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Conflicting Conceptions of Deterrence*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2009

Henry Shue
Henry Shue
Affiliation:
Philosophy, Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, University of Maryland at College Park.
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Extract

The Baptism of the Bomb

Here is a two-step plan to rescue nuclear war from immorality. First, the United States should build the most moral offensive nuclear weapons that money can buy and bring nuclear warfare into compliance with the principle of noncombatant immunity. Then it should build a defensive “shield” that will make offensive nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete” and take the world “beyond deterrence.” In this second stage, called the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (SDI) by believers and “Star Wars” by doubters, antimissile technology will confront missile technology like a Hegelian antithesis confronting its thesis, and we will all be lifted up out of the age of nuclear war into a realm made safe for conventional war.1 Even according to believers in the SDI, however, intermediate deployment, not to mention full deployment, of a strategic defense is some time away, pending breakthroughs on technological problems at which public money is now being thrown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Philosophy and Policy , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Autumn 1985 , pp. 43 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Social Philosophy and Policy Foundation 1985

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References

1 For some of the doubts, see Drell, Sidney D., Farley, Philip J., and Holloway, David, “Preserving the ABM Treaty: A Critique of the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative,” International Security, vol. 9 (Fall 1984), pp.51–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John, Tirman, ed., The Fallacy of Star Wars (New York: Vintage Books, 1984Google Scholar), especially the chapter by Bethe, Hans A. and Garwin, Richard L.; Carter, Ashton B., Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1984Google Scholar); and Shue, Henry, “Are Nuclear Defenses Morally Superior?” QQ: Report from the Center for Philosophy and Public Policy, vol. 5 (Spring 1985).Google Scholar For advocacy of SDI, see Gray, Colin S., Nuclear Strategy and Strategic Planning, Philadelphia Policy Papers (Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1984Google Scholar), “Option Five: Damage Limitation with Defense Dominance,” pp.86–93; Delauer, Richard D., “Antiballistic Missile Defense – The Opportunity and the Challenge,” NATO's Sixteen Nations: Independent Review of Economic, Political and Military Power, vol. 29 (November 1984), pp.7–11Google Scholar; Payne, Keith B. and Gray, Colin S., “Nuclear Policy and the Defensive Transition,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 62 (Spring 1984), pp.820–842CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Jastrow, Robert, and Kampelman, Max M., “Defense in Space Is Not ‘Star Wars’,” New York Times Magazine, January 27, 1985, pp.28–29, 46, 48, and 51.Google Scholar

2 Wohlstetter, Albert, “Bishops, Statesmen, and Other Strategists On the Bombing of Innocents,” Commentary (June 1983), pp.15–35.Google Scholar

3 ibid., p. 16.

4 ibid., p.31. See Iklé, Fred, “Can Nuclear Deterrence Last Out the Century,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 51 (January 1973), pp.267–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A reply to Iklé then was: Panofsky, Wolfgang, “The Mutual Hostage Relationship Between America and Russia,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 52 (October 1973), pp.109–118.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A recent reply to (Iklé and) Wohlstetter is: Bundy, McGeorge, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” in Douglas, Maclean, ed., The Security Gamble, Maryland Studies in Public Philosophy (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1984), pp.3–13.Google Scholar

5 ibid., p.29.

6 The most sophisticated discussions of the paradoxes I know are: David Gauthier, “Deterrence, Maximization, and Rationality”; Gregory S. Kavka, “Nuclear Deterrence: Some Moral Perplexities”; David Lewis, “Devil's Bargains and the Real World”; and Gregory S. Kavka and David Gauthier, “Responses to the Paradox of Deterrence”; all in MacLean, ed., The Security Gamble.

7 Wohlstetter, pp.19 and 31.

8 Sometimes it is difficult to decide when one is clarifying by sticking to the fundamentals, and when distorting by oversimplifying. Obviously, far more than four options can be, and repeatedly have been, worked out. Counterforce targets, for example, could be divided into nuclear and non-nuclear, e.g. troop concentrations; or they could be divided into military strictly speaking (which could be subdivided into nuclear and non-nuclear) and politico-military, including the whole Soviet or American chain of command, right up to the top. Initial uses could be subdivided into limited and massive, etc. Besides targets and timing, one could also consider a third dimension: type of weapons used, nuclear or non-nuclear. Soviet nuclear missiles could, perhaps, someday be struck with American precision-guided conventional weapons, thereby observing the taboo on nuclear use.

