***SPECIAL OFFER: Capt. Chappell has donated 100 copies of his new book to the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. We will mail them to the first hundred people who give donations of $100 or more online. Click here to donate.

It is not often that one comes across a book that is a passionate and reasoned plea for ending war.  It is even rarer to find a book like this written by a young soldier.  Recently, I read such a book.  It is written by Paul Chappell, a 2002 West Point graduate and a captain in the US Army.  It is called, Will War Ever End?  Its subtitle is A Soldier’s Vision of Peace for the 21st Century. 

As a teenager, Chappell, whose father was a soldier, wondered if war would ever end.  When he questioned his teachers, he received responses such as, “War is part of human nature, because people are evil.”  This answer wasn’t satisfactory for him.  If war is a part of human nature, he wondered, why did it drive people insane?  In his studies at West Point he realized that throughout history every army’s greatest problem was keeping soldiers from running away when battles would begin.  The Greeks discovered that it was their love for and commitment to their community, not their hatred for an enemy, which kept soldiers from fleeing the battlefield.  Thus, it is not human nature that propels us to war.   

Chappell had an “ah-ha” moment when he realized that in the 21st century the question in the title of his book could be reworded to: Will humanity survive or will we destroy ourselves?  That is the question that was at the heart of the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto, one which requires contemplation by every person on the planet.  It is a question made all the more urgent by the creation of nuclear weapons in the 20th century, and by major global problems such as poverty, climate change and environmental degradation – problems that can only be solved by concerted global cooperation.

Chappell found, as we did in our work at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, that the only way out of our global dilemma is by waging peace.  “To build a better world,” he writes, “soldiers of peace must use the creative power of peaceful means, rather than the destructive methods of violence.”  Throughout history, individuals like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Theresa have waged peace and often paid for it with their lives. 

To end war, Chappell says, “we must create world peace by continuing this journey and cooperating with the countless people who still have faith in humanity.”  To end war, we must wage peace.  We can’t end war by ourselves, but we can join with others to become more powerful in our efforts.  “By working together,” he argues, “we can transform our shared hope for a peaceful world into a reality within our reach.” 

It won’t be easy, but it is necessary.  Our common survival depends upon our actions for peace.  I am reminded of Joseph Rotblat echoing the sentiment of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in his 1995 Nobel Peace Lecture: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”  That is our challenge as we wage peace in the Nuclear Age.

More information on the book is available at www.willwareverend.com.

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