Well here we are again: once more living amidst the "chafe and jar/ Of nuclear war," as Robert Lowell put it in the early 1960s. Our moment of peril might not be quite as extreme as his—but it could certainly escalate to a similar fever pitch, depending on the actions of the various governments involved. Lowell even wrote that the rumors of nuclear confrontation in his era had lasted "All autumn"—and so too, we are experiencing another nuclear fall.
I'm referring to Putin's recent response to the possibility that the U.S. and the UK may approve the Ukrainian use of long-range weapons to fire on the interior of Russia. Putin expressly declared that he would consider this an act of war by the NATO powers. And while he didn't mention nuclear weapons specifically, the implication was clear: he was reminding the British and American authorities that they were confronting a nuclear-armed power.
Of course, the Western allies could respond to this implied threat with some sabre-rattling of their own. They could remind Putin that they have nuclear weapons too. They could even threaten to use them. This was the approach that Trump notoriously took with North Korea, when he threatened Kim Jong Un's government with the prospect of "fire and fury" that would consume their whole society.
I objected on moral grounds at the time to Trump's explicit threat of committing nuclear genocide against the subject population of North Korea (for such would be the inevitable result of using strategic nuclear weapons against their government and military). But it was sometimes said in response that Trump was doing nothing more than articulating—in his own bombastic way—the standard policy of all nuclear powers. Why maintain a nuclear stockpile at all, if not for deterrence? And what is deterrence, if it is not the implied threat that one might actually use these weapons?
Trump, of course, has not made similar threats against Putin. With his usual eerie affinity for Putin and his distressing pattern of aligning with Russian foreign policy goals on every issue—the only time Trump has invoked nuclear weapons in the present confrontation is to try to deter his own government from opposing Russian aggression. During the presidential debate a week ago, he refused to say that he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Putin; then he quickly pivoted to pointing out that Putin has nuclear weapons—with the implication being that we better do what he says.
But if we ignore this more recent experience and just refer back to Trump's "fire and fury" comments—it's worth noting that threatening the annihilation of an enemy's civilian population is not in fact the only policy a nuclear-armed power can pursue. Biden demonstrated this at an earlier stage of the Ukraine war. After intelligence reports warned that Putin might try to use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield, Biden did issue various threats of severe consequences if Putin took that step. But, notably, his advisors and others who spoke to the media expressly took nuclear retaliation off the table.
This seems to me a much more reasonable and humane policy. No one should ever contemplate the wholesale massacre of a civilian population, since this would violate every tenet of the laws of war and of ordinary morality. And if it's wrong to do it, it's presumably wrong to threaten it too—unless we are meant to believe the threat is intended wholly as a bluff (a possibility that is belied by the military readiness in which our nuclear arsenal is maintained—and the president's unilateral personal authority to transmit the launch codes).
But still, one could ask—if we would not use nuclear weapons against Russia, even in retaliation for their own use of nuclear weapons against ourselves or our allies, then why do we have them? The justification for maintaining a nuclear arsenal is generally that—even if we agree it would be wrong to ever use them—we nonetheless need to keep them as a deterrent. The adversary needs to fear we might use them.
But in that case, we are still retaining the implied threat that we just said was morally impermissible. And, if we have kept the same threat in force as a practical matter—then what is really the moral difference between Trump making the threat explicitly and Biden disavowing it while keeping the stockpile in place (since the nuclear arms themselves still make the threat sotto voce)?
The philosopher Anthony Kenny tries to answer this and similar questions in a slim volume: The Logic of Deterrence. It does not appear to be well known. I had the privilege today of being the first person in all of Goodreads.com to mark it as "Read." And I myself only found the book by happenstance. I was browsing in a London bookshop that carried a wide array of used titles. I knew Kenny by reputation as an analytic philosopher and ex-priest—and the topic of the book seemed to speak to our time. Viz. the aforementioned "chafe and jar." But it was only today that I got around to reading it.
In this short but well-argued book, Kenny makes a case for nuclear disarmament. But, crucially, he does not argue for immediate disarmament (which he concedes would expose NATO to various other dangers). Instead, he suggests a twofold policy in which: 1) Britain and the U.S. should explicitly declare that they would never use nuclear weapons against a civilian population, under any circumstances; and 2) they would nonetheless maintain a reduced portion of their nuclear arsenal as bargaining leverage, until such point as the Soviet Union had reduced its own stockpile proportionately. Eventually, under this policy, both sides would give up their nuclear arms entirely.
Kenny was writing in the 1980s, at one of the various peaks of Cold War tensions; but the same advice could be given today. And indeed, it is somewhat close to the policy Biden appears to be pursuing in practice. Again, he sent the message through advisers and spokespeople that he would not retaliate against Russia with nuclear weapons, even if Putin used a tactical nuke himself in Ukraine.
Kenny's argument for expressly declaring in this way that we will never use nuclear weapons in war is the same I gave above: the weapons are inherently indiscriminate; they would inevitably harm noncombatants; they would therefore be wrong ever to use. And if they are in fact wrong to use, then it is wrong to credibly threaten to use them.
