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The Case For and Against Nuclear Disarmament

photograph of bomb shelter sign in Ukraine

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.

When the Cold War ended thirty years ago, many hoped that the chances of nuclear war would decline, and even that nuclear weapons might be on the road to ultimate extinction. For a time, it seemed those hopes might be fulfilled. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ famous Doomsday Clock stood at six minutes to midnight – that is, global catastrophe – in 1988. The Clock was rolled back to fourteen minutes to midnight in 1995 as Russia and the United States agreed to unprecedented reductions in their strategic nuclear arsenals.

Sadly, though, these optimistic predictions have faded in recent years. Russian nuclear saber-rattling over Ukraine, the impending expiration of the one remaining nuclear weapons  treaty between Russia and the United States, signs of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, and the unprecedented challenge of managing a three-sided geopolitical competition between nuclear-armed Russia, China, and the United States have brought concerns about nuclear war back to the forefront of policymakers’ agendas. Some prominent Americans commentators are now calling for a big build-up of our nuclear arsenal. Today, the Clock stands at ninety seconds to midnight, closer to catastrophe than it has ever been – largely, the Bulletin claims, because of the mounting dangers of the war in Ukraine. Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer has even reignited debate about the United States’ use of nuclear weapons against Japan during World War II – so far, the only instance of their use in anger. Thus, now seems like a propitious moment to go back to first principles: that is, to reconsider what ultimately should be done about nuclear weapons.

At the risk of oversimplifying, the basic question is whether or not to adopt disarmament as the ultimate goal. “Disarmament” means both dismantling all nuclear warheads and delivery systems, as well as eliminating stockpiles of weapons-grade fissile materials that could be used to quickly assemble a weapon. The arguments against disarmament come in two flavors: first, that nuclear weapons are effective deterrents to nuclear, chemical, biological, and conventional forms of aggression; and second, that nuclear disarmament is an unrealistic goal.

The historical case for the value of nuclear weapons as deterrents to conventional military aggression is weak. In 1950, the United States enjoyed a near-monopoly on nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union having only tested their first atomic bomb a year earlier. This did not deter North Korea from invading South Korea with the Soviet Union’s support, and it did not deter China from entering the war when U.S., South Korean, and allied forces advanced almost to the border between North Korea and China in the fall of that year. Nor did the United States’ nuclear arsenal deter North Vietnam from invading and ultimately conquering South Vietnam, a country to which the U.S. had made clear security guarantees, in the early 1970s.

The reason that the U.S.’s nuclear “umbrella” was unable to dissuade Soviet-supported regimes from engaging in aggressive conventional military action against U.S. allies during the Cold War is not difficult to understand. Ultimately, the United States’ interest in avoiding a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, which it might have precipitated by using nuclear weapons against one of the Soviet Union’s allies, trumped its interest in protecting its own allies from conventional aggression. Knowing this, North Korea, North Vietnam and other Soviet-backed states were confident that the United States would not actually use its nuclear arsenal against them. Today, Russia or China or some other revisionist power may reasonably believe that the United States would, for precisely the same reason, never actually use its nuclear weapons against them if they threatened the sovereignty of countries like Taiwan, South Korea, or Poland with conventional military force – even one which enjoys a treaty-based U.S. security guarantee.

Nuclear weapons have historically also failed to deter states from directly aggressing against states that possessed their own nuclear arsenals. It is certainly true that the Cold War never went hot in a conventional sense, and that might be chalked up to superpowers’ nuclear arsenals. Still, the existence of a small Israeli nuclear arsenal was widely known since the late 1960s, though not officially acknowledged; but this did not deter a coalition of Arab states from invading Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. A few years before, the Soviet Union and China, which both possessed publicly-acknowledged nuclear arsenals, engaged in a series of intense military clashes on their border. And in 1999, Pakistani forces occupied strategic positions on Indian territory in the Kashmir region, leading to a conventional military conflict between the two nuclear-armed states. Again, the reason that aggressor states are not necessarily deterred by their victims’ nuclear arsenals is the cost of their use both in terms of possible nuclear counterstrikes by the aggressor or its ally and international reputation. This makes it unlikely that nuclear-armed states will use their arsenals against any but the most grave existential threats, whatever their official policy.

The case for nuclear weapons as deterrents against the use of other weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons – seems to rest on firmer historical ground. In the eighty-year history of nuclear weapons, there has never been a single nuclear exchange or chemical or biological attack by one state against a nuclear-armed state. The principle of mutually assured destruction or MAD, as it is popularly known, seems to have played a role here. According to this theory, two nuclear-armed states are unlikely to attack each other with nuclear weapons because there is no entirely adequate defense against a nuclear counterstrike. Because a state contemplating a first strike could expect to suffer cataclysmic losses from such a counterstrike, it will be effectively deterred.

