The Conundrum of Deterrence PDF

## The Conundrum of Deterrence ### A Practical Christian Response Lisa Sowle Cahill Two decades into the twenty-first century there are about seventeen thousand nuclear weapons in the world, a situation that Catholic social teaching—especially papal teaching—deplores and condemns. Yet most voters...

## The Conundrum of Deterrence ### A Practical Christian Response Lisa Sowle Cahill Two decades into the twenty-first century there are about seventeen thousand nuclear weapons in the world, a situation that Catholic social teaching—especially papal teaching—deplores and condemns. Yet most voters and politicians in the United States are disengaged from if not opposed to nuclear disarmament as an urgent public mandate. Many who find the situation worrisome or downright terrifying do not know where to begin to change institutionalized policies of nuclear possession and deterrence that followed the first and only (so far) use of nuclear bombs—by the United States against two Japanese cities in 1945. Work by activists, Church leaders, and international government representatives and policymakers to abolish nuclear weapons has made progress in recent decades. But the advances have had limited impact on the behavior of nuclear and would-be nuclear states and are hardly a priority of voters in the United States and other nations experiencing a resurgence of nationalist, protectionist right-wing politics. A first thesis of this essay is that while both possession and serious threat to use nuclear weapons are immoral, nuclear deterrence still presents a moral conundrum because decision makers must enter a de facto ongoing situation in which these immoral policies are a point of departure and set conditions for and parameters of available paths to deterrence. Those negotiating for disarmament (in contrast to prophetically denouncing nuclear weapons) must employ nuclear policy as a medium. This is why ecclesial representatives such as Pope John Paul II and the US Catholic bishops conceded that deterrence is provisionally tolerable or even acceptable, even though such a policy presumably entails a determination to do, should deterrence fail, that which is flatly and egregiously immoral. Those who work for change within nuclear-dependent political systems shoulder the burden of nuclear injustice to some extent. A second thesis of this essay is that while Christian ethics can provide no moral analysis that clearly resolves this problem, it offers a way forward in the form of practical ecclesial and political action. The key to reducing and ultimately removing the conundrum of nuclear deterrence is broad-based political mobilization, undertaken with a morally idealistic yet pragmatic sensibility. Tangled human situations in which good and evil are mixed call for context-specific discernment and the hope that human solidarity and the inherent appeal of justice can overcome tribalistic fear and what Augustine called the *libido dominandi* (*lust for domination*). A resource for this second thesis is the encyclical *Laudato si'* on lack of political will and social change. ### The Conundrum of Deterrence As other chapters in this volume have argued, the use of nuclear weapons has never been approved in Catholic social teaching, although John Courtney Murray claimed that Pius XII did not rule it out. Certainly popes since Vatican II have spoken out strongly against the nuclear arms race not only because nuclear weapons (even so-called limited or tactical nuclear weapons) kill indiscriminately and leave long-lasting lethal effects but also because the disproportionate expenditures they require is already an injustice to the poor. Nevertheless, John Paul II and the US Catholic bishops stated that deterrence policies could provide an acceptable moral framework within which to work for disarmament as long as progress toward that goal was steady and significant. Not only has that criterion not been met, but heightened focus on successful deterrence has meant that refinement of nuclear systems and capacities has overtaken the idea that the ultimate aim is elimination. Despite conditional acceptance, nuclear deterrence has never been justifiable in reasoned ethical terms, a point well argued by another contributor to this book, Gregory Reichberg. The most fundamental problem is that if a threat to use nuclear weapons in response to a first attack by an adversary is to be credible, it must be backed by a serious, public, and demonstrable determination to follow through should an attack occur. That virtually requires a command and launch system that responds automatically to an incoming attack, eliminating any in via reconsideration of the consequences or morality of retaliation by those who are attacked first. It has been argued that just such a system is in place in the United States. Yet assurances in 2017 by the head of the Strategic Air Command, Gen. John Hyten, that he would not execute an "illegal" command from the president to launch a nuclear weapon open up a margin of ambiguity and of morality in what would otherwise be a policy failing several just war criteria, most blatantly noncombatant immunity and right intention. Surely popes and bishops have approved deterrence only on the tacit premise that nuclear weapons would not in fact be used. But this does not remove the moral ambiguity of the policy itself as explicitly rejecting that premise. Advocates of Catholic social teaching as well as officials such as General Hyten are in a morally anomalous situation insofar as to effect change, they must cooperate with or even participate in the institutions from which they dissent. "We are all involved in webs of relationships that enable people to achieve their good or bad ends, whether by good or bad means." Our entanglement