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Taking the Bishops Seriously

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Susan Moller Okin
Susan Moller Okin
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Abstract

The U.S. Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on war and peace argues that nuclear deterrence is conditionally morally acceptable. Their concluding message is therefore not an exhortation to nuclear pacifism. The author argues, first, that the bishops' conditional moral acceptance of deterrence does not follow from their premises and the evidence presented to them; second, that this justification of deterrence, even if consistently arrived at, does not sanction current U.S. deterrence policy; third, that the conditions the bishops place on deterrence are incompatible with the type of deterrence they attempt to justify; and fourth, that there is no serious attempt currently being made to meet these conditions. The moral obligation that follows for those who take the bishops' principles seriously is nuclear conscientious objection.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , July 1984 , pp. 527 - 554
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 The pastoral letter, entitled “The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,” has been reprinted as the appendix to Castelli, Jim, The Bishops and the Bomb: Waging Peace in a Nuclear Age (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1983).Google Scholar As this is probably its most accessible form, it will be cited throughout this paper. Permission to reprint excerpts from the letter has graciously been given by the United States Catholic Conference, which has requested the inclusion of the following acknowledgment: “Excerpts from ‘The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response,’ copyright © 1983 by the United States Catholic Conference. All rights reserved. A copy of the complete pastoral letter may be ordered from the Office of Publishing Services, U.S.C.C., 1312 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C., 20005.”

Manatt, Charles T., chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is quoted in The New York Times, September 21, 1983Google Scholar, A15, as saying that the bishops called the principle of deterrence “the most dangerous dimension of the nuclear arms race.” In fact what they say is quite different: “Deterrence is at the heart of the U.S.-Soviet relationship, currently the most dangerous dimension of the nuclear arms race” (712). Bundy, McGeorge (The New York Times Book Review, October 9, 1983, 28)Google Scholar says of the bishops that they “accept deterrence and reject nuclear war,” a “position which requires approval of the very threat whose execution would be an appalling confession of failure.” I discuss this somewhat inaccurate representation of the bishops' position below.

2 “The Challenge of Peace,” 190 and 238.

3 Castelli (fn. 1); Stein, Walter et al., Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience (London: Merlin Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Voorst, L. Bruce van, “The Churches and Nuclear Deterrence,” Foreign Affairs 61 (No. 3, 1983), 827–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Castelli, 105–9, 118–19, 127–30.

5 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, War and Peace, second draft of a proposed pastoral letter on war, armaments, and peace, special supplement to The Chicago Catholic, 1982, 9A. See Sher, George, “The U.S. Bishops' Position on Nuclear Deterrence: A Moral Assessment,” Maclean, Douglas, ed., The Security Gamble; Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984)Google Scholar, for an interesting discussion of the problems inherent in this argument.

6 Jim Castelli gives a good, brief account of the theological furore that was provoked by the first and second drafts of the pastoral letter because of their implicit distinction between action and intention and their uses of consequentialism in justifying nuclear deterrence as an evil means to be tolerated for the accomplishment of a good end. As some of the critics pointed out, enormous difficulties could be caused for Catholic ethical doctrine by the setting of such a precedent (Castelli, [fn. 1], 102–4).

7 Bundy (fn. 1).

8 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 190.

9 Kavka, Gregory, “Some Paradoxes of Deterrence,” The Journal of Philosophy 75 (June 1978), 285–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See fn. 54 below.

10 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 228–29.

11 Ibid., 231 (emphasis added).

12 Hehir, J. Bryan, “Moral Issues in Deterrence Policy,” lecture delivered April 9, 1983Google Scholar, at the University of Maryland.

13 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1) 231 and 239.

14 Ibid., 198 and 272.

15 Ibid., 233.

16 Ibid., 234.

17 Ibid. (emphases added).

18 Castelli (fn. 1), 148.

19 Ibid., 169–70.

20 Ibid., 21, 101 and 136–37.

21 On Bishop Gumbleton's position, for example, see Ibid., 112–13.

22 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 231 (emphasis added).

23 Ibid., n. 61 (emphases added).

24 Ibid., 231.

25 Ibid., 236 and n. 73; Ball, Desmond, “U.S. Strategic Forces: How Would They be Used?” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), 31–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Okin, Susan Moller, “The Moral Acceptability of Nuclear Deterrence: A Critique,” Politics (Journal of the Australasian Political Studies Association) 18 (November 1983), 16–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 198.

27 Ibid., 239 and n. 81.

28 Ibid., 240.

29 Ibid., emphasis added.

30 Ibid., 243.

31 Castelli (fn. 1), 145.

32 Ramsey, Paul, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Scribner's, 1968), esp. 302–5.Google Scholar

33 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 244.

34 Ibid., 269.

35 Ibid.

36 The New York Times, “The Week in Review,” May 8, 1983, E5.

37 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 241.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., 235.

40 Ibid., 241–42.

41 Ibid., 237 and 241; see also 244.

42 Castelli (fn. 1), 181–82.

43 Anscombe, G.E.M., “War and Murder,” in Stein, Walter et al., Nuclear Weapons and Christian Conscience (London: Merlin Press, 1961), 43–62Google Scholar, at 57. See also Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 278–83.Google Scholar

44 Barnet, Richard, “A Reporter at Large: The Search for National Security,” The New Yorker, April 27, 1981Google Scholar, at 62; see also Posen, Barry R. and Evera, Stephen Van, “Defense Policy and the Reagan Administration: Departure from Containment,” International Security 8 (Summer 1983), 3–45, at 12–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), 28.

