Will... the threat of common extermination continue?... Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance?

In these rhetorical questions, John Paul II frames the nuclear arms race not as a technical or strategic contest but as a moral crisis with intergenerational consequences. “Common extermination” evokes the shared vulnerability of all peoples in an age of weapons capable of annihilating humanity, while the image of children “receiv[ing] the arms race… as a necessary inheritance” condemns the normalization of permanent militarized rivalry. The quote presses listeners to recognize that security built on escalating deterrence is unstable and ethically corrosive, and it calls for political courage to break the cycle so that future generations inherit peace-making institutions rather than ever more destructive arsenals.