening Valley, p. 140.
  45. Robert Johansen, “The Failure of Arms Control,” A Matter of Faith, p. 75.
  46. Lens, Doomsday, p. 186.
  47. Kraybill, Facing, p. 242.
  48. Ibid., p. 242.
    49. Wally Kroeker is West Coast co-editor of the Christian Leader and is a student at Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, Fresno, California.

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