In the 1950s, prior to the advent of ballistic missiles, the greatest nuclear threat to both superpowers was their adversary’s thousands-strong fleet of strategic bombers. Although the country that struck first could expect to destroy some of these bombers – both the United States and the Soviet Union built thousands of fighter interceptors to shoot them down – it was well-understood that at least some would manage to hit their targets. And even a handful of thermonuclear-armed bombers could cause millions of casualties. The lack of an adequate defense to nuclear counterstrike became only more apparent once the superpowers diversified their weapons delivery systems, developing the so-called “nuclear triad” of submarines, bombers, and missiles. Even today, anti-missile defense systems are notoriously unreliable, and submarines difficult to detect and destroy.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence that the United States and Soviet Union came perilously close to nuclear war at various points, notwithstanding the elegant logic of MAD. President John F. Kennedy estimated that the chances of a nuclear exchange during the Cuban Missile Crisis were one in three; his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, put the odds at one in one hundred. Either way, these are surely terrifying figures given the potentially catastrophic, even civilization-ending impact of full-blown nuclear war not just on those countries, but the entire planet.

In another famous incident in 1983, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Force named Stanislav Petrov likely single-handedly averted nuclear war when his nuclear early warning system mistakenly reported an intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the United States. Petrov chose to wait for corroborating evidence before relaying the warning up the chain of command, a decision credited with preventing a retaliatory nuclear strike at a time of heightened tension between the superpowers. The superpowers’ hair-trigger deployment of their nuclear arsenals meant that misunderstandings and the fog of (Cold) war could cause even rational actors to choose a fundamentally irrational course, and there was little time to deliberate or think twice about whether to launch. A world of MAD is not a safe world.

Moreover, the argument that nuclear weapons deter nuclear war is not by itself sufficient to justify their existence unless nuclear war would be more likely in a disarmed world or a world that attempted disarmament than in a world of nuclear deterrence. This point brings me to the arguments against nuclear disarmament based on the practical infeasibility of that goal.

In A Skeptic’s Case for Nuclear Disarmament, Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argues that the process of disarmament raises two dangers: the danger of incentivizing proliferation and the danger of cheating. Because any serious move toward disarmament would have to be led by the United States – the second-largest arsenal in the world – its allies, like Japan, South Korea, or Poland, might feel so apprehensive about losing America’s nuclear umbrella in light of mounting geopolitical tensions and rivalries that they would decide to acquire their own nuclear deterrent in response. For this reason, O’Hanlon recommends deferring nuclear disarmament until after major geopolitical tensions between Russia, China, and the United States have been resolved. It could be added that nuclear disarmament, which would require extensive cooperation between these great powers, would itself probably be more feasible if they were to resolve their disputes.

One reply to this argument is that it threatens to defer disarmament into the indefinite future – in practical terms, it implies no change to the intolerable status quo. There is no guarantee that even if the current disputes between the great powers were resolved, some new ones would not arise. As we have seen, there are also reasons to doubt whether America’s nuclear arsenal really is an effective deterrent. Moreover, that these disputes increase the likelihood of nuclear war is one of the best reasons for pursuing disarmament. And historically, it is not unheard of for nuclear-powered rivals to work together to reduce their nuclear arsenals, or even to talk seriously about disarmament.

O’Hanlon also argues that because of the extreme difficulty of verifying compliance with a disarmament agreement, particularly with respect to stockpiles of fissile materials, there is a serious danger that some rogue state will secretly build a nuclear weapon and use it for the purpose of nuclear blackmail. For this reason, he recommends that any disarmament treaty include a reconstitution provision pursuant to which any party could temporarily withdraw from the treaty and reconstitute its arsenal if it can show to an impartial body that it faces a serious nuclear, chemical, biological, or even conventional threat.

Such a reconstitution provision might, however, introduce further instability into the disarmament regime. Once a treaty party withdraws, its geopolitical rivals would certainly be strongly motivated to withdraw as well; indeed, one party’s withdrawal could be a sufficient reason for its rivals’ withdrawal. In effect, this would unravel the disarmament regime and take the world back to square one. Moreover, even if O’Hanlon is correct that no conventional deterrent could adequately prevent nuclear blackmail or conventional aggression by a rogue state, arguably a world characterized by a higher risk of conventional aggression and nuclear blackmail is still preferable to a world characterized by a non-trivial risk of a nuclear exchange.

