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The Morality of Nuclear Deterrence: Obstacles on the Road to Coherence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
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.
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References
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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.
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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.
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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.