Distinguished Professor and National Security Expert Talks Nuclear Proliferation at Wittenberg

(Photo Courtesy of Strategic Studies Institute) 

           War, nuclear weapons, and “the most dangerous place on the planet” were all on the agenda last Friday when retired Army Colonel and current CBS national security consultant Dr. Jeffery McCausland delivered a lecture titled, “Back to the Future: Battlefield Weapons in South Asia.”

            The 45-minute talk addressed the contentious relationship between India and Pakistan, and Pakistan’s proliferation of “tactical nuclear weapons,” or nuclear weapons used in short-range on the military battlefield. According to McCausland, these developments have occurred in order to deter India from acting aggressively towards Pakistan.

            While these developments have manifested for peaceful ends, McCausland warned of the prospects of these weapons falling into the hands of terrorist groups in Pakistan, in addition to arguing that their presence heightens prospects of an arms race and lowers the threshold for larger-scale nuclear escalation and war — making this “the most dangerous border in the world.”

           “If we have a nuclear war,” McCausland explained to the group of about 50 students and professors, “I firmly believe it will be in South-East Asia.” 

             McCausland likened the relationship to US-Soviet Cold War relations, and said the United States’ experience with such conflict has compelled American and Pakistani officials to participate in informal discussions on how to avoid miscalculations that could lead to “catastrophic consequences.”

            McCausland stressed that this is a problem that the United States has a direct interest in, explaining that an aggressive step taken by either Pakistan or India could trigger action from various other nations, eventually reaching the United States.

            But, according to McCausland, this problem “can only be managed, and never solved.”

            Though McCausland did not express hope for ending the problem, he did offer paths to avoid escalation, including encouraging inter-nation discussions with enhanced transparency, constructing arms control treaties, and developing any processes that slow, and illustrate the consequences of, proliferation. 

The Conversation We Started, Not the One We Intended

Last week, Tom Dwyer and I wrote an editorial in The Torch arguing against President Laurie Joyner being named one of the top 50 most influential businesswomen in the Dayton area by “the Dayton Business Journal.”

The editorial was met with a lot of backlash from students, prompting the #WeStandWithWittPres campaign; some lengthy Facebook statuses; a Yik Yak explosion, which isn’t worth addressing; and a letter to the editor and a Pro-Joyner op-ed that will both run in next Wednesday’s Torch.

Though I stand by the arguments I made in the article, I somewhat regret — no, rather, I’m discontent with — the discussion we started.

In writing the piece, Tom and I aimed to raise questions about two things: (1) the way our education is conceptualized by the administration, and (2) more importantly, the lives the housekeepers are forced to live.

Unfortunately, neither of these topics have been thoroughly addressed in reactions — especially the second one. Instead, the conversation has been mostly a blind defense of Joyner, and the discourse has yet to interrogate the reality housekeepers’ circumstances. In fact, I have yet to see a reaction that uses the word “poverty” a single time.   

Maybe this is because we wrote against a single figure? (Although we were quick to indict the entire administration; and we were just as quick to note that we see this as a broader trend in society at-large.) Indeed, maybe students are just really fond of Joyner?

If this is so, if we missed the mark as writers because we personalized the issue too much — I sincerely apologize to the housekeepers.

However, I’m not comfortable with this explanation. I think the reactions have less to do with Joyner per se, and more to do with our national ideology — our national identity, even. Thus, I think the reactions are useful in some capacity, and are worth interrogating.

The reactions, in my humble opinion, have served as a sort of microcosm of how people in the United States see poverty at large. That is, for many, poverty is simply an inevitable evil, and not the consequence of conscious decision making on how we distribute resources.

As the logic follows, poverty is a cultural issue, one that can never truly be cured, except by those who “choose to be poor.” They are expected to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” so the saying has gone for quite some time. We see this line of thinking articulated and actualized at the national level, through campaign rhetoric and public policy.

But, deep down, we know this is not true.

We know, for instance, that Wittenberg’s brand of poverty can be mitigated — even eradicated — by contracting a housekeeping employer that pays a better wage. In fact, this was the case prior to 2012.

And we know that we can end poverty in America. We know, in fact, just how much money it would require.  

Certainly, this will force us to change the way we distribute resources. At Wittenberg, our so-called administrative “leaders” might have to take a pay cut; and we might have to slightly raise tuition (this would cost each student $300/ year, and that’s without any administrative cuts).

At the national level, this might mean taxing rich folk; raising the minimum wage; and/or shifting military spending to social programs.

Ultimately, ending poverty means a more equitable distribution of resources — but we willfully ignore this reality.

We evade it by saying empty things like, “tough decisions had to be made;” we hide from it behind catchy hash-tags and slogans like, “Students First;” we lie to ourselves with jargon like, “culture of poverty.”

In doing so, we completely disregard the housekeepers who have to support several kids on a sub-par income, kids who will perform less-well in school because of it, kids who will go hungry because of it. We ignore the psychological and physical toll poverty takes on people of all ages. We ignore the humanity of folk who inhabit this community — this earth — with us.  

Though the existential poverty is by far the most devastating and concerning facet of this situation, a close second is that we blatantly refuse to face the ugly reality that our education comes directly at the expense of other people’s livelihood. We wanted to shed light on the material poverty of the housekeepers, but what we revealed was our student body’s moral and ethical poverty.   

And while these reactions have been somewhat revealing, informative, and maybe even enlightening, interrogating them has been terribly discouraging:

If a liberal arts institution — the epicenter of thoughtfulness, fellowship, love, and compassion — can’t bear to even wrestle with, not to mention solve, these problems — who will?