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NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IS AN IMMORAL AND PARADOXICAL THREAT
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| NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IS AN IMMORAL AND PARADOXICAL THREAT. Ron Rosenbaum American Journalist & Author, ʻ09] The Letter of Last Resort Slate The Spectator, Jan. 9, 2009 And it seems stunningly foolish, counterproductive, indeed self-destructive for the Royal Navy to reveal that the United Kingdom's last line of deterrence, its ultimate safeguard against nuclear attack—the certainty of retaliation—is not certain at all. In fact, any fanatical enemy could figure it had a 50-50 chance that Gordon Brown did not order retaliation. In all likelihood, it's probably 90- 10 against what prime minister, what human being would want to put in his own handwriting the order to kill tensor hundreds of millions of innocent civilians—especially at the point when the threat to do so had failed to deter the attack it was meant to deter The Letter of Last Resort serves at least one purpose It reawakens us to the awful unresolved paradox of nuclear deterrence. We must make any potential nuclear attackers believe that they would be vaporized—suffer national nuclear holocaust—if they hit us first with nuclear weapons. And yet if they went ahead and did it, if the genocidal threat failed to deter them, there would be no point in carrying out retaliation it would be useless mass murder, genocide pure if not simple. On the other hand, if the potential foe thought that we might not retaliate once the threat served no purpose—that retaliatory "deterrence" would, in essence, turnout to be a bluff—it would encourage those disposed to strike first to cause a nuclear holocaust without fear of reprisal. We had to threaten genocide—and convince people we meant to carryout our threat—in order to prevent genocide. 10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 69 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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