Fiat Cinis

I watch news in the Middle East with great attention and interest, not only because of worldwide implications but also more personal concerns, such as study abroad programs in the region. I have visited Arab countries many times: Jordan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Oman. The hospitality in these countries is unmatched. I have never felt unsafe, despite being an obvious outsider. I have been welcomed into homes almost sight-unseen, something unimaginable in the United States where fear and distrust too often outweigh hospitality. Such a profound testament to trust and love for humanity, something we in the U.S. seem to be lacking nowadays.

The news over the last few weeks has reawakened the world’s collective anxiety over nuclear escalation. In a news cycle where each headline could mark the prelude to a broader conflagration at the hands of an unstable, hubristic leader (and, no, I’m not talking about Iran), I find myself thinking about literature. Perhaps, I admit, as a form of escapism.

Years ago, a dear friend gave me a copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz, a haunting novel that envisions civilization’s cyclical self-destruction, where nuclear apocalypse repeats with the inevitability of original sin. He knew my love of science fiction, and I don’t think he realized how ingrained the story would become for me. I find myself thinking about it regularly, and its prescience really hit me this morning. Beyond literary allegory and political alarm, what I was really thinking about is that nuclear weapons are instruments of a global caste system, an architecture of power mirroring colonial hierarchies. The very existence of nuclear weapons is a geopolitical double standard, one that demands disarmament from the global South while permitting the nuclear club of the West to maintain and modernize its arsenals. Nuclear proliferation is colonial. We have never reckoned with that.

Nine countries are known to possess nuclear weapons. The United States and Russia hold the vast majority. France and the United Kingdom round out the Western bloc, while China stands as the Eastern superpower with a legitimate claim to global parity. The others (India, Pakistan, North Korea, and likely Israel) occupy ambiguous positions in international diplomacy: accepted, condemned, or denied depending on their alignment with the dominant powers.

The very concept of "nuclear legitimacy" is an invention of the West. The 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was written in a way that canonized nuclear apartheid (Biswas, 2014). Five countries were grandfathered in as "nuclear weapon states," and all others were expected to abstain in perpetuity. The powerful got to keep their bombs while insisting that everyone else had to prove their peaceful intentions. Peaceful intentions are not the point. Power is the point.

Iran, a non-nuclear signatory to the NPT, has faced decades of sanctions, sabotage, and even assassination campaigns for pursuing nuclear technology, despite consistently claiming civilian purposes, such as energy production, and despite IAEA reports documenting its compliance (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1974, 2016). While concerns about proliferation are not unfounded, in a global system where nuclear capability equals political power, one must ask: what choices remain for those who are denied it by design?

Israel has never signed the NPT and maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal. It is an open secret that Israel has nuclear weapons (Cohen, 1998); it is also an open secret that the West will never acknowledge them publicly. Doing so would trigger a political and moral crisis in the architecture of global security.

Thus is the crux of nuclear colonialism: the idea that some states are responsible enough to possess the ultimate weapon and others are not. It is the same logic that underpinned colonial rule, the belief that certain civilizations are mature and rational while others are inherently unstable and must be controlled.

Nuclear Theology: Faith in Annihilation

Walter M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic novel set in a monastery that preserves the relics of scientific knowledge after a nuclear holocaust. Written in the 1950s and steeped in Cold War anxiety, the novel follows generations of monks through the cyclical rise and fall of civilization. Despite the suffering and destruction brought by nuclear war, humanity continues to repeat its mistakes, rediscovering the atom and wielding it again.

What makes A Canticle for Leibowitz enduring is its moral clarity about the dangers of knowledge without wisdom and power without humility. In the novel, science becomes a new scripture, but it is misread, misused, and turned against its creators. The monks preserve the knowledge but cannot prevent its consequences.

We live in a world where nuclear weapons are still seen as a sign of modernity and might. Where their very existence shapes diplomacy, deters aggression, and defines sovereignty. We are told that these weapons are necessary, justified by a doctrine of deterrence. Deterrence is just faith in fear. It is nuclear theology. Like all theology, it divides the world between the elect and the damned.

The Ghosts of Hiroshima and the Silence of the West

It is impossible to talk about nuclear weapons without referencing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are historical events and origin stories. The United States remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war. Those bombings were military acts driven by racialized decisions. The lives lost were Japanese. Non-Western. Rendered expendable to save Western ones.

