International peace activist William Sloane Coffin addressed a crowd of about 20 last night in 105 Dartmouth Hall on the abolition of nuclear arms.
Making a reappearance at the College after being honored as last term's Montgomery Fellow, Coffin instantly acknowledged the gross lack of interest in the international dilemma of nuclear armament.
"The sense of urgency is gone," Coffin said. "For 50 years, my generation has dealt with an unrelenting quest to morally justify the use of nuclear weapons."
Coffin said the preservation of the environment is a more pressing concern for youth today than nuclear abolition.
"Your generation is not at all attached to the idea of nuclear weapons as mine has been," he said.
With an estimated 12,000 to 13,000 nuclear weapons currently harbored in the U.S. alone, and 170 wars having occurred since 1945, Coffin insisted this is "not an issue to be solved by short-term policy, but through persistent long term goals."
"People can no longer be subjected to a forced cohabitation with terror," Coffin explained. "Right now, there are far too many influential powers opposing nuclear disarmament."
Defense strategists, certain politicians and countless "cold warriors" -- all with a facilitated access to power -- have succumbed to the prevailing drive for superiority, under which arms-control is advancing in a perpetually upward motion, Coffin said.
"The entire world has become a prisoner condemned to death, senselessly awaiting its execution," Coffin said.
Coffin reiterated the conspicuous moral and political senselessness of nuclear war, stating that the nuclear arms build-up during the Cold War provided enough weapons to annihilate the world seven times over.
With the Warsaw Pact dissolved, the Cold War ground to a halt and the former Soviet Union disintegrated, Coffin explained the fundamental reason why certain countries still crave nuclear dominance.
"The world powers of today cling to an irrational love of loveless power," Coffin said. "The U.S. exhibits a macho love of war and weapons sprung directly from our macho frontier past."
Coffin paralleled this current international situation with "nuclear apartheid," in which the "superpowers" exercise the right to hold weapons themselves while policing the rest of the world against doing the same.
"The whole idea of a nuclear apartheid makes as little sense as racial apartheid, and has just as little chance of succeeding," Coffin said. "The nuclear weapon states must relinquish their weapons if they expect the rest of the world to effectively follow suit."
Although 30 wars are currently being fought internationally, the world is 95 percent nuclear-free, Coffin said. Nonetheless, he said "it's high time to deal with the final five percent."
"It's not complicated, it's just arduous," he said. "Moral imagination, political resolve, and persistence is all that is necessary for success."
Coffin said he believes ceasing the continual nuclear innovations is the first step that should be taken.
"How quickly our technology has surpassed our humanity, allowing the unthinkable to become all too thinkable," Coffin said. "Humanity has outlived war, but simply doesn't know it yet. It might seem hopelessly utopian, but it's the truth."
Coffin stressed the most crucial step is the establishment of an authorized central organization is to police and ban nuclear weapon use entirely.
"Abolition makes the point that a sharp arms reduction just doesn't make," Coffin explained. "Only God has the authority to end a life; human beings only have the physical power. The use of nuclear arms is intolerable, and uselessly keeping a few arms around just won't solve the problem."
Coffin encouraged the staunch environmentalists of today's youth to use their enthusiasm to bolster the disarmament side, since the use of nuclear weapons counters every environmental doctrine revered today.
This appeal was to the students who he claims are "no longer offended by the weapons they have lived with for so long."
"We've slipped behind on our schedule to save the planet because we were frozen for too many years by the Cold War," Coffin said.
He insisted this delay should not act as a continual source of discouragement, but instead as an incentive to expedite the total nuclear arms abolition.
"Having bitten into the nuclear apple, there is no returning to innocence," Coffin said. "But I simply will not stand the idea that there's nothing that we can do."
The speech was the final in a series of three sponsored by the Tucker Foundation in an effort to raise concerns for moral issues confronting the world, beyond the confines of the College.
