{"id":542,"date":"2026-07-07T04:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T04:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=542"},"modified":"2026-07-07T04:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T04:40:09","slug":"this-week-in-nation-history-the-fearless-idealism-of-jonathan-schell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=542","title":{"rendered":"This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: The Fearless Idealism of Jonathan Schell"},"content":{"rendered":"<article>\n<div>\n<div>\n<article>\n<header>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Activism<\/li>\n<li>March 29, 2014<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: The Fearless Idealism of Jonathan Schell<\/h1>\n<h1>This Week in \u2018Nation\u2019 History: The Fearless Idealism of Jonathan Schell<\/h1>\n<h2>\n<p>As he once wrote of history itself, Jonathan was \u201cno respecter of conventional wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=540\">Trump Is Trying to Rig the World Cup<\/a><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section>\n<time>March 29, 2014<\/time><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The passing of our friend Jonathan Schell last week is a profound loss for journalism and for the international peace movement. In twenty years at <em>The New Yorker <\/em>and sixteen at <em>The Nation<\/em>, Jonathan\u2019s work insisted on seeing through the headlines to the deeper currents of history swirling below. His great theme was the survival of humanity, both as a species and as a general principle of common decency and purpose. In addition to his incredible early reportage, works like <em>The Fate of the Earth<\/em> (1982), <em>The Gift of Time<\/em> (1998), and <em>The Unconquerable World<\/em> (2003) conveyed in bracing prose Jonathan\u2019s fearless idealism, his unique combination of justified alarm and unbridled optimism which forever changed the way the United States understands itself and the way the entire world understands matters of war and peace.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>As our peace and disarmament correspondent and a fellow at The Nation Institute, Jonathan filed for <em>The Nation <\/em>well over one hundred eloquent, elegant, passionate and forcefully argued essays on topics ranging from nuclear abolitionism to the Iraq war, from the Clinton impeachment proceedings to the fallout from September 11<sup>th<\/sup>, from the disclosures of illegal NSA spying in 2005 to the even more alarming Snowden files of 2013. To read through those essays now\u2014especially his special series, \u201cThe Republic on Trial\u201d and \u201cLetter from Ground Zero\u201d\u2014is to watch one of the most important journalists this country has ever produced grapple with unfolding trends and historical themes he had been tracking for decades\u2014and at a prolific, often weekly pace\u2014about which he always had original and clarifying things to say. It is also to discover once again that Jonathan, as he once wrote in <em>The Nation <\/em>of history itself, was \u201cno respecter of conventional wisdom\u201d\u2014that being among the loftiest legacies a journalist can leave behind.<\/p>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Gift of Time\u201d (February 2, 1998):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cTo succeed in the task would, by securing human survival through human resolve and action, go far toward restoring our faith, so badly shaken in the century, in our capacity to make use of the amazing products of our hands and minds for our benefit rather than our destruction. It would bring undying honor to those who carried it to fulfillment and to their generation. It would have the character not of a desperate expedient resorted to under pressure of terror but of a tremendous free act, following upon calm public deliberation in every nation\u2014among all humankind. In a way, it would be the foundation of humankind.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201c\u201d (February 15, 1999):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIn most respects, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton\u2014now destined to go on for yet more weeks\u2014is different from the proceedings against President Richard Nixon a quarter-century ago. Nixon was accused of abuses of the power of his office. You had to be President to bomb Cambodia secretly, to use the IRS to harass your political enemies or to ask the CIA to squelch an investigation by the FBI. Clinton, on the other hand, is accused of violations of law in his individual capacity. It is within the power of almost anyone to fool around at the office, to invite a colleague to dissemble about the affair in court or to ask a friend to do the lover in question a favor.<\/p>\n<section>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2>Popular<\/h2>\n<p><span><span>&#8220;swipe left below to view more authors&#8221;<\/span>Swipe \u2192<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<ol>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>Maine Democrats Must Replace Graham Platner Now<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                Maine Democrats Must Replace Graham Platner Now<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nSteve Phillips <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>We Are in the Middle of a \u201cRolling Coup\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                We Are in the Middle of a \u201cRolling Coup\u201d<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nRichard Gephardt<span> and <\/span>Timothy Wirth <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>All the Awful Supreme Court Rulings You Probably Missed<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                All the Awful Supreme Court Rulings You Probably Missed<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nElie Mystal <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h3>\n<span>The Banality of Peter Thiel\u2019s Evil<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                The Banality of Peter Thiel\u2019s Evil<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n<p>\nChris Lehmann <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe historical circumstances were different, too. In the immediate background was the cold war, in whose name the presidency had accumulated powers that Nixon used to break the law. The question before the country was whether to embrace this \u2018imperial\u2019 presidency or to restore the constitutional balance, and it chose the latter. Today, by contrast, one would be hard put to name and large public controversy that is going to be settled one way or another by the impeachment trial. If anything, the trial has created fresh issues (mostly regarding abuse of the impeachment power itself) rather than resolved existing ones.