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The Church and European Security
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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By indulging in a cold war Europe managed to disguise from itself for over forty years the true nature of its malaise. Perhaps that was why it lasted so long. Unconsciously, we hid our plight from ourselves partly by exporting our conflicts (and the armaments to go with them) and partly by suppressing them through coercion and obfuscation at home. By August 1991 the results of these self-deceptions had become crystal clear. The Gulf War and civil strife in Yugoslavia throw up horrible but revealing images of what we have been up to in these last few decades. Conversely, the failure of the coup in the USSR points to a more hopeful future. I want to discuss some of the implications for the Church of these various events.
Our self-deceptions were compounded by the absence of any really searching parliamentary debate about the principles which should govern European security. Those on both sides of the cold war who tried to put forward alternative military strategies or, more radically, new approaches to the concept of security itself were marginalised by the political elites. Creative thinking was undervalued, even suppressed, and parliaments confined themselves to technical minutiae on weapons procurement and the like. The absence of a discussion of fundamentals is the more remarkable when contrasted with the full and wide-ranging parliamentary scrutiny on other issues of principle, for example political union, the limits of national sovereignty or the possible benefits of a western European federation.
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- Copyright © 1992 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 A recent article in Survival (ISSS May/June 1991) argues that as a result of the Gulf War, with its emphasis on hi‐tech weapons as a way of keeping US casualties low, the US is in danger of building an ever smaller, more hi‐tech force which can only be used against ever weaker and less sophisticated countries, regardless of whether the latter constitute the principal danger.
2 Cf the message from John Paul II to President Bush, 15 January 1991: ‘Iwish now to restate my firm belief that war is not likely to bring an adequate solution to international problems and that, even though an unjust situation might be momentarily met, the consequences that would possibly derive from war would be devastating and tragic. We cannot pretend that the use of arms, and especially of today's highly sophisticated weaponry, would not give rise, in addition to suffering and destruction, to new and perhaps worse injustices.’ Cf also Centesimos Annus, 52.
3 Some say that abolishing war is misguided since the use of arms in the exercise of justice, e.g. Czechoslovakia in 1968, is then impossible. This is indeed one of the objections to nuclear deterrence. 'It cannot be right to renounce in advance the option of using arms to confront proportionally grave injustice. Force, crude as it is, is at the service of justice and order, and it may sometimes be necessary at least to contemplate it. To refuse to contemplate it is to render the negotiated pursuit of a just international order impotent (Oliver O'Donovan, Peace and Certainty: A Theological Essay on Deterrence, Oxford (Oxford University Press) 1989, 88)'. The trouble is that war at the service of justice and order, waged with modem weapons on the continent of Europe, is no longer possible. It is not deterrence as an aim of policy that has caused this dilemma, although the development of modern weapons has been heavily influenced by deterrence policies.
4 The WEU consists of all the EC states apart from Denmark, Greece and Ireland.
5 The Daily Telegraph, 11 July 1991.
6 The phrase ‘Europe as a whole’ is itself unclear and this constitutes part of the problem. How much of the USSR, how many of its republics, are in ‘Europe’? Contenders for the role of European peace‐builder, notably NATO, the EC and the CSCE, have very different notions of how to approach this crucial question.
7 Shortly after the coup, Russia appeared to threaten the Ukraine with what Orwell sarcastically called ‘rectification of frontiers’ on 26 August 1991. Even after a rapid agreement on economic and military matters between the two republics, the Ukraine was still expressing concern on 30 August (The Guardian, 31 August 1991).
8 This seems to have been agreed at the Congress of People's Deputies, 2 September 1991.
9 E.g. weapons supplied by expatriate Croats to help their fellow citizens in Croatia were intercepted at Zagreb airport by the Yugoslav federal army in early September 1991.
10 Getting down to very low levels of mutual deterrence in the absence of trust is difficult for technical reasons, which have been analysed mathematically. For a summary see Hockaday, A., ‘In Defence of Deterrence’ in Goodwin, Geoffrey (ed). Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence, London (Croom Helm) 1982, 68–93, 75ffGoogle Scholar.
11 The missiles have to be targeted on the USSR because of ‘negative security guarantees’ given by NATO promising not to use nuclear weapons on states which are themselves non‐nuclear and are not in alliance with a nuclear power. Since the demise of the Warsaw Pact NATO is committed not to use nuclear weapons on the former Warsaw Pact states of Eastern Europe.
12 Pacem in Terris, 113; Gaudium et Spes, 82.
13 Cf Christy Campbell in The Sunday Telegraph, 1 September 1991: 'Nato's “threat assessment” had always bargained for a hardline takeover, even a military adventure by revanchist generals … but no‐one had planned for … a democratic counter‐coup with … the apparent total collapse of the centre. Nowhere in western nuclear defence planning are there plans to barge in and “arrest” a Soviet missile silo complex or warship which suddenly does not answer to central control. There was a mid‐coup frisson when the port of Vladivostok, home of the Pacific fleet with its nuclear submarines, declared for the plotters. There was nothing NATO navies could do about it.'
14 Gaudium et Spes, 80.
15 Id. 77.
16 Renato Marrino, the Holy See's observer at the UN, 26 October 1990 (English ed of L'Osservatore Romano, 26 November 1990); Archbishop Sodano's statement on behalf of the Vatican, (English ed of L'Osservatore Romano, 23 January 1989).
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