Peace in the Post-Christian Era

It is fitting and a trifle ironic that I am writing this short review on the day when Barack Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, having recently committed a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Merton would surely have objected to this in the strongest possible terms, for the same reasons that he voiced his opposition to the war in Vietnam. Indeed, his extraordinary death in a shower in Bangkok in December 1968 may well have been an 'accident' engineered by the intelligence services in order to rid themselves of a thorn in their side. Merton's writings on peace are extraordinarily powerful - he saw them as an expression of his prophetic mission and his conviction that 'the vitality of the Church depends precisely on spiritual renewal, uninterrupted, continuous, and deep.' In this context, he did not believe that monks should be in the rear with the baggage, but rather part of the advance guard.

Needless to say, the nuclear issue is at the forefront of these essays, but there is much discussion of the parameters of a just war in the Christian tradition, along with a penetrating essay on the legacy of Machiavelli. The situation in Afghanistan owes a good deal to realpolitik as practised from Machiavelli to Clausewitz to Kissinger. Merton characterises the state of mind of his time, and indeed of ours, as 'one of truculence and suspicion, based on fear. In such a mood, it becomes difficult to see any other solution than violence.' On another page he remarks that military logic frequently demands a new and more ruthless policy, arguing that this will save lives and enable a swifter end to the war. This sounds chillingly familiar, and I'm sure that Obama will have heard this repeatedly. For Merton, the winner is war, with the same ruthless inhumanity on both sides. In Copenhagen, we are trying to formulate the interests of our common humanity - a logic that should be extended to all fields as we recognise our oneness and interdependence.