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The Gordian Knot: Moral Debate and Nuclear Weapons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2013

Ward Wilson
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Abstract

We have the power of choice over nuclear weapons. But we do not feel our power. Instead, we feel their power. They are larger than life. They loom over us, seemingly beyond our control, shrouded in myth and dark mystery. Because of their power and our feeling that nuclear weapons are unique, we believe that these weapons require a special set of moral rules, specially tuned to the separate world where nuclear weapons dwell.

Type
Roundtable: Nonproliferation in the 21st Century
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , Fall 2013 , pp. 319 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2013 

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References

NOTES

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2 Quoted in Lee, Morality, Prudence, and Nuclear Weapons, p. 1.

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12 For more detailed arguments and scholarly references, see ch. 1, Wilson, Ward, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013)Google Scholar.

13 I have often heard U.S. soldiers say that their job is to “kill people and break things.”

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