Swords to ploughshares

File:Starry Plough flag (with fringe).svg

The Starry Plough flag, with a sword in place of a ploughshare.

File:Schwerter zu Pflugscharen - Jewgeni Wutschetitsch - Geschenk der Sowjetunion an die UNO - 1959.jpg

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

File:Hand-separated large candlestick church chandelier with brass wax drip tray - GDR around 1980 - Use of armoured steel and brass - Single piece - Weight 10 kilograms.jpg

Hand-separated large candlestick church chandelier with brass wax drip tray – GDR around 1980 – Use of armoured steel and brass – Single piece – Weight 10 kilograms

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

The phrase originates from the Book of Isaiah chapter 2:

The ploughshare (Template:Langx ’êṯ, also translated coulter) is often used to symbolize creative tools that benefit humankind, as opposed to destructive tools of war, symbolized by the sword (Template:Langx ḥereḇ), 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.

A past example from the period 1993 continuing to 2013 is the dismantling of nuclear weapons and the use of their contents as fuel in civilian electric power stations, the Megatons to Megawatts Program. Nuclear fission development, originally accelerated for World War II weapons needs, has been applied to many civilian purposes since its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including electricity and radiopharmaceutical production.

Biblical references

File:Mosaic Yael Portugheis in Beit Habad Gallery (6244238560).jpg

Mosaic in the Beit Habad Gallery, Jerusalem, quoting Isaiah 2:4, with lion, spear and spade.

Beyond the above usage in the Book of Isaiah, this analogy is used twice more in the Old Testament/Tanakh, in both directions. In Micah, it is recited word for word:

In Joel, the opposite is said:

An expression of this concept can be seen in 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.

Confucianism

James Legge's translation of Analects of Confucius includes a story of Confucius asking his disciples to list their aims, resulting in praise for the virtue of Yan Hui:

At last came Yen Yuan, who said "I should like to find an intelligent king and sage ruler whom I might assist. I would diffuse among the people instructions on the five great points, and lead them on by the rules of propriety and music, so that they should not care to fortify their cities by walls and moats, but would fuse their swords and spears into implements of agriculture.

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Practical applications

File:Tokyo Tower 2023.jpg

Tokyo Tower, the second-tallest tower in Japan, is partially constructed from steel obtained by recycling US tanks damaged in battle during the Korean War.

• After World War II, military surplus AFVs were sometimes converted into bulldozers, agricultural, and logging tractors, as seen in the American television series Ax Men. Two are currently preserved at the Swords and Ploughshares Museum in Canada. French farmers sometimes used modified versions of the obsolete FT-17 tank, and similar vehicles, based on the T-34 tank, remain in widespread use in the former USSR. A British agricultural engineer and collector of classic tractors, owns a Sherman tank that was adapted to plow Lincolnshire's fields in response to the shortage of crawler tractors.
• From the 1970s onward, several anti-war musicians have played guitars made from military surplus weapons. Jamaican reggae star Peter Tosh famously owned a Fender Stratocaster built around an M-16 rifle. In the present day the Escopetarra, a guitar converted from the AK-47, is the signature instrument of César López, Souriya Sunshine, and Sami Lopakka of the Finnish death metal band Sentenced.
• Nitrogen mustard, developed from the chemical weapon mustard gas developed in World War I, became the basis for the world's first chemotherapy drug, mustine, developed through the 1940s.
• Peaceful nuclear explosions, the application of nuclear detonations to civilian applications such as excavation and mining, explored by the USA (Project Plowshare) and USSR (Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy). However, the nuclear fallout and other contamination produced quickly rendered such programs impractical.
• Swedish aid organization IM Swedish Development Partner launched Humanium Metal, using metal from illegal handguns to create everyday objects. The first product announced was headphones by Yevo.
• The Global Positioning System was originally developed to enable more accurate strikes with long-range weapons by the United States, but its purpose was later expanded to include civilian applications such as personal navigation assistants.
• The Plowshares movement (British, Christian, founded by Daniel Berrigan), Trident Ploughshares (British) and Pitstop Ploughshares (US, Christian) are peace movements, inspired by the book of Isaiah, in which participants attempt to damage or destroy modern weapons, such as nuclear missiles.
• The Megatons to Megawatts Program, agreed to in 1993 by the United States and Russia, successfully converted 500 metric tonnes of fuel from Soviet-era nuclear warheads into fuel for nuclear power plants over a period of 20 years.

In political and popular culture

• The Starry Plough, a flag associated with revolutionary Irish republicanism and socialism, features a sword as the plowshare.
• Twelve-term US Congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul wrote a book entitled Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, in which he discusses growing up during World War II and living his life through war after war.
• In his farewell address, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, when speaking about the military–industrial complex, stated:

• For his first and second inaugurations, U.S. President Richard Nixon took the oath of office with his hand on two family Bibles, opened to Isaiah 2:2–4.
• In their speeches at the signing of the 1979 Egypt–Israel peace treaty, Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin all referenced the saying in calling for peace.
• In Ronald Reagan's address to the 42nd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, New York.

• The song "Ashes In Your Mouth" by Megadeth uses a reference to plows and shear to swords:

• The popular anti-war song "The Vine and Fig Tree" from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp Songbook repeats the verse

• The song "The End of the Innocence" by Don Henley (1989) uses the Joel inverted version of the phrase:

• "Heal the World" by Michael Jackson (1991):

• Finale of the musical Les Misérables:

• The name of a card in Magic: The Gathering, a popular trading card game.
• A poem by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai:

• Guns into Plowshares, a sculpture by Mennonite artists Esther Augsburger and Michael Augsburger
• The marketing slogan used by the fictional Globotech Industries in Small Soldiers, serving as the introduction to the movie, and foreshadowing the central plot of smart ballistic missile guidance microprocessors being mistakenly used in children's toys.
• A "Swords into Ploughshares" badge was worn by Christian peace groups in East Germany. Wearers of the badge who refused to take it off were barred from educational and work opportunities by the state.

See also

• Anti-war movement
• Atomic gardening
• Atoms for Peace
• Escopetarra
• Guns vs butter
• Project Plowshare
• Plowshares movement
• Religion and peacebuilding