IF DETERRENCE IS MORAL BECAUSE OF ITS NECESSITY, CIVILIAN RESISTANCE MUST BE GRAPPLED WITH TO DECLARE IT MORAL Robert P. Churchill. Nuclear Arms as a Philosophical and Moral Issue Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 469, Nuclear Armament and Disarmament (Sep, 1983), pp. 46-57. P. 57. The case for nonviolent defense has not been completed, but serious and intelligent criticism has also hardly begun. Civilian resistance has not received the attention it deserves. It may turnout that a nonviolent national defense would be impossible, or if possible, less acceptable morally than nuclear deterrence. But nonviolent defense is not foolish on its face, nor is it merely pacifism or unilateral disarmament under a different guise Its apparent moral superiority to nuclear deterrence obligates us to give it our careful attention. Indeed if threats of nuclear retaliation are morally permissible, then they are permissible only because deterrence is absolutely necessary, and nuclear threats are the only means of effecting this deterrence. Thus even those who argue for the moral superiority of nuclear deterrence, if they are earnest and sincere, must attempt to demonstrate the moral inadequacy of civilian resistance.
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