The military teaches the way of
peace, said Paul K. Chappell, because they praise in public and reprimand in
private. I heard Paul K. Chappell interviewed on an KERA’s “Think” with Krys Boyd,
on March 20, 2018. A West Point graduate, Chappell left the Army as a captain and now
works for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. I bought two copies of his book, Soldiers of Peace, and gave one to the
director of our state guard officer candidate school. I finished reading it
this morning. Overall, it was easy to find much to disagree with but Chappell
argues well for finding other solutions to our social problems.
Chappell repeats
his claims, which begin (easily enough) with the observation that 200 years ago,
slavery was accepted and women could neither vote nor own property. But here we
are today. So, what about us now will seem short-sighted to people 200 years in
the future? Chappell calls his program “peace literacy.” It is a path, a way of
life, not a formula or a checklist. Peace literacy includes empathetic
listening, respect, integrity, and selfless service. Peace literacy depends on
knowing how to calm yourself so that you can calm others. All of this takes
discipline.
 |
Soldiers of Peace: How to Wield the Weapon
of Nonviolence with Maximum Force
by Paul K. Chappell,
Prospecta Press, 2017; 272 pages; $16.
|
Chappell denies
moral relativism and epistemological subjectivism. He says that the truth
exists and we can know it. He warns against romanticizing the past, and even
against romanticizing nonviolence. He calls himself a realist, and
differentiates that from the common “realism” that is only cynicism. It is not
surprising that he repeatedly cites Socrates, Lao-tze, Gandhi, and King. I did
find it curious that he echoed Ayn Rand (though Rand is not cited anywhere).
Rand found the basis for morality in our mortality. She posited an indestructible
robot and explained that it could have no values. Chappell makes exactly the
same argument. Like Rand, Chappell points out that humans have no instinctive,
automatic modes of survival. Oak trees and caterpillars, he says, have no need
for mentors. We do. And he provides many. Among them are Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, the heroes of the Iliad,
and Lt. Gen. John Schofield, the superintendent of West Point.
I never learned
anywhere else that one impetus for Rosa Parks to resist segregation on the city
bus line was her experience with the integrated transports at Maxwell Air Force
Base where she and her husband both worked. In fact, Chappell says (at least
twice) that his mother yelled at him when he announced that he was leaving the
military because nowhere else in her world could a mixed race
(African-American/Asian) person be treated fairly.
Chappell also
speaks well of the discipline of martial arts that teaches respect for one’s
opponent as the path to avoiding conflict in the first place. Contrasting that, he
notes that during World War I, in the mad charges from the trenches, cruel
officers were sometimes shot in the back. In the military, everyone is armed
and trained to kill, so the social formalities reinforce respect.
It is salient that
the military succeeds by training. Chappell cites Julius Caesar who recorded
that the Gauls, Celts, and Germans made fun of the small stature of the Romans—until
the battle was engaged. And in the military, failures in the field are traced
back to failures of training. Learning the literacy of peace requires deep and
extensive training, of course. And Chappell and the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation provide such classes (here) though he says nothing about them in this book. (His own website is here.)
Toward the close,
Chappell says that the best use of the military would be for humanitarian aid
and disaster relief. As killing the enemy still has not worked out very well, that
seems hard to argue with.
Easier to take
exception to are the very many glittering generalities, glib statements, easy
oversights, and incomplete examinations that litter the book as Chappell
wanders over the landscape of his personal life.
Just to take one
point, the author asserts that women in ancient Athens were oppressed. It is
the liberal, enlightened view. Women could not vote. They could not own
property. Indeed, they were property. But so was everyone else. It is famous
that the philosopher Diogenes was one of the very many who were captured on some voyage or on some road and were sold into slavery. Outside of your city, you had no protection. Even within the
city, rights as we know them did not exist. Socrates is the most famous case in
point, but not unique. On the other hand, Chappell at length cites Greek myths
and Athenian dramas in which women were the driving force, the wise speaker,
the effective agent. The god of war, Ares, was less powerful than Athena, the
goddess of wisdom (and strategy). Beginning with the assumption that he seeks
to prove, Chappell cannot reconcile that against the civil status of women.
A dozen other
problems run through the book, repeated and restated, cast
as assertions and reused as proofs.
In balance, Soldiers of Peace provides cogent reasons to re-examine our assumptions about war and peace.
Chappell’s thesis includes the minor premise that nonviolence is not peace.
Pacifism will not end war. Rage is an expression of pain, not of strength. Perhaps
the most arguable and yet insightful assertion is that the threats to peace
include disparities in wealth, rapid population growth in the cities, and
climate change. Those threats were identified by the U.S. Army Sustainability
Report (2009). “When the U.S. Army and the Occupy movement agree on something,
I think we should pay attention.”
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