Simone Well wrote of the Trojan War that "to be outside a situation as violent as this is to find it inconceivable; to be inside it is to be unable to conceive its end."

      Thinking about the threat of nuclear war is like that: when we step outside it in our imagination, we find it inconceivable that a few nations should have come to endanger the entire world in mutual self-defense. And yet, from our own experience of the threat of such violence, we are unable to conceive any end to it other than a catastrophic one, bringing what Kant called the "perpetual peace . . . on the vast graveyard of the human race."

      No one can predict whether human beings will achieve enough control over existing and future powers of destruction to avoid the fate of which Kant warned. Momentum is clearly building the world over for doing so. But the chances of success will depend to no small degree on combating two kinds of inertia--one born of despair, the other of complacency. The first is that of the many people who see no hope of overcoming the present crisis. They include liberals as well as conservatives, burned-out peace activists as well as military analysts, those experienced enough to know the difficulties that heighten the threat of war, and young people reluctant even to try thinking about something so ominous and vast. The second form of inertia besets people--at times in high-level positions--convinced that all talk of crisis reflects needless anxiety about a situation that is firmly under control. They place their faith in the nuclear deterrence that has now lasted for over forty years, heedless of warnings by military experts and policy analysts that nations risk a nuclear catastrophe unless they reduce their dependence on deterrence.

      In our present crisis, we can afford neither type of inertia. Both are allies of the threat of war, in that they blind people to the many opportunities to work for measures that increase the chance for a lasting peace. For while it may be hard to conceive of a complete end to the threat of nuclear extinction, it is not at all hard to envisage that threat either growing stronger or, on the contrary, being cut back substantially.

      It is fully within the capacity of humankind to respond more wisely to the threat of war than by reenacting age-old patterns of entrenched and self-defeating partisanship. We need not accept those patterns passively. We have alternatives to the lowest common denominator as a standard for conduct. There is nothing inevitable about the present levels of distrust and fear, nothing mechanical, nothing irreversible. Such tensions are built up in a thousand ways, by the decisions and failures of many individuals and groups to decide.

      Reversing these tensions will require ingenuity and perseverance in pressing for coordinated action on many problems that have long been allowed to drift. To be in a position to do so, nations must now take their bearings from moral constraints that promote collective survival. At least some observance of these constraints has been needed for any family, village, or society to survive, long before one could talk of nation-states, much less of a world community. They must be taken seriously in international relations now that nations risk perishing together.

      In stressing the role of moral values, there is no need to join the chorus of nostalgic laments, echoing in our period as they have so often in the past, that moral standards are deteriorating, that young people are not as principled as their elders, that civilization is on the skids. True, there is reason for special concern today about the ability of societies to contend with the combination of problems they now face. But this is not because principled conduct and the ability to cope are somehow withering away; it is, rather, because environmental and military threats to survival are vaster and more urgent than in the past. Previous generations did not take sufficiently strong and principled collective action against these threats while there was still time to keep them in check. Far more is needed today if we are to succeed where they failed. The problems have grown so severe that unless we can marshal a more forceful collective response, all the worst predictions of social collapse may finally come true after all.

      Can one expect enough nations and enough people to take such collective action against the threats they now face? Not only to see the threats but to respond vigorously enough? There is room for modest new hope in this respect. It is based on two developments. First of all, nations have a new reason to observe moral constraints in dealing with one another. There were always reasons for doing so and they were always good enough. But the new reason, which was only a hypothesis to Kant when he envisaged that human beings might come to destroy the world, is now utterly real to all. Self-preservation, the most basic human drive, now gives a reason even to those who saw none before to concern themselves with morality. The danger to human existence is no longer an abstraction, something far off in the future or affecting only strangers. For the sake of our children and our children's children, we now have direct and practical reasons to further what has long been called "the common good," a vision that links philosophies as different as those of Confucius, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas, and that echoes in most later philosophies of equal depth and scope.

      In the second place, this century has seen the development of strategies, methods, and techniques for bringing about change in such a way as not to injure the fragile level of trust needed for social cooperation toward the common good. We now have models, institutions, and knowledge more fully tested and worked out than in the past. We have learned much more about the causes of conflicts and wars and about ways to prevent them. And recent research has confirmed what experience already showed: that even small groups willing to initiate strategies of cooperation can have an effect far larger than their numbers would initially indicate.

      I have spoken of the atmosphere of mixed trust and distrust in which all human interactions take place. Societies thrive neither in an environment of excessive trust nor in one where distrust predominates, any more than living beings survive if the proportion of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere is so low that they cannot breathe or so high that fires rage out of control. Without some mutual trust human beings cannot cooperate for common goals; yet without a measure of skepticism and distrust they are defenseless against exploitation and assault. At either extreme, they lack the capacity to distinguish the cautious distrust needed for making wise choices from conduct that adds needlessly to that distrust in ways that undercut and endanger such choices.

      In the past, many societies have gone under or stagnated under such circumstances, while others have recovered or started afresh after a period of retrenchment. Now that nuclear weapons can bring about the end of all life on earth, there may be no further chance to rebuild and try to recover from stagnation or collapse. We are in a situation of dangerously high but often legitimate distrust, not only between East and West but also with respect to the leaders, now and in the future, who may dispose of nuclear weapons, to the accidents that can come about so as to place all at risk, and to the regional conflicts that may escalate so as to precipitate a larger war.