I do not mean to deny that at least some of these other distinctions are important or even that something is lost when they are left aside. I maintain only that I am focusing on some of the fundamental issues, and I am trying to discuss them in an uncluttered way. Much else could usefully be said, but I do not think it would require essential changes in what I say. In the final section of the paper, I introduce one simple additional factor that I take to be crucial.

9 For a clear account of the major differences between first use and first strike, and an explanation of why the current combination of first strike on one side and first use on the other is one of the worst possible combinations, see Dyson, Freeman, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), pp.250–253.Google Scholar

10 At least in the United States they are. For a fascinating discussion of national differences in emphasis, see Hassner, Pierre, “Ethical Issues in Nuclear Deterrence; Four National Debates in Perspective – France, Great Britain, United States, and West Germany,” paper prepared for European-American conference on “Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Deterrence,” April 1985, Stiftung für Wissenschaft und Politik, Ebenhausen, West Germany.Google Scholar

11 For a comprehensive examination of the varieties of deterrence theories, and their intellectual failure to face the question of what happens if deterrence fails, see Freedman, Lawrence, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).Google Scholar

12 See Manuel, Velasquez and Cynthia, Rostankowski, eds., Ethics: Theory and Practice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1985), pp.150–168.Google Scholar

13 Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, pp.18–19.

14 ibid., p.19.

15 See Ball, Desmond, “Can Nuclear War Be Controlled?” Adelphi Paper No. 169 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), Section V, “Soviet Strategic Doctrine: Implications for the Control of Nuclear War,” pp.30–35.Google Scholar “The doctrine that, once the nuclear threshold is passed, it is the task of the nuclear forces to terminate the war by achieving military victory through massive, crippling strikes is deeply rooted in Soviet strategic culture, and the preferences and habits of the military bureaucracy would tend to rule out any possibility of improvisation in favour of ‘American-formulated rules of intra-war restraint’” (34–35). Also see note 9 above, on the difference between NATO first use and U.S.S.R. first strike – and the tragedy of their being combined.

16 It will be impossible to convince anyone, when the counterforce capability is itself vulnerable to an initial counterforce strike, as will be the MX when it is based in Minuteman silos.

17 For a discussion of the Soviet doctrine of preemption, see note 15. Also see Gray, Colin S., “Targeting Problems for Central War,” Naval War College Review, vol. 33 (January/February 1980), pp.9–10Google Scholar; Erickson, John, “The Soviet View of Deterrence: A General Survey,” Survival, vol. 24 (November/December 1982), pp.242–251CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ogarkov, Nikolay Vasilyevich, Always in Readiness to Defend the Homeland, trans. JPRS L/10412, 25 March 1982 (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1982).Google Scholar

18 It may be worth mentioning what I would call the “air-force fantasy,” which contradicts this Clausewitzian point. Fans of air-force city-bombing often advance the false hypothesis that if civilians are subjected to terror-bombing, the morale on the other side will be broken. After all the megatonnage dropped from the skies, there never yet has been a clear positive example. The disconfirming cases include: German bombing of the British, British bombing of the Germans, and American bombing of Japan during World War II; and American bombing of Vietnam. The unfalsifiable counterargument always is: it wasn't terrible enough – next time, unleash us (e.g., Vietnam). On Vietnam, see Mueller, John, “The Search for the Single ‘Breaking Point’ in Vietnam: The Statistics of a Deadly Quarrel,” International Studies Quarterly, vol. 24 (December 1980), pp.497–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar And don't Hiroshima and Nagasaki show that if it is nuclear terror, morale will break? What if they show, instead, that morale will break if nuclear attacks are made on a non-nuclear power, which cannot retaliate in kind?

19 You might fire back before you are hit, if you have a policy of launch under attack, but not before you are fired upon with nuclear weapons. And if your own force is survivable – that is, will remain available for use even after you have been attacked – as it ought to if your strategy actually is retaliatory deterrence, you will have no need for the dangerous hair-trigger policy of launch under attack, or launch on warning. You can wait to assess what actually resulted from the attack before you make the decision to retaliate.

20 Wohlstetter, Albert, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 37 (January 1959), p.213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am not implying a criticism of inconsistency – everyone is allowed to change his mind once every quarter century – I simply want to emphasize the magnitude of the change between the 1959 article and the 1983 article.

