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Is Nuclear Deterrence Paradoxical?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2010
Extract
A paradox is a situation in which two seemingly equally rational lines of thought lead to contradictory conclusions. A moral paradox is a situation where the employment of diverse moral principles, each of which is at least intuitively acceptable to roughly the same degree, leads to radically different moral assessments of one and the same action. In his “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence” Gregory Kavka argues that such moral paradoxes lurk in the concept of deterrence and further that the present world situation of mutual nuclear deterrence may well provide a concrete illustration of these paradoxes. That deterrence can involve paradox may well be true, but what I wish to consider here is whether the case of nuclear deterrence is in fact an instance of “paradoxical deterrence”.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1984 , pp. 187 - 198
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- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984
References
1 Kavka, Gregory, “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence”, Journal of Philosophy (June 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: reprinted in Narveson, J., ed., Moral Issues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Page references are to the Narveson volume.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 73.
3 Ibid., 75.
4 Ibid., 79.
5 Ibid., 80.
6 Kavka, Gregory, “Deterrence, Utility and Rational Choice”, Theory and Decision 12 (1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Of course, the application of such principles to the situation as we have presented it is a bit ludicrous. No attempt whatsoever has been made to consider the probabilities of the outcomes given the possible strategies, and these are crucial. But note that if we were utterly lacking in information as to these probabilities the dominance argument would take on some force. Kavka is well aware of, and exploits, the fact that we do have some intuitive idea of the conditional probabilities here in making his argument in “Deterrence, Utility and Rational Choice”. But he wishes to stress that we do not have any reliable knowledge of the actual value of the probability of nuclear war. This lack of knowledge is what precludes the straightforward application of the expected utility principle of rational choice.
8 By, forexample, Hockaday, Arthur, “In Defence of Deterrence”, in Goodwin, G., ed., Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence (London: Croom Helm, 1982).Google Scholar
9 Kavka, “Deterrence, Utility”, 50.
10 Fora discussion of this see Lackey's, Douglas “Missiles and Morals: A Utilitarian Look at Nuclear Deterrence”, Philosophy and Public Affairs 11/3 (1982); reprinted (abridged) in Narveson, , ed., Moral Issues.Google Scholar
11 Kavka, “Deterrence, Utility”, 55.
12 Also, a policy which eliminated the risk to “foreign” (or, indeed, “internal”) innocents might be acceptable or more acceptable. This may not, however, be technically feasible, although perhaps the neutron bomb holds out some hope for this option since this bomb's limited range and blast effects could conceivably permit deterrence threats limited to selected targets such as military and governmental, without any attendant threat to external innocents. The thought of only the leaders, generals, and military machinery being at risk is a relatively pleasant, if implausible, option to the present massive general and indiscriminate threat.
13 I would like to thank the anonymous referees of Dialogue for criticisms of an earlier version of this paper; their suggestions forced me to try to improve it.