Editorials
CONNONWEAL Is deterrence moral? The question is more pressing than ever. In the months since Reykjavik, Mr. Gorbachev has been pelting the West with proposals for getting rid of nuclear arms. So...
...One result has been the widespread belief that the bishops advocate a species of "bluff deterrent": that they condemn all possible uses of nuclear weapons as immoral but nonetheless allow the state to maintain a nuclear threat, which our leaders are under moral obligation never actually to carry out...
...It may thus ground the Star Wars dream before it has literally gotten off the ground...
...The space-based platforms envisioned by SDI, for example, will require nuclear reactors...
...It also reflects sensitivity to the danger of reinforcing popular complacency about the nuclear status quo or lending support to the marketing of ominous or wasteful new weapons systems in the name of deterrence...
...The administration should now return to that offer, in keeping with the traditional reading of the treaty as recently reaffirmed in congressional hearings...
...But we believe that any position on nuclear deterrence must be held with fear and trembling...
...Precisely because the flurry of arms talks between East and West, following upon the ambiguities in the Reagan Star Wars initiative, has raised the question of whether we should be pursuing arms control on the basis of strengthening deterrence or simply dismantling it...
...The demand to reduce the wasteful, dangerous mountain of weapons...
...It is an almost visceral conviction that this sort of thinking can only be corrupting and ungodly, can only undermine peace, even "peace of a sort," rather than assure it...
...What are the limits of human responsibility for the world, what is the point beyond which we must leave everything to God's sovereignty rather than be complicit in profound evil...
...But should we then be striving, in our arms reduction efforts, to shape a moral nuclear deterrent...
...The question is whether Soviet interests can be made to coincide in this area with the interests of the West and the interests of peace and human survival...
...A lame duck may be agile by comparison...
...And we say that the evidence concerning targets, casualties, and escalation is at least mixed enough that the search for a moral deterrent is not doomed to self-contradiction but is, on the contrary, morally preferable to the immediate and complete rejection of nuclear deterrence...
...And, most significantly, the bishops themselves have done little to clarify the matter...
...We say "yes...
...Most find ample scope for their overall rejection of deterrence in active opposition to particular excesses of U.S...
...sizing up the historical and psychological evidence concerning escalation in war...
...Does the West really want to get rid of the threat of Warsaw Pact short-range missiles, as it said only a few weeks ago...
...A close reading of the pastoral and the debates that shaped it would show that this interpretation is inaccurate...
...that put the burden of proof where it belongs...
...No one should dismiss the present opportunities on the grounds, say, that Mr...
...the insistence on a political component that would complement the military dimension of East-West relations — all this is implied in the idea of an acceptable deterrent...
...In terms of space and time, this latter shot deserves to be heard loudly around the world...
...Should we be comparing targets...
...The report states it is highly questionable whether a space defense could defend itself from enemy attack...
...the Pentagon was the first to fire...
...Already SDI accounts for half its revenue, and the project is simply in the research phase...
...The APS report — which was eighteen months in preparation — is the most authoritative technical analysts of the Strategic Defense Initiative to date...
...Gorbachev is only pursuing Soviet interests...
...And thinking this through obviously requires clarity in the U.S...
...No one, of course, and certainly not the bishops themselves, would claim that their argument concerning deterrence is without considerable ambiguities...
...military policy, of which there are plenty...
...Dare Christians even enter this kind of moral discussion...
...These are not very palatable conclusions for the average citizen, and only the boldest American opponents of deterrence are apt to follow this logic to its end...
...Nonetheless, the moral case for nuclear deterrence needs to be voiced...
...Otherwise, "an agreement for total nuclear disarmament will almost certainly degenerate into an unstable rearmament race...
...In Mr...
...Does the word "proportionate" retain any meaning in the case of nuclear strikes...
...If the bishops have avoided resolving this ambiguity, that may reflect a reluctance to exacerbate differences within their own ranks or alienate the constituency that has, in many respects, been the most devoted to the pastoral's message...
...It set in motion what promised to be an exotic, ever-expanding development of space-based strategic defenses...
...The bishops were right to express "profound skepticism" about the moral acceptability of any use of nuclear weapons...
...The 424-page report contained other revelations as well...
...One example is the Space Division of the Grumman Corporation...
...The report is thus the pre-emptive strike proponents of SDI feared most...
...But the APS report is in an orbit its critics will find difficult to touch...
...Yes, but...
