Scott Sagan asked me to revisit Nuclear Ethics, a book I published in 1986, in light of current developments in world affairs. In doing so, I found that much had changed but the basic usability paradox of nuclear deterrence remains the same. As do the ethical dilemmas. To deter, there must be some prospect of use, but easy usability could produce highly immoral consequences. Some risk is unavoidable and the moral task is how best to lower it. Nuclear weapons pose moral problems but nuclear use is the greater evil. Abolition may be a worthy long-term goal, but it is unlikely in the short-term relations among the nine states now possessing nuclear weapons. Drawing on just war theory, I examine the three dimensions of intentions, means, and consequences to outline a ten-point agenda for just deterrence that seeks to lower risks of nuclear war. The world has changed since the book was published but the basic moral dilemmas remain the same.

In this essay, I propose five principles to make U.S. nuclear deterrence policy more just and effective in the future: sever the link between the mass killing of innocent civilians and nuclear deterrence by focusing targeting on adversaries’ military power and senior political leadership, not their population; never use or plan to use a nuclear weapon against any target that could be destroyed or neutralized by conventional weapons; reject “belligerent reprisal” threats against civilians even in response to enemy attacks on one's own or allied civilians; replace nuclear “calculated ambiguity” threats against biological or cyberattacks with “deterrence by denial” strategies; and work in good faith toward eventual nuclear disarmament.

Any threat to use nuclear weapons inherently carries the possibility of escalation to a level such that both parties in a conflict, and likely many others, would be destroyed. Yet nuclear weapons are also seen as necessary for securing the very things that would be destroyed if the weapons were ever used. The fix for this nuclear dilemma relies on the strategy of deterrence. Deterrence provides a rationale for why nuclear weapons are necessary, even though they may seem dangerous. But the practice of deterrence involves less intentionality and agency than is usually assumed. The success of deterrence relies partially on luck as well as unrealistic assumptions about human behavior. Rather than a strategic necessity, deterrence may be an institutionalized behavior, accepted because it has always been practiced rather than because it makes sense. Assessing the ethics of deterrence and nuclear weapons requires engaging with these issues.

Nuclear weapons are different from every other type of weapons technology. Their awesome destructive potential and the unparalleled consequences of their use oblige us to think critically about the ethics of nuclear possession, planning, and use. Joe Nye has given the ethics of nuclear weapons deep consideration. He posits that we have a basic moral obligation to future generations to preserve roughly equal access to important values, including equal chances of survival, and proposes criteria for achieving conditional or “just deterrence” to minimize the risk of nuclear use and help preserve these values. While Nye's conditions are laudable, they are not achievable. They rely on flawed assumptions about the nature of nuclear weapons and the inherent risks of the nuclear deterrence system. Since the Cold War ended, the strategy and practice of nuclear deterrence has grown riskier, more urgent, more dangerous, and less stable. It is time to rethink how we manage nuclear risks. A new nuclear security system must be built on the design principle that the consequences of system failure cannot threaten to end or fundamentally disrupt civilization. We owe the future a new nuclear security strategy that can prevent an existential global nuclear event.

The recent proposal by the Independent Expert Panel of the Stop Ecocide initiative to include the crime of ecocide in the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute has raised expectations for preventing and remedying severe environmental harm through international prosecution. As alluring as this image is, we argue that ecocide prosecutions may be the most difficult, perhaps even impossible, in precisely the cases that the ICC would need to be concerned with; namely, the gravest global incidents of environmental harm, including those associated with planetary climate change. We explore a series of questions about the panel's formulation of ecocide that resonate with longer debates around criminalizing environmental harm but take on new dimensions amid the Anthropocene and after twenty years of ICC trials. Ecocide must contend with the hard lessons learned concerning the ICC's limitations in realizing justice in a fraught international political context and also with fundamental challenges to knowledge and legitimacy arising from the uncertainty and dynamic socioenvironmental context of the Anthropocene. The proposed amendment, if adopted, risks ineffective prosecutions or even perverse outcomes for the environment itself. This risk, however, may characterize any effort to prosecute ecocide internationally in the Anthropocene unless the terms of international criminal law are fundamentally rethought.

This essay reviews two recent books—Marion Laboure and Nicolas Deffrennes's Democratizing Finance and Eswar S. Prasad's The Future of Money—on financial technology (fintech) and the future of money. Both books present overviews of recent developments in fintech and assess the prospects of technological change to deliver a more accessible, equitable financial system—described in both cases as the “democratization of finance.” I raise two key concerns about the limits of the “democratization” implied here. First, the vision of democratized finance implicit in both books rests on claims about widening access to financial services for individuals, households, and businesses. This contrasts with more substantive visions of democratized finance that entail the exercise of accountable, deliberative decision-making on monetary and financial questions. Second, “fintech democracy” rests on a very thin account of how finance might be democratized, stressing exogenous technological change, with little consideration of relations of power, institutional reforms, or mobilization. Both books provide eloquent and comprehensive overviews of emerging fintech debates, but in so doing ultimately reveal important limitations to achieving financial democracy through fintech.