Suchergebnisse

Within days after Presidential Directive No. 59 was leaked to the New York Times (August 6, 1980) and reported as "a new strategy for nuclear war," it was under attack by dedicated arms controllers. Among these were Jeremy J. Stone of the Federation of American Scientists, Herbert Scoville of the Arms Control Association, and Bernard T. Feld of MIT. All three lamented the apparent shift away from making population centers the primary targets of nuclear weapons on both sides—the dogma of mutual assured destruction (MAD)—that had appeared to ensure stability by making nuclear war unthinkable.

Can security in the NATO/Warsaw Pact area be achieved without nuclear-weapons, or with significantly reduced reliance on them?" Many religious leaders and other concerned citizens in Europe and America are asking this question while NATO political and military authorities are deliberating about how NATO should improve its nuclear posture in Europe (the so-called theater nuclear posture).No one can be smug or even satisfied about depending on nuclear weapons for security. One hardly need recount the destructive power of individual nuclear weapons (up to twenty-five or fifty times the explosive power of the bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) or count the thousands of warheads in current nuclear inventories on both sides.

Confusion and a deep division within the American public over die value of an anti-ballistic missile (A.B.M.) defense system was reflected in the midsummer vote in the Senate to authorize about $900 million for expenditure in fiscal year 1970 for President Nixon's Safeguard A.B.M. system.During the debate that preceded the Senate vote, public and religious presses carried many articles that presented forceful arguments against the Safeguard program. These seem to boil down to two principal issues of moral concern: it is alleged, first, that the Safeguard A.B.M. would introduce a destabilizing element into the strategic nuclear balance just at the time we are attempting to enter negotiations with the Soviet. Union for limitation on strategic armaments; second, that deployment of the Safeguard system would be wasteful of national resources needed for pressing domestic problems.

It is sometimes suggested that nuclear weapons technology has made the world safe for "wars of national liberation." I don't happen to accept this proposition, but I do acknowledge that "wars of national liberation" are a prominent part of both the declaratory and action policies of the Communist world. The free world does not have the option of declining to respond to such wars. This is sufficient reason for attempts to assay the ethical issues they raise.Wars of liberation have been called "political wars." I assume two different things are intended by this: on the one hand, that they have a larger political component than other wars in that they do emphasize or circumvent some of the more typical military missions such as seizing and holding territory; on the other hand, as compared with nuclear war, they seem more nearly to be. compatible with Clausewitx's dictum that war is a continuation of policy. There are difficulties with both notions, but I do acknowledge that wars of liberation are intimately related to the political purposes of their sponsors and that they do generally employ means aimed directly at political power and try to postpone or avoid military engagements as the determinants of their outcome.