Of course, there is much more to be said about the arguments for and against disarmament; in the foregoing I have only managed to scratch the surface. Some useful further resources include O’Hanlon’s book, Raimo Väyrynen and David Cortwright’s Towards Nuclear Zero, George Perkovich and James M. Acton’s Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, and McGeorge Bundy’s Danger & Survival: Choices About the Bomb in the First Fifty Years. Whichever way you ultimately come down on this issue, with the nuclear order straining under new challenges, it behooves all of us to reflect seriously upon the desirability and feasibility of a renewed push for nuclear disarmament.

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Reflections on Communal Annihilation or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

photograph of overgrown buildings in Chernobyl exclusion zone

It appears that we are at the moment living under the greatest threat of nuclear war the world has seen in decades.

If you live in a city, or if you (like me) live next to a military base of strategic importance, there is a non-zero chance that you and your community will be annihilated by nuclear weapons in the near future.

I, at least, find this to be unsettling. For me, there’s also something strangely fascinating about the prospect of death by the Bomb. The countless books, movies, and video games that depict nuclear apocalypse – often in vaguely glamorous terms – suggest that I’m not alone.

If ever there was one, this is surely an appropriate time to reflect on the specter that haunts us. That’s what I’d like to do here. In particular, I’d like to ask: How should we think about the prospect of death by the Bomb? And why do we find it fascinating?

***

Let’s start with fascination.

Our fascination with the Bomb is no doubt partly rooted in the technology itself. It wasn’t too long ago that human beings warred with clubs and pointy bits of metal. The Bomb is an awful symbol of humanity’s precipitous technological advancement; to be threatened by it is an awful symbol of our folly.

Even more important, in my view, is that the Bomb has the power to transmute one’s own personal ending into a small part of a thoroughly communal event, the calamitous ending of a community’s life. In this way, the Bomb threatens us with a fascinating death.

To appreciate this point, consider that one of the peculiar things about the prospect of a quotidian death is that the world – my world – should carry on without me. I (you, we) spend my whole life carving out a unique place in a broad network of relations and enterprises. My place in my world is part of what makes me who I am, and I naturally view my world from the perspective of my place in it. Contemplating the prospect of my world going on without me produces an uncanny parallax. I see that I am but a small, inessential part of my world, a world which will not be permanently dimmer after the spotlight of my consciousness is extinguished.

This peculiarity sometimes strikes us as absurd, an indignity even. Wittgenstein, for example, expressed this when he said that “at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.” It can also be a source of consolation and meaning. Many people are comforted by the belief that their loved ones will live on after they die, or, optimistically, that they have made a positive impact on others that will extend beyond the confines of their life. We are told that death can even be noble and good when one lays down one’s life for one’s friends.

The Bomb is different from run-of-the-mill existential threats in that it brings the prospect of a death that isn’t characterized by this peculiarity. If the Bomb were to strike my (your) city, my world would not carry on without me. Humanity and the Earth might survive. But my world – my family, friends, colleagues, students, acquaintances, the whole stage on which I strut and fret – would for the most part disappear along with me in one totalizing conflagration. At death, my world really would come to an end.

From an impartial point of view, this is clearly worse than my suffering a fatal heart attack or dying in some other quotidian way. But this is not the point of view that usually dominates when we think about the prospect of our own deaths. What sort of difference does it make from a self-interested point of view if our world dies with us?

A tempting thought is that the extent to which this would make a difference to a person is directly proportional to how much they care about others. If I don’t care about anyone besides myself, then I will be indifferent to whether my world dies with me. The more I care about others, the more I will care about who dies with me.

While I think there’s truth in this, it strikes me as an oversimplification. A thought experiment may help us along.

Imagine a people much like us except that they are naturally organized into more or less socially discrete cohorts with highly synchronized life cycles, like periodical cicadas. Every twenty years or so, a new cohort spontaneously springs up from the dust. The people in any given cohort mostly socialize with one another, befriending, talking, trading, fighting, and loving among themselves. They live out their lives together for some not entirely predictable period, somewhere between ten and one hundred years. Then they all die simultaneously.

It seems to me that death would have a recognizable but nevertheless rather distinct significance for periodical people. On the one hand, as it is for us, death would be bad for periodical people when it thwarts their desires, curtails their projects, and deprives them of good things. On the other hand, there would be no cause to worry about leaving dependents or grieving intimates behind. There would be little reason to fear missing out. Death might seem less absurd to them, but at the unfortunate expense of the powerful sources of consolation and meaning available to us.