      As a result, just as we are going to have to institute imaginative efforts to reverse the damage to our natural environment, so we shall have to be equally imaginative and resourceful in working out ways to defend our nations, resolve conflicts, and achieve social change in ways that do not damage the social environment on which we all depend. Nations have no realistic choice other than that of making an unprecedented effort to break out of what have become outmoded patterns of partisanship.

      It is therefore high time that governments, organizations, communities, and individuals take stock and ask to what extent their actions worsen or improve the atmosphere in which cooperation takes place. How can they avoid being free riders damaging a social environment that can tolerate no further injuries? And what can they do to help shift the balance? A broader and deeper perspective, a limited set of fundamental moral constraints, and a practical strategy are indispensable in seeking to improve that climate. Within such a framework, a vast scope for action opens up. It concerns, in every region in the world, military as well as diplomatic, commercial, cultural, and other activities and, for every nation, domestic as well as foreign policy. A comprehensive strategic approach is needed to coordinate action at different levels, in which both citizens and public officials reconsider the role that fundamental moral constraints should play in their nation's domestic and international policies.

      Such a comprehensive approach can also help to broaden the agenda for organizations already dedicated to working for peace. Many of them concentrate so much on some particular conflict or weapons system or reform, or on purely informational or symbolic activities, that they do not see a larger and more practical scope for their work. It is easy, then, to become discouraged, especially after years of effort with little to show in the way of results. Within the context of a strategy for peace, on the other hand, one can choose from among different activities that have practical import, and see the paucity of results in one area as outweighed by advances elsewhere.

      Because of the importance of open debate in curtailing shortsighted or biased decisions, censorship and other measures that inhibit debate require opposition as vigorous as that directed toward the violence and deceit that multiply in the absence of free debate. But it is not enough merely to work to cut back on the activities most ripe for change and to debate more marginal ones. We must also take note of, and work to encourage, alternative methods of dealing with conflicts and promoting social change: the growing success of peaceful revolutions, the articulate new forms of resolving conflict that can replace violence in family quarrels as well as in border disputes, the language-teaching and encouragement of travel across every partisan barrier, and the new uses of information technology to promote public debate and to share knowledge.

      To be sure, the many individuals caught up in war or forced to live in refugee camps, or suffering from hunger and political oppression, endure daily and direct threats to their personal survival that leave little room for concern about lasting peace or the survival of humanity as a whole. In some nations, those who work for peace and human rights do so at their peril. This places the responsibility even more squarely on those of us who live at peace and in societies protective of free speech. We have special reasons to pursue the debate and to press for the changes that further a strategy for peace. Not only are we freer to do so than others, but we have more to lose, given the risks to the democratic form of government posed by secrecy and by all policies that undermine such a strategy.

      There is room for everyone, then, who wants to further such a strategy. And no effort, so long as it respects fundamental moral constraints, is too limited or too personal to contribute in some way to the larger strategy. On the contrary: it is striking how often those who devote themselves to the task of reducing violence and distrust insist, as did Gandhi and King, on the links between personal change and the capacity to bring about social change. Don't start out blindly, they urge; be sure of your own motives and think hard about your methods. If you rush in unprepared, you are likely to fail, defeated or manipulated by forces that you did not understand. If you advocate principles such as that of nonviolence on the public or political level, be sure that you try to observe them in your personal life as well, lest you become entangled in conflict and hypocrisy.

      Be prepared, moreover, individuals experienced in these matters advise us, to begin in local and quite piecemeal ways, rather than by backing only the most global changes. You have more power to change yourself than to affect others; likewise, your influence in your community and your nation will be greater than elsewhere. Yes, you want to see the links between what you do and larger contexts. But concentrating from the outset only on the least personal and largest problems imaginable almost guarantees that nothing will get done.

      In beginning to work for piecemeal rather than global change as part of a strategy for peace, we can learn from a suggestion of Gandhi's that we carve out spaces or territories in personal relations where violence, say, or deceit will not be used: territories in the family, in the community, with friends and even opponents, where we have more control and also greater responsibility. Such an effort requires that we reconsider the role of violence or deceit in our work--as news reporters or police officers, as public servants or industrial workers, as scientists or executives--and at home, with family and friends, in community service, recreation, and entertainment. If one begins thus, with the personal and the piecemeal, one can then try to expand the reach of these spaces or territories of peace. This is the path already chosen by many individuals, community groups, professional organizations, and religious bodies in searching for ways to establish nonviolence.

      I see all those who strive to reduce distrust as working for peace, even if they produce no immediate and direct effect on the nuclear balance of terror. Whether in government offices or at the negotiating table, with children or with adults, in religious or in political groups, in private or public life, the men and women who work to diminish the sway of violence, of deception, of breaches of faith, and of excessive secrecy are all doing the work of peace. They show that the opportunities for such work, should one so choose, are everywhere -- and that change can begin, should one so choose, right away.