10nfl1-Nukes-Cover
THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL NECESSARILY HARM
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| THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS WILL NECESSARILY HARM INNOCENTS Thomas Donaldson. Nuclear Deterrence and Self-Defense.” Ethics, Vol. 95, No. 3, Special Issue Symposium on Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence (Apr, 1985), pp. 537-548 Furthermore, the very character of nuclear weapons systems implies increased harm to noncombatants -to persons who are neither harming nor about to harm us. Nuclear weapons systems are quite different from single nuclear weapons. In such systems individual weapons occur as parts of complex attack plans designed to explode thousands of bombs in a given order and pattern. This, coupled with the indiscriminate character of the hydrogen nuclear explosion, means that civilian casualties in the event of a nuclear attack by the superpowers would be substantial. It explains why even theories designed to justify war, such as the jus ad bellum and jus in bello doctrines, have difficulty justifying the inevitable harm to noncombatants resulting from nuclear warfare A nuclear strike would bring about as a matter of certainty the deaths of thousands ofpersons who could in noway be regarded as culpable. Even if one includesthe ordinary Soviet citizen along with Soviet leaders as culpable agents,thousands of children under the age of six would be killed. A nuclearexchange may also harm innocents living beyond the boundaries of targetednations. Indeed, Jonathan Schell has argued that nuclear weapons areunique in threatening the very existence of the human species Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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