The views expressed in these blogs belong to the authors, not necessarily LICC. In this series, we’re hosting a conversation in blog form, bringing diverse perspectives into dialogue.

Editor’s introduction

‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. … 
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.’
(Matthew 5:5, 9) 

By God’s grace, this will ultimately be so. But right now, we need courage to hold on to this hope and wisdom to model another way, as the risk of world war seems to grow daily.

Currently, there are over 40 countries locked in conflict that destroys lives and devastates community and creation alike.

As international conflict escalates, how would Jesus have us seek shalom wherever we stand?

That’s the question this five-part blog series explores. Our contributors include military advisors, global relational peacebuilders, educators, humanitarian aid workers, academics, activists, and political aides. Some work overseas, directly engaging on the frontline. Others are serving on UK soil, dealing with the repercussions of unchecked violence come home to roost.

The articles are designed to help you become a ‘wise peacemaker’ where you are. Each author models how to:

• Listen to what’s going on and why as wartime impinges on their context and calling
• Imagine what should be going on, with biblical insight to join God’s peace-full mission
• Create practices and a response of healing action that brings God’s shalom near
• Communicate the gospel that Christ reigns even over dictators, without firing a bullet

The series also accompanies our Wisdom Lab: Peacemaking in Wartime event, at which the authors will deliver a TED-style talk and engage in honest dialogue that will help us squarely face war’s consequences in a Christlike way.

In this essay, Dr Alan Storkey – an academic economist, sociologist, and Christian ethicist – tells his decades-long personal story of waking up to the madness of militarism. Alan presents the countercultural choices Christians must make to follow Christ’s radical way of peace. He boldly calls us together to resist the dominant military powers, standing against the war-mongers who benefit from seemingly intractable conflict.

Dr Dave Benson, Director of Culture & Discipleship, LICC

 

Walking backwards to disarmament 

We students study a subject, but the question is – to what purpose? Sometimes it is for technical competence in an area, but really there are always deeper questions behind whatever we study. This is an account of a journey studying war, weapons, and peace, and coming up with what seems to me the clear conclusion.

Of course, we are all against war. I was born in 1943 and as a child I lived with bombsites and the after-effects of World War Two. War had ended, except the Korean War came along, and the Cold War and other wars which popped up. Articulate pacifists were around. But wars kept coming. There was the long Vietnam War, conflicts in the Middle East which did not make sense to outsiders, and I knew all kinds of Christians thinking and working for peace. In my life there was studying economics at Cambridge, LSE, the Shaftesbury Project, research and teaching steeped in biblical and Christian understanding and philosophy. And at the same time, wars, hot and cold, were always there. I was asleep, even though I wrote articles on the subject, stood as a Christian Parliamentary candidate in late 1974, and was Chair of the Movement for Christian Democracy.

Around this time, political reality was especially complex, facing countless issues. But topping the list were weapons and war, surely the biggest issue on the planet; and the militarised status quo, the great Churchill–US deal, ruled the world. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament had been hounded down. The Cold War ended in 1990, obviously the time to do something about world peace, but President Clinton was more worried about sex than disarmament. The war machine went on and almost nobody was allowed to think that this way might be wrong. I was in contact with good peace-making Christians – Alan Kreider, Bruce Kent, and others – but broadly the UK Government squeezed peace movements out of effectiveness with the power of the state. It was so normal that we could not question it deeply enough.

Then, my wife Elaine and I called in on G. David’s second-hand bookshop in central Cambridge, a holy place, and God placed Philip Noel-Baker’s The Private Manufacture of Armaments in my hand – published by Victor Gollancz, 1936, only £4.95 – and I took it home. I had met Noel-Baker. While at school I went to a London UN conference in circa 1962, at the YMCA headquarters, then off Tottenham Court Road. Yehudi Menuhin was there, and Noel-Baker. He frowned quite a bit and implied that things had gone wrong in the 1930s, but nobody quite understood what he was on about and Menuhin was obviously a bigger star even without a violin. I went and listened to Noel-Baker after the main sessions and discovered there was a lot I did not know.