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cLetter from Ground Zero: The Power of the Powerful\u201d (October 15, 2001):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cVaclav Havel once invoked the \u2018power of the powerless,\u2019 by which he meant the power of the nonviolent weak to defy and defeat totalitarian regimes through unarmed acts of non-cooperation and defiance. But the powerful have some power, too. Terrorism is jujitsu, by which the violent weak use the power of the powerful to overthrow them\u2026But the powerful can refuse to cooperate. Tom Friedman of the <em>Times <\/em>advised that the United States, like the Taliban, should act \u2018a <em>little bit<\/em> crazy.\u2019 But the Taliban are a poor model. That way lies our undoing. When all is said and done, it is not in the power of America\u2019s enemies to defeat us. Only we can do that. We should refrain.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Growing Nuclear Peril\u201d (June 24, 2002):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe goal of nuclear abolition, it is true, is ambitious, and the difficulties are mountainous. Many will say, as they have throughout the nuclear age, that it is unrealistic. They would perhaps be right if we lived in a static world. But events\u2014in South Asia, in Central Asia, in the Middle East, in New York\u2014are moving at breakneck pace, and the avenues to disaster are multiplying. A nuclear revival is under way. A revival of nuclear protest is needed to stop it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cLetter from Ground Zero: The Path to Point B\u201d (September 23, 2002):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cA year that began (if we count by the new calendar whose Day One is September 11, 2001) with an attack on the United States by a terrorist group consisting mostly of Saudi Arabians headquartered in Afghanistan has ended with preparations for an attack by the United States on Iraq, a country that had not demonstrated involvement in September 11. The path from point A a year ago to point B now has been lengthy and circuitous, Along the way, a radically new conception of America\u2019s role in the world has been advanced by the Bush Administration. It has claimed nothing less than a right and a duty of the United States to assert military dominance\u2014a Pax Americana\u2014over the entire earth. Discussion along the way has been muted, but now a debate has begun. Its subject, however, has been not so much whether the United States should first meet certain conditions (find allies, explain itself to Congress, win the support of the American public, make plans for Iraq\u2019s political future) and only <em>then<\/em> wage the war. The debate proceeds backward from the conclusion to the arguments for it\u2026.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThere is no assurance so far that the public will be told whether or when the Administration has decided to attack Iraq before the bombs begin to fall. At an appearance before a gathering of troops at Fort Hood, Texas, Rumsfeld said, \u2018The President has made no such decision that we should go into a war with Iraq.\u2019 According to the <em>Times<\/em>, Rumsfeld added with a characteristic coy chuckle, \u2018He\u2019s thinking about it.\u2019\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cA debate about the war, if the nation decides to have one, will be in vain if it does not address the wider revolution in policy of which the war is an expression. Will other nations claim for themselves the right of pre-emptive overthrow of hostile regimes? Can the proliferation of nuclear weapons actually be prevented by military force? Are negotiations and treaties worthless for this purpose? Will American superiority be so great that other arms races fade away? Will such action provoke the very military challenges, from terrorists and others, that it is meant to prevent? Should the United States aim at preserving military dominance over the earth for the indefinite future? Is such dominance possible? If it is possible, do the people of the United States want it? If the attempt is made, can the United States remain a democracy? Can the United States act as military guarantor of a world that rejects and hates its protector? George Bush is thinking about it. Are we?\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Case Against the War\u201d (March 3, 2003):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cA revival of worldwide disarmament negotiations must be the means, the abolition of all weapons of mass destruction the end. That idea has long been in eclipse, and today it lies outside the mainstream of political opinion. Unfortunately, historical reality is no respecter of conventional wisdom and often requires it to change course if calamity is to be avoided. But fortunately it is one element of the genius of democracy\u2014and of US democracy in particular\u2014that encrusted orthodoxy can be challenged and overthrown by popular pressure. The movement <em>against<\/em> the war in Iraq should also become a movement <em>for <\/em>something, and that something should be a return to the long-neglected path to abolition of all weapons of mass destruction. Only by offering a solution to the problem that the war claims to solve but does not can this war and others be stopped\u2026.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cLet us try to imagine it: one human species on its one earth exercising one will to defeat forever a threat to its one collective existence. Could any nation stand against it? Without this commitment, the international community\u2014if I may express it thus\u2014is like a nuclear reactor from which the fuel rods have been withdrawn. Making the commitment would be to insert the rods, to start up the chain reaction. The chain reaction would be the democratic activity of peoples demanding action from the governments to secure their survival. True democracy is indispensable to disarmament, and vice versa. This is the power\u2014not the power of cruise missiles and B-52s\u2014that can release humanity from its peril. The price demanded of us for freedom from the danger of weapons of mass destruction is to relinquish our own.