...Whereas previous objections to SDI emanated from engineering skeptics, political and financial naysayers, and ideological opponents, the stark challenge of the APS report is that its negative assessment comes from an independent scientific body concerned solely with the physical facts...
...indeed, it is justified as a means of forestalling use...
...If deterrence is immoral, then nuclear arms will become the monopoly of immoral nations...
...It is not hard to make a strong case against the morality of nuclear deterrence...
...Was he not informed...
...opponents of arms control jubilant...
...Four years ago, for example, the Catholic bishops declared a "strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence.'' Yet it is not unfair to say that in many of the circles where the bishops' nuclear pastoral has been most warmly welcomed and actively promoted there is more tolerance than enthusiasm for both the letter's reaffirmation of just-war doctrine and for the bishops' acceptance of deterrence...
...The APS has unmasked the illusion...
...MIGHTIER THAN THE SDI In March 1983 President Reagan's "Star Wars" speech hit the unsuspecting world like the primordial big bang...
...To raise problems like these is not to defend the status quo of fifty thousand nuclear weapons as anything resembling a rational system of "peacekeeping...
...the opposition to new, destabilizing systems...
...For some, that case is only an extension of the incompatibility they see between the Gospel and any use of violent force...
...Why is this issue posed more emphatically today...
...It is a healthy thing when bishops shy away from appearing to bless weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction...
...Many are employed at the government's own prestigious laboratories, and we hope they will continue to be...
...Starting, for example, with Star Wars...
...Does the West really want a Europe free of intermediate-range missiles, as it said seven years ago...
...REPORT FROM HAITI 262: Commonweal...
...and policy makers beaming, if somewhat fuzzy on the details...
...It is reasonably objected that such a deterrent not only implicates the military and the citizenry (who are presumably unaware or uncertain of their leaders' ultimate determination never to use these weapons) in the intention to carry out vastly immoral actions, but it also stands doubly condemned for being so transparent a bluff as in fact to increase the danger of nuclear war...
...They include not only the preservation of freedoms and institutions of enormous significance, but also the prevention of continental holocaust itself...
...When it comes to reality, the report makes it clear, you've got to start with at least a minimum of the right physics...
...The report does not do this immediately, but it says ten years of research are needed to know whether SDI stands a chance of ever flying, a question the administration seems to have simply waved...
...There are good reasons why some veteran arms-control advocates who were once aghast at the Reagan administration's unreceptive stance toward East-West arms negotiations are now rubbing their eyes and shaking their heads at the same administration's sudden lurches toward sweeping reductions in nuclear weapons...
...Military contractors were ecstatic...
...Between the very plausible goal of deep cuts in nuclear arms and the grander goal of abolishing such arms entirely, whether by treaty or strategic defenses, the leap is enormous...
...Would a totally denuclearized Europe make the outbreak of conventional war there more or less likely...
...Does the West really want to do away with all ballistic missiles—or even all nuclear weapons — as Gorbachev and Reagan grandiosely proposed at Reykjavik...
...And the logical conclusion of that is probably a rejection of any armed resistance (except possibly guerrilla warfare) against a determined nuclear power...
...and Europe about basic objectives...
...It was authorized by the most eminent board of physical scientists this country has...
...Eventually, one hopes, embarrassment will concentrate the collective mind of Washington and NATO...
...If everything that rises must converge, the serendipitous aspect of the APS report is that it dovetails with proposals made last year at Reykjavik (but later abandoned) by the administration which would have maintained the deployment strictures of the 1972 ABM Treaty for the next ten years...
...So far, the West has been capable of responding with little more than, "Yes, but...
...In the private sector alone there are 331 separate business firms which have received SDI contracts...
...Even a world government with peacekeeping powers might have to maintain some kind of deterrent...
...It leans heavily on a papal pronouncement and does a better job of yoking together certain reasonable conclusions than of supplying a coherent moral rationale to justify them...
...But many others who don't consider themselves pacifists equally reject any use of nuclear weapons on the grounds that they immediately perpetrate death and destruction on an indiscriminate and disproportionate scale—or they threaten almost inevitably such death and destruction through escalation...
...That, too, is a tremendous challenge to any conscience...
...The logical conclusion of an anti-deterrent posture is unilateral nuclear disarmament...
...Indeed, when Commonweal recently published an article characterizing the bishops' (and the pope's) acceptance of deterrence as a blank check, a soft pitch to the military-industrial complex, and "a bleak day for the Gospel," reader response was almost unanimously favorable...
