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10 | THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
The first book of Toni Morrison’s that I
read was “Sula.” It was a gift from my
brother the summer before I started
college, his reasoning being that I could
not become a literate adult, let alone a
black woman in America, without being
initiated into Ms. Morrison’s work.
The first time I read the novel, I read
with a sense of rapt gratitude. Despite
all the pleasure that reading had offered
me, up to that point in my life I honestly
had never encountered black charac-
ters depicted with such rich and trou-
bling complexity. I lurched toward the
lives of Nel and Sula, the young black
girls Ms. Morrison, who died on Mon-
day, chronicles into adulthood. I recog-
nized them in their girlhood and their
dawning sense of selfhood. And I recog-
nized the wishes and the fears and
judgments of the community they grew
up in.
From the stories my parents had
carried with them on their journey to
California from the Jim Crow South, I
even recognized certain conditions
governing the characters’ lives in a
black neighborhood called “The Bot-
tom.”
But what Ms. Morrison’s novel did, by
way of its intriguing and indelible char-
acters, was to marry to that general
knowledge an intimate firsthand per-
spective on love, betrayal and the strug-
gle not only to survive in the physical
sense but to survive in spirit. “Sula,”
then “Song of Solomon,” then “Beloved"
and each of Ms. Morrison’s novels as I
encountered them, assured me that the
lives of ordinary black people in Amer-
ica, both historically and now, exist upon
the very same scale as myth. Her body
of work insists that these same lives
hold the key to something at the very
heart of what America is, something
that cannot be overlooked or disre-
garded if sense is to be made of this
nation and all of us in
it.
Black life is the
canvas for Ms. Mor-
rison’s body of work.
It yields the condi-
tions and the charac-
ters that fascinated
her as an artist. But I
believe her subject is
America, this place founded upon con-
flict and driven by the need to define one
group against another. Her work asks:
Who are we? What have we built and
broken together? What does it mean to
regard one another deeply, humbly,
hopefully? And what are the conse-
quences for our refusal to regard one
another? Across Ms. Morrison’s novels
and essays, these questions operate in
the intimate spaces — in families,
friendships, marriages — that serve to
determine the terms of our engagement
with the wider world. And the reverse is
true as well: The terms of the wider
world seep inevitably into the most
private regions of our lives.
In “Beloved,” the protagonist Sethe is
haunted by the return of her own child,
whom she killed in an attempt to protect
her from enslavement. But beyond this
insular haunting, the family is intruded
upon at every turn by the larger specter
of a nation whose claims of freedom,
power and moral authority are con-
founded by systems of slavery, submis-
sion and the fallacy of racial inferiority.
In her essay collection “The Origin of
Others,” Ms. Morrison writes, “The
resources available to us for benign
access to each other, for vaulting the
mere blue air that separates us, are few
but powerful: language, image and
experience.”
When we encounter the world
through Ms. Morrison’s fiction, we are
urged to submit to and invest in the
feelings and plights of others separated
from us by time and circumstance.
There is very little else in the world that
can so easily afford us such an opportu-
nity. Friendship can do it, and so can
love, yet there are limits to the people
we befriend and those we allow our-
selves to love; we must be willing to see
them as worthy of our attention, and we
must muster the courage to approach
them. But in a novel, we vault “the mere
blue air that separates us” instantly.
“That’s how much she loved us,” a
friend said by text Tuesday morning
when the news of Ms. Morrison’s death
was announced. “She tried to teach us
about love in everything she wrote, but
what have we learned?”
It’s hard, waking up so often to news
of the terror unspooling in America.
Domestic terrorism. Racially motivated
violence. Environmental devastation.
Economic instability. It’s tempting to
believe that a distinct chapter has only
just now begun, one in which some new
evil has been unleashed and our na-
tional work will be to devise new terms
and new tools for understanding and
eradicating it. It’s tempting to believe
that the work that lies ahead must live
on a policy level, in laws and punish-
ment, checks and safeguards. But the
living monument of Ms. Morrison’s
body of work assures me that the lan-
guage of peace, justice, safety and
stability must enter our imagination as
they always have — not through the
language of policy, but via our willing-
ness to regard one another as worthy of
attention and love. Such ideas must be
sat with, moved through, married to our
vocabularies for love, desire, loss, re-
sentment, remembering, healing and
hope. And those vocabularies are the
primary terrain of the artist.
I don’t believe there is a writer who
understood America better and loved it
with more ferocity than Toni Morrison.
