To Tell the Truth

SINCE PRESIDENT REAGAN first proposed it in March 1983, the Star Wars weapons system has virtually become all things to all people. To the president and his hardest core of ideological disciples, it is a panacea to rid the world of nuclear weapons and a patriotic challenge much like the Kennedy-era race to the moon. To fundamentalist TV preachers, it is an answer to the indefensible morality of nuclear deterrence. To Cold Warriors it is a new and advantageous framework for U.S.-Soviet conflict. To big business it is a high-tech economic bonanza. To some scientists it is an opportunity to pursue previously under-funded pet projects.

That litany, of course, omits the one thing that the Star Wars program, or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), most assuredly and verifiably is - the next stage of the arms race. And it is not off in a distant George Lucas future. It is the arms race already upon us. Billions of dollars in Star Wars contracts have already been let out. Powerful lobbies for the program are in place.

It is still not too late to re-examine the Star Wars dream and turn back from it. But the time is growing short.

If this new stage of the arms race goes ahead as planned, it will, like all previous escalations of the last 40 years, lead to Soviet responses and countermeasures. Those will lead to American claims of a "strategic defense gap," or perhaps an oxymoronic "space gap." And the vicious cycle of military threats and counter-threats will continue - a cycle that seemingly can only end in war.

In recent years most Americans have become convinced that the threat of mass annihilation is a morally and politically unacceptable defense policy. Given that conviction, most Americans will also oppose the Star Wars scheme once its true nature and purposes are revealed. That is why the program has come in all the disguises cited above, and then some.

Probably the most urgent task before people of faith and conscience in America today regarding Star Wars is simply to get the truth out before it's too late. In this article we will examine some of the more prominent myths surrounding Star Wars, beginning with the basic technological and military terminology used to describe the plan.

Myth 1: Star Wars is Defense

FROM THE EARLY DAYS of Star Wars, the Reagan administration has portrayed the system as one that would provide a leak-proof shield over America. This "Astro-dome" would surround the country and keep out foreign objects, especially Soviet missiles. We would be made secure from the threat of nuclear weapons, it was said, by erecting a wall around the country capable of shooting down enemy warheads before they could do any damage. We no longer would need to fear nuclear weapons, because a high-tech guardian angel would look after fortress America and keep us safe and secure.

Unfortunately Reagan's Utopian vision of an impenetrable shield was little more than a reassuring fantasy. The scientific community resoundingly rejected the possibility of such a leak-proof umbrella as ludicrous folly and dangerous delusion because there would be no way to ensure complete protection from a nuclear attack.

Decoys could fool the system, cruise missiles could sneak under it, and the Star Wars weapons themselves would be subject to attack. Some warheads would inevitably get through, killing millions of people. It was extremely dangerous and a gravely serious error, the scientists said, to base our security on the premise that a nuclear war fought with space weapons could be "won" in any meaningful sense of the word.

Star Wars was merely a new, high-tech way to accomplish an old Reagan administration goal: giving the United States the ability to "win" a nuclear war. In the early 1980s, when members of the administration discussed the desire to be able to "prevail" in a nuclear war, the public was rightly incensed. Now, with Star Wars, the same agenda could be slipped in through the back door of "defense."

Edward Teller, the so-called "father of the H-bomb" and an avid proponent of space weaponry, claimed that Star Wars technology would bring "a period of assured survival on terms favorable to the Western alliance." In other words SDI would give our side the ability to emerge victorious from a nuclear exchange.

The weapons developed for "strategic defense" would be useful for offensive war fighting in a number of ways. The Star Wars battle stations could be used to destroy the early warning satellites that serve as the "eyes and ears" of the Soviet Union, prime targets in a surprise attack.

The battle stations themselves would be vulnerable, requiring other satellites to defend them, thus setting up a Buck Rogers game of cat-and-mouse in space: satellites defending satellites attacking other satellites. In addition, some of the proposed new weapons would in theory be able to scorch the earth from orbit, igniting huge firestorms in cities and towns.

Finally, there is only one way the Star Wars system would actually work: a surprise first strike. With new offensive weapons like the Trident II and MX missiles, the United States could destroy a majority of Soviet missile silos. Then a leaky Star Wars system might deal effectively with the few remaining Soviet weapons launched in retaliation, protecting a portion of the American population and enabling the United States to "survive" a nuclear war. Thus, from the viewpoint of the Soviets, Star Wars would, in effect, unilaterally disarm their nuclear arsenal and leave them vulnerable in the face of the U.S. nuclear threat.

