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Reason and Nuclear Deterrence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alan Gewirth
Alan Gewirth*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL60637, U.S.A.
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Extract

The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union has reached a stage of unparalleled destructive potential. Fueling the race are not only an immense series of mighty technological developments but also each side's unremitting quest for both security and power. Thus, each side is animated by intense competitiveness with and deep distrust of the other.

My primary purpose in this essay is not to examine the historical background or the current status of this murderous competition but rather to inquire into what can and should be done to avoid its dangers. For this purpose, we must make the most intensive possible use of reason. For reason gives us the surest way to attain truth, including practical truth about what ought to be done in the various predicaments that confront human beings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 12: Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence, and Disarmament , 1986 , pp. 129 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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References

1 See Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1978),Google Scholar chs. 2-5; ‘The Rationality of Reasonableness,’ Synthese 57 (1983), 225-47; ‘The Epistemology of Human Rights,’ Social Philosophy and Policy 1,2 (1984), 1-24.

2 See Frei, Daniel, Risks of Unintentional Nuclear War (Totowa, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun & Co. 1983),Google Scholar esp. ch. 4.

3 This distinction has been upheld by Krol, John Cardinal and Connery, John R., as reported by McCormick, Richard A., ‘Nuclear Deterrence and the Problem of Intention: A Review of the Positions,’ in Murnion, Philip J., ed., Catholics and Nuclear War (New York: Crossroads 1983), 173, 174.Google Scholar

4 For this distinction, see Brodie, Bernard, War and Politics (New York: Macmillan 1973), 404Google Scholar (quoted in Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars [New York: Basic Books 1977], 281Google Scholar) and Sterba, James P., ‘How to Achieve Nuclear Deterrence Without Threatening Nuclear Destruction,’ in Sterba, James P., ed., The Ethics of War and Nuclear Deterrence (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1985), 155-68.Google Scholar

5 See Hollenback, David, Nuclear Ethics (New York: Paulist Press 1983), 73, 83.Google Scholar

6 On this principle, see Donagan, Alan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1977), 158–164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 On the distinction between distributive and aggregative consequentialism, see Gewirth, Alan, Human Rights: Essays on Justification and Applications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1982), 251-3,Google Scholar 335; also Reason and Morality, 215-16, 296, 325, 327.

8 See Reason and Morality, 343-4.

9 Ramsey, Paul, as quoted in Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 272Google Scholar

10 For relevant quotations from National Security Council documents, see Draper, Theodore, Present History (New York: Vintage Books 1984),Google Scholar 36 ff.

11 Schell, Jonathan, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Avon Books 1982), 226Google Scholar

12 See Lackey, Douglas, ‘Missiles and Morals: A Utilitarian Look at Nuclear Deterrence,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 11 (1982), 189–231.Google Scholar

13 See Dewey, John, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston: Beacon Press 1948), chs. 7–8;Google ScholarThe Public and Its Problems (New York: Henry Holt and Co. 1927), 84 ff. See also Popper, Karl, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1957).Google Scholar For an extensive discussion of the ‘strategy of disjointed incrementalism,’ see Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision (New York: Free Press 1963), chs. 5–6.Google Scholar

14 Osgood, Charles E., An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press 1962), ch. 5Google Scholar

15 Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books 1984), chs. 2–3;Google ScholarDyson, Freeman, Weapons and Hope (New York: Harper and Row 1984), 274Google Scholar ff.

16 See Hardin, Russell, Collective Action (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univer· sity Press 1982), 210.Google Scholar

17 See Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, 8-10.

18 See Smoke, Richard, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. 1984), 243Google Scholar ff.

19 See Smoke, , National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma, 152, 161,Google Scholar 175 ff. See also Freedman, Lawrence, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's Press 1981),Google Scholar ch. 24.

20 See Turco, R. P., et al., ‘Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions,’ Science 222 (23 December 1982), 1283-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Ehrlich, Paul R., Sagan, Carl, et. al., The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War (New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1984).Google Scholar

21 Sam Nunn and Warner, John W., ‘Reducing the Risk of Nuclear War,’ The Washington Quarterly 7 (1984), 3–7Google Scholar

22 Harvard Nuclear Study Group, Living with Nuclear Weapons (New York: Bantam Books 1983), 5