The book was not well-ordered, but conveyed that arms manufacturers tended to push states towards war and had more or less pushed Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Austro-Hungary towards the World War One conflict. There were quotes from statesmen backing this position and it fitted with other stuff I had read. Really, up to that point, I’d bought the obvious line that Hitler caused World War Two and the Kaiser was the main problem in World War One. Clearly, this position was wrong and all kinds of points in earlier reading began sounding off.

One thing irked especially. Noel-Baker was annoyed at a Mr Mulliner, who was in charge of the Coventry Ordinance Works, which made big guns for ships. He lied about German naval disarmament, concocting a scare story about Krupp and Co – a leading global steel and arms maker until the end of World War Two ^[1] – being able to build Dreadnoughts in a few months. ^[2] They never got under two years, even during World War One. The Coventry Ordinance Works wanted orders, but even the Admiralty knew they were lying. In due time, the ‘We want eight and we won’t wait’ Dreadnought scare came along, backed by the popular press, with propagandists fuelling public panic that the Royal Navy wasn’t fit for purpose to face the looming conflict. Britain and the arms companies contributed to the start of World War One. Arms companies need wars for their business to survive and they go out to get them.

Suddenly, the line was crossed in my mind. Previously, I’d thought we were civilised, and the other side were probably the problem. I thought ‘us’ and ‘them’. But, of course, this might be self-righteousness. What if we were and are the problem? Jesus had views on self-righteousness. More than this, the arms manufacturers of Britain and the West were pushing militarism and had succeeded in making it a worldwide phenomenon by 1914, with four arms races before World War One. I did about a decade of historical work beginning with Krupp, the first half published as War or Peace? The evidence of the success of the arms companies was clear and largely incontrovertible. Politicians are taught to fear – think ‘us’ and ‘them’ – and so are the public. We ‘Remember Hitler’ but ignore the fact that the USA armed him.

There was now more space for me to read – good reading from Cambridge University Library, filling out the history of industrial weapons from the 1830s onwards. Weapons generated wars, everywhere, because rulers trusted them, exchanged justice for fighting, and were besotted with conquest and might, and there were continuities with the imperial histories of Europe and the USA. Fascism, which we tend to associate only with Germany and Italy in World War Two, was a far bigger problem – the alliance of money and military power to keep the masses at bay and protect the rich – and it occurred, and occurs, worldwide.

You test such a theory all the way to see if it stands. And it did. War after war after war. There were the arms industries and then the wars. You armed both sides. You promoted arms races. You bribed. British, American, and French arms companies bribed to sell weapons and then more weapons. There was no way round all the evidence. It was undeniably true that we and our faith in arms were the problem. We were constantly told that we had fought for democracy and freedom, but really the USA was using the same system as Hitler (importing some of his people in 1945) in order to impose our will on the rest of the planet.

Of course, this linked with the older empires. Spain, Portugal, the Dutch, Belgian, British, French, German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and American empires. They were built with weapons. They travelled right round the world. They did conquest, mowing down native people with machine guns. There was the heart of darkness, but it was our heart. There is evidence aplenty if one is prepared to look. We Brits had been cruel in China, India, Tibet, South Africa, Australia, and throughout much of Africa. The evidence was the same in the United States. The elimination of most of the Indigenous Americans, slavery and the treatment of slaves and ex-slaves, really through to Martin Luther King, Jr, was cruel and based on the rule of the gun. Really, the great Western history of Rule Britannia and Defending Democracy was partly, even mainly, untrue. In biblical terms, we were the godless barbarians.

In 2003, we were invading Iraq, with the USA, because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). ^[3] The issue was in front of our eyes. Clearly, the USA arms establishment after the end of the Cold War needed an enemy and Saddam was the only one available, so a war was engineered. The UN was ignored and Saddam declared a threat. The lie was amazing, concocted, and exposed. Especially key was the evidence which emerged from Glen Rangwala in the politics department here in Cambridge. ^[4] He published a long interview the UN had carried out with Hussein Kamel al-Majid, who had been in  charge of Iraq disarmament under the UN as the head of Saddam’s armed forces. He clearly showed both the competence and the detailed knowledge to indicate that Saddam had no WMDs. He was telling the truth and Saddam murdered him for doing so. I read this interview carefully several days before going on the big march against the Iraq War. Passing Downing Street, we knew that Prime Minister Blair knew there were no WMDs. He was sitting in Number 10 lying and controlling the Cabinet. ^[5] He has continued to lie about the war and should tell the truth before he meets his Maker. WMDs were a concocted story and Blair, our Prime Minister, was doing untruth to further the USA/UK military agenda.