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cLetter from Ground Zero: Accountability\u201d (October 27, 2003):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cOf all the responsibilities of government, the decision to go to war is the most grave. Can an Administration take the country to war on false pretexts and get away with it? A year ago, the issue was war and peace. Now the issue is the integrity of the American political system. Not democracy in Iraq or even the entire Middle East\u2014that fading mirage\u2014but democracy in the United States is now at stake.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Empire Backfires\u201d (March 29, 2004):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe reliance on force over cooperation that was writ large in the imperial plan was also writ small in the occupation of Iraq. How else to understand the astonishing failure to make any preparation for the political, military, policing and even technical challenges that would face American forces? If a problem, large or small, had no military solution, this Administration seemed incapable of even seeing it. The United States was as blind to the politics of Iraq as it was to the politics of the world\u2026.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe same pattern is manifest on an even larger scale. Just now, the peoples of the world have embarked, some willingly and some not, on an arduous, wrenching, perilous, mind-exhaustingly complicated process of learning how to live as one indivisibly connected species on our one small, endangered planet. Seen in a certain light, the Administration&#8217;s imperial bid, if successful, would amount to a kind of planetary coup d&#8217;\u00e9tat, in which the world&#8217;s dominant power takes charge of this process by virtue of its almost freakishly superior military strength. Seen in another, less dramatic light, the American imperial solution has interposed a huge, unnecessary roadblock between the world and the Himalayan mountain range of urgent tasks that it must accomplish no matter who is in charge: saving the planet from overheating; inventing a humane, just, orderly, democratic, accountable global economy; redressing mounting global inequality and poverty; responding to human rights emergencies, including genocide; and, of course, stopping proliferation as well as rolling back the existing arsenals of nuclear arms. None of these exigencies can be met as long as the world and its greatest power are engaged in a wrestling match over how to proceed\u2026.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIf the engine of a train suddenly goes off the rails, a wreck ensues. Such is the war in Iraq, now one year old. At the same time, the train&#8217;s journey forward is canceled. Such is the current paralysis of the international community. Only when the engine is back on the tracks and starts in the right direction can either disaster be overcome. Only then will everyone be able to even begin the return to the world&#8217;s unfinished business.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe Hidden State Steps Forward\u201d (January 9, 2006):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThere is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Administration of George W. Bush is not a dictatorship, but it does manifest the characteristics of one in embryonic form.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cObama and the Return of the Real\u201d (February 9, 2009):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cOne day someone will undertake a comprehensive study of how all these bubbles grew and why they were inflated at the same time. It will be a story of a crisis of integrity of the institutions at the apex of American life. It will recount how the largest government, business, military and media organizations, as if obedient to a single command, began to tell lies to themselves and others in pursuit of or subservience to wealth and power. Individual deceivers must arrange their untruths by themselves, by flat-out conscious lying, self-deception or a combination of the two. Huge bureaucracies have wider options. Banks, hedge funds, ratings agencies, regulatory agencies, intelligence services, the White House, the Pentagon and mainstream news organizations can grind inconvenient truths to dust, layer by bureaucratic layer, until the convenient lies that had been wanted all along are presented to the satisfied money- or war-hungry decision-makers at the top. The study of these operations will be a story of groupthink; of basic facts relegated to footnotes; of wishes tweaked into facts; of deepening secrecy; of complex models, mathematical or ideological, used to supplant, not illumine, reality; of new offices created to draw false new conclusions from old facts; of threat inflation; of the sinking careers of truth-tellers and the rising careers of truth-twisters. It would be interesting, for instance, to compare the creation of the illusions of the real estate bubble with the creation of the claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. In both cases contrary facts were readily available at the base of the system but were filtered out as the reports went up the chain. For a somewhat contrasting, top-down model, the White House method for suppressing the truth about global warming within government agencies is instructive. In that case, the science was duly gathered but often squelched at the last minute by political appointees editing the reports\u2026\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIn short, the relationship between observation and action had been reversed. Reality was not the field of operation in which you acted, and whose limits you must respect; it was, like a play or movie, a scenario to be penned by human authors. Fact had to adjust to ideology, not the other way around.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cTorture and Truth\u201d (June 15, 2009):<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cIt has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guant\u00e1namo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture. Subsequently, he seemed to grow cautious. He discouraged formation of an independent commission to investigate the torture and reversed a previous position in favor of releasing Pentagon photos of abuses and instead opposed release. In his May 21 speech at the National Archives, he seemed to try to create a framework for understanding his policies, but they remained very much a work in progress. He surprisingly embraced a number of Bush policies, including military commissions for trying detainees, the use of the State Secrets privilege to protect information in court and the indefinite use of preventive detention\u2013all to be revised in ways that were left vague or unspecified. Yet among these reversals and improvisations, one very general preference has remained steady. Throughout, Obama has expressed a desire to concentrate on the \u2018future\u2019 rather than the \u2018past.