In his March 1983 Star Wars speech, Reagan admitted that defensive systems, if paired with offensive weapons, "can be viewed as fostering an aggressive policy." For his part Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger has accused the Soviets of developing their own defensive systems, adding, "We must recognize what this means - the Soviets are seeking a first-strike capability." In Weinberger's one-way prism, Soviet defenses are threatening but American defenses are not.

Myth 2: Star Wars is Non-nuclear

REAGAN HAS REPEATEDLY claimed that SDI is "non-nuclear," emphasizing his contention that Star Wars is a decisive break from nuclear weapons. Although much of the planned Star Wars weaponry uses new, exotic means of destruction including lasers and particle beams, the Department of Energy has been testing in the Nevada desert an "X-ray laser" powered by a nuclear explosion in space.

A congressional advocate of SDI claimed that such nuclear weapons are not really nuclear weapons at all: "We're all big boys," Rep. Sam Stratton (D-N.Y.) said. "I think we can understand the difference between a nuclear explosion that is near the ground that has a fallout and an explosion way out in space where nobody's going to be affected." Despite such glib assurances, launching fully armed nuclear warheads into orbit can hardly be viewed as an escape from the nuclear arms race.

Myth 3: Star Wars is Merely Research

SINCE REAGAN INTRODUCED Star Wars, he has put forth a third myth about SDI: that it is merely a research project, exploring theoretical possibilities rather than actually developing new weapons. Even members of Congress opposed to Star Wars as strategic policy have voted for the funding of research.

But many in the scientific community judged that the research was based on highly questionable premises that contradict the laws of science. David Parnas, a computer software specialist who resigned from an official Star Wars advisory panel, said, "It is fraudulent to tell people that we can build this thing when we can't, and know we can't, just because it will advance our [ scientists' ] private research goals and make Ronald Reagan happy."

Despite claims to the contrary, SDI backers had no intention to keep this multi-billion dollar program in the laboratory. Last October in Reykjavik, Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev offered significant concessions in offensive weaponry in exchange for a Reagan promise to restrict Star Wars to the lab for 10 years. Reagan refused, because such an agreement would derail the first goal of the Star Wars strategy: to get the program irrevocably off the ground before Reagan leaves office.

What is the reason for this push for "early deployment"? SDI planners fear that a research program could easily be halted by opponents in the years to come. A future president or Congress would be much less likely to cancel weapons already under production or in operation.

What parts of Star Wars would be launched first? Not surprisingly, the exotic weapons supposedly able to defend our cities would not be available for several decades. The systems that would be rushed into operation by the early 1990s are those designed to protect missile silos, command centers, and other military targets; in other words, the tools of nuclear war fighting.

What's more, the development of Star Wars will mean breaking two treaties with the Soviet Union. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 bans nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from any form of stationing in outer space. In the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed "not to develop, test or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based."

The Reagan administration has decided not to abide by the ABM treaty, under the pretense that a loophole in its wording allows the United States to proceed with Star Wars testing. A ratified treaty is the law of the land, and the ABM treaty violation is an illegal act. But without a world enforcement authority or national self-restraint, even a worthy treaty like the ABM is rendered meaningless.

Fighting for Moral Ground

WHERE DID STAR WARS come from? How did Ronald Reagan become a true believer in such a questionable proposition as "strategic defense"? There are several reasons, not all of them mutually compatible.

The clue to SDI's roots can be found by looking at the historical context of Reagan's speech that launched Star Wars. In the early part of this decade, the growing anti-nuclear crescendo threatened to sweep away the "national security consensus" that had justified the arms race for 40 years. Reagan himself helped to fuel public concern with his 1980 campaign rhetoric of the "window of vulnerability," as well as first-term pronouncements on the possibility of a limited and winnable nuclear war.

Soon thereafter millions of people from all walks of life joined the clamor for a nuclear weapons freeze, calling into question not merely the latest weapons system or newest launching device but the whole nuclear arms competition. It was in this context that the U.S. Catholic bishops began their unprecedented process of moral and biblical scrutiny of the arms race.

For many years U.S. churches had helped provide a theological basis for Cold War anti-communism and nuclear deterrence. This religious sanction was important to the government, for it gave credibility to the morally tenuous position of basing national security on weapons of mass destruction. So when the bishops and other religious leaders began to challenge the propriety of the arms race, it was a notable step toward undermining the moral legitimacy of nuclear weapons and paving the way for their eventual rejection.