Perhaps most importantly, that most decisive of personal misfortunes, individual annihilation, would invariably be associated with a much greater shared misfortune. In this way, death would be a profoundly communal event for periodical people. And this would reasonably make a difference in how a periodical person thinks about their own death. It’s not that the communality would necessarily make an individual’s death less bad. It’s more that assessments of the personal significance of events are generally affected by the broader contexts in which those events occur. When a personal misfortune is overshadowed by more terrible things, when it is shared – especially when it is shared universally among one’s fellows – that personal misfortune does not dominate one’s field of vision as it normally would. Perversely, this can make it seem more bearable.

When we contemplate the Bomb, we are in something like the position of periodical people. The usual other-related cares, the usual absurdity, the usual sources of consolation and meaning do not apply. The prospect of collective annihilation includes my death, of course. But weirdly that detail almost fades into the background as it is almost insignificant in relation to the destruction of my world. This is a strange way of viewing the prospect of my own annihilation, one that produces a different sort of uncanny parallax. I think this is key to our fascination.

There may be something else, too. We live in a highly individualistic and competitive society where the bonds of community and fellow feeling have grown perilously thin. The philosopher Rick Roderick has suggested that in a situation like ours, there’s something attractive, even “utopian,” about the possibility that in its final hour our fragmented community might congeal into one absolutely communal cry. Of course, if this suggestion is even remotely plausible, it is doubly bleak, as it points not only to the prospect of our communal death but also to the decadence of our fragmented life.

***

I’ve tried to gesture at an explanation as to why the Bomb can be a source of fascination as well as trepidation. Along the way, some tentative insights have emerged, which relate to how we ought to think about this unique existential threat.

Then again, I recently had a conversation with my much wiser and more experienced nonagenarian grandparents, which makes me question whether I didn’t start this circuitous path on the wrong foot. To my surprise, when I asked them of these things my grandparents told me that during the Cold War they didn’t really think about the Bomb at all. My grandfather, Don, gave me a pointed piece of advice:

“There’s not a darn thing we can do about it. You know, if it’s going to happen, you better go ahead and live your life.”

Perhaps, then, I (and you, reader, since you made it this far) have made a mistake. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply not to think about the Bomb at all.

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Nuclear War and Scope Neglect

photograph of 'Fallout Shelter' sign in the dark

“Are We Facing Nuclear War?” — The New York Times, 3/11/22

“Pope evokes spectre of nuclear war wiping out humanity” — Reuters, 3/17/22

“The fear of nuclear annihilation raises its head once more” — The Independent, 3/18/22

“The threat of nuclear war hangs over the Russia-Ukraine crisis” — NPR, 3/18/22

“Vladimir Putin ‘asks Kremlin staff to perform doomsday nuclear attack drill’” — The Mirror, 3/19/22

“Demand for iodine tablets surge amid fears of nuclear war” — The Telegraph, 3/20/22

“Thinking through the unthinkable” — Vox, 3/20/22

The prospect of nuclear war is suddenly back, leading many of us to ask some profound and troubling questions. Just how terrible would a nuclear war be? How much should I fear the risk? To what extent, if any, should I take preparatory action, such as stockpiling food or moving away from urban areas?

These questions are all, fundamentally, questions of scale and proportion. We want our judgments and actions to fit with the reality of the situation — we don’t want to needlessly over-react, but we also don’t want to under-react and suffer an avoidable catastrophe. The problem is that getting our responses in proportion can prove very difficult. And this difficulty has profound moral implications.

Everyone seems to agree that a nuclear war would be a significant moral catastrophe, resulting in the loss of many innocent lives. But just how bad of a catastrophe would it be? “In risk terms, the distinction between a ‘small’ and a ‘large’ nuclear war is important,” explains Seth Baum, a researcher at a U.S.-based think tank, the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. “Civilization as a whole can readily withstand a war with a single nuclear weapon or a small number of nuclear weapons, just as it did in WW2. At a larger number, civilization’s ability to withstand the effects would be tested. If global civilization fails, then […] the long-term viability of humanity is at stake.”

Let’s think about this large range of possible outcomes in more detail. Writing during the heights of the Cold War, the philosopher Derek Parfit compared the value of:

    1. Peace.
    2. A nuclear war that kills 99% of the world’s existing population.
    3. A nuclear war that kills 100%.

Everyone seems to agree that 2 is worse than 1 and that 3 is worse than 2. “But,” asks Parfit, “which is the greater of these two differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between 1 and 2. I believe that the difference between 2 and 3 is very much greater.”