46 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 190 and 238.

47 Sigal, Leon V., “Warming to the Freeze,” Foreign Policy 48 (Fall 1982), 54–65; at 56–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nye, Joseph S., “Restarting Arms Control” Foreign Policy 47 (Summer 1982), 98–113, at 106–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mention should also be made at this point of deterrent threats to “decapitate” the enemy by destroying its top political and military leadership, in the hope of paralyzing its retaliatory capacity. This strategy, which is currently part of U.S. targeting plans, is at least as destabilizing as traditional counterforce deterrent strategy and renders war termination virtually impossible. See Ball (fn. 25), 56; Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), 27; cf. Steinbruner, John D., “Nuclear Decapitation,” Foreign Policy (No. 45, 1981/1982), 16–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Barnet (fn. 44), 64; Nye, 103–4; Scoville, Herbert, “Flexible Madness”? Foreign Policy (No. 14, 1974), 164–77, at 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sloan, Stanley R. and Gray, Robert C., Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control (New York: Foreign Policy Association Headline Series No. 261, November 1982), at 41–42.Google Scholar

49 Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), 28. The Trident II, however, is a counterforce weapon that does not involve this problem, though it is still highly destabilizing, because it will put at risk so much of the Soviets' retaliatory capacity.

50 Rosenberg, David Alan, “The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960,” International Security 7 (Spring 1983), 3–71, esp. 54–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 Brown, Seyom, The Faces of Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 550Google Scholar; Scoville (fn. 48), 164–66.

52 Brown, 550.

53 The basis of the Reagan administration's claim that the Soviet Union now possesses strategic superiority is the argument that, faced by a limited counterforce attack by the Soviets, the United States would be able only to retaliate with a counterpopulation strike, thus inviting counterpopulation retaliation and devastation. But quite apart from the question of the absurdity of any such Soviet risk-taking, it seems that any proposed “cure” to the problem would only set off inevitable further escalation. As Jeremy Stone of the Federation of American Scientists has recently summarized the problem:

If the U.S. does go ahead with Trident II [i.e., to give us invulnerable counterforce retaliatory capacity], it will present a threat to Soviet ICBMs and bombers simultaneously; when Soviet sea-based counterforce takes place, the same thing will happen to the U.S. in reverse. The window of vulnerability argument will be heard again in the land and with a vengeance, (F.A.S. Public Interest Report 36 [May 1983], 1Google Scholar; see also 3–4).

See also Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), 12–14.

54 “The Challenge of Peace,” 190 and 241 (emphasis added). Michael Walzer comes to a conclusion about deterrence that is very similar to that espoused by the bishops in the second draft of the pastoral letter, though abandoned in the final version (Walzer [fn. 43], 269–83). He argues that although deterrence cannot be adjudged morally acceptable in the context of just-war theory, it is the least evil of the alternative evil courses of action currently available to us. But his justification of deterrence is just as conditional as the bishops'; because it is an evil, we must seek to avoid it. Since it has been our failure to control the inception, growth, and spread of nuclear weapons that has rendered deterrence necessary, we are under a serious moral obligation to halt and reverse these failures.

Similarly, Gregory Kavka's defense of nuclear deterrence is conditional, though less explicitly, on the pursuit of arms control (Kavka, fn. 9). He argues that, in spite of our normal adherence to the moral premise that to intend even conditionally to do what one knows to be wrong is itself wrong, there exists, in certain conditions, a subset of intentions—“deterrent intentions”—that it is right to form, even though the action intended is inherently evil. I cannot enter into the details of Kavka's argument here. What is significant in this context is the fact that his justification of deterrence, no less than the bishops' and Walzer's, depends upon the serious pursuit of arms control. For the “certain conditions” under which Kavka claims that deterrent intentions are justified must be such that “the defender's forming this intention is likely necessary, and very likely sufficient, to prevent a seriously harmful and unjust offense” (290). Now, we have no good way of telling whether or for how long nuclear deterrence will be sufficient to prevent nuclear war. But we cannot even claim that it is necessary unless we have tried and continue to try all other alternatives. The foremost of these, it seems, is a serious and sustained effort to achieve bilateral disarmament.

55 Quoted in Castelli (fn. 1), 99.

56 Ibid. 116 and 123.

57 The New York Times, “The Week in Review” (fn. 36), E5.

58 The Boston Globe, November 18, 1983, 1.

59 Quoted from an account by Bishop Reilly of the meeting between the bishops' committee and Weinberger, in Castelli (fn. 1), 83.

60 Johansen, Robert C., “How to Start Ending the Arms Race,” World Policy Journal 1 (Fall 1983), 71–100.Google Scholar See also Brownstein, Ronald and Easton, Nina, Reagan's Ruling Class (New York: Pantheon, 1983)Google Scholar, chap. 6; Caldwell, Lawrence T. and Legvold, Robert, “Reagan through Soviet Eyes,” Foreign Policy 52 (Fall 1983), 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44).

61 “The Challenge of Peace” (fn. 1), 241–43.

62 Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), esp. 23–29.

63 Lodal, Jan M., “Finishing Start,” Foreign Policy 48 (Fall 1982), 66–81, at 66–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nye (fn. 47), 104–5; Posen and Van Evera, 44; Sigal (fn. 47), 63–64.

64 Posen and Van Evera (fn. 44), 42.

65 Castelli (fn. 1), 43 and 79.

66 See fn. 54 above on Kavka's position.

67 “The Challenge of Peace,” (fn. 1), 246.