NUCLEAR RETALIATION WOULD BEAN IMMORAL RESPONSE TO Ab bNUCLEAR ATTACK 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. 51. Yet even if nuclear deterrence does not violate the rights of its hostages, it is nevertheless immoral. It commits a nation to a course of retaliation, since if a nation bluffs its adversary may learn this through espionage. But if deterrence does fail, and the opponent launches an attack, there would be no rational or moral reason to carryout the threatened retaliation. Indeed the leaders of the stricken nation would have conclusive moral reasons not to retaliate. Retaliation would punish the leaders who committed this unprecedented crime and would prevent them from dominating the postwar world but it would accomplish no deterrent effect while massacring millions of innocent civilians in the attacking nation, and in other nations, would setback postwar recovery for the world immeasurably, and might even render the earth unfit for human survival.