Her genius and her humanity invite us
to imagine a different sense of who we
are, even now, and where, together, we
might decide we are going.
Tracy K. Smith
TRACY K. SMITH served as United States
Poet Laureate from 2017 to 2019. Her
most recent book is “Wade in the Wa-
ter,” a collection of poems.
Toni Morrison’s song of America
BEBETO MATTHEWS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Black life is
the canvas for
her body of
work. But her
subject is our
nation.
After more than 30 years, the Interme-
diate Nuclear Forces (I.N.F.) Treaty
ended last week, with an American
withdrawal on Friday and a Russian
withdrawal on Saturday. Although the
United States abided by the terms of the
treaty, Russia violated it by fielding
more than 100 banned intermediate-
range missiles, and China, which was
never bound by it, fielded thousands.
The United States has none.
To fix this gap, it is time for the De-
partment of Defense to develop and
field conventionally armed, ground-
launched, intermediate-range missiles.
The I.N.F. was a good treaty that re-
duced tensions and contributed to the
peaceful end of the Cold War. After
signing it in 1987, the Soviet Union and
the United States eliminated ground-
launched missiles with ranges of ap-
proximately 310 to 3,417 miles. Those
missiles were problematic because, if
they were armed with nuclear war-
heads, they could, given their short
flight time, be used for devastating
surprise attacks against allies in Europe
and against the Soviet Union. The elimi-
nation of those missiles provided a
greater sense of stability between the
Soviet Union and the United States and
its allies.
Unfortunately, for more than a dec-
ade Russia has been violating the
treaty. In 2008, Russia breached it by
testing an intermediate-range, ground-
launched cruise missile known as the
9M729. Equipped with modern guid-
ance systems, the 9M729 and other
new Russian missiles can fly precisely
to their targets. This precision enables
Russia to use warheads with conven-
tional explosives that have a much
smaller destructive area than nuclear
warheads, which in turn increases the
likelihood that Russian forces will use
these weapons in a conflict.
For six years, American diplomats
patiently tried to persuade the Russians
to honor the agreement, but Russia
ignored the United States and NATO
allies while building and deploying
more than 100 of the banned missiles.
Even more worrisome, China, which
was never part of the bilateral treaty
and repeatedly declined to join it,
started in the 1990s to assemble a huge
missile force explicitly designed to
counter American strengths. China now
has thousands of missiles armed with
conventional and nuclear warheads.
These precise and deadly missiles are
capable of attacking ships at sea and
bases ashore, not only throughout the
territory of America’s allies in Asia, but
also far out at sea and on American
territory in Alaska, Guam and the
Northern Marianas.
Lacking conventionally armed,
ground-launched missiles with which to
attack enemy forces, or sufficient de-
fenses against China or Russia’s con-
ventionally armed, ground-launched
missiles, American forces routinely lose
war game simulations involving China
or Russia, and could lose a real war.
So the United States needs to acquire
its own conventionally armed, ground-
launched, intermediate-range missiles.
These missiles could provide consider-
able operational
benefits for United
States forces and
pose challenges to
adversaries. If
operated from
American territory
and the territory of
allies, these weap-
ons could quickly
attack enemy
targets once they
are detected. Moreover, by using these
missiles to strike heavily defended
targets and the systems that protect
them, the risks to manned aircraft and
ships could be reduced.
This new capability would make
American forces more effective and
could deter Chinese, Russian or other
adversary leaders from aggressive
actions. Lastly, by arming these mis-
siles with only conventional warheads,
the United States could reduce the
possibility that enemy forces would
confuse these weapons with nuclear
ones and mitigate the concerns that led
to the original I.N.F. Treaty. It could also
provide the United States with an op-
portunity to negotiate a treaty with
China, Russia and other countries that
would ban nuclear-armed, ground-
launched, intermediate-range missiles.
Some observers in the arms control
community think that leaving the I.N.F.
Treaty is dangerous and could cause an
arms race. The truly dangerous choice
is to continue to watch China and Russia
field missile arsenals while we do little
more than protest and analyze our
options. Thankfully, the United States
now has effective options. With the
treaty dead, the Army and Marine
Corps can develop and field convention-
ally armed, ground-launched, interme-
diate-range missiles. As Congress
finalizes the defense budget, it can make
smart investments in this area not only
to fund the development of new mis-
siles, but also to repurpose existing
designs like the Tomahawk cruise mis-
sile (which is currently fired from ships
and submarines) or previous designs
like the Pershing II ballistic missile
(which was banned by the I.N.F.
