Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to examine the dominant views on the subject of deterrence and the use of nuclear weapons, to compare them with each other, and to consider objections that have or might be made against them. A second, more controversial and substantive, aim is to show that nuclear weapons and war-fighting plans engender some disturbing moral dilemmas which call into question fundamental ways of thinking about morality and some of our common intuitions on the relation of intentions and actions. ;I examine the moral literature, both religious and secular, on nuclear arms policy written between the early 1960s and the late 1980s. Three different schools of thought, or "parties," are identified. The Disarmament Party claims that modern war is immoral. This is so because modern weapons violate the principle of non-combatant immunity. If to kill non-combatants is wrong, and modern war inevitably involves such killing, then war is morally wrong. Moreover, since one may never intend what is immoral to do, the threat to retaliate with nuclear weapons is itself immoral. It follows that the only acceptable position is that of immediate and unilateral disarmament. The War-Fighting Party holds that the limited use of nuclear weapons and deterrence can be made compatible with the moral principles which traditionally have governed the conduct of war. Finally, the Deterrence-Only Party argues that the use of nuclear weapons advocated by war-fighting moralists is incompatible with traditional moral principles, but the practice of deterrence, for the sake of preventing nuclear war, can be morally justified. ;To establish the differences among these parties, I show the various ways in which judgments on the use of nuclear weapons and on deterrence are linked either by a prohibitive moral principle which draws a moral equivalence going from action to intention or by a factual assumption about the nature of nuclear weapons. I conclude with the suggestion that the dilemmas which arise in the moral evaluation of nuclear deterrence represent a profound and much wider problem in moral theory between the ideals of character and the moral claims of politics