in the web raises the prospect of morally wrong complicity with the bad ends and means. One tool of Catholic moral theology that is often invoked to alleviate such tensions is the principle of cooperation. As moral theologian Gerard Magill notes, "the purpose of the principle is to clarify how good moral decisions can be made, even when there is complicity in wrongdoing." One is culpable for the evil aspects or outcomes of the actions or policies with which one cooperates if one's contribution is formal in the sense that one approves the evil result. If one does not desire or approve the outcome, then one's action is considered material and not necessarily culpable. Whether material cooperation is culpable depends on how necessary it is to the execution of the evil effect. The principle of cooperation provides further distinctions to evaluate its connection to the evil caused by the principal actor. Degrees of material cooperation can be distinguished on the basis of whether the action is part of or overlaps with that of the principal agent or is distinct from and secondary to it (immediate and mediate cooperation). The latter sort of cooperation (mediate) can be further analyzed in terms of how close it is to the principal action in space or time or chain of causality (proximate or remote). If one's cooperation is material, mediate, and even remote (the evil aspect is not desired and is a remote and indirect consequence in time and space of the agent's own action, one that would be accomplished even without the agent's participation), then one is not morally guilty of the resulting evil. These distinctions do not amount to a clear formula for defining immoral complicity, but beyond ruling out deliberate participation in evil, they also post strong warning signals around close connections to it. The more close or direct the agent's cooperation, the weightier the justification must be. "In sum, the principle of cooperation provides a moral compass to distinguish immoral complicity from an honorable commitment to diminish evil by combining hope and realism in a world of compromised values and sinful actions." While the principle of cooperation is helpful in distinguishing degrees of culpability, moral theologians of the past have been too quick to see it as resolving moral quandaries and absolving the agents caught up in them. First, even agents who cannot on the whole be regarded as blameworthy still bear some responsibility for evil aspects of a morally justifiable action that was entangled in webs of good and evil. Second, remedial and compensatory action is required. These two provisions are recognized when nuclear deterrence is accepted only within a strong and overarching condemnation of violence as an acceptable path to peace and when remediating conditions are set, such as negotiations toward disarmament. Even so, and as Catholic social teaching instructs, any cooperation with policies enabling the continued possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons are morally fraught courses of action that properly result in uneasy consciences. Nuclear deterrence is a moral conundrum because it is both theoretically unjustified and practically necessary as a condition for negotiating arms reduction and nuclear abolition. ### A Practical Christian Response Probably the two most common and visible Christian ethical responses to nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence are to insist and demonstrate that they are incompatible with Bible, theology, and authoritative teaching and to urge international agreements and United Nations (UN) control over nuclear proliferation and use as well as over the current unstable possession of nuclear arms by at least eight nation-states. In addition, a smaller number of theorists and policy advisers are working on concrete paths to better international relations and more successful nuclear arms control. Such responses are necessary but inadequate. First, while it is certainly true that the very existence of nuclear arms contradicts the gospel, derivative theologies, and right reason, it is necessary to come to terms with the fact that no move can be made from these sources to policy changes without going through diverse political and military intermediaries (including voters) who have access to policy formation. Here we enter the realm of moral negotiation, compromise, and ambivalence where even finding an adequate language of engagement can be difficult. Second, international treaties and law are important and influential, a recent example being the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which the Holy See was one of the first states to sign and ratify. But the problem here is twofold: treaties are toothless unless they are ratified and implemented (ratification by fifty states would make the treaty law, and more than that number have signed it, but a much smaller number have ratified it, and none of the signers are states actually possessing nuclear weapons). In any event, though the UN has considerable moral authority, an asset of the treaty, it lacks enforcement mechanisms. The same is true of agreements between states and of national policy domestically. Bilateral agreements will not be observed and domestic policy will not be conformed to arms reduction if practical incentives and citizen buy-in are lacking. In the networked new world order, global governance must be handled in a way that is more fragmented yet alliance building, more bottom-up and midlevel-out than top-down. Domestic policy depends similarly on the consent of those domestic stakeholders whose support the government needs (whether voters or local elites), accomplished through alliance building. The Christian Catholic response must go beyond naming the injustices of nuclear