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Nuclear Deterrence and Arms Control: Ethical Issues for the 1980s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr
Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr
Affiliation:
The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University
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Extract

The threat of atomic destruction has heightened the criminal irresponsibility of aggression, the employment of war as an instrument of national or bloc policy. Correspondingly, the moral obligation to discourage such a crime or, if it occurs, to deny it victory, has been underscored. The consequences of a successful defense are fearful to contemplate, but the consequences of a successful aggression, with tyrannical monopoly of the weapons of mass destruction, are calculated to be worse. While the avoidance of excessive and indiscriminate violence, and of such destruction as would undermine the basis for future peace, remain moral imperatives in a just war, it does not seem possible to draw a line in advance, beyond which it would be better to yield than to resist. Reinhold Neibuhr.

… the person who deeply desires peace rejects any kind of pacifism which is cowardice or the simple preservation of tranquility. In fact, those who are tempted to impose their domination will always encounter the resistance of intelligent and courageous men and women, prepared to defend freedom in order to promote justice. Pope John Paul II

For two generations the United States has maintained with its principal adversary, the Soviet Union, a security relationship based upon the deterrence of war by the possession of means deemed adequate to inflict unacceptable levels of damage in response to a Soviet attack upon the United States or its allies. Against the Soviet Union, the world's largest land power, in possession of superior conventional forces that could be launched against Western Europe and other peripheral regions of the continents of Europe and Asia, the United States has held nuclear capabilities as the ultimate weapon to be invoked in support of those interests deemed to be most vital to American security.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 74 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1985

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References

1 “The Case Against Pacifism,” Harry, R. Davis and Robert, C. Good, eds., Reinhold Niebuhr on Politics (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1960), pp.145–146.Google Scholar

2 1984 World Peace Day Message.

3 The Challenge of Peace: God's Province and Our Response: A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, May 3, 1983, p.61.

4 See The Military Balance 1984–5 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1984), esp. pp.3–6 and 13–18; Can America Catch Up?: The U.S.-Soviet Military Balance (Washington, DC: Committee on the Present Danger, 1985). According to this analysis, “State indicators of the nuclear balance have shifted decisively in favor of the Soviet Union. This includes the overall number of nuclear warheads, where the Soviets now lead the United States by at least several thousand (strategic and tactical). In addition, the Soviets enjoy clear strategic advantages in land-target capability and megatonnage.”

5 See, for example, Sokolovskiy, V.D., Soviet Military Strategy, edited with an analysis and commentary by Harriet Fast Scott (New York: Crane, Russak and Company, Inc., 1975), pp.14–25, 172–213, 257–259Google Scholar; Sidorenko, A.A., The Offensive (A Soviet View) (Moscow, 1970) trans. United States Air Force (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973), esp. pp.109–118Google Scholar; Douglass, Joseph D. Jr., Soviet Military Strategy in Europe (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980), pp. 1–20Google Scholar; Vigor, P.H.Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory (London: Macmillan, 1983), pp.102–122, 144–183Google Scholar; Harriet, Fast Scott and William, F. Scott, eds., The Soviet Art of War: Doctrine, Strategy, and Tactics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1982), esp. pp.17–71Google Scholar; Lockwood, Jonathan Samuel, The Soviet View of U.S. Strategic Doctrine: Implications in Decision-Making (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1983) esp. pp.13–123.Google Scholar

6 For an extended treatment of this issue, see Novak, Michael, Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age (New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983).Google Scholar

7 For an extended discussion of such issues, see Dougherty, James E., The Bishops and Nuclear Weapons: The Catholic Pastoral Letter on War and Peace (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984Google Scholar); Dougherty, James E. and Pfaltzgraff, Robert L. Jr., Contending Theories of International Relations, Second Edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1981Google Scholar); Ernest, W. Lefever and E., Stephens Hunt, eds., The Apocalyptic Premise: Nuclear Arms Debated (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1982Google Scholar); O'brien, William V., The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981Google Scholar); Reilly, Robert R. and others, Justice and War in the Nuclear Age (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983Google Scholar); James, R. Woolsey, ed., Nuclear Arms: Ethics, Strategy, Politics (San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1984).Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Gouré, Leon, War Survival in Soviet Strategy: USSR Civil Defense (Miami, FL: Center for Advanced International Studies, University of Miami, 1976Google Scholar); Yegorov, P.T., Shlyakhov, I.A., and Alabin, N.I., Civil Defense: A Soviet View (Moscow, 1970), trans. United States Air Force, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, n.d.).Google Scholar