Sunday, June 14, 1998

India, Pakistan revive threat of nuclear destruction

(All Scriptural quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.)

By Lauren R. Stanley / Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- I was born into a world ruled by apartheid and Jim Crow, by the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. In the first decade of my life, the Berlin Wall went up, the tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and "The Troubles-- erupted in Northern Ireland.

The world into which I was born was a world of gloom and doom. National budgets were ruled by defense costs. We in the United States watched the Soviet Union's every move with fear and trembling. The superpowers drew up plan after plan to destroy each other, and the rest of the planet.

And then came the late 1980s and the 1990s, when, as the prophet Amos foretold, "justice roll(ed) down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.-- (Amos 5:24) The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union fell apart, apartheid came to an end, and peace broke out in Northern Ireland at the tip of the pen, not the sword. Peaceful transitions no longer are strange to us; instead, they are becoming, more and more, the norm.

Witness Indonesia and Northern Ireland in the last month alone.

The gloom and doom of the first three decades of my life have departed. Hope has replaced fear and trembling.

Until India and Pakistan came along, filled with religious fervor, and exploded 11 nuclear test devices in the space of a few short weeks.

Suddenly, the fear and trembling have returned.

The specter of nuclear death which had so dominated my early years has returned, and frankly, I am scared.

Back in the early 1980s, there was a television movie called "The Day After.-- It was the fictional story of the nuclear bombardment of the United States, and how the people of Lawrence, Kan., survived in the aftermath.

At the time the movie aired, I was living in North Dakota, a state bristling with nuclear missiles and site of two of the largest Strategic Air Command Air Force bases in the country. North Dakotans know nuclear weapons, and they know what it means to live with the specter of nuclear death.

"The Day After-- was heavily watched, and had a huge emotional impact on me, and on many of us living in the United States.

But in the years since that movie aired, the impact has lessened and the fear receded -- because justice has rolled down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

That is, until India and Pakistan came along, filled with religious fervor, and exploded those 11 nuclear devices.

Suddenly, all the fear and trembling have returned.

This time, there is a difference. During the Cold War, the plans for Mutually Assured Destruction kept each side from blowing everything to smithereens. This time, there doesn't seem to be the same restraint.

This time, both sides are driven by religious fervor.

What happened in the former Yugoslavia -- war on a large scale driven by religious hatred -- will look like child's play compared with what could happen if India and Pakistan allow their religious hatreds to flow out of control.

In South Asia, Muslims are competing with Hindus -- seemingly out of ego and hatred -- to see who can become the most powerful nuclear nation the fastest. And because neither side even pretends to tolerate the other, the specter of a nuclear holocaust looms large.

And I, for one, am very scared.

What would happen if either nation attacked the other with nuclear weapons? Not just to those two nations -- we know the outcome there would be total destruction -- but to the whole world?

Would all of our worst nuclear fears be realized?

Last week, the survivors of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki tried to explain just what those fears looked and felt like. They said, in unequivocal terms, Don't set loose your nuclear powers. Don't give in to the temptations of pride and ego. Don't let your hatred for each other kill all of you, and possibly some of us.

The question is, will the Indians and the Pakistanis hear, much less heed, those words of pleading advice?

Or will they let their egos and their religious fervor drive them -- and possibly the rest of us -- to nuclear destruction?

In the past decade, when justice indeed has flowed down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, it has become possible to dream of a world striving for peace, where apartheid and Jim Crow can come to an end, where governments can be changed by voters, not armies.

India and Pakistan, driven by blind religious fervor and hatred, have the ability to end that dream of peace, to stop the flow of just waters.

Perhaps, before any more decisions are made and devices tested, and possibly, missiles launched, those two nations should pause to hear other words from the prophet Amos:

"Seek good and not evil, that you may live; ... hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate ...-- (Amos 5:14, 15)

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(The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley, a former assistant news editor for the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, is the associate rector at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Burke, Va. Readers may write to Stanley care of Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)

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(c) 1998, Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.