21 September is the United Nations’ International Day of Peace
Peace has a magic to it. Even the sound of the word is soothing and evocative. Posters of peace carry images of green valleys, gentle streams, soft sunlight, animals grazing and trees giving shade. Our thoughts and images of peace are often nostalgic because the reality of our world is so different. The green of the valleys turns to dust in the heat and drought of global warming. The stream becomes a flood that drives people from the peace of their homes. The orderly towns of Gaza and Ukraine are a skeletal mass concealing the dead bodies of nameless children. And over the world fly planes and rockets designed to carry nuclear weapons that can destroy our earth. The peaceful charm of the natural world gives way to the nameless terror of the man-made world.
And yet, as St Augustine once wrote, we all long for peace, even those who build the weapons and send the missiles that destroy it. They want peace on their own terms and go to war to secure it. Indeed, the world leaders most ready to kill and destroy human lives own luxurious rural estates where they can enjoy peace. Within nations, too, people act violently and stir conflict out of desire for peace on their own terms. Domestic violence expresses the frustration that other members of the family will not act in a way that brings peace to the violent. The violence in social media exchanges also often expresses the desire to remove a threat to people’s inner peace.
For Augustine, this meant that peace is more than the absence of war, and that the desire for peace is not enough. Making peace demands that we look beyond our own interests and what it takes to further them. We must look out for the good of all people, and especially of people who are most vulnerable. That attitude leads us to renounce violence as a way to peace and to be ready to yield to others.
Underlying this attitude is the conviction that each human being is precious and may not be used as an instrument for others’ ends. This conviction, grounded in different ways, is enshrined in the rule of law, in the understanding of universal human rights and in national and international law. In particular, it is governed by rules concerning armed conflict that respect the right to life of non-combatants. Their lives may not be taken in order to preserve more lives.
These go beyond the requirement that the cause of war be just, to demand that its goal be achievable and the benefit sought in it be proportionate to its harm. Furthermore, in the conduct of war, the loss of innocent lives must be avoided and be proportionate. They must not be the target of military action. These rules recognise that in war people will die but sets moral limits on the taking of life. Underlying them is the high value of each human person.
Modern wars are so destructive because this value of human life, so central in civilised societies, is routinely disregarded by military strategists and advocates for war. In defence of the Israeli conduct of war in Gaza – with its high loss of civilian lives and starvation, and unattainable goals – apologists have appealed to the conduct by Britain and the United States in the Second World War. These included the English firestorm bombing of Dresden, the similar bombing of Hamberg, the United States firebombing of Tokyo and the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima, all of which were designed to cause massive deaths of non-combatants, targeted citizens, and used their deaths as an instrument to force the enemy to surrender.
These actions, the defence of them and the appeal to them to justify the killing in Gaza presume that the value of human beings depends on their race, nationality and their usefulness. Each human life is not precious. In this bleak view, ultimately, what matters in human affairs is power. The powerful may do what they wish, the weak will suffer what they must. And with the power of modern weapons to annihilate, human beings won’t be around to matter.
Fr Andrew Hamilton SJ writes for Jesuit Communications and Jesuit Social Services.