21 Testimony of Nitze, Paul H., in U.S. Congress, Joint Committee on Defense Production, Civil Preparedness and Limited Nuclear War, Hearings on April 28, 1976 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p.70Google Scholar, quoted in Hanson, Donald W., “Is Soviet Strategic Doctrine Superior?” International Security, vol. 7 (Winter 1982/1983), p.63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Kenny, Anthony, “Nuclear Deterrence,” paper presented at First Fulbright Anglo-American Colloquium on Ethics and International Affairs, University of St. Andrews, October 1984.Google Scholar Also see Anthony Kenny, The Logic of Deterrence, forthcoming.

23 Bernard Brodie, “Schlesinger's Old-New Ideas,” unpublished paper, Bernard Brodie Papers, Box 33, folder 8, quoted in Kaplan, Fred, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), p.47.Google Scholar

24 For how little difference “careful” targeting makes, see in addition to the reference in the next note, the following studies: Drell, Sidney D. and Von Hippel, Frank, “Limited Nuclear War,” Scientific American, vol. 235 (November 1976), pp.27–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which includes the effects of a Soviet counter-ICBM attack on the U.S.; Arkin, William M., Von Hippel, Frank, and Levi, Barbara G., “The Consequences of a ‘Limited’ Nuclear War in East and West Germany,” Ambio, vol. 11 (June 1982), pp.163–173Google Scholar, reprinted in book form under different titles by different publishers, The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War (Pantheon) and Nuclear War: The Aftermath (Pergamon); and Von Hippel, Frank, “The Effects of Nuclear War,” in David, W. Hafemeister and Dietrich, Schroeer, eds., Physics, Technology and the Nuclear Arms Race (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1983), pp.1–46.Google Scholar Also see Lewis, Kevin N., “The Prompt and Delayed Effects of Nuclear War,” Scientific American, vol. 241 (July 1979), pp.35–47.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

25 Desmond Ball, “Can Nuclear War be Controlled?” p.28; in this extremely careful analysis, see generally Section IV, “The Control of Damage in Nuclear War,” pp.26–30.

26 Metcalf, A.G.B., “The Minuteman Vulnerability Myth and the MX,” Strategic Review, vol. 11 (Spring 1983), p.9.Google Scholar

27 See Rosenberg, David Alan, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” International Security, vol. 7 (Spring 1983), pp.3–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; reprinted in a highly useful collection, Steven, E. Miller, ed., Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence, An International Security, Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp.113–181.Google Scholar Also in the Miller anthology, see Desmond Ball, “U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?” pp.215–244; and see Ball, Desmond, “Targeting for Strategic Deterrence,” Adelphi Paper No. 185 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1983).Google Scholar

28 That mutual assured destruction is the reality, irrespective of whether it is any nation's policy, has recently been persuasively argued in Jervis, Robert, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

29 The most accessible account of the findings about nuclear winter and their implications for policy is Sagan, Carl, “Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe: Some Policy Implications,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 62 (Winter 1983/1984), pp.257–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The most recent account, which uses three-dimensional models of the atmosphere, is Thompson, S.L., Aleksandrov, V.V., Stenchikov, G.L., Schneider, S.H., Covey, C., and Chervin, R.M., “Global Climatic Consequences of Nuclear War: Simulations with Three Dimensional Models,” Ambio, vol. 13 (1984), pp.236–243.Google Scholar Pioneering articles appeared in a special double issue, “Nuclear War: The Aftermath,” Ambio, vol. 11 (1982), reprinted in book form under different titles by two publishers: The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War (Pantheon) and Nuclear War: The Aftermath (Pergamon). The one-dimensional study that first attracted widespread public attention was reported in Turco, R.P., Toon, O.B., Ackerman, T.P., Pollack, J.B., and Sagan, Carl, “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,” Science, vol. 222 (December 23, 1983), pp.1283–1292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A more readable account appeared as Turco, Richard P., Toon, Owen B., Ackerman, Thomas P., Pollack, James B. and Sagan, Carl, “The Climatic Effects of Nuclear War,” Scientific American, vol. 251 (August 1984), pp.33–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The original report from Science and relevant discussion is available as Ehrlich, Paul R., Sagan, Carl, Kennedy, Donald and Roberts, Walter Orr, The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984).Google Scholar A study requested by the Department of Defense was unable to fault the basic methodology of the original studies: see Committee on the Atmospheric Effects of Nuclear Explosions, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, The Effects on the Atmosphere of a Major Nuclear Exchange (Washington: National Academy Press, 1985).Google Scholar A plan for further research was submitted to the White House, but has not been funded: see National Climate Program Office, NOAA, Interagency Research Report for Assessing Climatic Effects of Nuclear War (Washington: Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and Technology Policy, February, 1985).Google Scholar For the Pentagon's argument that the solution is to do all the things it was planning to do anyway, see Weinberger, Caspar W., The Potential Effects of Nuclear War on the Climate, A Report to the Congress (Washington: Office of the Secretary of Defense, March 1985Google Scholar), mimeo.