Parfit was, it turns out, correct about what most people think. A recent study posing Parfit’s question (lowering the lethality of option 2 to 80% to remove confounders) found that most people thought there is a greater moral difference between 1 and 2 than between 2 and 3. Given the world population is roughly 8 billion, the difference between 1 and 2 is an overwhelming 6.4 billion more lives lost. The difference between 2 and 3 is “only” 1.6 billion more lives lost.

Parfit’s reason for thinking that the difference between 2 and 3 was a greater moral difference was because 3 would result in the total extinction of humanity, while 2 would not. Even after a devastating nuclear war such as that in 2, it is likely that humanity would eventually recover, and we would lead valuable lives once again, potentially for millions or billions of years. All that future potential would be lost with the last 20% (or in Parfit’s original case, the last 1%) of humanity.

If you agree with Parfit’s argument (the study found that most people do, after being reminded of the long-term consequences of total extinction), you probably want an explanation of why most people disagree. Perhaps most people are being irrational or insufficiently imaginative. Perhaps our moral judgments and behavior are systematically faulty. Perhaps humans are victims of a shared psychological bias of some kind. Psychologists have repeatedly found that people aren’t very good at scaling up and down their judgments and responses to fit the size of a problem. They name this cognitive bias “scope neglect.”

The evidence for scope neglect is strong. Another psychological study asked respondents how much they would be willing to donate to prevent migrating birds from drowning in oil ponds — ponds that could, with enough money, be covered by safety nets. Respondents were either told that 2,000, or 20,000, or 200,000 birds are affected each year. The results? Respondents were willing to spend $80, $78, and $88 respectively. The scale of the response had no clear connection with the scale of the issue.

Scope neglect can explain many of the most common faults in our moral reasoning. Consider the quote, often attributed to Josef Stalin, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” Psychologist Paul Slovic called this tendency to fail to conceptualize the scope of harms suffered by large numbers of people mass numbing. Mass numbing is a form of scope neglect that helps explain ordinary people standing by passively in the face of mass atrocities, such as the Holocaust. The scale of suffering, distributed so widely, is very difficult for us to understand. And this lack of understanding makes it difficult to respond appropriately.

But there is some good news. Knowing that we suffer from scope neglect allows us to “hack” ourselves into making appropriate moral responses. We can exploit our tendency for scope neglect to our moral advantage.

If you have seen Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, then you will remember a particular figure: The girl in the red coat. The rest of the film is in black and white, and the suffering borders continually on the overwhelming. The only color in the film is the red coat of a young Jewish girl. It is in seeing this particular girl, visually plucked out from the crowd by her red coat, that Schindler confronts the horror of the unfolding Holocaust. And it is this girl who Schindler later spots in a pile of dead bodies.

The girl in the red coat is, of course, just one of the thousands of innocents who die in the film, and one of the millions who died in the historical events the film portrays. The scale and diffusion of the horror put the audience members at risk of mass numbing, losing the capacity to have genuine and appropriately strong moral responses. But using that dab of color is enough for Spielberg to make her an identifiable victim. It is much easier to understand the moral calamity that she is a victim of, and then to scale that response up. The girl in the red coat acts as a moral window, allowing us to glimpse the larger tragedy of which she is a part. Spielberg uses our cognitive bias for scope neglect to help us reach a deeper moral insight, a fuller appreciation of the vast scale of suffering.

Charities also exploit our tendency for scope neglect. The donation-raising advertisements they show on TV tend to focus on one or two individuals. In a sense, this extreme focus makes no sense. If we were perfectly rational and wanted to do the most moral good we could, we would presumably be more interested in how many people our donation could help. But charities know that our moral intuitions do not respond to charts and figures. “The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics, ‘human beings with the tears dried off,’ that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action,” writes Slovic.

When we endeavor to think about morally profound topics, from the possibility of nuclear war to the Holocaust, we often assume that eliminating psychological bias is the key to good moral judgment. It is certainly true that our biases, such as scope neglect, typically lead us to poor moral conclusions. But our biases can also be a source for good. By becoming more aware of them and how they work, we can use our psychological biases to gain greater moral insight and to motivate better moral actions.

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The Nuclear Dice

image of clock showing five minutes to midnight

As I write, Russia is waging a brutal and illegal war against Ukraine. NATO has responded by providing Ukraine with weapons and intelligence, and by enacting sanctions and other measures which are essentially aimed at crashing the Russian economy. 74% of Americans say they believe that NATO should impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine – though it is unclear how many understand that this would require shooting down Russian planes and destroying Russian air defenses. In any event, it seems clear that there is a small but real risk of a larger war breaking out between Russia and the West. And in light of that, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, nuclear war feels like a realistic possibility.

