Swords to ploughshares

This article is about converting military technology. For the American veterans' NPO, see Swords to Plowshares.

Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares, a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich in the United Nations Art Collection

Swords to ploughshares (or swords to plowshares) is a concept in which military weapons or technologies are converted for peaceful civilian applications.

The phrase originates from the Book of Isaiah, who prophesies of a future where there will be peace amongst all humankind:

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. — Isaiah 2:4 & Micah 4:3

The ploughshare is often used to symbolize creative tools that benefit mankind, as opposed to destructive tools of war, symbolized by the sword, a similar sharp metal tool with an arguably opposite use.

In addition to the original Biblical Messianic intent, the expression "beat swords into ploughshares" has been used by disparate social and political groups.

One of the greatest efforts in this vein has been various peace movement goals. An example might be the destruction of nuclear weapons and the use of that technology in the development of power sources. Nuclear fission has been applied to many civilian purposes since its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and nuclear fusion requires further research before it can become practical to the same degree.

References in popular culture

• In his farewell address, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, when speaking about the military-industrial complex stated:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

• In Ronald Reagan's Address to the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York.

Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity.

• The popular anti-war song "The Vine and Fig Tree" repeats the verse

And everyone neath their vine and fig tree

shall live in peace and unafraid,

Everyone neath their vine and fig tree

shall live in peace and unafraid.

And into ploughshares beat their swords

Nations shall learn war no more.

And into ploughshares beat their swords

Nations shall learn war no more.

• Create a world with no fear

Together we'll cry happy tears

See the nations turn

Their swords into plowshares — Heal The World by Michael Jackson (1991)

• They will live again in freedom

In the garden of the Lord.

They will walk behind the ploughshare,

They will put away the sword.

The chain will be broken

And all men will have their reward. — finale of the musical Les Misérables

• You took your sacrifice to the gods of war

Traded your children's lives for a mess of gold

And beat your ploughshares into swords

Breathing free. — "Protect and Survive" by Runrig

• The Don Henley song "The End of the Innocence" contains the line: "They're beating plowshares into swords, for the tired old man that we elected king" (a reference to then-President Ronald Reagan).
• The Stephen Stills song "Feed the People" includes the line: "Turn your swords to ploughshares everywhere, and feed the people."
• The phrase Pax Arva Colat meaning "Let Peace Cultivate the Fields" is the motto of the World Ploughing Organization.
• In the song "What Good are Plowshares if we use them like Swords?" Hoots and Hellmouth ask:

What good are plowshares if we use them like swords?

Don't spoil the harvest, we ain't got much more.

• The collectible card game Magic: The Gathering features a card named "Swords to Plowshares". It is an Instant that exiles a creature (removes a creature from the game entirely), and allows its controller to gain life equal to the creature's power. It costs one white Mana to cast.
• In the Brave Saint Saturn song "Blessed are the Landmines" the phrase is reversed in a satire:

Beat your plowshares into swords

beat your pulpits, turn your tables

blessed are the hand-grenades

bless the church who rattles sabers

• "Swords to Plowshares" is a spell on the Healer spellsheet in the LARP Amtgard. It "destroys" a weapon to heal the wielder.
• In the song "High Caliber Concentrator" by Clutch:

We'll thresh the psyche and till the pride

Distill the blood, proclaim the gun divine

Damn the foul ego, praise the promised swarm

We are the ploughshare, and yet we are the sword

• Sex, Bombs and Burgers: How War, Porn and Fast Food Shaped Modern Technology, a novel by Peter Nowak, published in 2010 examines the phenomenon in detail.

The plowshare is often used to symbolize creative tools that benefit mankind, as opposed to destructive tools of war, symbolized by the sword, a similar sharp metal tool with an arguably opposite use. The common expession "beat swords into plowshares" has been used by disparate social and political groups.

This analogy is used several times in the Bible such as in the following verses:

Isaiah 2:4 "And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war."

Joel 3:10 "Beat your plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, "I am a mighty man."

Micah 4:3 "And He will judge between many peoples And render decisions for mighty, distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they train for war."

• Until the nations turn their swords into plowshares — Heal The World by Michael Jackson (1991)
• They will live again in freedom

In the garden of the Lord.

They will walk behind the ploughshare,

They will put away the sword.

The chain will be broken

And all men will have their reward. — Finale of the musical Les Misérables

• "...they're beating plowshares into swords for those tired old men that we elected king" — End of the Innocence by Don Henley (1989)

An expression of this concept can be seen a bronze statue in the United Nations garden called Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares, a gift from the Soviet Union sculpted by Evgeniy Vuchetich, representing the figure of a man hammering a sword into the shape of a plowshare.

List of notable cases

Main article: Dual-use technology

Not all of the following examples actually express the idea of the phrase, which stresses the destruction of weapons of war and recycling the materials for peaceful purposes. Although interesting and somewhat related to the concept, these show the dual-use nature of technology, which does not always clearly convey the intention of the phrase nor how it is used today.

The Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares statue at United Nations headquarters, New York.

• Radar was initially developed for detection of incoming bombers, now used in commercial airliners. The microwave oven is also a consequence of this technology
• Jet engines were developed for fighter craft by Britain and Germany during the Second World War
• The Space Race was based on technology, in particular rockets, designed for nuclear warfare
• The first computers, Bombe, Colossus and ENIAC were developed for codebreaking or the calculation of ballistic trajectories; many of their predecessors were designed to assist in military codebreaking
• Roman roads were designed for the rapid transport of troops, but were used by civilians for millennia afterwards
• The Global Positioning System (GPS) was developed under the United States Department of Defense for military navigational purposes. The system has been released for free civilian use, e.g. in land, sea and air navigation, cartography and land surveying.
• Cyanoacrylate was developed in an attempt to produce synthetic gunsights for airplanes during World War II, but was too sticky to be useful. It is now commonly sold as 'super glue'.
• Active sonar was developed during World War I to facilitate the discovery of enemy submarines, which led to medical ultrasonography.
• Facial tissues such as Kleenex were originally created while attempting to develop better gas mask filter membranes.
• In several former Soviet republics, large stocks of a rocket fuel component, mélange, (a mixture of nitric acid and nitrogen oxides that would have otherwise posed significant a environmental hazard) were recycled into fertilizer by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. [1][2].
• Old M20 recoilless rifles are being used as part of an avalanche control system used by the U.S. National Park Service.
• The Megatons to Megawatts Program is a joint program between the United States and Russia to convert fissile materials in nuclear weapons into nuclear fuel.

See also

• Operation Plowshare
• Plowshares Movement
• Military budget

The titls of Lord Ashdown's book covering his time in Bosnia, and providing a template for stabilisation

External links

• Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares statue at the U.N. or [3]
• Guns Into Plowshares sculpture by Esther & Michael Augsburger, formerly in Judiciary Square in Washington D.C.