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Morality and Paradoxical Deterrence*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
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Nuclear deterrence is paradoxical. One paradox of nuclear deterrence we may call the rationality paradox:
(RP) (1) While it is a rational policy to threaten nuclear retaliation against an opponent armed with nuclear weapons, it would not be rational to carry out the retaliation should the threat fail to deter; and (2) what would not be rational to do is not, in the circumstances characteristic of nuclear deterrence, rational to threaten to do.
This is a paradox in the standard sense that it involves contradictory claims, for it implies that adopting a policy of nuclear deterrence is both rational and not rational, yet we have strong reason to believe that each of the claims is true. Claim (1) is a recognition that, though we believe nuclear deterrence works, there would seem to be no reason to carry out the threat if it were to fail. Claim (2) is part of the logic of all forms of deterrence, military and nonmilitary, and it relates to the important notion of credibility: if an opponent knows that one has no reason to carry out a threat, the threat would not be credible and so one would have no reason to make it. Further, it is characteristic of a state of nuclear deterrence that the opponent would recognize that one would have no reason to carry out the threat.
The rationality paradox is but one of the paradoxes raised by nuclear deterrence. Some other of the paradoxes of nuclear deterrence have the same form as the rationality paradox: for a certain set of predicates x,
(PND) (1) the act of threatening nuclear retaliation (against an opponent with nuclear weapons) is x, while the act of carrying out the threat would be not-x; and (2) if it is not-x to perform some action, then, in the circumstances generally characteristic of a situation of nuclear deterrence, it is not-x to threaten to perform that action.
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References
1 One person who has given attention to the moral paradox is Gregory Kavka; see his “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence,” Journal of Philosophy, vol.75 (June, 1978), pp. 285–302.
2 For a further development of some of the themes in this section, see the essay by myself and Cohen, Avner, “The Nuclear Predicament,” in A., Cohen and S., Lee, eds., Nuclear Weapons and the Future of Humanity (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1985).Google Scholar
3 The kinds of ballistic-missile defenses proposed by the present administration would have to be virtually 100 percent effective in order to provide real protection for cities, and such perfection is not to be expected. Even proponents of the plan have begun to speak of the purpose of the defenses as protecting missiles only.
4 Jervis, Robert, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), p.48.Google Scholar
5 Glenn Snyder has emphasized the point that nuclear deterrence is deterrence by punishment rather than denial; see his Deterrence and Defense (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 14ff.
6 Iklé, Fred, “Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century?” Foreign Affairs, vol.51 (January, 1973), p.268.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 This is what Jonathan Schell calls the “monumental logical mistake” on which deterrence is based: in The Fate of the Earth (New York: Avon, 1982), p.202.
8 Wohlstetter, Albert, “Bishops, Statesmen, and Other Strategists on the Bombing on Innocents,” Commentary, vol.72 (June, 1983), p.30.Google Scholar
9 Jervis, p.56. Jervis adopts the term “conventionalization” from Hans Morganthau.
10 ibid., pp.59–63. Jervis points out that what is important in the case of nuclear weapons is absolute rather than relative military capability.
11 Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p.278.Google Scholar
12 This term is used by the Harvard Nuclear Study Group, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam, 1983), p.34Google Scholar ; but I am using it in a different sense.
13 Kavka, p.289 (emphasis removed). The epistemological feature Kavka includes is important to the principle. This feature, I believe, applies as well in the case of nuclear deterrence. Despite the moral blindness often characteristic of policymakers, it is hard to imagine that such indiscriminate slaughter is not known by them to be wrong.
14 ibid., pp.286, 289.
15 Ramsey, Paul, “A Political Ethics Context for Strategic Thinking,” in Morton, Kaplan, ed., Strategic Thinking and Its Moral Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Center for Policy Study, 1973), pp.134–135.Google Scholar
16 Kavka, p.290.
17 ibid., p.287.
18 For a development of this point, see my “The Morality of Nuclear Deterrence: Hostage-Holding and Consequences,” Ethics, vol.95 (April, 1985).
19 Wohlstetter, p.29.
20 Ramsey, pp.136, 142.
21 ibid., p.139.
22 ibid., p.135.
23 ibid., p.142.
24 ibid., p. 133.
25 For a discussion of the doctrine of double effect, see May, William, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, ed. Warren, T. Reich (New York: Free Press, 1978), pp.317–320.Google Scholar
26 On the riskiness of counterforce elements in present U.S. deterrence policy and the overriding nature of consequentialist considerations, see Russel Hardin, “Risking Armageddon,” in Cohen and Lee.