This is not to say that there will be a nuclear war. I think there almost definitely won’t be. But nuclear war would be very, very bad: the greatest catastrophe in the history of human civilization. It could kill hundreds of millions of people immediately, kill billions more through fallout and nuclear winter, and render life much, much worse for the survivors for a very, very long time. And even a very small chance of a very bad outcome must be taken seriously. The theory of expected utility says that we can determine how seriously to take a risk by multiplying how good or bad the relevant thing would be by the probability of that thing happening. So, for instance, if a certain lottery ticket gives me a 1% chance of winning $100, the theory of expected utility says that I should value that ticket at $1 (because 1% of $100 is $1). But the same reasoning suggests that, if a nuclear war would kill billions of people, then even if there is only a 1% chance of a nuclear war happening at some point in the future, we should take that possibility as seriously as a calamity that kills tens of millions of people.

So – in addition, of course, to asking how we can help the people being unjustly harmed in the war right now – it is worth asking how we might reduce the risk of nuclear war. In the immediate future, NATO should obviously be wary of directly going to war with Russia, even if NATO helps Ukraine in other ways. The effect of these other forms of help on the risk of nuclear war is harder to gauge. Their immediate effect is to increase tensions with Russia. But on the other hand, if NATO stood by and did nothing while Putin attacked Ukraine, perhaps he would suppose that NATO was so reluctant to fight him that he could freely attack other countries, including NATO members like Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. And that would greatly increase the chance of a nuclear war. Suffice to say, the question is difficult.

In the longer term, what could we do? Unfortunately, this question is also difficult. Many people have worked for nuclear disarmament, the elimination of nuclear weapons. But while this may be a good long-term goal, it seems unrealistic for the foreseeable future. Because nuclear weapons can guarantee a nation’s security, they are too valuable to expect everyone to give them up. Ukraine gave up its own nuclear weapons in the 1990’s, and if it hadn’t, it seems quite likely that the current war would not be occurring. Meanwhile, Russia’s nuclear arsenal prevents NATO from using its superior military might to directly intervene in Ukraine. And so on. And if only some nations gave up their nuclear weapons, the risk of nuclear war might well increase. Peace between the USA and the USSR during the Cold War was achieved through the doctrine of mutually assured destruction: each country maintained a nuclear arsenal large enough to destroy the other in the event of a surprise attack. This meant neither side would launch such an attack, since their own country would be destroyed, too. But if one had gotten rid of its nuclear weapons on its own, the other might well have seized the opportunity to eliminate their rival.

However, there may at least be steps we can take to reduce the risk that a nuclear war breaks out due to an accident, or the actions of an irrational leader. For instance, at present, it is a matter of controversy what limits, if any, exist on the ability of the President of the United States to order the use of nuclear weapons. If a president someday orders a nuclear attack on Canada because he doesn’t like maple syrup, presumably those around him would disobey the order. But would there be any legal way to stop him? Some experts say no. Others suggest that those tasked with carrying out the order could reject it as inconsistent with the laws of war. But in any event, there is no reason to leave any confusion. The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act would ensure that the president could only use nuclear weapons with the permission of Congress, or in response to the use of nuclear weapons by someone else. An alternative proposal would require that any order to use nuclear weapons be confirmed by the next two people in the presidential line of succession (ordinarily, the Vice President and Speaker of the House), perhaps with exceptions in the case of a surprise attack. Policies which might reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war have also been proposed. Advocating for the introduction of policies like these in the U.S. and in other nuclear-armed states might reduce the risk of nuclear war. So might working for a better and more peaceful world in general, since the fewer conflicts, the fewer opportunities for something to escalate into a nuclear exchange. Of course, all of these measures can only do so much. But given the stakes, making nuclear war even slightly less likely is morally urgent.

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Pope Francis, Edward Gallagher, and Just War Theory

photograph of armed soldiers in file

In his remarks during a trip to Japan, Pope Francis denounced not only the use, but also the mere possession, of nuclear weapons as morally unacceptable. While this has been Pope Francis’ position throughout his tenure as Pope, it marks a change in the Vatican’s official position toward nuclear weapons from the era of Pope John Paul II, at which time the church merely denounced the actual use of nuclear weapons. Neither of these comments are motivated by a general principle of pacifism on the part of the Catholic Church, which both currently and historically has supported the existence and use of military force. The contemporary Church recognizes war as legitimate only in the context of national self-defense.

Relatedly significant controversy has attended President Donald Trump’s meddling in the case of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who was tried and acquitted of war crimes. The idea of a war crime can itself seem perplexing as to many it is intuitive that the point of war is simply to win quickly and by whatever means necessary. How do nations like the United States, which has actively pursued military means of executing its international agenda, square their activities with idea of a war crime? Are institutions like the United States and the Catholic Church contradicting themselves, or is there actual principle at work?