Reagan was faced with the greatest challenge of his political career. The MX missile, centerpiece of the new line of first-strike weapons, appeared dead-in-the-water over the lack of a politically acceptable place to put it. The highly publicized final draft of the U.S. Catholic bishops' peace pastoral was soon to be released.

Nearly one million citizens had filled New York's Central Park, demanding an end to the arms race. Twelve million people and the U.S. House of Representatives had voted for a nuclear freeze. And the Democrats were jumping on the band-wagon in the hopes that the freeze would become an issue in the 1984 re-election campaign.

What was up for grabs was even more important than Reagan's re-election. The stakes were nothing less than the continued good health of the military-industrial complex. How was Reagan to deal with the most serious threat the arms race had faced in its 40-year existence? How could he undercut the compelling moral arguments of the bishops and the freeze campaign?

The late conservative columnist Joseph Kraft made a suggestion in a 1982 syndicated article titled "Reagan Should Co-opt Nuclear Protest": Don't fight the peace movement head on. Instead of direct confrontation or redbaiting, Kraft recommended that the president "take the protest movement in tow" by coming out with a proposal that would steal its thunder, momentum, and language. Kraft suggested not a policy shift but a move to appropriate terminology.

Less than a year later, Reagan gave his response with his nationally televised Star Wars speech. The speech was a masterful stroke that caught the nation by surprise, stunned the "experts" and the Pentagon, and served as the first blow of a concerted effort to co-opt the peace movement. The intention and the effect has been to steal the moral high ground and to throw a lifeline to an arms race threatened with being swamped by the tide of history.

'Technology Can Save Us'

REAGAN'S "STAR WARS SOLUTION" had the advantage of appealing to very deep and powerful streams in American culture. We, as a nation, have always had a special faith in progress, especially the progress marked by technological innovation. Our history is filled with examples of the "can-do" spirit, the attitude that we can succeed against all odds. Our scientific prowess gives further evidence that we as a nation are a chosen people, blessed by Providence, and marked by a destiny to serve as a moral beacon for the rest of the world.

The invention of nuclear weapons presented a profound challenge to this worldview. Here was an example of technical progress that was clearly not moral progress. With nuclear weapons we had technology that was evil in itself, not merely in how it might be used but arguably in its very existence. Merely freezing or reducing the number of nuclear weapons couldn't restore the threatened worldview that linked progress and American virtue. It was the symbolic meaning of nuclear technology that had to be changed.

Star Wars was to be the method of almost magically altering that meaning. Jeff Smith, a professor of mass media and popular culture at Bowling Green University, said, "What Ronald Reagan seeks through SDI is nothing less than proof that technology, and thus America, is still fundamentally benign." Star Wars is seen as not just one more fallible machine, but rather an antidote to other destructive machines. In Star Wars, Reagan invokes the power of technology to heal all problems, even to save us from the trap of its own creation.

Star Wars and Cold Wars

AT FACE VALUE Star Wars comes from a forward-looking vision, with its high-tech devices right out of futuristic fantasy. There are, however, some deep political and cultural roots of Star Wars that look for inspiration not to the future but to the past.

From a military point of view, Star Wars is an attempt to restore America's pre-nuclear position of world supremacy simply by building a better mousetrap. "We are technological junkies," commented Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.). "People think if we spend enough money, we can go back to 1945, when we were number one."

The invention of nuclear weapons brought about a world in which, despite our massive military forces, the country was forever exposed to destruction. Star Wars grew out of a vision of the past in which America was the invulnerable center of world power and didn't have to deal with another nuclear superpower in the Soviet Union.

Though full development of the Star Wars scheme is years, and perhaps decades, away, the Reagan administration has already deployed it as a political weapon in the U.S.-Soviet conflict with devastating effects. While still in its technological infancy, the space weapons program has already shot down any short-term prospects for nuclear disarmament. As the program becomes a permanent fixture in our military-industrial complex, the door is rapidly being shut on new possibilities in the U.S.-Soviet relationship for the foreseeable future as well.

Shooting down disarmament and detente was a primary mission of the Star Wars program from its very inception. As retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham of High Frontier, an early and influential pro-Star Wars lobby, wrote, "The strategy...can be adopted and pursued without regard for further arms-control agreements with the Soviets....Indeed one of the salient advantages...is that it provides security to the West quite independently of any trust or distrust of the leaders of the Soviet Union."