weapons, calling for their abolition, protesting defense policy, or demanding (as papal Catholic social teaching is wont to do) that the UN step in and correct the errors of nation-states. All of these moves will be effective only if and because they manage to reshape the broader and deeper cultural imagination that is supportive of or resigned to the potential use of nuclear weapons. Apparently, few Americans buy the "nuclear taboo" and indeed prioritize protecting American troops and interests even if it means killing millions of foreign noncombatants. The biggest and most important challenge is to rally the worldwide institutional presence of Catholicism and the civil society and professional roles of its members to instigate cultural and worldview changes in the social environments that are maintaining the present dangerous and immoral nuclear scenario. We find a model in *Laudato si'*, where Pope Francis identifies the tendency of UN summits to produce an "ineffectual outcome document" (e.g., on climate change) due to the opposition of "countries which place their national interests above the global common good." Pope Francis neither expects the UN to take control, anticipates that a top-down Vatican document will command the attention of Catholics everywhere, nor limits his sights to Catholics and Catholic practice. Instead, he cites seventeen or more local bishops' conferences, urges Catholics and non-Catholic partners to build momentum through public education, and draws on vision-expanding resources such as poetry, prayer, and a YouTube video. Pope Francis has called nonviolence "a style of politics for peace." This style involves symbolic strategies of conversion, such as the prayer vigil he held for peace in St. Peter's Square in 2013 and the photo of a small boy at Nagasaki that he shared with journalists because "it is more moving than 1000 words." A politics for peace requires pragmatic creativity that can find workable solutions to looming dangers and intractable conflicts, including (as General Hyten himself proposes) international diplomacy in an atmosphere of respect, with prioritization of mutual benefits over threats and demands. Speaking to the UN in 2017 on negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons, Pope Francis recognized that globalization and interdependence mean that responses to the nuclear weapons threat must be "collective and concerted,” involving not only nation-states but the military, private business, religious communities, civil societies, and international organizations. Later that same year, he explicitly condemned simple possession of nuclear weapons and praised the "healthy realism" motivating the "alliance between civil society, states, international organizations, churches, academics and groups of experts" that had come together to make and back the 2017 UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. It is the strength of this alliance and its ability to infiltrate the cultures and politics of nuclear-possessing states that will define the practical impact of the treaty and the world's (non?)nuclear future. Catholics in partnership with like-minded Christian denominations, religious traditions, humanitarian organizations, governmental representatives at multiple levels, and political movements can and must do more to make what Pope Francis terms "effective and inclusive" progress toward a world without nuclear weapons. Networking at every level of society, they must prioritize nonviolent means of conflict transformation, counter xenophobic politics with a politics of solidarity, and make national and international leaders more accountable to constituencies that are newly energized against the dangerous reality of nuclear proliferation. **Notes** 1. This was confirmed by a Stanford University study in 2017. See Clifton B. Parker, "Public Opinion Unlikely to Curb a US President's Use of Nuclear Weapons in War, Stanford Scholar Finds" Stanford News, August 8, 2017. See similar results in "U.S.-Japan Opinion Survey, 2017" University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, January 8, 2018, https://criticalissues.umd.edu/sites/criticalissues.umd.edu/files/us-japan_opinion_survey.pdf, presented at the Brookings Institution, January 8, 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/fp_20180108_north_korea_transcript.pdf. 2. In July 2017, a majority of the world's nations adopted an agreement to ban nuclear weapons. See International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, "Signature/Ratification Status of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons", http://www.icanw.org/the-treaty/. 3. See Ariel Edwards-Levy, "Voters Say Health Care Is a Top Issue in the 2018 Election-A Good Sign for Democrats", Huffington Post, April 6, 2018. Edwards-Levy also names and ranks other voter priorities such as immigration and the economy. 4. John Courtney Murray, *We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition* (New York: Doubleday, 1964), 243-53. 5. See John Paul II, "Message to the UN Second Special Session on Disarmament," June 7, 1982; and National Conference of Catholic Bishops, "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,” Washington, USCC, 1983. 6. Gerard Powers, "From Nuclear Deterrence to Disarmament: Evolving Catholic Perspectives," Arms Control Association, May 2015. 7. Gregory M. Reichberg, "The Morality of Nuclear Deterrence: A Reassessment," in *Nuclear Deterrence: An Ethical Perspective*, ed. Mathias Nebel and Gregory M. Reichberg, 9-31 (Chambésy, Switzerland: Caritas in Veritate Foundation, 2015). See also Reichberg's chapter "Philosophical Debate on Nuclear Deterrence" in the present volume. 8. Bruce Blair, "What Exactly Would It Mean to Have Trump's Finger on the Nuclear Button?" Politico, June 11, 2016.