A good way to understand this is to look into the specific provisions of so-called Just War Theory, the roots of which are in the work of famed (and Catholic) philosopher Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologicae. Far from pacifism, Just War Theory advocates that there is a way to enter into, conduct, and conclude wars which is not merely morally excusable but wholly justified. Nor is this sort of thinking limited to the Catholic tradition. In the Muslim tradition, the concept of jihad is one which prescribes with whom it is morally acceptable to go to war and how it is permissible to prosecute such a war. Similar sentiments can also be found in the writings of the Confucian and Mohist schools of philosophy in Ancient China as well as in Ancient Roman concepts of the laws that govern conduct among nations.

For the sake of simplicity and brevity, let’s stick with Just War Theory. A ban on the use of nuclear weapons would come under the heading of jus in bello, the part of Just War Theory that deals with what counts as prosecuting war in a morally justified fashion. Accounts of the aftermath of the use of nuclear weapons by the United States against Japan in 1945 are harrowing. Those people who survived the initial explosion suffered from extensive and horrible burns as well as a lifetime of health problems due to exposure to intense levels of radiation. These aspects inefficiently achieve the licit goals of military action as allowed by Just War Theory, namely to incapacitate a wrongly aggressing force without excessive damage to civilians and non-military infrastructure. Further, nuclear weapons in general create the possibility of nuclear fallout, which is the transmission of radioactive material throughout the atmosphere by weather patterns. Importantly the spread of nuclear fallout is not in the direct control of those who deploy nuclear weapons in the first instance. Hence the area and number of people affected is indiscriminate, with no clear way of controlling collateral damage.

Both of these features of nuclear weaponry make them a means of conducting war that is arguably male in se, in the terms of Just War Theory. This means that it is a method that is inherently bad, regardless of who uses it and how. Examples of methods that are treated as mala in se without controversy are slavery, pillaging and raping, group punishment as well as chemical and biological weapons (e.g., mustard gas and weaponized infectious agents). Nuclear weapons are not banned, but the similarity of the effects that they have to chemical and biological agents has led many to advocate for disarmament and an international ban on the possession, use, and development of nuclear weapons.

Not only are certain methods of killing and incapacitating enemies and civilians forbidden in Just War Theory, so is certain treatment of prisoners of war. The war crimes accusations against Edward Gallagher concerned the murder of an Islamic State prisoner of war. In general, prisoners of war (and otherwise incapacitated combatants), are not allowed to be killed, tortured, or humiliated. Unlike criminal prisoners, prisoners of war are not being held as a means of punishment for their actions. Even where the captured military personnel are responsible for actions considered international crimes, the ground personnel of the opposing military are not considered legitimately empowered to execute punishment. Here another aspect of Just War Theory enters the picture, jus post bellum, which concerns appropriate behavior upon the conclusion of war. Any prosecution for war crimes must be done by with respect for due process, including full court proceedings, within a court with the appropriate jurisdiction.

Just War Theory attempts to carve out a middle path between two monolithic alternatives. On the one hand there is pacifism, which argues that all violent, military action is morally unacceptable. On the other hand there is so-called realism about war, which argues that war is not immoral but beyond morality. However every nation belonging to any international political or governing body (at least in theory) subjects itself to rules of warfare meant to limit what are seen as moral excesses in the conduct of an otherwise (possibly) justifiable enterprise. The concept of a war crime in general, and the Catholic Church’s evolving position on warfare in particular, both manifest attempts to stay between the twin implausibilities of pacifism and realism concerning war.

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The Letters of Last Resort and MAD Ethics

photograph of submarine half-submerged in ocean

On July 24th, former London mayor Boris Johnson became the newest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. According to tradition, one of the first actions taken by each new PM, following a briefing regarding the state of Britain’s nuclear capabilities, is to write and seal identical letters to the commanding officers of four British nuclear submarines. Called the ‘Letters of Last Resort,’ they contain instructions for what should happen in the event that UK leadership is incapacitated and unable to issue final orders. Because each UK leader writes their own letters, which are then locked inside a safe-within-a-safe on board each submarine and are destroyed without being opened when a new PM takes office, these letters will only be read in a worst-case scenario of apocalyptic proportions. To date, the specific contents of any such letters remain unknown to all but their authors.

Nevertheless, conventional wisdom indicates that there are four broad possible options for these final directives:

    1. Fire upon particular targets (including, but not limited to, those guilty of attacking the UK).
    2. Do not fire.
    3. Use your own judgment regarding what to do.
    4. Surrender the submarine (and its payload) to a particular ally.

