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Deterrence, Defense, and the Sanctification of Hiroshima
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16188 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1989 |
8,765 Words |
| Author
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Alvin M. Weinberg
Alvin M. Weinberg is Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for
Energy Analysis, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge,
Tennessee. |
Ever since the Soviet Union acquired the capability of attacking cities with thermonuclear weapons, fear of retaliation has deterred nuclear war. Despite targeting doctrines that abjure attacks on cities ("countervalue"), the collateral damage from an attack on silos ("counterforce") all but eliminates the difference between the damage caused by countervalue and counterforce attacks. These last forty-odd years are therefore properly regarded as the MAD era--the era of Mutually Assured Destruction: Peace has been maintained by fear of assured retaliatory destruction.
No one knows how long the MAD era will last. Though the superpowers have avoided conflict, many have doubted both the morality of a posture that depends upon an implied threat to kill--even inadvertently--millions of innocents; and the robustness of the standoff in the event of extreme international tension. Politicians as well as analysts have therefore tried to visualize an alternative that was as effective as MAD in keeping the peace, yet was not encumbered by the profound moral deficiencies of MAD.
The most important attempt to move away from MAD was initiated by President Reagan's March 23, 1983, "Star Wars" speech, which launched the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The president called for transforming the MAD era into the MAS era, the era of Mutually Assured Survival. This was to be done by development and deployment of defensive systems, mostly space-based, that would render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Peace between the superpowers would then depend not on fear of retaliation but upon denial of aggressive intent.
Many analysts as well as churchmen concede that MAS, if it works in keeping the peace, is morally superior to MAD. On the other hand, most, though by no means all, analysts doubt that MAS is feasible technically; or, if it is, that a transition from MAD to MAS can be managed without encountering insuperable instabilities.
The purposes of this paper are threefold. The first task will be to describe the MAD and MAS eras and to compare the moral sanctions for each. This will require an elementary exposition of some principles of moral philosophy. The second purpose will be to summarize several recent studies that purport to show how the transition from MAD to MAS can be made without encountering either crisis or arms control instabilities.
But this is not enough. Even though the world may shift from MAD to MAS, can the MAS era last
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