My knowledge of World War II is, obviously, from anecdote and coursework rather than personal experience. My grandfather was in a combat zone on Leyte, Philippines, in the Pacific Theater and was subsequently stationed in Tokyo at the Dai Ichi Building under General MacArthur during the occupation of Japan. My impression of Japan from him was very positive (though he did warn me not to drink Japanese whiskey, advice I have not followed). He reflected on the warmth of the people, the tranquility of the mountains outside Tokyo, and we ate sushi together regularly until his death in 2012. I note this because while he was known for eating raw ground beef right out of the butcher package with salt and pepper, sushi really was not something West Tennesseans embraced without hesitancy or suspicion, whereas we had been enjoying it together for years, a product of his global education.

Fast forward to college, where, as a student studying political and economic transition in East Asia, I remember seeing Life magazine’s photo of a woman whose Navy boyfriend sent her the skull of a Japanese soldier as a memento during WWII. The conflict between what I knew of Japan through my grandfather (ultimately a colonist even if he was following orders) and the absolute dehumanization of an entire race (Dower, 1987), depicted in this one photo, was overwhelming. This photo represented how the United States justified bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We rarely dwell on this moral arithmetic, though the rest of the world has not forgotten it.

To this day, we talk in euphemisms around nuclear weapons. We say "tactical," "second-strike capability," "limited yield," as if nuclear war can be contained or sanitized. Radiation does not recognize borders. Fallout does not discriminate. Nuclear war is total by nature. It is annihilation. Yet, we continue to build new weapons. The U.S. is modernizing its nuclear triad (Congressional Budget Office, 2021). China is expanding its arsenal. North Korea tests with impunity. Iran is a constant point of contention. Israel is insulated by American silence. Meanwhile, arms control treaties are being abandoned or ignored. We live in the age of permanent brinksmanship. The drills of hiding under school desks because of Russia’s nuclear power have faded from memory.

Colonialism Reloaded

When the West, particularly the U.S., condemns countries like Iran or North Korea for their nuclear ambitions, it is about control. It is about maintaining the global order that emerged after World War II, where the victors wrote the rules and the rest were told to follow them. This order mimics colonialism in its structure and its assumptions. It presumes Western rationality and Eastern volatility. It penalizes resistance while ignoring provocation. It expects submission under the guise of international law, all while exempting itself from the very norms it enforces.

Iran’s grievances about Western hypocrisy are not unfounded. The U.S. and its allies provided Saddam Hussein with support during the Iran-Iraq War, only to later vilify him. Israel receives billions in military aid annually while operating outside the NPT framework. When Iran reacts to these contradictions, it is cast as irrational, dangerous, and illegitimate.

Colonialism has never really ended, just adapted. In this context, it speaks in the language of nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and sanctions. It draws the same lines between civilized and savage.

What Now?

If A Canticle for Leibowitz warns us about the cyclical nature of destruction, then our task must be to break the cycle. It means questioning the legitimacy of nuclear weapons altogether. Not just in Iran or North Korea, but everywhere. That means dismantling the myth of deterrence as a moral good. It means confronting the colonial structure of the international system and building something more equitable in its place. Countries should sign, and be accountable to, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. WMD holders are conspicuously absent from the signatory list.

We must remember that peace is not the absence of war. Peace is the presence of justice. Justice requires honesty about history, humility in power, and solidarity across borders.

In this moment, it feels naïve to speak of disarmament. The alternative is resignation. A Canticle for Leibowitz reminds us where that leads. If we believe, as the novel does, that knowledge is sacred, then so too must be restraint.

Otherwise, we will write new scriptures in ash.

References:

Miller, W. M. Jr., (1959). A Canticle for Leibowitz, J.B. Lippincott & Co. https://amzn.to/4lmuA43

Biswas, S. (2014). Nuclear Desire: Power and the Postcolonial Nuclear Order. University of Minnesota Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt9qh3p6

Cohen, A. (1998). Israel and The Bomb. Columbia University Press. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/israel-and-the-bomb/9780231500098/

Congressional Budget Office. (2021). Projected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2021 to 2030. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57130

United Nations. (2017). Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/tpnw/

Dower, J. W. (1987). War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War. Penguin Random House. https://amzn.to/4kOr3vo

International Atomic Energy Agency. (Various) https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran; https://www.iaea.org/publications/documents/infcircs/text-agreement-between-iran-and-agency-application-safeguards-connection-treaty-non-proliferation-nuclear-weapons