10nfl1-Nukes-Cover
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IS USELESS AND IMMORAL ONCE A WAR
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| NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IS USELESS AND IMMORAL ONCE A WAR STARTS. Daily Kos [ΚΌ09] Nuclear Fallout August 31, 2009, http://bit.ly/18nqKs Most people think they know the "corrector "expected" response to the first category. Our entire Cold War defense strategy rested on the premise of "massive retaliation" resulting in "MAD-- Mutual Assured Destruction" The idea was (and still is, I suppose) that no nation would be foolish enough to launch a nuclear weapon at the United States because the response FROM the United States would be immediate, total and nuclear as well. But when you actually put yourselves in the shoes of the person who would have to make that call, you should immediately see some striking ethical (as well as pragmatic) dilemmas. Lets start with the massive first strike scenario envisioned in the Cold War. Imagine, if you will, that Russia (or some other heavily armed nuclear power of the future) has launched all (or nearly all) of its nuclear arms at you in the hopes of knocking out your retaliatory capability all at once. In this scenario you would actually have some warning BEFORE any of the bombs go off that those bombs are on the way. What is the correct response What would you do The heart of the MAD theory rests on the assumption that you will implement "massive retaliation" at this point. But let's think about this. The other side has already launched all of their weapons. Most of the people in your country are going to die--either in the initial blast or from the radioactive fallout afterward. The majority of your military forces will be wiped out. The ecological devastation facing those who do survive will be severe to say the least. Your nation, for all intents and purposes, will cease to exist into minutes. Nothing you can do can stop this. What is the point, at THIS theoretical moment, of pressing the proverbial button and responding in kind By doing so, what do you accomplish You will wipe out most of the people of another once great nation. That's hundreds of millions (or possibly billions if we consider a China scenario) of deaths on your hands. You will be adding a tremendous amount of ecological devastation onto an already bleak situation. The dust and debris that you will kick into the air will result in an even more severe nuclear winter scenario than if you simply do nothing. This will kill tens of millions of people around the world who weren't a member of either warring nation-state. Maybe hundreds of millions. You will add to the mass extinctions of other species as well. You might be contributing the destruction of all civilization as we know it. And you won't save a single member of your own country. Even worse, if the attacking nation is a nondemocratic one (and democratic nations tend to not go to war with one another, then you are killing millions of people even within that attacking nation state who had no say whatsoever in your being attacked. Who, but a monster, could make this decision And yet, our nuclear "defense" policy rests on convincing other nuclear-armed nations that our leaders are, in fact, monstrous enough to respond using massive nuclear retaliation in the event we are attacked. And so does theirs. It rests on the assumption that our need for revenge will trump any other rational, humane or compassionate considerations in the moment. Can this be ethical What does it say about us And might it be even more unethical to call massive retaliation unethical if it actually does reduce the effectiveness of MAD by making potential attackers thinking we WILL respond humanely 10NFL1-Nuclear Weapons Page 70 of 199 www.victorybriefs.com Download 1.23 Mb. Share with your friends:
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