War, Peace And Arms Control
In The Bronze AgeBy Stephen Edward Seadler
25 October,2005
Countercurrents.orgOnce upon a planet billions of years after its formation in one of the galaxies among the billions of galaxies in a universe so huge that the distance from it to the farthest known galaxy is several billion parsecs, or 40 billion trillion miles -- there arose a species of bipedal primates that came to call itself homo sapiens sapiens and its people ‘humans.’ Also ‘hominids,’ after the Family in which the species is included, Hominidae, which also includes the great apes: orangutans, gorillas and chimpanzees. In fact, human genes are 99% the same as those of chimpanzees. We will nevertheless continue the convenient old practice of calling only humans hominids, in order to emphasize their evolutionary origins and nature.
In the course of time, as simplicity fed on ambient elements under local heat, pressure, bombardment by cosmic radiation, and the workings of chemistry and probability over millions of years, there evolved higher complexities and a primordial 'soup' in which the first creatures grew. In the further course of millions of years there evolved the ape Ramapithicus, some ten million years later the small-brained, large-toothed bipedal hominid Australopithicus, and later on, some 1.5 to 2 million years ago, Homo habilis, an upright East African hominid having some advanced humanlike characteristics, comprising an early form of Homo, the genus of bipedal primates that includes humans, followed by Homo erectus, Homo sapiens neanderhalensis (Neanderthal Man), and finally, Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnon Man) during the upper Paleolithic Epoch, the prototype of modern humans, with the first fully human version of hominids appearing about 50,000 years ago. The hominids came to call their planet Earth, and through their sciences learned that it is 4.3 billion years old.
As their sciences advanced they came to discover the instant of origin of their universe and the evolution of its space, matter and time, and to map its present structure, including their own galaxy and their solar system in that galaxy and their planet Earth in that system. They discovered the origin and evolution of their Cosmos by means of their extraordinary multi-science science of Physical Cosmology. An illuminating account is provided in Part V, The Ascent of Intellect, in this writer’s book Principia Ideologica: A Treatise on Combatting Human Malignance, which can be perused on amazon.com via direct link http://softpower.us He had the privilege of studying quantum mechanics, relativity and cosmology under the late great George Gamow, main co-author of ’Big Bang’ cosmology. Actually, there was no bang at the origin: there was no space or air yet. It was just a name created by British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle to denigrate Gamow‘s theory, but Gamow whimsically adopted it.
“The most detailed and precise map yet produced of the universe just after its birth confirms the Big Bang theory in triumphant detail and opens new chapters in the early history of the cosmos, astronomers said yesterday [ 11 Feb 2003]…the universe is 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus one percent…The map, compiled by a satellite called the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe…would serve as the basis for studying the universe for the rest of the decade…The results were announced at a news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington yesterday, and posted online at map.gsfc.nasa.gov/.” -- New York Times, 12 Feb. 03, p.A1.
During the course of terrestrial evolution, the brain (encephalon) of animal species also evolved. For instance, the increase in size of the cerebellum in the course of evolution generally paralleled the enlargement of the cerebral cortex in higher mammals, a process called encephalization. The cerebellar hemispheres regulate higher cerebral processes that plan complex movements and participate in cognition and thinking. Humans enjoy unique neural capacities, but much of human neuroarchitecture is shared with ancient species; much of the basic systems are similar to those of the most basic vertebrates. For instance, human neuroarchitecture includes elements from aquatic vertebrates, including the shark. As evolutionary encephalization progressed, new higher structures and functions evolved on top of the previous lower and ferocious ones. Eventually the higher functions manifested what the hominids call Reason.
That recalls the words of Mephistopheles to the Lord in Goethe’s Faust: “Of suns and worlds I’ve nothing to be quoted, / How men torment themselves is all I’ve noted. / The little god o’ the world sticks to the same old way, / And is as whimsical as on Creation’s Day./ Life somewhat better might content him, / But for the gleam of heavenly light that thou hast lent him. / He calls it Reason -- thence his powers increased / To be far beastlier than any beast.” By the combination of evolutionary animal neurophysiology and abuse of Reason, the hominids became the most vicious, deadly and destructive species on the planet.
The hominids engaged in so much warfare and their weapons became so deadly that starting early in their 20th century -- counting from the birth of a Hebrew rabbi named Yeshua, which translated into the later English language as Jesus, whom everyone considered to be a prophet and many considered to be the messiah, from the Hebrew word mashiah, meaning anointed, or messiah, which translated into English as ‘Christ’ -- many nations began to create and sign treaties to halt or at least control the arms races and wars.