...While these criticisms of SDI are clearly not novel, it will be much harder for the administration to write them off in the future...
...Not only that...
...and indeed, if it is not to fail, it requires an immediate readiness to commit the horrendous acts that effectively deter...
...Last month, however, a second bang was registered, the explosive report issued by the American Physical Society questioning the feasibility of Star Wars defenses anytime this century (if ever...
...Do such targets actually exist...
...We can expect counterattacks on the APS report...
...What, then, is the bishops' alternative...
...Those who refuse to reject deterrence in principle face no small task...
...Does the West really want Europe denuclearized altogether, as various peace movements have been vigorously urging and most European leaders vigorously denying...
...Gorbachev's world of the year 2000 where nuclear weapons have been reduced to zero, the nation that cheated would pose a tremendous threat...
...Unilateralism is often said to risk the former...
...Deterrence, they would allow, is not use...
...asking ourselves what level of "incidental" casualties have been accepted as legitimate in wars that, with hindsight, we might consider just...
...It may help spare the world one too many big bangs...
...Nonetheless grounds for it can be easily found in the text, as well as in other episcopal statements...
...At a time when tangible breakthroughs are possible in arms control and reduction, such a posture would allow the administration to save face and appear creative at the same time...
...That is why Robert McNamara, even while he affirms the desirability of a nuclear-free world, points out that it would require a virtually perfect method of detecting any building of nuclear weapons "by any nation or terrorist group...
...Any truck with nuclear war — even maintaining the potential of waging it precisely to prevent it from ever occurring — risks asserting an arrogant degree of control over our destiny that some would say belongs only to God...
...It may not be one of the well-known laws of ther8 May 1987: 261 modynamics, but when it comes to Star Wars the axiom applies: "The greater the illusion, the larger the crash...
...Still, there will continue to be tremendous pressure from the right and from military contractors to proceed with SDI...
...Quite the contrary...
...But the first question is whether, always within the severe limits of our knowledge, we will explore these questions at all...
...The stakes are enormous...
...These are "empirical" questions — concerning facts that, if deterrence serves its purpose, can never be ascertained with certainty...
...Is escalation so inevitable that all restraint would 260: Commonweal be lost...
...That is the moral argument, but opposition to deterrence is both more and less than an argument...
...More to the point, should it ever begin to be widely accepted, unilateralism would create instabilities making nuclear war more, not less, likely...
...Of course he is...
...even to the zero-option proposal of its own devising...
...The president has continued to boast of SDI as non-nuclear...
...It is a deep-seated recoiling from all the calculations of threat and anticipated destruction on a vast scale that deterrence theory ultimately entails...
...But they were also right in refusing — as the record of their debate shows — to rule out all use definitively, in particular retaliatory strikes against military and economic, not primarily civilian, targets that would not involve disproportionate noncombatant deaths...
...We say all this with fear and trembling...
...Given an ideologically divided and distrustful world, and the fact that the knowledge needed to recreate nuclear weaponry will not disappear, reliance on deterrence of some sort or another looks less like a temporary resort on the way to total nuclear disarmament than a semi-permanent fact of life...
...Most opponents of deterrence instinctively say "no...
...An agreement serving Soviet interests will be a lot more solid than one based on some unlikely outburst of Kremlin benevolence...
...If the answer is more likely, then ultimately won't nuclear war between the superpowers be rendered more likely as well...
...The best defense against Star Wars, it seems, is nothing other than rigorous scientific research...
...Or should we agree with those who believe such a thing is a contradiction in terms at best, a blasphemy at worst...
...Faced with a moment like the present, we are forced back to basics in moral as well as strategic terms...
...These should not be rhetorical questions, meant only to taunt Western leaders for their apparent timidity...
...The visions of a nuclear-free world entertained by the two protagonists at Reykjavik actually served to remind many people of how problematic such notions really are...
...Finally, Soviet countermeasures could probably overwhelm and neutralize space defenses more efficiently and cheaply than an SDI could be deployed...
...But deterrence, should it fail, involves a future risk of unjustifiable deeds...
...Political leaders are being forced back to an old truth: getting rid of nuclear weapons is not exactly the same thing as getting rid of nuclear war...
...It's no good reducing the superpowers' capacity to destroy 8 May 1987: 259 civilization from five times over to two times over if, in the process, the likelihood of such a catastrophe is actually increased...
...The search for a moral nuclear deterrent is not equivalent to the acceptance of any deterrent...
Vol. 114 • May 1987 • No. 9
