It struck me the other day that ‘peace’ is a word we’re not using much at present. Our war in Iran is unpopular, for sure, but there’s not really a ‘peace movement’ to end it (though the midterm elections are in some measure a proxy for that). When we talk about it, it’s in the context of "forever wars," as in "what a pain for us to have to fight," or it’s about the way that war has raised prices. We seem barely to have noticed that we have attacked another country, killed its leaders, bombed its schools, made life as impossible as we can for its citizens, not to mention billions of other humans who are dealing not with higher prices at the pump but with no access to fertilizer or fuel.

But actually this is the perfect moment for a revival of the peace movement—because it’s easier now than ever before to imagine the rapid transition to a more peaceful world. That’s because all of a sudden we have an alternative to oil, and if you look around us, oil is the cause, the weapon, and the casualty of our current round of conflicts. More than at any point in our past, oil has become inextricably bound up in warfare, which means we could in short order move past it, in ways that I don’t think we’ve focused on clearly enough.

I’m thinking about all this because I’ve taken a day off of the campaign trail to come to Independence, Missouri (just a stone’s throw from the Kansas Senate race!). The town is best known as Harry Truman’s home, but it’s also the headquarters of a denomination, the Community of Christ, that had been unknown to me until they asked me if I’d accept their annual International Peace Award, which had gone in previous years to some of my real heroes: Dolores Huerta, Rev. James Lawson, Terry Tempest Williams, Jane Goodall.

As people in these nations endure horrific lives, and the world edges closer to truly unspeakable catastrophe, the fact that it’s all connected to oil suggests a way out: which is to make oil less important.

As it turns out, the Community of Christ is an interesting group—they’re descended from the Mormons who didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah but instead stayed in the Midwest with the family of Joseph Smith after he was killed by an armed mob. Over the years they drifted apart from their Utah brethren, until in the last generation they’ve become much closer to the Protestant mainline, indeed an avowedly progressive church, led by a woman, committed to LGBT participation, and very focused on peace. As I write this, I’m looking out on a Japanese garden, planted with a sister community in that country, in recognition of the complicated role that Independence and its most famous son played in the planet’s nuclear history; I’ve just come from a daily Prayer for Peace service. If I had to describe this group, I’d say: Imagine Unitarians, except that they believe in Jesus and are earnestly Midwestern in their manners and customs. I like them very very much; they’ve built something special.

Anyway, the fact that I needed to give a talk as part of this awards ceremony got me more focused than I usually am on questions of peace, and the more I thought, the simpler my task seemed. The world is obviously at war right now; in fact, one Times columnist mused last month that World War III may already be in its early stages. Russian President Vladimir Putin is hammering civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, as his ongoing and unprovoked attack nears the five-year mark. The US, having attacked Venezuela and then Iran, finds itself running short of missiles and interceptors, bad news for the Saudis who are suddenly facing strikes from renegade Yemenis. There are plenty of other conflicts around the world, some military and some for the moment just running on intimidation and coercion—the US siege of Cuba, for instance, which is killing silently. (In 2018, infant mortality on the island was 4 per 1,000 births, lower than in the US. Now, thanks to us, it’s more than double that).

War, of course, has many causes—ethnic and religious supremacy, personal ambition—but it is very simple to see the degree to which oil plays a crucial part in so many of these conflicts, as cause, as weapon, and increasingly as vulnerability.

Consider. We attacked Venezuela, holder of the world’s second-largest oil reserves—as far as I can tell there’s been no effort by our leaders to explain this in terms of human rights or democracy, but only as an effort to secure its oil supplies. Read the “fact sheet” the White House put out this summer about our purposes there:

In the biggest oil deal in world history, President Donald J. Trump has secured US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela—vastly expanding our current US territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century—all at zero cost to the United States. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, gives the US government powerful governance rights, economic ownership, and guaranteed low-cost off-take from a new private Venezuelan oil champion, which will be the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world.

Our attack on Iran was somewhat more complex, clearly affected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to cripple the Tehran regime (and stay out of jail) but also clearly driven by Trump’s fascination with the world’s third-largest oil and gas reserves. In March, for instance, Trump said in a social media post that

the US would hit Iran "VERY HARD TONIGHT" and would "assume total control" of Iran's oil and gas industries, including the key Kharg Island oil terminal, in the "not too distant future."

As he explained to the Financial Times:

To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: "Why are you doing that?" But they’re stupid........

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