I spent the month of January in India. Hence for the first several weeks of the Gulf war, the papers and editorials I was reading came from this populous Asian country to the east of the Arab world. The general outlook was highly critical of the war, which was seen primarily as an exercise in Western neo-colonialism, covered over with hypocritical moralism.
It thus was a double shock to return to this country in February to experience the national exhilaration with the annihilation of another country and the virtual repression of critical comment in the mainline media. For the first time in my life, the thought crossed my mind that I might want to disassociate myself from American citizenship.
I, along with many other people in what might broadly be called the American "peace community," have been trying to assess what really happened to this country during the first quarter of 1991. I am inclined to see this as a very ominous new stage in the exercise both of Western destructive violence and of repression of public dissent against that violence. It also is clear that American political elites understand that the conscience of the American people must be pacified to accept such destruction by an intense combination of patriotic and moralistic symbols and rhetoric.
Thus those of us who operate, in our criticism of international injustice, out of a conscious theological-ethical frame of reference are challenged to take particular responsibility to expose the falsity of this appeal to ultimate dualisms of good and evil, God versus Satan. For some years now, Third World liberation theologians have been naming the ultimate dimensions of the conflict in which we are involved as a conflict between state theology and the gospel. State theology fundamentally is idolatrous and demonic in nature, presenting the violent and cruel agendas of dominating power as an expression of God's redemptive order.
Some weeks ago I was speaking about this to Dagmar Celeste, wife of the ex-governor of Ohio and a political figure in her own right. Dagmar grew up in Austria in the 1930s and '40s. She said, "The last time I heard this sort of language about a 'new world order,' it was called the Third Reich." This statement crystallized the unease that I had been feeling.
Although one hesitates to use any analogies to the Nazi era, given the overblown exploitation of the rhetoric in the Gulf war, it seems evident to me that Saddam Hussein, although undoubtedly a tyrant, was a relative "paper tiger." The much greater global threat to human well-being comes more from the sort of claims to global military hegemony that are being sold to us by President Bush under the label of the "new world order."
What President Bush means by the "new world order" is the exact opposite of what the human community needs to be working toward if we are to have anything approximating what the World Council of Churches has called for as a just, peaceful, and sustainable world in the 21st century. I see a number of components that characterize this dangerous global system leading us to accelerating destruction.
One of these is the export of the Western corporate capitalist model of industrialism and agribusiness. This pattern of "development" is fundamentally exploitative, creating increased poverty, dependency, and debt for the poor nations and classes, while generating superprofits for a global elite. This model of corporate capitalism has petroleum as the centerpiece of power and energy, and demands a neglect of the environmental costs of the petroleum economy.
This mode of industrialization mires the world in a cycle of indebtedness through loans, the most devastating form of which is expressed in loans for armaments. Increasingly, the major forms of export trade of the industrialized world to the "underdeveloped world" is, in fact, the arms industry. This pattern of false development prefers political regimes that are oligarchic national-security states, even though these may be dressed in the external trappings of electoral "democracy." What is fundamentally rejected, however, is genuine self-determination by other countries, particularly Third World countries.
Finally, United States military power, together with auxiliary "allies," is to play the role of ultimate force to keep this American-dominated Western hegemonic power in the saddle. This world order is in no sense "new." It is fundamentally the one that was shaped by the Cold War, but for some years has been retooled as an instrument of Western dominance over the "developing" world. The only thing "new" about this "world order" in 1991 is that the anti-communist agenda is now untenable, and so its North-South agenda must be dressed in the rhetoric of new "threats" to the "American way of life."
A GLOBAL SOCIETY that would be moving in the direction of peace, justice, and sustainability would demand genuine alternatives to all these components. It would mean decentralized, sustainable forms of development in the hands of local workers and farmers. It would mean conversion from the petroleum society through renewable forms of energy. It would mean global cooperation to prevent further pollution of the environment and to repair some of the damage that has been done to forest, waters, soil, and atmosphere.
It would also mean genuine democratization and national self-determination, where international law is recognized as a universal standard of relations between local political communities. It would mean equalization of access to resources between rich and poor, between nations, and within nations. It would mean ending the arms race and movement toward demilitarization of all nations, including the United States. It would mean effective international instruments for non-military solutions to international conflict.
What kinds of steps can be taken to move in this direction of genuine peace, justice, and sustainability, counteracting the Third Reich-like conditions of aggravated poverty, militarism, and global destruction? I see the first line of action as the reclaiming of genuinely free public discourse, against major moves to repress dissent through the manipulation of the means of communication. We must finds ways to break through the hegemonic control of public discourse by the military-industrial-governmental oligarchies.
This will not be easy. I would foresee that the churches will be a major battleground since, at this point, they are one of the major uncontrolled institutions of international stature. It is for this reason that we can expect to see stepped-up efforts to clothe the hegemonic "order" in the language of religious ethics, to develop further the cadre of "court" theologians and church people willing to sanctify this system of power, and to discredit critical voices from the churches.
Although I would be happy to be disproved, I have a strong sense that this struggle between a "civil religion" of the "new world order" -- over against authentic theological-ethical discourse about real global justice and peace -- will become an increasingly titanic struggle in the coming decade. Critical church people must prepare themselves for this struggle by shaping committed communities of prayer, mutual support, and organizing that can sustain us in this struggle.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, a Sojourners contributing editor, was Georgia Harkness professor of applied theology at Garrett-Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Illinois when this article appeared.
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