Studying the arms companies in detail establishes that they had bribed bigtime since the 19^th century. The most famous arms trader, a  ‘merchant of death’, was Basil Zaharoff, selling for Vickers and other companies. He used to leave wads of notes around to seal his deals. But always the governments covered up. They had a business to run and their business was war. ^[6] All of this was going on, but most of the time it is hidden, or normalised. Many big arms contracts were out of control. The UK arms establishment focussed, as it still does, on BAE Systems. ^[7] They were involved in corruption in relation to the Saudi Al-Yamamah deal and most of its other markets. The Guardian beautifully uncovered the Saudi bribes. I wrote about it, did the research, and especially focussed on the way the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was pulled off prosecuting the corruption crimes. The climax was the way Justice Bean summed up in the Tanzania bribery case in 2010, screwing BAE to the floor as guilty of bribery when they had perverted the Government from Prime Minister Blair down. I probed the way in which the Blair Government put pressure on the SFO to close down their corruption cases. It was unmistakable evidence BAE were, and are, deep inside government and the Ministry of Defence.

President Bush paraded his ‘Mission Accomplished’ in 2003, but 20 years later the Allies lost and withdrew, and it was not difficult to see the accumulated cost of war, measured in trillions of dollars, or how rich the planet would be if we had not been fighting one another. Every which way, the West could not see its own failings. We blustered on about terrorism, which of course is what happens when your country is overrun by a more powerful state; Churchill planned terrorism if Hitler invaded Britain in 1940. War spreads. Weapons have kick-back.

Military dictators were kept in power by Western arms consortia and government sponsored deals. Prime Minister Thatcher and Saudi Arabia, the Shah in Iran – wherever you looked, arms were fertilising wars or causing them. When you studied the Vietnam War properly and the arms business which ran it, you screamed. For the Military–Industrial Complex, as President Eisenhower  warned in his final Presidential address, was dangerous and footloose across the world. Astonishingly, one week after Eisenhower’s warning speech, at Goldsboro 150 miles from Washington, two nuclear bombs fell out of a burning B52. One of them had three of the four safety devices fail and the explode message went to the core. It’s a staggering yet true story. The USA nearly nuked itself.

So, this research became dominant, but only because it was obviously important. War is important and so too is disarmament. Isaiah’s ‘swords into ploughshares’ (Isaiah 2:4) is good politics and economics.  It became clear well before the year 2000 that ending militarism was one of the best ways of cutting global warming. It can generate a massive economic revival in good activity, a world-wide peace bonus. It saves lives, trauma, destruction, and the hells of conflict. It was not just ‘my thing’. I could do more painting, writing, and so on, but this was the right thing to do, because it was crucial, and Jesus said we strain at gnats and swallow camels while neglecting God’s desire for ‘justice, mercy, and faithfulness’ (Matthew 23:23–24). So I had to do it.

The full gospel of peace from the Bible continued to shape my understanding. There were great Christians, like Leo Tolstoy, who opened up real pacifism. We tend to think of pacifism as withdrawal from war or as utopian, but these earlier leaders critiqued the whole military system. I understood the biblical deconstruction of might and empires far more fully and how it dissected the whole of modernity’s militarism. Babylon and the USA were similar. Isaiah was ahead of our thinking, showing the way to follow the Prince of Peace. Jesus, healing the Gerasene demoniac (Luke 8:26–39) was probably addressing post-traumatic stress disorder which millions now suffer through war. The biblical message of peace is for now; the mighty tyrants and opportunistic militarists should fall, and we must learn and live Christ’s way. Of course, this is just relearning old truths.

