Doomsday Deterrence, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
In January 2023, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock—a symbolic estimation of humanity’s proximity to complete annihilation—to 90 seconds to midnight. After the Cold War ended, the dangers of nuclear war became less salient to much of the world. Yet many now fear that the risk of nuclear war is increasing in light of Russia’s implicit threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the proliferation of nuclear weapons by North Korea, and rapid developments in artificial intelligence that could facilitate the development and use of nuclear weapons.
Historically, nuclear deterrence—in which one state credibly threatens to respond to a nuclear attack with a nuclear response of its own—has been the dominant strategy to mitigate the risk of nuclear war. The idea underlying this strategy is that the threat of significant retaliation—perhaps even complete destruction—provides a very strong disincentive for any state to ever use nuclear weapons. Proponents of nuclear deterrence thus argue that—perhaps counterintuitively—credibly threatening to use nuclear weapons is actually the best way to ensure that nuclear weapons are never used. Yet this strategy raises a host of vexing ethical questions.
Some defenders of nuclear deterrence claim that, in principle, it could be morally permissible to respond to a nuclear attack by using nuclear weapons against military targets. Others argue that even if actually using nuclear weapons is always wrong, merely threatening to retaliate with nuclear weapons—or leading other states to believe or suspect that one might retaliate with nuclear weapons—is a morally permissible form of deterrence.
Those who categorically oppose the use of nuclear weapons reply that using nuclear weapons is never a proportionate military response, and that it is difficult to ensure that using nuclear weapons against military targets will not inadvertently harm civilians. Moreover, many argue that using nuclear weapons against any target weakens the nuclear taboo and makes escalatory uses of nuclear weapons more likely in the future. Some critics contend that even threatening to use nuclear weapons is morally wrong.
Yet proponents of nuclear deterrence point out that this strategy has been remarkably effective not only at preventing nuclear war but at preventing direct armed conflicts between great powers. Because there do not appear to be any feasible ways of achieving complete nuclear disarmament in the foreseeable future, they argue, continuing to employ some version of the strategy of nuclear deterrence is (at least for now) our least bad option.
Discussion Questions
If performing some action would be morally wrong, is it ever morally permissible to intend to perform the action, threaten to perform it, or lead others to believe or suspect that you might perform it?
When the most likely way of averting a morally catastrophic outcome requires acting in a way that violates a moral rule, should you ever perform this action?
If there were a nuclear holocaust causing most life on earth to go extinct, would it be bad primarily because it would kill currently existing individuals, or primarily because it precludes the existence—and potential flourishing—of future individuals, civilizations, and/or non-human species?