(What about the proposal mentioned above of threatening to use them only as a bluff? Would that be immoral, or merely sound strategy? Kenny has a good rejoinder to this: keeping the military in a state of active readiness to use the weapons means that, if we really were confronted with a nuclear attack, we would probably use them in the heat of the moment—even if we told ourselves now, in the abstract, that we were doing so only as a bluff.)
So far, therefore, I entirely agree with Kenny. I whole-heartedly endorse prong 1 of his strategy: the US and Britain should make clear—to the extent they are not already doing so—that they will never drop nuclear weapons on other countries.
Yet, one could make the same objection to the latter half of Kenny's proposal as the one I described above, in reference to Biden's policy. After all, one can say that nuclear weapons would only give us "leverage" over our adversaries, in disarmament talks, if our adversaries still believed we might use them. They are only real "bargaining chips," that is to say, if we maintain in some way the credible threat to use them. And if we are still making this threat, if only impliedly—then is that really so morally different from making the threat explicitly?
Kenny considers this argument at length; but he is not overcome by it. He argues that, in fact, there is a real moral difference between explicitly threatening to use nuclear weapons (as Trump did in the "fire and fury" speech) and merely retaining the ability to use nuclear weapons, which an adversary may interpret as a threat if they are so inclined.
The key to Kenny's policy would be for the nuclear-armed West to not only say publicly that they will not use these weapons—but also to give standing orders throughout the chain of command to refuse any instruction, from whatever source of authority, to fire nuclear weapons at populated areas (the same way the military does with other illegal orders). If the West actually took these real steps to make it harder to use nuclear weapons, this would make it a self-binding commitment. They would know that when they said they were never going to use them, they really meant they would never use them—even if the enemy did not know this.
(These steps would also serve to differentiate Kenny's proposal from the "bluff" strategy—they would actually make it harder to use the weapons, even in the heat of the moment of a real nuclear confrontation.)
I could see how this would amount to a real moral distinction; and I support Kenny's policy proposal to that extent. Yes, let us issue such standing orders, throughout the military. Of course, as Kenny acknowledges, there is always the danger that such orders could be rescinded by a future administration. But they might help to establish a norm; and any further barriers we can erect between the possession of nuclear weapons and actually using them is clearly a step in the right direction.
Maybe, even subject to all these conditions, a threat is still implied in the bare existence of the weapons. Does Kenny himself not admit that this existence should be maintained for is deterrent effect, and what is a deterrent but a threat? But, even if this threat is a moral wrong—I suspect it is outweighed by the even worse evils that might come about from not committing it. (I am enough of a deontologist to think that moral wrongs are still wrong even if they would yield positive consequences; but I am also enough of a consequentialist to think there may be some consequences that are so severe that they justify committing some moral wrongs—and simply accepting the stain on our conscience as a cost of avoiding still greater evils.)
The lingering objection I have to Kenny's proposal, however, now proceeds from the opposite side of the debate. If it is in fact morally justifiable to keep nuclear weapons in our arsenal, as a form of "leverage"—even while we promise never to use them and put policies in place to prevent them from ever being used—then why does this argument only justify the limited possession of nuclear weapons as a "temporary" deterrent while both superpowers are winding down their stockpiles and decommissioning their arsenals? Why would the same argument not apply equally strongly in favor of the policy of continuing indefinitely a nuclear stockpile that we fully intend never to use, but which we want to maintain as a theoretical capacity so that we deter other countries from attacking us and our allies?
Whatever its merits may be, this latter probably comes closer to what any U.S. or British administration is likely to do, no matter how humane and pacific. Having come into a world where the existence of nuclear weapons was already a fait accompli, they are unlikely ever to wholly deprive themselves of the capacity of using them, no matter how explicitly they disavow any intention of ever doing so, and no matter how many layers of procedure they place between the mere fact of possessing them and actually using them in warfare.
Kenny himself acknowledges that dropping this deterrent power of mere possession and capacity might be suicidal in the immediate term. That is why he offers his concession of the "temporary deterrent." But if such a deterrent was justified so long as the U.S. and Britain needed to persuade the Soviet Union to reduce its own stockpile—why would not the same nuclear deterrent be equally justified, once the Soviet Union was dissolved and replaced by the present no-less-dangerous personalistic authoritarianism of Putin? Why would it not be justified as an ongoing measure to deter other authoritarian adversaries from attacking our allies—deterring, say, the People's Republic of China from invading Taiwan?
And so, Biden's present policy may actually be something close to the best of options in a nuclear-armed world: keep the capacity, but make clear you will never use it. (Though I'd appreciate it if he added Kenny's further recommendation: as in, actually create procedural barriers to using these weapons in the chain of command, in the form of standing orders never to fire them.) As fraught and uncomfortable as such a posture may be—as seemingly self-contradictory as it may appear—I'm not sure anyone's ever proposed anything better.
Perhaps the best attitude to nuclear weapons remains the one that Martin Amis came to. In a book of short stories mostly concerned with the horrors of nuclear weapons, Amis nonetheless admitted up front: "I am merely going on about nuclear weapons; I don't know what to do about them." Neither do I. However much we can all agree that they are terrible—it is by no means so obvious how we get rid of them, now that they are here.
No comments:
Post a Comment