Give Thanks for 80, 80, 9
In the WSJ, columnist Peggy Noonan writes about the grace of reflecting on your and our country’s blessings. According to G.K. Chesterton, gratitude is “the highest form of thought.”
Tolstoy took it a step further, notes Ms. Noonan.
You can infer from (Tolstoy’s) work that he thought the moments in which we feel the greatest thankfulness are those in which we are most noble.
Gratitude comes in many forms. If you feel grateful long enough, Ms. Noonan suggests, it could even become a leading stance in life.
I did nothing to earn the snow-capped mountain on the horizon, and yet there it is, filling my eyes and soul with wonder. Thank you, God. Or thank you, mystery. But thank you.
Big or small, there is much thanks to be given. Noonan begins with Harvard University political scientist Graham Allison, a leading analyst of US national security and defense policy, with a special focus on nuclear weapons and terrorism. Allison wrote to Peggy Noonan this Thanksgiving week to share with her his three reasons to give thanks for the holiday season: “80, 80, and 9.”
The first 80: “Since Japan surrendered in September 1945, the world has lived in the longest peace—the longest period without Great Power war—since the Roman Empire.”
The second 80 is the answer to the question: how many years has it been since nuclear weapons were used in war? Had anyone been asked to bet about this in 1950 or 1960, they could have gotten thousand-to-one odds against this outcome.
The 9, says Allison, may be the most incredible of all. “How many states have nuclear arsenals?” We rightly fear nuclear proliferation, and yet “amazing grace and good fortune,” and admirable postwar statecraft, “actually bent the arc of history.”
According to Mr. Allison, more than a hundred nations have the resources to build nuclear weapons. They, however, have chosen to rely on “the security guarantees of others.”
This, Ms. Noonan reminds readers, is an event wonderful and “historically unnatural.”
… think of the genius that went into making 80, 80, and 9. And be grateful. (The thinking of Mr. Allison and his collaborator, James A. Winnefeld, Jr., on how to renew progress, is in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.)
