This is part three of a series
describing how I would approach the war chapters. You can find part one here,
which discussed some models examining the causes of the war. You can find part
two here, which asked some hard questions about Captain Moroni and the
consequences of victory seen within the Book of Helaman. Part three finishes
the series by looking at cultural attitudes and ancient practices that warn
against simple applications.
Cultural Attitudes:
Probably the most important point
at the end of the war chapters is to try applying this. Latter Day Saints are
good at making applications to their life, but not all comparisons and
applications are equal in quality and application. The utility of ancient history to modern
application is one of the important factors. For example, modern Democracy is
far different than a premodern tribal based society. There is the separation of church and state,
and foreign policy is based on things different than a cosmological worldview. That
means that Latter Day Saints living in a modern liberal Democracy don’t have
the same amount of power over foreign policy as the Nephite Chief Judge.
Returning to part one, Henry
Kissinger described two views concerning foreign policy.[1]
These models show us a way we might tentatively apply modern principles to help
understand some of the lessons the text might offer. One is
a realist view based on balance of power considerations. As part one discussed,
the rising powers of Germany and Sparta threatened the sphere of influence with
the dominant powers of Great Britain and Athens. This unbalance created tension that led to
war. The second kind of foreign policy is
based on democratic ideals and an almost crusading concept of intervening to
support democracy and greater humanitarianism.
The most vivid example of this would be Woodrow Wilson’s War to End All
Wars, 14 Points, support for the League of Nations, and his intervention in
World War I. While this is also a modern concept, it helps the reader consider
how ancient moral ideas, such as God punishing the wicked Nephites using wicked
Lamanites,[2]
might be inappropriately applied and morphed into a crusading foreign policy. Latter Day Saints have a responsibility to
consider God’s will concerning warfare, but it isn’t quite as simple as a
taking a verse or two and then making sweeping pronouncements in support of
warfare. As Sunzi famously said, warfare is the greatest affair of state, the
way to life and death, and it must be thoroughly examined.[3] Considering the justifications for war, both
modern foreign policy models and ancient scripture, requires an extensive
consideration and application of both.
For example, the concept of
sheltering civilians from the horrors of war developed in the modern Western
world largely after the 30 years war ended in 1648. The humanist movement in Europe reacted
against this carnage by trying to regulate conduct on the battlefield, and the
discrimination between military targets and those that were off limits. (Though
every culture and time has a back and forth struggle and conversation with what
is acceptable in war and what isn’t.)
Thus modern Western readers come with a very specific version of what
people can and can’t do based upon a series of cultural assumptions that have
grown for hundreds of years and are fully expressed in documents like the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the
Geneva Convention. This is why we might
suggest that Moroni is not as righteous for things like indefinite detention
and his use of prisoners to test poisoned food. Conversely, judging Moroni
solely based on modern standards is a fallacy called presentism. Its most
extreme form means that anybody judged racist or sexist by today’s standards,
which is pretty much everybody, can be discarded. The best way to use our
modern sensibilities is to be aware of them, note the differences, and using a
phrase, to assess Moroni’s actions and “grade on a curve.” This means the
modern expectations and standards are useful guides, but not necessarily a
final determination of his righteous, as even God declared that he teaches men
according to their state (2 Nephi 31:3).
Destructiveness of War:
On top of that, the modern world
makes it more difficult to directly cut and paste ancient tactics and
strategy. Pre-modern battle consisted of
face-to-face encounters. The armies that traveled to these battles were
limited by the primitive logistics of that age. Their logistical limits were
compounded by an apparent lack of wheeled transport in pre-Colombian
Mesoamerica. But even with an army’s damage limited to what they could
personally smash or kill, and a nation’s limitations in supplying its troops,
the Lamanites could quickly desolate many cities before the Nephites “could
raise a sufficient army.” (Alma 16:2-3).
In Helaman 1:19, the Lamanites marched “with such great speed” they and
captured the capital city and ultimately they enacted genocide with these
primitive means.