My book Jesus and Politics (2005) properly located Jesus’ power as also fully political. He was, and is, the real world political ruler. He shows the way. Every lesson was there to shape us and change the world. Arms deals are done in the dark, but will be brought into the light (Luke 8:17). If you trust in weapons, you will die by them (Matthew 26:52). The mighty need to be brought down (Luke 1:52). Peace needs to be made (Matthew 5:9). Paul details our only legitimate weapons in Ephesians 6:10–20. We move mountains through faith, not force (Matthew 17:20). Don’t let fear of being killed rule you (Matthew 10:28). Love and understand your enemies (Matthew 5:43–48). The rulers think they are powerful, but they are not (John 19:1–12). Jesus is sorry for Pilate and endured the cross, the great militarist threat of having the power to string us up, through to victory over it (Colossians 2:15).

The gospel of peace really has the power to wrap up militarism and war, as the Scriptures teach. The Big Boys are in charge technically, but we have a church of two billion Christians and they can fully disarm the world. Indeed, most people must see that wars do not work and we have been falsely sold the way of militarised defence–attack. It is not difficult to see that militarism and war is a failed system.

Above the door of my Peace Hut I painted ‘We can disarm the world’ and five years later painted out the ‘can’. We do it. How? A year’s thought, aided by lessons learned from the Geneva World Disarmament Conference of 1932, when world popular democracy nearly succeeded in bypassing the great military establishments, was enough to work out how to disarm the world safely and effectively. Basically, with open inspection, you cut all arms and forces budgets by a fifth a year until they are all gone and we tell the military what to do and not they us. It is undoing a failed system and reusing the waste products – ships, planes, lorries, metal, and more.

And so, it is clear, to me at least. It is like a brush sweeping away lots of dirt. It is not difficult to see how it can be done, but we all have a lot of walking backwards to do. Jesus said that unlearning, becoming like little children, is a big part of growing up (Matthew 18:2–4). All of us, Christians and Peace People, stand for peace, thousands, millions, and then billions when we have unlearned the false propaganda of decades. A big problem, the long wicked quest for weapons and dominance,  needs a big solution, one that goes beyond enemies.

Yet, the Big Boys are trapped in their own system, a load of Goliaths in heavy armour,  and we Christians by faith can walk around them and construct peace. Of course, peace is more and deeper than not having arms. But the gospel of peace is also about beating swords into ploughshares. We stand for disarmament, as Paul insists in Ephesians 6:10–20. Then and now the rulers, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, are substantially manifested as might and war. War is the world’s dominant evil now, and we must fight it. It was Jesus’ third temptation (Luke 4:9–12). We fight not against flesh and blood, but for world disarmament.

The world nearly sees every day on their screens that wars do not work. The military system is a failure. We realised a long while back (except in the USA) that weapons within states were a mistake. We merely extend the same lesson. There is no Us and Them. We forget, like Switzerland for 200 years, the external ‘threat’ thing. The Big Boys need to shrink. ‘Unless you become like little children…’ (Matthew 18:3). We listen to the news as though all this fighting and threatening world destruction with nuclear weapons makes sense. We listen avidly to big statue Caesar and not the Saviour of the World. Christians who should understand the Lamb ruling without violence and the final healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1–5) are asleep like foolish virgins, if you get Jesus’ drift (Matthew 25:1–13). I have been walking backwards for 30 years and think I can see what he was on about. We Christians are asleep, snoring like pigs, while our gospel of peace on earth, swords into ploughshares, the gospel of peace to all nations, remains unfinished business. The world needs disarmament. It is not difficult once people see that it can be done by faith.

But we come to turning the key. Jesus assured us that faith can move mountains (Matthew 17:20). Obviously, he was doing exaggeration, hyperbole… except he was not. He turned the key again. Faith like grains of mustard seed can dump a mountain in the sea. It is not difficult. Let’s dump this mountain in the sea. If two billion Christians stand up, just stand for world disarmament, then the job can be done. We are together the body of Christ, not Anglicans or the Church of Luxembourg. And if the body acts together, it is done. There need to be petitions so that people can stand up and be counted. We need petitions in all nations, all church groups, so that we all stand for full world disarmament. That Ephesians 6 ‘stand’ word is important. We stand for unarmed peace. My old man petition is at around 800 signatures, though only about 400 Christians, and we have to do far better than this. Christians can act together with clear Christian content to their action.

We cannot settle for peace being purely otherworldly, beyond the horizon. The Scriptures resist this sacred–secular dualism; they confront war and pursue peace throughout human history. Christian quietism allows the evil ruler of this world to triumph, as we see in the news every day. So, we must snap the spear in sunder.