Those peace, security, non-armament, arms reduction, and arms control instruments included: the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), the League Commission on Armies Draft Treaty (1925), the Pact of Locarno (1925), the Washington Naval Conference (1927), the Geneva and London Conference Agreement (1927, 1930), the Geneva Protocol (1928), the Kellog-Briand Pact (1928), the Charter of the United Nations and its Statute of the International Court of Justice (1945), the Antarctic Treaty (1961), the Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963), the Outer Space Treaty (1967), the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1970), the Treaty for the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons in Latin America (1971), the ‘Accidents Measures’ Agreement (1971), the Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1972), the Biological Weapons Convention (1972), the ABM Treaty (1972, the SALT I Interim Agreement (1972), the ABM Protocol (1973), the Threshold Test Ban and Protocol (1973), the Prevention of Nuclear War Agreement (1973), the ABM Protocol (1974), the Treaty and Protocol on Underground Peaceful Nuclear Explosions (1976), the Environmental Modification Ban (1977), and so on and on an on, arriving now at the Era of Catastrophic Terrorism by transnational groups using Weapons of Mass Death and Destruction, compounded by nations, especially North Korea, Iran, India, Pakistan and the United States, still nuclear-bombs racing.
In the Conclusion of this writer’s Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during its Hearings on the SALT II Treaty, he stated, “The need for introduction of Ideological Arms Control in arms control in general and the SALT [Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty] process in particular is clear and urgent…[by doing so] we will have begun to extend universally that Novus Ordo Seclorum [New Order of the Age] envisioned in our Great Seal, wherein Mankind will have learned to recognize and disdain the dogmatic fallacies of tyrannical malevolence, and to value more noble and glorious purposes.” Hearings Before The Committee On Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninety-Sixth Congress, Part 4, September 1979, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979, pp 504-509.
Despite the international instruments listed above and many more, the 20th century produced three World Wars (The Third a.k.a the incredible misnomer of ‘Cold War.’ Were the Korean, Vietnam, Angola, etc., wars ‘cold’?) -- four holocausts -- the Armenian, Ukrainian, European (Jewish and Other), and Rwandan. All were products of ideologies: Islamism, Christianism, Social-Darwinism, Fascism, Naziism, Shinto-Tanakaism [my term], and Marxism-Leninism and its variants. All of those except Shinto-Tanakaism were products of Abrahamic Civilization, which comprises the three religions that trace their roots back to the patriarch Abraham (considered by many scholars to have been only a mythical culture hero), namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In overview, Abrahamic Civilization in the 20th Century was an Ideologically Determined Catastrophe -- the most savage century in history.
Consider its theological history: Judaism evolved during the Bronze Age out of pagan mythologies tracing back to ancient Sumer, resulting in an extremely bloody, savage literature we call the Old Testament. A little over two millennia ago a small sect within Judaism led by Yeshua and his eleven Jewish and one non-Jewish (Luke) disciples created a new religion out of the old one that came to be called Christianity, and wrote a sequel to the Old Testament we call the New Testament, fundamentally just as bloody as the Old. Of the four Gospel writers three were Jewish (only Luke was not). Some six hundred plus years later an illiterate merchant of the Arabic Koreish tribe named Muhammad, working with his Jewish friends and colleagues and scribes to whom he dictated, created a third, and what he declared to be the last and correct, testament, called the Qur’an, or Koran, in large part out of Judaism and some misunderstood Christianity. Result: another savagely bloody ‘holy’ book. These three works, rooted in the Bronze Age, comprise the foundations of Abrahamic Civilization today.
In the chapter “The Wish For War” in his classic book Ends And Means (1937), British author Aldous Huxley wrote, “Christianity…was able to justify the bloodthirsty tendencies of its adherents by an appeal to the savage Bronze Age literature of the Old Testament.” In 1992, Maryland Public Television produced a series of global civilizations studies called LEGACY, written and narrated by British historian Michael Wood, in which he summarized the savagery in our “civilization” in cultural terms as follows:
“WE WESTERNERS OF THE LATE 20TH CENTURY -- FOR ALL OUR MODERNITY -- ARE STILL A BRONZE AGE PEOPLE.”
It is fruitless to discuss War and Peace seriously without definitions of those two terms, which are standardly absent from all works about them. The best operative definition was given by Thomas Hobbes in his 17th Century classic Leviathan:
For W A R R E consisteth not in Battel only, or in the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battel is sufficiently known; and there the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of Warre, as it is in the Nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foule weather, lyeth not in a Showre or two of rain, but in an inclination thereto of many days together: So the nature of Warre consisteth not in actual fighting; but in a known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is P E A C E
The “inclination” and “disposition” to war are crystallized and distributed in a war’s ideological foundations, which rationalize, legitimate, motivate and unify “the Will to contend by Battel.” Ideological armaments are as essential as physical armaments in preparation for and conduct of war. Without such understanding, international peace and security agreements have been doomed to repeated failure. Especially arms control, which, seeking to control preparations for war without essential understanding of the nature of War and Peace, is fundamentally flawed and has been an historically failed enterprise. It needs to be reconceived and redefined, and this is developed in PRINCIPIA IDEOLOGICA, pages 475 to 478.
