What Kind of Peace? What Sort Of Growth?

March 20—We live under the immediate threat of general, nuclear war, capable of annihilating the human species, and of an economic suicide spiral destructive of human life and progress. What is the way out?

People of good will seek peace in Ukraine, but what sort of peace? If peace were merely an absence of war, were Ukraine and Russia “at peace” before February 24? Have Russia and NATO been “at peace” for the last twenty years?

A peace that relies on a balance of powers, on a calibrated equality among divergent goals, could last for long; it would not reflect the universality of humanity or common paths to prosperity and happiness.

While it is possible for Russia to succeed in its goals of demilitarizing and de-Nazifying Ukraine, the necessary form of peace required for the world cannot be won on the lands of Ukraine.

It must be fought for and achieved by the people of the U.S., of other NATO countries, of the non-aligned world, of everyone—in short, through a new security and development architecture for all nations, taking into account the interest of every nation and of humanity generally.

This interest transcends preferences of nations (or of their ruling elites), deriving its authority from the nature of each human as made in the living image of God, endowed with reason and with an impulse (and largely unachieved right!) to contribute in a durable way to the advancement of humanity as a whole.

We have reached the point that poverty anywhere on this globe is unnecessary, its continued existence a crime. Against this great potential of the powers of the human mind and human economy stands an Anglo-American-centered empire that attacks directly the human potential to grow—attacks it through green mandates, financialization of the economy, and through direct military confrontation.

The Russian-Ukrainian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky expressed the growing power of the human mind in his “Scientific Thought as a Planetary Phenomenon,” writing in the 1930s:

“In the course of the last half millennium, from the 15th to the 20th Century, the development of man’s strong influence over surrounding nature and his comprehension of it continued apace, growing ever more powerful. During this period, the entire surface of the planet was encompassed by a single culture: the discovery of printing, a knowledge of all previously inaccessible areas of the globe, the mastery of new forms of energy—steam, electricity, radioactivity—the mastery of all the chemical elements and their utilization for the needs of Man, the creation of the telegraph and the radio…. Profound social changes, having been given support by the broad masses, thrust their interests into the first rank, and the question of eliminating malnutrition and famine became a realistic option that could no longer be ignored.”

It is time to organize the world around the achievement of this great potential of the human species, to discard the brutal geopolitics and balance-of-power outlook of the past, to look to a future of abundance and progress.

There lies victory! And it must be achieved before the “Doomsday Clock” strikes midnight.

Build the Schiller Institute’s April 9 conference!