If not nuclear deterrence?
Shannon, William V.
WILLIAM V. SHANNON If not nuclear deterrence, then a conventional one? THE FIRST DRAFT of the bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war is an attractive document if only for its unremitting effort...
...But at the same time, they raise moral obstacles to that strategy-as it is now conceived-that would seem to require its radical revision...
...He served as Ambassador to Ireland during the Carter administration and is presently a columnist for the Boston Globe and professor at Boston University...
...The bishops in this document do not confront the draft issue squarely...
...On paper, there is no reason why Western Europe which has almost as many people as Russia and which is far wealthier and technologically more advanced could not defend itself by conventional weapons...
...as a group, they have not been in the forefront of those thinking and speaking out on the agonizing problems of nuclear war...
...But if we are going to try to rein in the nuclear horses to that extent, then I think we have to work hard and work quickly to create conventional military forces that would serve as a convincing deterrent to a Russian conventional attack...
...Since nuclear war would almost certainly extinguish civilization, it is a subject that invites one to take an extreme position...
...There are equally conscientious Christians who devote all or part of their daily lives to propagating the cause of pacifism...
...But if the moral issues of existing nuclear strategy are as grave as the bishops perceive them to be, does not the emergency already exist...
...Otherwise, we are placing more confidence in the self-restraint of Russian leaders than I or a a majority of Americans would probably be willing to place...
...That statement supported the principle of registration but cautioned that the actual drafting of young men should be reserved for a time of national emergency...
...Too many of us have escaped this choice by taking no position and finding sanctuary behind the oldest defense of all: a denial that the problem exists or, if it does, that we personally can do anything about it...
...I agree with the bishops' prudence in leaving open the question as to whether nuclear weapons may be employed under any circumstances...
...WILLIAM V. SHANNON was previously a member of the editorial board and Washington correspondent for The New York Times...
...That is doubly true when it can call upon the back-up manpower of Canada and the United States...
...They state: "We do not perceive any situation in which the deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on whatever restricted a scale, can be condoned...
...At one pole, there is the determination to stop at nothing and to spend anything that may required to keep up with the Russians or even, if possible, ahead of them in the invention and production of weapons of nuclear terror...
...At the other pole, there is the conviction that pacifism or at least the total rejection of all nuclear weapons is the only sane policy to keep mankind alive...
...As matters now stand, Europeans are not prepared to pay the taxes needed for more extensive conventional armed forces or to limit the freedom of their young people in order to maintain greater numbers of conscripted troops...
...Instead, they cite their statement of 1980 when President Carter and Congress revived registration for selective service...
...But, in reality, Europeans are only slightly less terrified of a conventional war than they are of a nuclear war...
...They conclude that the strategy of nuclear deterrence which the United States and its allies have followed for many years is marginally tolerable...
...In the absence of credible conventional forces, there is the strong likelihood that the whole effort to rein in the nuclear horses-whether it be an effort to achieve a nuclear freeze or a pledge of no first use of nuclear weapons-will falter and fail for lack of sufficient public support...
...THE FIRST DRAFT of the bishops' pastoral letter on peace and war is an attractive document if only for its unremitting effort to be honest and fair...
...Nor have the American people or the bishops faced up to that reality...
...The existing strategy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization presupposes that if the allied forces were unable to withstand a massive conventional attack by the Russian army, they could resort to nuclear weapons...
...Many of the bishops may themselves have been guilty of this simple escapism...
...The unrelenting pursuit of military and scientific supremacy over the Russians seems to lead into a terrifying downward spiral, yet there is something about the pacifist position that does not wholly square with our experience of reality in everyday life...
...I would also agree with the bishops' further, more specific judgment that "if nuclear weapons may be used at all, they may be used only after they have been used against our own country or our allies and, even then, only in an extremely limited, discriminating manner against military targets...
...Non-nuclear attacks must be deterred by other than nuclear means...
...The bishops would rule out this possibility...
...We unwisely abolished the draft in Nixon's time...
...As befits spiritual leaders who have immortal souls in their care, the bishops in their draft letter have words of consolation, encouragement, and concern for both sets of Christians...
...There are conscientious Christians who work as military officers, scientists, and civilian officials on nuclear weapons programs...
...They have not faced up to the cruel reality that they face an adversary capable of fighting either a conventional or a nuclear war...
...Americans who have not fought a war on their own soil since the Civil War ended in 186S make a much sharper disjunction between nuclear and non-nuclear wars than Europeans do...
...There are Christians to be found clustered about each pole...
...But whatever their evasiveness in the past, they have now taken their courage in their hands and entered into the nightmare world of the nuclear strategists and the deterrence theorists...
...Unless the Europeans are prepared to do so, they cannot plausibly relinquish the dangerous right to resort to nuclear weapons...
...The bishops, however, devote most of their letter to those-which would probably include the great majority of us-who do not feel comfortable at either pole...
...Recognizing that they are laymen on military issues and recognizing, too, that the church's traditional doctrine of a just war was developed when wars were neither nuclear nor total, the bishops nevertheless apply their theological and scriptural knowledge and their intelligence to this awesome problem and try to think their way through it...
Vol. 109 • August 1982 • No. 14