Treaty).
A mix of missiles based on new and
repurposed designs should allow the
Department of Defense to field signifi-
cant numbers of missiles within a few
years at moderate cost. China and
Russia have been sprinting to build
their missile forces; with the United
States now out of the I.N.F. Treaty, it is
time to level the playing field.
Timothy A. Walton
TIMOTHY A. WALTON is a research fellow
at the Center for Strategic and Budg-
etary Assessments, an independent
policy institute in Washington for na-
tional security strategies.
U.S. could lose a real war with Russia
America should
build more
conventional
missiles to
catch up with
Russia and
China.
In January the Russian military spelled out the specifications of the 9M729 cruise
missile to refute the American claim that Russia had violated a key nuclear arms pact.
PAVEL GOLOVKIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS
opinion
The Indian government’s decision to revoke the
semiautonomous status of Kashmir, accompa-
nied by a huge security clampdown, is danger-
ous and wrong. Bloodshed is all but certain, and
tension with Pakistan will soar.
The Himalayan territory of Kashmir has long
been the central source of friction between India
and Pakistan and a hotbed of separatist aspira-
tions. Rival claims to Kashmir have led to two
wars and frequent eruptions of violence and ter-
rorism over the past seven decades, made all the
more menacing by the nuclear arsenals of India
and Pakistan. Only in February, a Kashmiri sui-
cide bomber struck an Indian military convoy,
prompting a tense military standoff and aerial
dogfights between India and Pakistan. After an
earlier such incident, former president Bill Clin-
ton dubbed Kashmir “the most dangerous place
in the world.”
The Indian government knows how incendiary
its actions are, which is why, before making the
announcement on Monday, it ordered tens of
thousands more troops into Kashmir, put major
political figures under house arrest, ordered
tourists to leave, closed schools and cut off inter-
net services.
The government claimed it was acting to pre-
vent a planned terrorist attack. But Prime Min-
ister Narendra Modi and his governing
Bharatiya Janata Party, deeply rooted in Hindu
nationalist ideology, have long made no secret of
their intention to revoke the articles in the Indi-
an Constitution granting the predominantly
Muslim Kashmir a special status — a move the
B.J.P. sees as “correcting a historical blunder.”
That “blunder” began with Britain’s 1947 parti-
tion of its Indian colony into a Hindu-majority
India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. The sta-
tus of what was then the principality of Jammu
and Kashmir was left undecided. India and Paki-
stan soon fell to blows over it, which ended with
Pakistan occupying roughly a third and India
two-thirds, divided by a heavily armed and bul-
let-riddled “line of control.” India’s side was
granted a relative degree of autonomy in ex-
change for accepting Indian rule.
The United Nations recommended holding a
referendum to let Kashmiris decide their fate,
but that never happened. In later years, Muslim
militants, often backed by Pakistan, joined the
fray, striking at Indian troops in Kashmir and at
targets deep inside India, including a multiday
killing spree in Mumbai in 2008 that left more
than 160 people dead.
In this volatile stew, India’s latest action pro-
voked instant vows of resistance. The Kashmiris
are especially incensed by the lifting of a ban
they had long imposed on the purchase of land
by nonresidents, to prevent their land from being
bought up by Indians. “There will be chaos if our
identity is compromised,” vowed Mehbooba
Mufti, a former chief minister of Jammu and
Kashmir. In neighboring Pakistan the sabers
were quick to rattle. “Pakistan will exercise all
possible options to counter the illegal steps,”
declared the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, while
Shahbaz Sharif, the leader of the political opposi-
tion, thundered that “Kashmir is the jugular vein
of Pakistan, and anyone laying a hand on our
jugular vein will meet a frightful end.”
The fray is not without global implications.
Under President Trump, the United States has
shifted its favors from Pakistan, a longtime re-
cipient of American aid, to India, which the ad-
ministration perceives as a bulwark against
China. China, meanwhile, has become an ally
and financial patron of Pakistan.
There is still a good chance that the changes to
the Constitution will end up before India’s Su-
preme Court. But the fires are already lit. The
United States and China must not allow Kashmir
to become a pawn in their ongoing disputes; on
the contrary, the United States, China, the United
Nations and other powers with influence over
India and Pakistan must urgently do what they
can to prevent India’s folly from escalating into a
perilous and unpredictable regional crisis.
By revoking
the special
status of the
mountainous
territory, India
is courting
conflict with
Pakistan.
INDIA TEMPTS FATE IN KASHMIR
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