The Star Wars scheme is a convenient tool for institutionalizing the virulently anti-Soviet worldview of the Reagan administration and the American Right. At the core of that worldview is the assumption that conflict with the Soviet Union is inevitable, and peaceful coexistence impossible, even undesirable: We must instead maintain a posture of overwhelming military superiority in order to "prevail" over the Soviets by any means necessary.

Toward that end the Reagan administration came into office determined to scrap the remaining vestiges of an arms control process. Six years later the success of that policy is evident. Strategic arms talks at Geneva are deadlocked to the point of stagnation. The SALT II agreement has been trashed by deliberate U.S. violations of its missile limits. And the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty has been essentially "reinterpreted" out of existence.

First-strike missiles have been deployed in Western Europe for the first time. The MX missile system is in production, as is the Trident II submarine-based missile. The brakes are now effectively off the nuclear arms race, and the Star Wars scheme has played no small part in bringing it to pass.

President Reagan first announced the Star Wars proposal during a time of unprecedented worldwide public resistance to the nuclear arms race. But it was also a time when political disarray in the Soviet Union made it relatively easy for the president to regain the initiative on arms race issues.

Soviet leader Brezhnev's death in 1982 had been preceded by several years of moribund stagnation in the Soviet system. The decline deepened as Brezhnev's successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, spent most of their brief terms incapacitated by illnesses that proved fatal. During this period the Soviet leadership was chained to the status quo. In the face of a shiny political public relations initiative such as Star Wars, they could manage only a coldly reflexive "nyet."

But in 1987 the posture of the Soviet Union has changed considerably. Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985 determined to get his country moving again. He has begun taking measures to open up and decentralize Soviet economic, political, and cultural life. And knowing that Soviet society could not bear the weight of a new arms race, he has initiated something like a peace race.

Gorbachev has offered significant Soviet concessions on issues including Euromissiles and Soviet troop strength in Europe and put forward sweeping proposals for the abolition of nuclear weapons by the year 2000. Most significantly, with its unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons testing, the Soviet Union has become the first superpower to move beyond rhetorical proposals and risk bold and concrete action for disarmament.

In the last two years, Gorbachev has begun removing many of the obstacles in Soviet military and political behavior that President Reagan claimed stood in the way of a U.S.-Soviet agreement. Now Star Wars stands in the way as the primary obstacle to peaceful resolution of the nuclear arms race.

We stand at one of those rare crossroads in history where the choices we face and their likely consequences are unusually clear. We can plunge ahead with the Star Wars program, aggravate East-West tensions, and ignite a new round of the arms race. Or we can seize the historic opportunity to stop the arms race, move toward the abolition of nuclear weapons, and build a new relationship with the Soviets based on our common interests in security and survival.

High Tech and High Finance

IN ADDITION TO THE geopolitical interests served by U.S. military dominance over the Soviet Union, the Star Wars scheme has also taken on a convenient role in the domestic political economy. In the United States, the process that gives birth to giant military projects such as Star Wars is at once childishly simple and incredibly complex.

All policy emanates from the central assumption that the United States must maintain a military machine powerful enough to assert superiority over the Soviet bloc and to decisively influence events in the rest of the world. That's the simple part, childishly so because it is rooted in the same political ethic acted out by small boys on schoolyards the world over.

Translating that desire for dominance into strategic policy and military hardware is the complex part. A dizzying array of influences are brought to bear, including inter-service rivalry among the Army, Navy, and Air Force; congressional infighting over shares of the military pork barrel; and the mutual back-scratching between Pentagon officials and their counterparts at the military-contractor corporations.

But perhaps the most often overlooked factor in the formation of defense policy is the role military spending plays in the management of the U.S. economy. Ever since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it has been obvious that if the invisible hand of the marketplace were allowed to run free, it would bring the temples of finance crashing down.

As a result every capitalist society has since instituted some form of state economic planning and intervention to moderate the boom-bust cycles and uneven development endemic to capitalist economies. In Western Europe and Japan, economic management is often practiced through direct state subsidies to certain enterprises, and sometimes even the nationalization of industries such as railroads, that aren't profitable enough to attract capitalist investors but are nonetheless essential to the functioning of the economy as a whole.