Today’s battlefields stretch over
many miles. The personal weapon of American infantrymen, the M-16, has an
effective range of roughly a third of a mile. Jet fighters, stealth bombers,
and cruise missiles can launch from one location and strike a thousand miles
away. And Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles live up to their name, attacking
and strike from continents away. Worldwide airline and naval travel easily
transport dangerous people and materials. During the Cold War the United States
could nominally count on the international order to restrain the actions of the
enemy. Now, the United States faces
regimes that explicitly reject that world order, support terrorism as an arm of
foreign policy, and seek the most devastating weapons known to man.
Case Study: Nuclear Weapons
It was this triad (rogue regimes,
seeking WMDs, and supporting terror) that George W. Bush presented as
justification for the attack on Iraq.
This section presents a brief case study that suggests how me might take
ancient scriptures that didn’t know about nuclear weapons, and apply them in
the modern world, and I adapt it from my work in War and Peace In Our Time: Mormon Perspectives.
In Alma 46 we read how Amalickiah
presented a threat to the liberty of the Nephites. The actual results of his
behavior could not be seen until his treachery and murder in chapter 47, his
agitation of the Lamanites in Alma 48, his devastating offensive in Alma 50,
and his brother’s hellish letter in Alma 54. While it is possible Moroni acted
with incomplete intelligence, I believe he correctly identified Amalickiah’s
intent and latent evil, and followed a righteous course of action in Alma
46:30-32. In these verses Moroni did “according to his desires” and sought to
“cut off” Amalickiah. Thus Moroni saw Amalickiah (using George W. Bush terminology)
as a “gathering storm.” Precise details
of Moroni’s specific military campaign are scarce. But the reason for his
pre-emptive action is not far removed from George W. Bush’s removal of Saddam
Hussein. And it is not at all unlikely that the kingmen who opposed Moroni did
so by labeling him as a war-mongering fascist (or its ancient equivalent).
It is always hard to justify
offensive action based on possible future events or simply latent evil, but
from the actions of Moroni in Alma 46 and several other places, it is clear
that offensive, proactive, and even pre-emptive attacks are morally sanctioned
from the righteous actors in the Book of Mormon. For example, as already noted,
the Nephites at times adopted a vigorous counterinsurgency campaign, meaning
they actively sought to search and destroy their enemies. And on another occasion, the Nephite
government established a military outpost in enemy territory to try and
strengthen their position.
Conclusion:
You’ll notice I’ve provided many
ideas such as the way that treatment of civilians has changed, or the changes
brought by nuclear weapons. But I haven’t provided many firm and dogmatic
answers. As the development of the
barges in Ether showed, true growth comes from having a pertinent question
without any clear answers (Ether 2:18-20, 22-23). I believe reading the text
should be a demanding experience. Sacred
scripture gives us answers to questions that potentially affect the lives and
deaths of millions of individuals. The
individual must thoughtfully examine and reassess their preconceptions, dive
thoughtfully into the text, and then develop a foreign policy vision consistent
with the scriptures.[4]
Sacred scripture that deals with potentially millions of lives and deaths
should be a challenging experience that pushes, engages, strengthens, and
radically changes our will and understanding towards God’s. We have amazing
modern tools such as foreign policy models that can help us understand the
scriptures. But we also have a different
world view from ancient writers, and we are separated from God. We need all the help we can get in
understanding warfare, what it means in understanding the Book of Mormon, and
how it applies in the world. I hope this series helped.
**********
[1] Henry
Kissinger, Diplomacy. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.)
[2] Hugh
Nibley, “Warfare in the Book of Mormon,” Warfare
in the Book of Mormon, William Hamblin and Stephen Ricks eds, (Salt Lake
City: Deseret Book, 1991). Though as
Duane Boyce pointed out, this model has significant exceptions within the Book
of Mormon and does not account for every war. Duane Boyce, Even Unto Bloodshed: An LDS Perspective on War (Salt Lake City: Greg
Kofford Books, 2015) 73-80.
[3]
Sunzi, “The Art of War,” Ralph Sawyer
trans., The Seven Military Classics of
Ancient China, (New York: Westview Press, 1993,) 157.
[4] I
was incredibly disheartened for example when I praised an author’s work for
examining those assumptions, and almost immediately an anti-war proponent copy
and pasted a long list of proof texts with no analysis whatsoever. See Jeremy
Orb Smith’s comment here: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-vital-resource-for-understanding-lds-perspectives-on-war/#comments
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