30 Carl Sagan, “Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe,” p.276. Then there would be the climatic effects of the retaliatory strike.

31 Perhaps I ought to provide an example. Here is an almost randomly selected one, in no way worse than average but interesting in that the “argument” is said in an accompanying footnote to go back to 1967, thus demonstrating how groundless speculations become orthodox dogmas of deterrence: “Presumably people believe the Soviet Union is interested in annihilating the United States because this would make it the dominant world power. The analogy, if U.S. defenses had eliminated the Soviet ability to annihilate the United States, would be a countervalue attack designed to weaken the United States. To deter this type of attack, the United States would need a retaliatory capability that could weaken the Soviet Union as much as the Soviet countervalue attack could weaken the United States. A countervalue capability roughly equivalent to the Soviet countervalue capability should be sufficiently large to satisfy this requirement”; Glaser, Charles L., “Why Even Good Defenses May Be Bad,” International Security, vol. 9 (Fall 1984), pp.103–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This deterrence requirement of “equal countervalue capability” is, thus, derived from the assumptions that the Soviet Union is simultaneously (1) devoted to dominating the world by doing as much damage to the United States as the U.S. lets it and (2) devoted to making military decisions using Benefit-Cost Analysis and the principle of maximizing expected utility. That a demonically power-mad regime would use BCA to set its strategy is logically possible, but what reasons do we have to believe it is true? How do we know that an equal amount of damage “should be sufficiently large”? If they are such wild annihilators, perhaps the U.S. would need to be capable of doing them twice as much damage in order to deter them. If they are such careful reasoners, perhaps they would not risk half as much damage in an uncertain adventure. Why exactly equal amounts? Are they just like us? If so, why are we contemplating destroying each other?

32 Thus, although I generally admire the pioneering philosophical work on deterrence by Gregory Kavka, I utterly reject his thesis that Soviet civilians “are partially responsible and hence partly liable” (to threatened attack); see Gregory S. Kavka, “Nuclear Deterrence: Some Moral Perplexities,” in MacLean, ed., The Security Gamble, p.132. It is the rare Soviet civilian, I would suggest, who has even the slightest responsibility for any of the policies of the dictatorial state to which he is subjected, and few indeed who have enough responsibility to be placed justly at risk of death. The vast majority of the civilians in the Soviet Union are women and children with no power and no voice at all.

33 “Russia, Germany and France each misjudged the extent of the other's military preparations and mobilized, fearful that failure to do so would enable their opponents to gain a decisive military advantage”; Lebow, Richard Ned, “Practical Ways to Avoid Superpower Crises,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 41 (January 1985), p.25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a full study of how crises issue in wars, see Lebow, Richard Ned, Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981Google Scholar); on World War I, see especially “The July Crisis: A Case Study,” pp.119–147. However, also see Lebow, Richard Ned, “Windows of Opportunity: Do States Jump Through Them?” International Security, vol. 9 (Summer 1984), pp.147–186CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as well as other articles in the same number, all reprinted in Steven, E. Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, An International Security Reader (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

34 Fortunately, neither side is anywhere near the capacity to disarm the other; see Feiveson, Harold A. and Von Hippel, Frank, “The Freeze and the Counterforce Race,” Physics Today, vol. 36 (January 1983), pp.36, 38, 40, 42, 44, and 46–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Compare the recent statement of President Reagan's science adviser, as part of the Administration's advocacy of the Strategic Defense Initiative: “Inevitable advances in technology have now put both superpowers' retaliatory forces at risk to preemptive attack”; Keyworth, G.A., “Ganging Up on Star Wars,” Washington Post, 24 December 1984, p.A15Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

35 Viner, Jacob, “The Implications of the Atomic Bomb for International Relations,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, January 29, 1946, p.54Google Scholar, quoted in Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armaggedon, p.27.

36 Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, pp.395 and 400.

37 This point has become clear to me from repeated – not to say endless – conversations with my colleague, Robert K. Fullinwider.

38 See Feiveson, Harold A., Ullman, Richard H., and Von Hippel, Frank, “Ten-Fold Reductions in the Superpower Nuclear Arsenals,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 41, Special Issue (August 1985)Google Scholar, forthcoming. In essence, this proposal would reverse MIRVing.

39 See notes 24, 25, 27, and 28.