In the United States, for deep-seated reasons of history and culture, such overt state intervention in the economy for purposes of equity and efficiency is ideological anathema. The mechanism of the military budget and the ideology of national security are therefore among the few socially acceptable tools available for managing the U.S. economy. It was the boom in heavy industry occasioned by World War II that finally pulled the United States out of the Great Depression. And ever since, wartime-level military spending has functioned to help avoid the inevitable bust.

In the post-war years, the "national defense" tag adorned all manner of social investment from student loans, absorbing the surplus labor supply and training managers, to interstate highways, which buoyed the demand for automobiles and helped create the suburbs as we know them. Meanwhile, the ICBM age essentially created the American aerospace and electronics industries, making the Sunbelt deserts blossom with concrete and steel. With the only industrial machine untouched by the ravages of war, the United States was also able to set the terms of international trade and finance to our benefit.

In the last 15 years, however, the outlines of our national security economy have shifted considerably. U.S. manufacturers and finance institutions have not proven loyal to their ever-generous government. Jobs and investment have moved overseas at a dizzying rate.

The economies of Western Europe and Japan are no longer subsidiaries of our own but serious competitors. And their systems of economic management have proven efficient in enhancing productivity through new technologies, while our military-industrial system often rewards the uncompetitive and incompetent.

One day in 1986, we awoke to find that the United States had become the world's largest debtor nation. Star Wars is part of the answer to that grim economic picture. Once again the banner of national defense is being hoisted to get us out of the economic hole. In the years ahead, as much as a trillion dollars in taxpayers' money may be thrown at American business in the name of Star Wars, with the object of maintaining military superiority over the Soviet Union and the by-product of bringing our high-technology industrial base up to 21st-century standards.

The Star Wars program also again gives the United States the opportunity to use its military clout to economic advantage vis a vis our allies. Immense political pressure has been exerted on the governments of Western Europe and Japan to sign on to the Star Wars program. In return the allies get a cut of our Star Wars research dollars and the continued good will of their nuclear protector. But we get to set the terms regarding what technologies are developed and how they can be used, again to our benefit.

Superficially the economic benefits of Star Wars research and development might appear to be an argument in favor of the program, not against it. Especially when the benefits accrue to the fashionable, futuristic world of high tech. The popular mythos around American high-tech industry centers on the romance of pioneering entrepreneurship. The early and astounding success of Apple Computers and a few other firms gave rise to the image of Silicon Valley New-Agers leaving the Fortune 500 dinosaurs in the dust with a combination of free thinking, labor-management equality, and encounter-group jargon.

But the bonanza of Star Wars bucks isn't going to eccentric Grateful Dead fans tinkering in their basements. Glance at the list of 1987 Star Wars contractors and you'll find at the top familiar names including Lockheed, General Motors, and General Electric - a veritable roll call of the truly needy. If anything, Star Wars will be a welfare program to help our multinational behemoths stave off entrepreneurial competition.

And the fact remains that military spending is a highly inefficient way to manage an economy. It creates products that (we hope) are never used. It is extremely capital-intensive, creating fewer jobs per dollar than any comparable civilian investment. And especially in today's high-tech phase, the benefits of military spending are uneven both geographically - rarely touching the abandoned industrial Rust Belt - and demographically - creating high-paying jobs for a few skilled professionals at one end and extremely low-paying, often non-union assembly jobs at the other. If just and sustainable economic growth were really our goal, we would be better served to beat our laser swords into the plowshares of railroads, day-care centers, and family farms.

The Selling of Star Wars

THOUGH IT IS NOW working its way into the manufacturing sector, we should recall that the Star Wars system began as a product of the "information economy." More than anything else, Star Wars is an advertising campaign. Taking a cue from Madison Avenue, SDI proponents did careful market research and designed a comprehensive sales strategy to shape the public image of Star Wars. The rhetoric used in the selling of Star Wars has been carefully crafted to co-opt the language of the peace movement and to convince the public that this high-tech escalation of the arms race is the only "moral" way to go.

Edward Teller, Daniel Graham, and others have been pushing the concept of space-based weapons for years. In 1982 the Heritage Foundation, a far-Right advocacy center in Washington, D.C., convened a meeting that brought together Graham, Teller, and members of Reagan's "kitchen cabinet," including multi-millionaires Joseph Coors and Justin Dart to discuss Graham's "High Frontier" space weapons proposal.

Graham later met with Reagan to evangelize the president on the issue. While the High Frontier plan was rejected as infeasible by the Pentagon and the congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Reagan was intrigued by the vision of a space shield. Later, after the 1983 Star Wars speech, Graham claimed credit for persuading Reagan to pursue the space weapons program.

