The Immorality Of Nuclear Deterrence Essay Research — страница 2

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catastrophe without parallel. The use of a few hundred nuclear weapons, not to speak of a thousand, would raise the already incomprehensible losses by an order of magnitude, leaving the imagination in the dust (9). Schell goes on to compare nuclear deterrence to something worse than genocide (10). Nothing but nuclear weapons allows for the type of death that Schell describes, and only a deterrence doctrine makes that killing possible, or allowable. Even if one can make a case that nuclear deterrence perpetuates peace in some instances and even if one can prove that deterrence means that there is a smaller risk of a nuclear calamity, there will always be the propensity for a nuclear conflict if we rely on a deterrence posture. Against that there can be no argument. This truism of

deterrence, the immorality of the risk of use, is precisely what Schell, Fetter, and Miller argue. Furthermore, the moral effects of nuclear deterrence are comparable to those of a nuclear war, because the intention to wage such a war is the same thing as waging the war in the moral sense. There are numerous other reasons in non-secular writing that nuclear deterrence is immoral. These usually consist of hostage holding, slaughter of innocents, and non-Catholic support of the just war teachings. MAD requires a type of hostage holding. All people in the world are always within the target range of nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence means that we are all hostages to all other foreign nations who have a nuclear capacity. Perhaps more frightening, we hold all people in the world

hostage. There is not a single place on the face of the earth our nuclear weapons cannot travel. Steven Lee, a Rockefeller Resident Fellow at the Institute for philosophy and Public Policy, argues that hostage holding is immoral because it treats humans as a mere means to an end. Lee sees that this is true because the holding of a hostage is something that one does to further one s own ends without the hostages consent. This makes a human being a means (by being a hostage) to achieving an end (defense capability). Nuclear deterrence, Lee continues, is a perfect example of hostage holding because civilians are targeted and used as pieces in a geo-strategic defensive game. These civilians are innocent. They are not the ones pointing nuclear warheads at another nation. Thus, both

countries locked into deterring each other hold millions as a kind of prisoners of peace, ever living with the threat of annihilation (45-46). Lee further argues the hostage holding argument on an implication level, by indicating the scope of the injustice wrought by nuclear deterrence. The deontological stakes in the case of nuclear deterrence are very high. The number of people the policy holds hostage is very large – in the hundreds of millions – and the injustice against each of these victims is significant, for they are put at a substantial risk of death or severe suffering, and the risk is not temporary, but continues over long periods of time (67). Keep in mind that these people, everyone on the planet really, have done nothing to deserve living with this risk, and can

do nothing to stop it as long as there is a nuclear deterrence doctrine. Immoral policy is guaranteed. Lee s argument naturally follows into the argument regarding the slaughter of innocents. Deterrence relies on the perceived threat that total destruction will occur if a first strike occurs. This destruction is not merely limited to the military, but is instead wreaked upon the populace. Phillip Lawrence, a Senior Lecturer of politics at the University of Wolverhampton, in defense of the just war tradition, argues that all deterrence is revenge, and there is certainly no place in the just war teachings for revenge. Not only does deterrence rely on revenge, which is immoral, but relies on revenge against an innocent party, also being immoral (163-164). Furthermore, a deterrence

doctrine undermines the rights of a civil society. As professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, Daniel Deudney argues that deterrence renders the ability for a state to perform its basic functions impossible by making it seem illegitimate. Both the American right and the American left oppose deterrence, the right because the international deterrence mindset left U.S. citizens susceptible to destruction and death, and the left because of deterrence arguments similar to those above. The calling into question of deterrence and nuclearism can accurately be labeled a legitimacy crisis because these disputes touch upon primal state apparatus functions (112-113). Undermining these basic functions is unacceptable from any point of view, and the loss of the ability