\u2019 As he put it a while back, he is bent on \u2018getting things right in the future, as opposed [to] looking at what we got wrong in the past.\u2019 Or as he said in the National Archives speech, \u2018We need to focus on the future\u2019 while resisting those \u2018with a strong desire to focus on the past.\u2019\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cBut can the United States really get things right in the future by turning away from the past? For one thing, the factual record is still incomplete. For another, the reasons for what went wrong aren&#8217;t as clear as they might at first seem. Why did the United States make the decision for torture? What changes does it portend for American life? It seems likely that getting things right will depend on having answers to these questions.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cOccupy Wall Street: The Beginning Is Here\u201d November 7, 2011:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe power of the movement does not lie in the mite that it can add to or withdraw from some existing grouping through such traditional means as alliances and endorsements. Rather, its power lies in its direct appeal to the hearts and minds of the population at large\u2014to the 99 percent that the movement so audaciously and promisingly claims to represent. By this process, the mite becomes mighty. It was surely such a felt tremor in the hidden recesses of hearts and minds\u2014in short, in public opinion and, even more, in public will\u2014that alone can explain the established expressions of support as well as the wildfire spread of the protest.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhen such sea changes in opinion and will are under way, entrenched institutions start to tremble and shake, and political miracles become possible. If the scale of the national and international response to Occupy Wall Street is any measure, they have begun.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe exceptional creativity in the movement has been evident in countless handwritten signs. For example: I Lost My Job but Found an Occupation. And, Love Is the New Fear. But perhaps the loveliest, appearing in the demonstration\u2019s early days and cited in these pages, was The Beginning Is Near. To this we can now gratefully add, The Beginning Is Here.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cAmerica\u2019s Surveillance Net\u201d July 8-15, 2013:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhat should Americans do when all official channels are unresponsive or dysfunctional? Are we, as people used to say, in a revolutionary situation? Shall we man the barricades? The situation is a little more peculiar than that. There is a revolution afoot, but it is not one in the streets; it is one that is being carried out by the government against the fundamental law of the land. That this insurrection against the constitutional order by officials sworn to uphold it includes legal opinions and legislation only makes it the more radical and dangerous. In other words, the government is in stealthy insurrection against the letter and the spirit of the law.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s needed is counterrevolution\u2014an American restoration, returning to and reaffirming the principles on which the Republic was founded. Edward Snowden, for one, knew what to do. He saw that when government as a whole goes rogue, the only force with a chance of bringing it back into line is the public. He has helped make this possible by letting the public know the abuses that are being carried out in its name. Civil disobedients are of two kinds: those inspired by universal principles, and those inspired by national traditions. Each has its strengths. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is the first kind; Snowden, the second. Asked why he had done what he did, Snowden replied, \u2018I am neither traitor nor hero. I am an American.\u2019 He based his actions on the finest traditions of this country, which its current leaders have abandoned but which, he hopes, the current generation of Americans still share. In the weeks and months ahead, we\u2019ll find out whether he was right.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>***<\/p>\n<p><em>Subscribers to <\/em>The Nation <em>can access our fully searchable digital archive, which contains thousands of historic articles, essays and reviews, letters to the editor and editorials dating back to July 6, 1865.<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=538\">Maine Democrats Must Replace Graham Platner Now<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<footer>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>                Submit a correction<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Send a letter to the editor<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>                Reprints &amp; permissions<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p><span> Chris Lehmann<svg>\n<\/svg><br \/>\n<\/span>Chris Lehmann is the DC Bureau chief for <em>The Nation<\/em>\u00a0and a contributing editor at\u00a0<em>The Baffler.<\/em>\u00a0He was formerly editor of\u00a0<em>The<\/em>\u00a0<em>Baffler\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>The New Republic<\/em>, and is the author, most recently, of <em>The Money Cult: Capitalism, Christianity, and the Unmaking of the American Dream<\/em>\u00a0(Melville House, 2016).<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=536\">How Zohran Mamdani Saved the Fourth of July<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n<\/div>\n<p><input\/><br \/>\n<input\/><br \/>\n<\/footer>\n<\/article>\n<p>Ad Policy<br \/>\n<!-- <a class=\"inifiniteLoader\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/new_infi_loader.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a> -->\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - 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