The blueprint for the Star Wars sales campaign was a document commissioned by the Heritage Foundation and written by John Bosma, now editor of Military Space magazine. Many of his suggestions were later implemented by administration officials.

Bosma recommended that the United States should move ahead "forcefully and unilaterally" with Star Wars but said that it should "be represented as a bilateral effort." New Right organizations were encouraged to hide their sponsorship of SDI behind "centrist groups" and urged to make special efforts to attract "neoliberals and moderates." SDI proponents, Bosma said, should play freely on "high road" ethical themes, and he recommended a "radical approach that seeks to disarm [SDI] opponents by stealing their language and cause [arms control]." "With appropriate political and emotional packaging," the memo continued, "this approach may be able to tap the freeze constituency."

The key to the "packaging" was the strategy to sell Star Wars as an ethical alternative to the nuclear status quo. As Reagan said in 1985, "What could be more moral than a system based on protecting human life rather than destroying it?" Over and over, Reagan has claimed that Star Wars would replace the tainted policy of mutual assured destruction with virtuous weapons of defense, when in fact the space weapons would only serve to make the destruction more assured, if less mutual.

This approach has its cost for the conservatives. After 40 years of defending deterrence as the basis of U.S. security, proponents of strategic defense are now forced to acknowledge that the peace movement has been correct: The existence of nuclear weapons and their use as an instrument of foreign policy is a fundamentally flawed position and must be rejected as morally indefensible.

Star Wars Religion

TO THE PRESIDENT, Star Wars is more than a moral issue. SDI has been portrayed with explicitly religious language and symbols. Reagan has said he "saw the hand of Providence" in the decision to start down the road toward arming the heavens. He has used the language of faith, saying we would be better served to trust in technology than in agreements with the Soviets. And the whole notion of mysterious beings providing security from above smacks of pagan religion.

The Bosma memo recommended courting conservative evangelicals as a constituency that was "convertible" on the issue. The Heritage Foundation responded by putting together a "Religious Coalition for a Moral Defense Policy," with endorsers including Jerry Falwell, Tim LaHaye, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker. The coalition said Star Wars "offers the real prospect of providing a morally and perhaps also militarily superior policy" (emphasis added).

The overtly religious nature of the pro-Star Wars offensive is aimed at blunting
the cutting edge of the new peace consciousness in the American churches. With the churches beginning to withdraw their moral and theological sanction from nuclear deterrence and some even calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons, President Reagan has moved to position himself as the First Abolitionist. He too could not abide "the immorality of mutual assured destruction." He too wanted to lift the nuclear curse from future generations.

In place of the difficult and soul-rending path of repentance and reconciliation, President Reagan offers the cheap grace of a technological quick fix, assuring us that we don't need to come to terms with the Soviet Union, scale down our global ambitions, or redirect our military economy; we need only to put our faith in his promised peace shield to save us from the consequences of our sin.

It is precisely because Star Wars is being sold as a religious issue that Christian voices of opposition are so important. The case for Star Wars comprises a series of half-truths adding up to one big lie. Yes, nuclear weapons are a moral and even theological issue. Yes, the threat to annihilate civilian populations is morally and religiously abhorrent. Yes, nuclear weapons can and should be abolished as instruments of national security. These truths should be self-evident to all Christians.

But in the hands of the Star Wars proponents they are only half-truths, because they are used to justify yet another new means of destruction. The whole truth of the gospel is that there is another way - a way of peacemaking and reconciliation. That way of Jesus is the most crucial thing Christians have to offer the world at this critical juncture in history.

Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus warned his disciples that armed force could not save them or bring about his purposes. Facing the soldiers in Gethsemane, he told Peter to put away his sword saying, "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword."

The truth of that message is multiplied thousands of times over in our nuclear world. Our weapons cannot save us. They cannot establish justice and freedom. They can only destroy us. The answer to that dilemma is not a new weapons system but a new way of thinking and acting.

We have the opportunity today to put aside the pride and idolatry that tell us our own technological creations can save us. We can instead learn to live alongside our enemies, not in agreement or approval, but without hating and destroying each other. In place of eminently fallible weapons in space, we can rest our security and our hopes for the future on the trustworthy path of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.

Jim Rice is the editor of Sojourners; Danny Duncan Collum is contributing editor.