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Would You Press the Button?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2018

Walter Stein
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Extract

"Would you press the button you know is going to annihilate millions of people?"

"If the circumstances demanded it, I would."

This reply, under oath, by Air Commodore Magill to Pat Pottle at the British Official Secrets Trial of February 1962, distils the essence of the deterrence strategy. In the light of common sense, and especially with reference to the just-war tradition, it also defines its essential immorality.

As a prosecution witness, the Air Commodore was being cross-examined by one of the accused who had invaded a nuclear base in protest and who was later sentenced to imprisonment for this offense.

Type
The Church and the Bomb
Information
Worldview , Volume 7 , Issue 12 , December 1964 , pp. 8 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1964

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