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The Morality of Nuclear Deterrence: Obstacles on the Road to Coherence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Richard B. Miller ,
United Methodist Council of Bishops ,
United Methodist Council of Bishops ,
U.S. Catholic Bishops  and
U.S. Catholic Bishops
Richard B. Miller
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Abstract

This essay critically assays four recent attempts to furnish a moral justification for nuclear deterrence: the success thesis, the just war thesis, the argument from the “supreme emergency,” and the exceptionalist thesis. By entering into critical dialogue with representatives of these arguments I hope to show that the current confidence in the morality of nuclear deterrence is ill-conceived. Chief among the logical and practical difficulties plaguing these arguments are the following. (1) The success thesis rests on the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning. Nor does the assertion of the past success of deterrence furnish guarantees of future effectiveness. (2) Representatives of the just war thesis either establish conditions for accepting deterrence that are incoherent with their judgments about use (e.g., U.S. Catholic bishops) or develop a theory of deterrence that cannot be morally institutionalized (e.g., David Hollenbach). (3) The argument for the supreme emergency eclipses moral convention in the nuclear age. (4) The attempt to salvage the supreme emergency according to a classical theory of community rests on a fundamental disanalogy between the Aristotelian polis and modern nation-states. Moreover, it opens the door for a double standard to evaluate the methods of war.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 21 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1988

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References

1 For a discussion of the Strategic Defense Initiative and its relation to nuclear deterrence, see United Methodist Council of Bishops, In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace (Nashville, TN: Graded Press, 1986), pp. 49–52Google Scholar; Schlesinger, James R., “Rhetoric and Realities in the Star Wars Debate” in Miller, Steven E. and Erva, Stephen Van, eds., The Star Wars Controversy, An International Security Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 15–24, esp. 17-18Google Scholar; Nye, Joseph Jr., Nuclear Ethics (New York: Free Press, 1986), p. 125Google Scholar. All of these sources note how the rationale for the Strategic Defense Initiative has shifted from “rendering nuclear weapons obsolete” (in order to move away from the immorality of deterrence) to enhancing deterrence. Obviously the shift in rationale entails a shift in the moral evaluation of deterrence.

2 Johnson, James Turner, Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 1Google Scholar. See Johnson's, study of the development of just war ideas, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

3 Weinberger, Caspar, “A Rational Approach to Nuclear Disarmament” in Sterba, James, ed., The Ethics of Nuclear War and Deterrence (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1985), p. 117Google Scholar.

4 Wasserstrom, Richard, “War, Nuclear War, and Nuclear Deterrence: Some Conceptual and Moral Issues,” Ethics 95 (April 1985), 435-40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 O’Brien, William V., The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981), p. 138Google Scholar.

6 Johnson, , Can Modern War Be Just?, p. 103Google Scholar.

7 Zuckerman, Solly, Nuclear Illusion and Reality (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 48Google Scholar.

8 Wieseltier, Leon, “The Great Nuclear Debate,” The New Republic, January 10 and 17, 1983, p. 35Google Scholar. Wieseltier subsequently published this extended essay as War, Nuclear, Peace, Nuclear (New York: Holt, Reinhardt, and Winston, 1983)Google Scholar.

9 McKim, Robert, “An Examination of Moral Argument Against Nuclear Deterrence,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (Fall 1985), 279-97, at 283-85Google Scholar.

10 Hollenbach, David, S.J., Nuclear Ethics: A Christian Moral Argument (New York: Paulist, 1983), p. 83Google Scholar.

11 United Methodist Council of Bishops, In Defense of Creation, p. 49Google Scholar.

12 J. L. Mackie, “Fallacies,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1st ed. That this is an inductive fallacy, one which pertains to the relation of facts to themselves, means that it is also vulnerable to the charge that it issues in a falsehood. That is, the fallacy obscures other nonnuclear accounts for the absence of war (see note 13).

13 For a brief discussion of nonnuclear factors contributing to the absence of war, see Bundy, McGeorge, “Existential Deterrence and its Consequences” in MacLean, Douglas, ed., The Security Gamble: Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.

14 Bok, Sissela, “Distrust, Secrecy, and the Arms Race,” Ethics 95 (April 1985), 716CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 See, e.g., Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just?, chs. 5, 6, 8; O'Brien, Just and Limited War, ch. 6. In more recent writings, O’Brien has placed tighter restraints on the use of nuclear force than he did in his previous writings. See O’Brien, William V., “The Failure of Deterrence and the Conduct of War” in O’Brien, William V. and Langan, John, eds., The Nuclear Dilemma and the Just War Tradition (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1986), pp. 153-97 at 158, 176Google Scholar.

