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Nonproliferation: A Global Issue for a Global Ethic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2013

J. Bryan Hehir
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Extract

A global ethic for the twenty-first century will be different from that of the twentieth century. While themes of normative and political continuity will exist, humankind's main moral challenges have changed. Between the two centuries lie the end of the cold war, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the global financial crisis, and the double transformation of the structure of power in world politics and the norms of sovereignty and intervention. Nuclear weapons will remain high on the agenda of a global ethic, but they will not hold as dominant a place as they did in the past century. This essay, focused on the continuing moral challenge of nuclear weapons, recalls the intellectual and moral lessons of the last century and identifies three leading issues in nuclear ethics today: post–cold war challenges to nonproliferation and deterrence, the new challenges posed by the terrorist threat, and recent proposals for Going to Zero.

Type
Roundtable: Nonproliferation in the 21st Century
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Fall 2013 , pp. 261 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2013 

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References

NOTES

1 Aron, Raymond, “From Sarajevo to Hiroshima,” in The Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 67–160Google Scholar.

2 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 4th ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2006), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

3 Quoted in Kaplan, Fred, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1983), p. 10Google Scholar.

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7 In other writings I have reviewed examples of theological-ethical positions on the nuclear age: The New Nuclear Debate (with Robert Gessert), CRIA Special Studies 215, pp. 35–76; “Moral Issues in Deterrence Policy,” in McClean, Douglas, ed., The Security Gamble (Rowman and Allenheld Publishers, 1984), pp. 53–71Google Scholar; and “Ethics and Strategy: The Views of Selected Strategists,” in Whitmore, Todd, ed., Ethics in the Nuclear Age: Strategy, Religious Studies and the Churches (Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University Press, 1989), pp. 13–32Google Scholar.

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9 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 274.

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11 Pope John Paul II, “Message to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament” (remarks to the UN General Assembly, June 7, 1982), para. 8.

12 United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of Negotiations (Washington, D.C.: United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1990), pp. 89–106Google Scholar. In this section of the essay I draw upon themes I used in the Hesburgh Lectures at the Kroc Institute for International Affairs, University of Notre Dame, March 25–26, 2008.

13 Ibid., p. 99.

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15 Graham Allison and Charles Ferguson, “Nuclear Disorder: Surveying Atomic Threats,” Foreign Affairs 89, no. 1 (January/February 2010), p. 80.

16 Ibid., pp. 80–81.

17 J. Bryan Hehir, Hesburgh Lectures; Joseph Nye directly addressed the moral dimensions of the NPT regime in The Morality of Non-Proliferation, Project Syndicate, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-morality-of-non-proliferation (May 20, 2009).

18 Ignatieff, Michael, “In Search of a Global Ethic,” Ethics & International Affairs 26, no. 1 (2012), pp. 7–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 John Courtney Murray warned against a too simple translation from the interpersonal to the political: “Society and state are understood to be natural institutions with the relatively autonomous ends or purposes, which are predesigned in broad outline in the social and political nature of man. . . . It follows then that the morality proper to the life and action of society and state is not univocally the morality of personal life or even of familial life.” We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), p. 286Google Scholar.

20 Bracken, Paul, The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2012), p. 1Google Scholar. Bracken goes on: “The bomb is a fundamental part of foreign and defense policies in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia and has become deeply embedded in these regions” (p. 2).

21 Ibid., p. 1.

22 Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (Canberra, Australia: Commonwealth of Australia, 1996), p. 1Google Scholar.

23 Daedalus 139, no.4 (2009).

24 Allison, Graham, Nuclear Terrorism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004) p. 212Google Scholar.

25 Michael Mandelbaum, “Lessons of the Next Nuclear War,” Foreign Affairs 74, no. 2 (March/April 1995), pp. 23–24.

26 Perry, William, “The New Security Mantra: Prevention, Deterrence, Defense,” in Hoge, James F. and Rose, Gindeon, eds., How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), pp. 225–40Google Scholar.

27 George Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. 1; and George Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Toward a Nuclear Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2008, p. 5. Contending articles and proposals include: Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, “The Logic of Zero,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 6 (November/December 2008), pp. 80–95; and Josef Joffe and James W. Davis, “Less than Zero,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 1 (January/February 2011), pp. 7–13.

28 Barack Obama, “Remarks by President Barack Obama,” (Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009).

29 Schelling, Thomas, “A World without Nuclear Weapons,” Daedalus 138, no. 4 (Fall 2009), p. 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Ibid., p. 125.

31 Ibid., p. 127.

32 Ibid., p. 129.

33 George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation,” Wall Street Journal (March 7, 2011); reprinted in Shultz et al. , Deterrence: Its Past and Future (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2011), pp. 94–95Google Scholar.

34 Schelling, “A World Without Nuclear Weapons,” p. 129.