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that war in your members? "
lt
is a painful fact and not easily
acknowledged.
T here is a story of a nuclear
strategist, the late Bernard Brodie,
who once dismissed the idea of a
surpr ise nuclear attack by the
Soviet Union against the Uni ted
S ta tes as not "worth spendi ng
much money on." Why? he was
asked. His answei-: " Human beings
don' t act that way."
Of course, human beings
do
act
that way. Conquest has been one of
history's constant themes.
" Remember t he Hlvi t es"
Lawrence W. Bei lenson, author of
Treaty Trap,
points out that man's
tendency to break treat ies goes
back a long, long time. Consider,
he notes, the disarmament agree–
ment made between the sons of the
biblicial patriarch J acob and the
Hivites in Genesis, chapter 34.
The young Hivite named She–
chem, the son of Hamor, had
seduced Dinah, Jacob's daughter.
Afterwards, " Hamor the father of
Shechem went out unto J acob to
commune with him" (verse 6). At
this "conference" th e Hivit es
offered intermarriage of the two
peoples (verse 9) and the sharing of
Hivite land (verse 10) in return for
J acob's allowing Dinah to wed She–
chem. The sons of Jacob agreed–
but wanted one more concession–
all the male H ivites had to agree to
be circumcised (verse 15), an opera–
tion which, of course, rendered them
in no shape for combat for the next
few days.
So, "on the third day, when they
[the Hivi tes] were sore, ... two of
the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi,
Dinah 's brethren, took each man
his sword, and carne upon the city
boldly, and slew all the males"
(verse 25).
In this case, the Hivites only had
an
oral
agreement that the sons of
J acob would live peaceably with
them (compare verses 1O and 21).
And as the old joke about oral
agreements goes: they're not worth
the paper they're written on. The
Hivites had no
guarantee
that the
sons of J acob would not take advan–
tage of their temporary weakness.
A reader of the account in Gene-
14
sis 34 may notice that when the
sons of Jacob accepted the "disar–
mament agreement," they did so
"deceitfully" (verse 13) . Unlike a
contract a prívate citizen might
make, international treaties are
unenforceable--except through
war.
If
a treaty is made deceitfully,
the other side may lose every–
thing--as the Hivites did.
Now consider the modern context
of the disarmament movement in
Europe. The London
Economist
summarizes what would happen if
Western Europejust went ahead and
renounced nuclear weapons without
the Soviets doing likewise:
"If
western Europe rejected
nuclear weapons the Ru ssian
response would pretty certainly be
a grateful, if puzzled, smile. The
more honest of western Europe's
nuclear disarmers have lately
started to realize this. They there–
fore explain that 'if the Russians
did not start to match our disarma–
ment moves
in
the west, we should
have to reconsider.' 1t would be too
late to reconsider."
"Too late to reconsider"--like
the foolish Hivites in Genesis 34-–
or Prime Minister Chamberlain in
1938 who carne back from a confer–
ence with Hitler in Munich waving
a piece of paper , proclaiming
"peace in our time."
Mutual t rust is absolutely neces–
sar y for disarmament, but it is
absent among nations. The Soviet
Union has never renounced its goal
of communizing the world. The
West can never be
sure
that any dis–
armament agreement negotiated
with the Soviets isn' t really a ploy to
leave the West vulnerable to a sur–
prise attack. Nor can the Soviet
Union ever really renounce its goal,
because the very ability of the Soviet
leaders to stay in power depends on
giving the Soviet people something
outside themselves
and
their domes–
tic system
to sacrifice for.
Were the Soviets to become a
status quo power, they would have
to acknowledge, as Chinese com–
munist leaders have done, their
failu re to provide high living stan–
dards for their citizens. That would
in turn force them to change their
system (as Chinese have begun to
do)- and that is something Soviet
leaders will
not
do, because it
would mean admitting that the
goals to which they have devoted
their lives- and the sacrifices they
have imposed on their people-–
were in vain.
Thus as a practical matter there
can be no disarmament that does
not in sorne way promote the Soviet
domination of the world. There–
fore, as long as the United States
and other nations cai-e about free–
dom and independence, there can
be no disarmarnent.
Why The re Will Be Peace Anyway
"Disarmament," declared
Th e
Plain Truth
19 years ago, "is the
resu/t
of peace, not the way to it."
Peace will come when Christ
returns to this earth and forcibly
sets up his government over a11
nations. It will take Christ to
end
the inte rn a tional anarchy that
insures that disarmament treaties
can be cheated on or broken in
today's world.
T be Bible reveals that the
returned Christ will "rule [the
nations] with a rod of iron" (Rev.
19:15), and force the nations to
"beat their swords into plowshares"
(lsa. 2:4). While tbe Bible says
man doesn't know the "way of
peace" ( lsa. 59:8), God does, and
the Gospel itself is, among other
things, a message about the peace
(Eph . 6:15) which God wi ll impose
from on high.
In the meantime, hope of pre–
venting war rests with wbatever
fear the American nuclear arsenal
can inspire in Soviet leaders, an
ever more slender reed as the world
enters the mid-1980s. Disarma–
ment negotiations can seem to less–
en "international tensions," at least
as they are publicized in the West–
ern media, but they cannot reach
the
underlying
causes of war-–
which don't derive from weapons
but from the very nature of the
human heart itself. Indeed , the
Bible leaves us a stern warning
about putting trust in negotiations
to bring peace:
"For when they shall say, Peace
and safety, then sudden destruction
cometh upon them, as travail upon
a woman with child; and they sha11
not escape"
(I
Thess. 5:3) . o
The PLAIN TRUTH