The new, nonmoral
nuclear disarmament debate
Adam Mount, Georgetown University
Chatham House: 5 June, 2013
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
The new, nonmoral
nuclear disarmament debate
in America
Adam Mount, Georgetown University
Chatham House: 5 June, 2013
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
Disarmament activism was widespread
•
•
1945-54: Principled advocates—world
federalists and atomic scientists—pressured
Western governments directly
1954-63: A mass movement forms,
especially in Europe.
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–
–
•
1966-75: Movement silent. The Vietnam War
attention, groups disbanded.
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•
1959: 10 million in Japan
1962: 150,000 from AWE
1963: 500,000 in Greece
1964: 500,000 in twenty countries
1975-89: Movement revives gradually, mass
protest now coupled with sophisticated public
discourse.
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–
1980: 80,000 Trafalgar Sq.
1981-2: 700,000? in New York
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•
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400,000 Amsterdam
200,000 Florence
200,000+ Tokyo
200,000+ Bonn
150,000 London
100,000 Milan
50,000 Paris
25,000 Chicago
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
Approval of nuclear disarmament (U.S.)
100
90
80
% approval
70
60
Multilateral
50
Unilateral
40
30
20
10
0
Apr-38
Jan-52
Sep-65
May-79
Jan-93
Oct-06
Jun-20
Year
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
Moral arguments
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•
Moral arguments give categorical,
other-regarding reasons for action.
Circumstantial considerations:
–
–
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Other norms of nuclear restraint have a
moral valence: use taboo; testing has
public health concerns
Film and literature depicting nuclear war
focuses moral deliberation
Religious advocacy
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•
Quester, Wohlstetter, Nye,
Mearsheimer, Bull, Jervis, Hardin,
Sagan, Russett, and Mandelbaum
wrote about nuclear ethics
Morgenthau, Glaser, Waltz, Schelling,
Sagan, Holloway wrote on nuclear
disarmament
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
HARM
Doing harm is morally wrong, especially to
innocents and noncombatants.
A state that insists on maintaining a nuclear
arsenal infringes on the rights of the citizens it
is intending to protect.
•
•
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Walzer: "Anyone committed to the
distinction between combatants and
noncombatants is bound to be appalled by
the spectre of destruction evoked, and
purposely evoked in deterrence theory."
Just War Theory
Lee: Nuclear deterrence is hostageholding; Kennan called this “a blasphemy,
an indignity.”
•
•
Morgenthau: "The great issues of nuclear
strategy… cannot even be the object of
meaningful debate… which the theory of
democracy [assumes].”
Schell: “what it says about us and what it
does to us that we are preparing our own
extermination.” “We are the authors of that
extinction.”
Kennan: “This entire preoccupation with
nuclear war is a form of illness…a
readiness to commit suicide for fear of
death.”
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
INTENT
EXTINCT
Deterrence rests on a conditional intention to
do immoral acts.
Above and beyond the threat to existing
individuals, it is wrong to risk the destruction
of civilization.
•
•
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McMahan: intentions “[reflect] the agent’s
values by showing what he is prepared to
do.”
Stein: “a deracination from humanity, and
from the humanity within ourselves.”
Markus: “in a double sense, our very
humanity is at stake.”
•
Schell: “The mind, overwhelmed by the
thought of the deaths of the billions of
living people, [staggers] back without
realizing that behind this already
ungraspable loss there lies the separate
loss of the future generations.”
Kennan: “This civilization is not the
property of our generation alone. We are
not the proprietors of it; we are only the
custodians…who are we, then, the actors,
to take upon ourselves the responsibility of
destroying this framework, or even risking
its destruction?”
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
PEACE
COOP.
Steps taken on nuclear disarmament can have
instrumental benefits—specifically, on war
onset.
States have an obligation to behave in ways
consistent with the preferences and interests of
other states.
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•
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Urey: “the atomic bomb is not the
fundamental problem at all… the
fundamental problem is war. If there is
another war, atomic bombs will be used.”
Langmuir: “We may someday come to
regard the atomic bomb as the discovery
that made it possible for mankind to bring
an end to all war.”
•
Kant exhorts us to take others’ ends as our
own.
Obligation to fairness
•
Obligation to allies’ security
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
SAFE
National defense is a moral imperative, the
gravity of which justifies the practice of
deterrence.
•
•
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Walzer: “We threaten evil in order not to
do it, and the doing of it would be so
terrible that the threat seems in
comparison to be morally defensible."
Will: “a great enough good to justify
involvement with nuclear weapons.”
Quester: “to call a spade a spade and stop
pretending that we are trying to disarm our
adversary when we are rather trying to
torture him… perhaps we ought simply to
adjust our morality.”
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
The current debate: ethics
“We believe that nuclear-weapons states have
political and moral obligations to seek to
eliminate all nuclear arsenals. These
obligations stem from Article VI of the NPT,
which specifies that parties should pursue
negotiations leading to complete nuclear
disarmament, the 1995 negotiations over the
indefinite extension of the treaty, and the basic
principle that a nuclear order cannot be
maintained and strengthened over time on the
basis of inequity. Double standards on matters
as materially and psychologically important as
nuclear weapons will produce instability and
non-compliance, creating enforcement crises
that increase the risk of conflict and nuclear
anarchy.”
—Perkovich & Acton, p. 16
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
The current debate: threats and needs
“Bilateral relations between the two largest
nuclear powers, the United States and Russia,
are frayed, and there are continuing difficulties
in effectively addressing emerging nuclear
threats in North Korea and Iran, punctuated
recently by a test explosion in North Korea.
Combined with the dangers of suicidal terrorist
groups, the growing number of nations with
nuclear arms and differing motives, aims and
ambitions poses very high and unpredictable
risks.
“The actual existing threats… cannot be
resolved using our nuclear arsenals.
The world is spending vast sums on producing
and maintaining nuclear arms…”
—Global Zero report
Our age has stolen fire from the gods. Can we
confine this awesome power to peaceful
purposes before it consumes us?” —FH, 2007
“New nuclear states do not have the benefit of
years of step-by-step safeguards put in effect
during the Cold War to prevent nuclear
accidents, misjudgments, or unauthorized
launches.”
—FH, 2013
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
Conclusions
• Ethical content drained from the disarmament debate along with war
• Disarmament debate / obligation is technical and political
• Ethical considerations being historically important motives, the current
debate is disoriented
• Ethical thinking, and the debate, has not been updated to account for
changed strategic conditions
– The prospect of widespread HARM and certainly EXTINCTion have diminished
– SAFE has inverted, but the danger is not as acute
– INTENT is more pressing (Schell)
• Arguments from threat (HARM, EXTINCT, SAFE) are less compelling
• Arguments from identity (INTENT, PEACE) are stronger, but silent
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013
Implications
• Disarmament activism is effectively silenced in politics
– Smaller and less motivated
– Congressional interest is low
• We cannot afford to debate disarmament without a firm grasp of reasons
– A debate about an aspirational goal is about an end
– Considering means without ends will lead to myopic recommendations and
take the burden off opponents
• Explore contemporary ways to frame arguments from identity
– Not zero-sum
– Draw on and fortify the taboo
– Reflect extant strategic realities
Mount:
CHATHAM HOUSE
5 June, 2013