With only the foregoing brief sketch it should be clear that international security instruments in general and arms control in particular cannot meaningfully contribute to generating Peace in Abrahamic Civilization during its continuing Bronze Age. Therefore, high priority must be assigned to ending the Bronze Age while treating secular ideologies of war and oppression. That requires introducing the Ideologic (EYE dee oh LOW jic) dimension (ID) into national and international affairs. These matters are developed further in the brief book ENDING THE BRONZE AGE -- which the reader can peruse via the direct link http://bronze-age.us . Those compact 72 pages summarize the PRINCIPIA, apply it to a case, and thereby provide the essential principles and methods for obtaining genuine PEACE -- for the first time in hominid history. Essential reading in a state of Bronze Age Modernity during the Era of Catastrophic Terrorism.
The ‘logics’ of Ideologics comes from ‘Logos,’ as in John 1.1 of the New Testament, “In the beginning was the Word.” In the original Greek ‘Word’ was ‘Logos’ -- meaning Idea and the manifestation of Idea.
The primary threat we face in that Era is from nuclear bombs -- not just radiological, or ‘dirty bombs’ -- but most especially the kind that obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some designs are easily made, others easily stolen or bought, and smuggled into or dropped onto American cities and ports and critical telecommunications, industrial, financial, energy, and defense facilities and centers. A one-page outline of the problem, and of the principles and practices for its solution, is provided by the online paper NUCLEAR THREAT AND PREVENTION, which includes links to further material. It can be read and printed out at terror2.com: http://terror2.com .
That paper makes clear that we are fighting a war only against terror -- not against terrorism -- which involves ideology. Bin Laden made this clear in a taped speech broadcast on 3 November 2001 by the Al Jazeera Arab satellite channel based in Qatar: “This is a matter of religion and creed. It is not what Bush and Blair maintain, that it is a war against terrorism. There is no way to forget the hostility between us and the infidels. It is ideological.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has come to realize that full well. Speaking before a Labour Party policy forum in London on 6 July 2005 he declared, “What we are confronting here is an evil ideology…a religious ideology, a strain within the worldwide religion of Islam…It is a global struggle . And it is a battle of ideas and hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it. This is the battle we must win.”
The fundamental resource for fighting that battle, which provides the essential perspectives, principles and weapons, is the compact 81-page tract TERROR WAR AND PEACE: With De-Sanctification of Jihad. It waits in the wings unadvertised on amazon.com, waiting for the situation to get desperate enough for the infidel world to catch up with it. This is not Islamophobia; it is Islamorealism. It works directly from the Qur’an itself, and from classical and modern Koranic scholarship. It can be perused on amazon.com via the direct link terror1.com: http://terror1.com It will be a both-eyes opener to nearly all readers.
It would be well to note further that that is not bigotry against people and their religion, but is, rather, a matter of defensive war-fighting, requiring in accordance with Ideologic Defense, attacking and nullifying an adversary’s ideology. One of this writer’s closest associates on major matters is by his choice, based on superior merit, a Pakistani Muslim.
As you will see, the nature of the problem and its resolution’s principles and operations cannot be left to government. They must be implemented by the private sector: by NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and you. You can begin by passing the word -- of this message -- and the web address that got you here.
For, this is about far more than how to win World War IV. It is about how to prevent as well as fight wars in general, in the tradition of Sun Tzu’s 500 B.C. classic THE ART OF WAR: “For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
We must go beyond merely putting out fires, at great cost in lives and treasure,to putting out the incendiary ideologies that light them
As called for by the famous phrase in the Charter of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): “Since Wars Begin In The Minds Of Men It Is In The Minds Of Men That The Defenses Of Peace Must Be Constructed.”
As called for by Hobbes’ definition of Warre. And by John 1.1’s focus on Logos.
This is also about combatting racism, religionism, ethnicism and all manner of malignant ideologies of oppression. And about building genuine Peace -- for the first time in hominid history.
Where there is no vision, the people perish. -- Proverbs 29.18
Stephen Edward Seadler is a member of:American Physical Society, New York Academy of Sciences, Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers, Foreign Policy Association, Academy of Political Science, West Point Society of New Jersey, Union of Concerned Scientists, American Physical Society Forum On Physics & Society, Naval Intelligence Professionals, Wisdom Hall of Fame.and is listed in: Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Science & Engineering, Who's Who in Finance & Business Who's Who in American Education. Others in the UK, Europe & Asia.
© Copyright 2005 by Stephen Edward Seadler