We do full world disarmament. Why do less? We bring down the mighty in obedience to him. We are called, in God’s power, to make peace for the healing of the nations. We march, or shamble along, two billion strong, but weak. We do not need strong leaders; we merely need to be together because we have seen how to love our enemies and that he is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). We could have it done by 2000 years after the resurrection.

Dr Alan Storkey
Alan has studied economics, sociology, philosophy, politics, and biblical studies from a Christian perspective, and examined the long narrative of Western military control in a quarter of a century of study.

 

Discussion questions

1. What in Alan’s journey of waking up to militarism struck a chord for you?
2. In your own words, what drives the military–industrial complex which in turn fuels war?
3. If Jesus addressed those who profit from war today, what might he say?
4. Do you agree with Alan’s assessment that on the reality of war, the church is ‘asleep like foolish virgins’ (Matthew 25:1–13)? Why or why not?
5. How might you practically follow Jesus’ way of peacemaking in your own context?

Endnotes

[1] Editor’s comment. Descendants of both Krupp and Armstrong continue to operate these businesses today, destabilising regions and arming opponents for financial gain. Also, the Vickers–Armstrong merger scheme in 1927 was pushed through the Bank of England by the Government of the day at the taxpayers’ expense. See the website Arming All Sides, and especially the two articles: ‘Vickers and Krupp: A Debacle Over Royalty Payments’; and ‘Bailing Out the Private Sector: Vickers–Armstrong Fusion Scheme.’

[2] Editor’s comment. Dreadnoughts are a type of battleship armed with six or more guns having calibres of 30cm or more. They were first launched in 1906 by the Royal Navy, and arguably sparked the first arms race.

[3] Editor’s comment. For more on this disaster, built upon misinformation and outright lies peddled to the populace from the top political and military levels, see the BBC documentary, ‘Once Upon a Time in Iraq’ (2020).

[4] Editor’s comment. See, for instance, Seth Ackerman, ‘The Iraq War Was One of History’s Greatest Atrocities: An Interview with Glen Rangwala,’ The Jacobin Blog, 20 March 2023. For more detail, see Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and Its Legacy (Cornell University Press, 2006).

[5] Editor’s comment. See, for instance, the ‘Memorandum from Dr Glen Rangwala’ presented to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, highlighting the original unedited sources, and exposing misleading material in the 19-page Government-released dossier: ‘Iraq – Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation,’ 30 January 2003. See also Glen Rangwala’s email ‘Intelligence? The British Dossier on Iraq’s Security Infrastructure’ sent 5 February 2003 to a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.

[6] Editor’s comment. For an at once entertaining and terribly disturbing insight into the arms business, based on in depth research and true stories of these merchants of death, see Nicolas Cage’s depiction of Yuri Orlov in the 2005 film, ‘Lord of War’, written and directed by Andrew Niccol (screenplay online here).

The film opens with a suit-clad, conservatively dressed Cage standing alone on a battlefield surrounded by charred military vehicles and countless discarded weapons and ammunition, standing atop a blood-stained desert floor. Speaking matter-of-factly into the camera, he muses:

‘There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That’s one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is … [taking a draft and stubbing out his cigarette] … how do we arm the other eleven?’

Yuri would be pleased to know that in the 14 years since this speech (2019), there are now over 1 billion firearms, equating to one weapon for every eight people in the world.

[7] Editor’s comment. BAE Systems is the leading British aerospace defence and security company, based in London. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe and the seventh largest in the world based on revenues, supplying arms to multiple countries, including the US Department of Defense.

Helpful resources

Books:

– Alan Storkey, Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers (Baker Academic, 2005).
– Alan Storkey, War or Peace? (Christian Studies Press, 2015).
– Alan Storkey, Militarism has Failed: We Disarm the World (Christian Studies Press, 2024).
– Philip Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments (Dover, 1972 [1936]).

Web-based media:

– Read Alan’s blog here, through which he regularly argues for demilitarisation.
– If you resonate with Alan’s argument – that war always fails and militarism destroys – then sign his petition here and add your weight to calls for a six-year process of disarmament.