A Resolution Against Genuine Resolve

In the game of nuclear deterrence, holds a position of particular importance. A nation’s ability to convince other nations of its willingness to use its arsenal forms the bedrock of instilling a mutually assured destruction mentality in its foes. Resolve can accurately be considered a necessary tool in achieving this objective; demonstrating resolution to use nuclear weapons in the event of an attack may be the only way to deter rogue nations from aggressive action.

[su_pullquote align=”right”]Once the missiles are in the air, the conflict has for all intensive purposes ended and America has been destroyed.[/su_pullquote]The deterrent power of resolve arises not from an aggressive first strike posture, but from an asserted and proved determination to launch retaliatory nuclear missiles in response to an attack initiated by an enemy. But retaliatory nuclear strikes raise considerable ethical concerns. At the point after an enemy has already launched nuclear weapons, retaliatory strikes may have no military value. Of course, this assertion fails to hold true in cases when the nuclear aggressor is a state with a relatively small arsenal, like North Korea. If a country with the capacity to wipe out the entire United States, like Russia, initiates a nuclear conflict, however, retaliating serves no real military purpose. Once the missiles are in the air, the conflict has for all intensive purposes ended and America has been destroyed.[su_pullquote]At the point after an enemy has already launched nuclear weapons, retaliatory strikes may have no military value.[/su_pullquote]

In such a case, it seems that a President or other military official has no just grounds to respond. If it’s too late to save the United States, there seems no persuasive reason to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Russians in response. Some might argue that our enemies would in some sense “deserve” to be killed as a kind of tit-for-tat punishment for killing Americans. Nuclear weapons do not simply kill those who made the decision to launch, however. Rather, in order to punish Putin for his atrocious act, the United States would have to destroy hundreds of thousands with him.[su_pullquote]In order to punish Putin for his atrocious act, the United States would have to destroy hundreds of thousands with him.[/su_pullquote]

While I’m inclined to reject punitive justice in nearly all cases, surely nobody would defend a view of punitive justice as being so important as to justify massive additional innocent deaths in its name. An objector might further contend that because governments represent their people, all citizens in an aggressor country become complicit. Even in a democratic country, this conclusion would be suspect; surely the minority groups who did not vote for those in power should bear no responsibility. In authoritarian countries like Russia, the claim that citizens bear responsibility for the atrocities perpetrated by the tyrannical government that rules over them deserves no serious consideration.

A more plausible defense of retaliatory strikes might be to appeal to the military value of maintaining genuine resolve. The military necessity of projecting resolve may only possible if leaders genuinely resolve to retaliate to future strikes, granting a kind of post facto justification to retaliatory strikes. Some moral philosophers have suggested that bad acts may be justified if they result necessarily from the formation of good intentions and motivations. For example, we say that mothers who adopt a strong motivation to protect their children have acted rightly. If this good motivation causes a mother to sacrifice strangers to save her child, this act should not be thought of as bad because it was actually entailed by the good action of forming a protective motivation concerning her child.

I suspect this strategy would be the one taken by the vast majority of defenders of retaliatory nuclear strikes. It seems intuitively correct to say that if displaying resolve requires a genuine intention to follow through, and displaying resolve is good, following through cannot be bad. I’m intrigued by this possibility. The philosophical reasoning seems strong and potentially persuasive, although I’m not willing to place myself firmly on one side of the debate. That being said, I think this defense of nuclear retaliation has a more serious empirical problem. It relies on the premise that projecting resolve requires genuine resolve, and little evidence seems capable of supporting this claim.

Projecting resolve simply requires that Russia or other adversaries believe that we will retaliate to a nuclear strike. Given how adept people are at lying and acting, American leaders should have no problem putting on an effective show of resolve. This show need not completely assure Russia that our resolve is genuine, nor could it ever. Rather, it must only convince Russia that the possibility of a retaliation is great enough that the potential costs of a nuclear strike would be greater than the benefits. Given that US intelligence services frequently promulgate mistruths to our adversaries and foreign policy always requires some level of deceit, feigning genuine resolve does not seem to be so impossible a task as to justify the human rights travesty that would result from retaliating to a nuclear strike. This position remains vastly unpopular. According to the Roper Center, only 22 percent of Americans said that nuclear weapons should never be used. Yet despite this overwhelming consensus, there does not seem to be any particularly persuasive argument denying the moral evil in even a retaliatory strike.

Connor Warshauer ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at cwarshauer@wustl.edu.