With one exception, no former prime minister has ever spoken out regarding their thinking on which option was best: James Callaghan (who held the office from 1976 to 1979) indicated his general support for (1) – though only reluctantly as an absolute last resort which, if he were still alive to witness, he would regret until he died. While neither Johnson nor his Conservative predecessor Theresa May have commented publicly on their opinions, Labour party opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has long been an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament, suggesting that he might support (2).

For some, a defense mechanism like this is a sensible element of a wider approach to global relationships between nuclear powers. The logic of a foreign policy founded on ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD) requires a nation’s enemies to understand the retaliatory capability of that nation, should it be attacked first. Birthed particularly as a result of the Cold War (where the standoff between the USA and the USSR was famously complex), MAD doctrines have only become more complicated as the list of countries with nuclear capabilities has grown over the last six decades. In short, on this perspective, even if they are never read, knowledge that the Letters of Last Resort exist serves as a reminder to potential enemies of the UK that, should London fall, London’s attackers will fall as well – the letters are, effectively, a nuclear-level deadman’s switch.

For others, the letters are an antiquated method of problem-solving which fails to account for any number of important variables which, in the event of a disastrous attack, would surely be relevant facts to consider. How hard might it be, for example, for a team of clever con artists to fake enough of a situation that one of the submarine commanders could be convinced to open the safeguarded letter? Or, in the event of a real emergency, what happens if the letter indicates that a submarine should fire upon a target disconnected from the actual threat? Or if they specify a target that had already been destroyed? Enshrining a particular set of instructions that are (in all likelihood) impenetrable to being updated by new information is a curiously rigid system for handling any sort of governmental program – particularly one with such dire potential consequences as a nuclear missile.

Additionally, as Ron Rosenbaum, author of How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III, explained in an article for Slate, notifying the world that the Letters of Last Resort only might require retaliation undercuts the entire foundation for MAD in the first place; as Rosenbaum puts it, “With all due respect to our British cousins, this seems, well, insane.”

Other countries with nuclear technology have developed more complicated security measures, technological firewalls, communication networks, and backup plans to serve as alternatives in the event that one or two systems fail. The US, for example, has turned the country’s nuclear power into a badge of authority, sending the so-called ‘Nuclear Football’ and its attendant along wherever the President of the United States happens to go (a system mimicked by Pakistan, Russia, and possibly France). But these systems suffer from limitations of their own. In January of 1995, for example, a scientific rocket designed to study the Northern Lights was launched from Norway; confusion in nearby Moscow led to the Russian Football (called the cheget) being temporarily activated, though ultimately no attack was issued – perhaps the closest the world has come to the brink of nuclear disaster since the infamous Petrov incident of 1983.

It remains to be seen what a Boris Johnson administration will mean for Britain and the rest of the United Kingdom, but – by now – the Johnson Letters of Last Resort have been penned and secured beneath the waves. Until, and unless, a more secure system for managing such destructive weapons can be devised, we must continue to hope that those letters remain unread.

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Evolving Apocalyptic Narratives and the Ethics of Fallout

An in-game screenshot of Fallout 4, where a man points a weapon at a zombie.

Since the first atom bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, pop culture has imagined and re-imagined apocalyptic narratives. From the “atomic pop” that proliferated on the radio in the 1940s and 50s, to the 2008 and 2016 releases of post-apocalyptic video games Fallout 3 and Fallout 4, this recurring theme exemplifies how ingrained the apocalyptic narrative is in Western culture. However, a shift can be seen from apocalyptic fears in the years after the bomb, to the post-apocalyptic heroic narratives told today in video games like Fallout. Although the apocalypse was once seen as the ultimate end, post-apocalyptic narratives make room for life afterwards, a life inherently fraught with ethical dilemmas about how to rebuild society. Where did apocalyptic narratives shift from ultimate annihilation to a heroic narrative about rebuilding society, and how does Fallout provide a moral compass for navigating the post-apocalypse?

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Imagining Trinity’s Echoes

It was seventy years ago today that the New Mexico desert was first lit in the glare of a nuclear explosion. Dubbed “Trinity” by the scientists who had built it, the 1945 test was the first time an atomic bomb had ever been detonated. A little over a month later, similar devices would be dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, ending WWII in the Pacific and killing as many as 200,000 people. Three explosions in three different locations, they were the first of many, with results that sparked fears of nuclear warfare that remain today. And now, seventy years later, photos depicting the tests pay homage to the dark anniversary.

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