Bishops' dilemma

...We do not have to match the enemy's destructive power, warhead for warhead...

...I shall draw on some of the Com-monweat contributors...

...But the focus of our strategy and targeting is Soviet military power, not Soviet populations...

...And this means inflicting untold and unimaginable suffering on people both military and civilian, to say nothing of the ecological implications...

...The top priority is "No nuclear war...

...It is impressively advocated by Solly Zuckerman in his new book Nuclear Illusion and Reality...

...There is among them a rough consensus, that the bishops have tried hard, and humbly, to do a good job, and that they have not done too badly...

...Where modern nuclear weaponry is involved, the realities are stark, and the priorities pragmatic-too much so for the fastidious moralist...

...To reject this morally dubious but solitary prop to nuclear standoff in the interests of moral purity is, in the situation of the world today, morally callous...

...In our August 13 issue we presented nine responses to the first draft of the American bishops' proposed pastoral letter on nuclear weapons...

...Can anyone help me and the bishops, because they're going to need it-with this dilemma...

...International order BISHOPS' DILEMMA THE CRUEL IRONY OF DETERRENC SEBASTIAN MOORE COMMONWEAL for August 13 is devoted to the bishops' statement on the nuclear menace, the first draft of which is now available...

...The piquancy of this situation could hardly be more painful...

...The article just quoted goes on to make this very point: "The only dissents [ to the current 'counterforce' policy] come from a small minority on the right pushing 'war-winning' approaches or an equally small minority on the left (usually extreme arms control advocates) who favor an obviously immoral, minimal nuclear capability only able to threaten large Soviet population centers in a retaliatory strike...

...prepared these reflections for a new organization, Educators for Social' Responsibility, recently founded at Marquette University...

...The present nuclear arms race is predicated on the tragic mistake of not appreciating this difference and so of building higher and higher beyond the ceiling...

...Now while the bishops who drafted this preliminary statement are clear that to inflict such suffering, even in a retaliatory second strike, is totally immoral, and that therefore to be prepared to inflict it and threaten to inflict it is also immoral, they are bending over backwards to find reasons for "tolerating" the "sinful situation," as they call it, of the maintenance of peace by immoral threat...

...As I read around among the best people I can find, the above concept of a minimal but sufficient deterrent seems to afford the only glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel...

...And the more extended becomes the enemy's military installation, the more extensive has to be our "deterrent" capability...

...Therefore a policy is moral (or at least morally tolerable) to the extent that it reduces the probability of nuclear war...

...The ceiling was not reached before the development of nuclear arms, so the rule then was "archer for archer, division for division, battleship for battleship...

...An awful lot more than one submarine...

...They represent the main areas of expertise that are germane to the nuclear problematic: moral-theological, spiritual, political, military, scientific...

...Commonweal will continue to pursue this crucial discussion in its pages...

...The bishops drafting the pastoral were to revise it in the light of the comments received and then submit it to the general meeting of the bishops in November...

...Lord Zuckerman, now eighty and a manifestly wise person, was chief scientific adviser to the British government from 1960-1970...

...I want to reflect on what is clearly the key issue in the statement and in the nuclear debate as a whole: the issue of nuclear deterrence...

...Anyone who doesn't see that does not know what "nuclear war'' means...

...Possessing the nuclear deterrent means insuring that an enemy who launched a nuclear attack would have everything to lose...

...Why are they doing this...

...If we have enough power to cripple an enemy, then we have all that is needed for nuclear deterrence...

...however, another aspect to nuclear deterrence, that is widely ignored...

...At least it highlights the need for the greatest possible maturity and competence on the part of those who have to make the important decisions...

...Thus you get the cruel irony that a concept of minimal deterrence, which would pull us out of the arms race and massively reduce tension and the risk of nuclear annihilation, is predicated upon a species of threat that is absolutely unacceptable morally...

...There is...

...And in point of fact, credible military experts iasist that this mass-murder of citizens is no part of military policy...

...The bishops try to tolerate a policy of deterrence, not in order to keep in line with national policy, and not in order to leave in peace the many Catholics whose livelihood is in defense, but because they do not want to declare morally unacceptable a policy which appears to be the only way we have so far found of making a nuclear holocaust less likely...

...At least it's a beginning...

...whilst a morally much more acceptable concentration of deterrent strategy on enemy military strength keeps the arms race going full belt and daily increases the probability of the ultimate catastrophe...

...Not only is the "minimal" deterrent "obviously immoral": its advocates find themselves to be the bedfellows of extreme warmongers on the right...

...But haw much weaponry would be required to secure this less morally heinous aim...

...If "crippling the enemy" means wiping out every major city in the Soviet Union, then just one submarine contains enough destructive power for this purpose...

...The point here is that, with nuclear weaponry, destructiveness in war reaches a kind of ceiling, so that to build beyond that ceiling achieves nothing by a massive long-term increase of risk...

...however, because of what was described as the "magnitude of response" to the first draft, that date has been postponed, with the possibility that there will be a special session of the bishops to take up the matter in the spring...

...The reason should be clear, though it often is not to their radical critics...

...They are all substantive and repay careful study...

...This means having the potential to cripple the enemy beyond recovery...

...But the tontent of this threat is absolutely beyond the bounds of any kind of'' tolerance,'' however grudging and nuanced...

...It comes under the sentence of Jesus against the moral experts who "strain out the gnat and swallow the camel...

...The main task, then, that faces the bishops as they proceed to firm up their statement, is to find a way of saying, trenchantly, simply, and accurately, that the very thing that makes nuclear deterrence tolerable makes the continual arms buildup in the name (falsely assumed) of deterrence absolutely intolerable morally, since it brings the future of all civilization more and more into jeopardy...

...The latter has moved from this "counter-value" strategy to "counterforce" strategy...

...But the concept of minimal deterrence runs into a serious snag...

...Casualties would doubteless be heavy and millions of civilians would die...

...Nine authors give their views on the statement...

...Father Moore's The Inner Loneliness will be published this fall by Crossroad...

...Sebastian moore (Father Sebastian Moore, O.S.B., author of The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger and The Fire and the Rose Are One, both published by Seabury...

...This means that what we threaten to do, if attacked, is not "wipe out all Soviet cities" but (and I quote from Philip Odeen, one-time Director, Program Analysis, reporting to Henry Kissinger) "to destroy much of the Soviet military machine, industrial targets critical to its military power, and the Communist party structure that started the war...