16 Wasserstrom, , “War, Nuclear War, and Nuclear Deterrence,” p. 440Google Scholar; see also Schell, Jonathan, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 197Google Scholar. The problem of introducing notions of successful and unsuccessful deterrence into the same overall account is particularly acute for the argument of O’Brien. O’Brien's entire argument on behalf of a counterforce war-fighting strategy as essential to a credible deterrent begins with the assumption “that the nuclear deterrent has failed, aggression has occurred, and a nuclear response of some kind is under consideration.” See O'Brien, , Just and Limited War, p. 129Google Scholar and, more recently, “The Failure of Deterrence and the Conduct of War,” in The Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 153, 156.

17 U.S. Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983), pp. 46–50Google Scholar. It should be noted, moreover, that the bishops are considering “the real as opposed to the theoretical possibility of a ‘limited nuclear exchange.’“

18 Ibid., pp. iii-iv.

19 Ibid., p. 58.

20 Ibid., p. 59.

21 For a discussion of the present counterforce and retaliatory capabilities in the U.S. arsenal, see Posen, Barry R. and Erva, Stephen Van, “Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment,” International Security 8 (Summer 1983), 3–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 For a similar view of the bishops' argument on the issue of use, see Murnion, William E., “The American Catholic Bishops' Peace Pastoral: A Critique of Its Logic,” Horizons 13 (Spring 1986), 79–80Google Scholar. Moreover, this problem of reconciling the proscription of a nuclear first-strike with the permission of second-strike counterforce warfare also plagues the argument for a “no first use” policy made by four former U.S. officials. See Bundy, McGeorge, Kennan, George F., McNamara, Robert, and Smith, Gerard, “Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance,” Foreign Affairs 60 (Spring 1982), 753-68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Hollenbach, , Nuclear Ethics, pp. 47–62Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 65.

25 MacLean, Douglas, “Introduction,” in The Security Gamble, p. xviiGoogle Scholar.

26 Hollenbach, , Nuclear Ethics, p. 57Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 74.

28 Ibid., p. 75.

29 Ibid., p. 83.

30 Freedman, Lawrence, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's, 1983), esp. chs. 4-9, 14-16, 25Google Scholar. See also Ball, Desmond, “U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?” International Security 7 (Winter 1982/1983), 31-60, esp. 33–40Google Scholar.

3l Bracken, Paul, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 179–237Google Scholar, passim.

32 For a similar point, see Kenny, Anthony, The Logic of Deterrence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 50, 53–54Google Scholar.

33 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1977), pp. 269-83Google Scholar. For a retrieval of the supreme emergency as analogous with Vitoria's application of just war ideas, see Johnson, , Can Modern War Be Just?, pp. 185-90Google Scholar. See also the recent discussions of Walzer's notion of the supreme emergency by Gerald Mara (to be discussed below), Hollenbach, , and O'Brien, in The Nuclear Dilemma and the Just War Tradition, pp. 15-18, 49–64, passim, 227-28Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 272.

35 Ibid., p. 273.

36 Ibid., pp. 273-74.

37 Ibid., p. 252.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., p. 260.

40 Ibid., p. 274.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., p. 253.

43 Ibid., p. 282.

44 Mara, Gerald M., “Justice, War, and Politics: The Problem of Supreme Emergency,” in The Nuclear Dilemma, pp. 49–78Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., p. 65.

46 Ibid., p. 70.

47 Ibid., p. 67.

48 Ibid.

49 See, for example, the U.S. Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace, p. 74Google Scholar, where they affirm the “real but relative” value of national sovereignty. The relativity of national sovereignty precludes reference to national survival as an ultimate value or principle, even within the present international order.

50 One such example is Barrs, Jerram, Who Are The Peacemakers? The Christian Case for Nuclear Deterrence, with an Introduction by Francis Schaeffer (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1983)Google Scholar.

51 MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (1st ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 236-37Google Scholar.

52 Mara, , “Justice, War, and Politics,” p. 71Google Scholar.

53 I would like to thank members of the Interdisciplinary Seminar, “The Experience of War,” at Indiana University, Mary Jo Weaver, and the anonymous readers for Horizons for their useful criticisms of earlier drafts of this essay.