The new, nonmoral nuclear disarmament debate

1. The new, nonmoralnuclear disarmament debate Adam Mount, Georgetown University Chatham House: 5 June, 2013

2. The new, nonmoralnuclear disarmament debatein America Adam Mount, Georgetown University Chatham House: 5 June, 2013

3. Disarmament activism was widespread • 1945-54: Principled advocates—world federalists and atomic scientists—pressured Western governments directly • 1954-63: A mass movement forms, especially in Europe. • 1959: 10 million in Japan • 1962: 150,000 from awe • 1963: 500,000 in Greece • 1966-75: Movement silent. The Vietnam War attention, groups disbanded. • 1964: 500,000 in twenty countries • 1975-89: Movement revives gradually, mass protest now coupled with sophisticated public discourse. • 1980: 80,000 Trafalgar Sq. • 1981-2: 700,000? in New York • 400,000 Amsterdam • 200,000 Florence • 200,000+ Tokyo • 200,000+ Bonn • 150,000 London • 100,000 Milan • 50,000 Paris • 25,000 Chicago

5. Moral arguments • Moral arguments give categorical, other-regarding reasons for action. • Circumstantial considerations: • Other norms of nuclear restraint have a moral valence: use taboo; testing has public health concerns • Film and literature depicting nuclear war focuses moral deliberation • Religious advocacy • Quester, Wohlstetter, Nye, Mearsheimer, Bull, Jervis, Hardin, Sagan, Russett, and Mandelbaumwrote about nuclear ethics • Morgenthau, Glaser, Waltz, Schelling, Sagan, Holloway wrote on nuclear disarmament

6. Doing harm is morally wrong, especially to innocents and noncombatants. • Walzer: "Anyone committed to the distinction between combatants and noncombatants is bound to be appalled by the spectre of destruction evoked, and purposely evoked in deterrence theory." • Just War Theory • Lee: Nuclear deterrence is hostage-holding; Kennan called this “a blasphemy, an indignity.” Harm A state that insists on maintaining a nuclear arsenal infringes on the rights of the citizens it is intending to protect. Morgenthau: "The great issues of nuclear strategy… cannot even be the object of meaningful debate… which the theory of democracy [assumes].” Schell: “what it says about us and what it does to us that we are preparing our own extermination.” “We are the authors of that extinction.” Kennan: “This entire preoccupation with nuclear war is a form of illness…a readiness to commit suicide for fear of death.”

7. Extinct Above and beyond the threat to existing individuals, it is wrong to risk the destruction of civilization. • Schell: “The mind, overwhelmed by the thought of the deaths of the billions of living people, [staggers] back without realizing that behind this already ungraspable loss there lies the separate loss of the future generations.”  • Kennan: “This civilization is not the property of our generation alone. We are not the proprietors of it; we are only the custodians…who are we, then, the actors, to take upon ourselves the responsibility of destroying this framework, or even risking its destruction?” Intent Deterrence rests on a conditional intention to do immoral acts. • McMahan: intentions “[reflect] the agent’s values by showing what he is prepared to do.” • Stein: “a deracination from humanity, and from the humanity within ourselves.” • Markus: “in a double sense, our very humanity is at stake.”

8. Peace Coop. States have an obligation to behave in ways consistent with the preferences and interests of other states. Kant exhorts us to take others’ ends as our own. Obligation to fairness Obligation to allies’ security Steps taken on nuclear disarmament can have instrumental benefits—specifically, on war onset. • Urey: “the atomic bomb is not the fundamental problem at all… the fundamental problem is war. If there is another war, atomic bombs will be used.” • Langmuir: “We may someday come to regard the atomic bomb as the discovery that made it possible for mankind to bring an end to all war.”

9. Safe National defense is a moral imperative, the gravity of which justifies the practice of deterrence. • Walzer: “We threaten evil in order not to do it, and the doing of it would be so terrible that the threat seems in comparison to be morally defensible." • Will: “a great enough good to justify involvement with nuclear weapons.” • Quester: “to call a spade a spade and stop pretending that we are trying to disarm our adversary when we are rather trying to torture him… perhaps we ought simply to adjust our morality.”

10. The current debate: ethics “We believe that nuclear-weapons states have political and moral obligations to seek to eliminate all nuclear arsenals. These obligations stem from Article vi of the npt, which specifies that parties should pursue negotiations leading to complete nuclear disarmament, the 1995 negotiations over the indefinite extension of the treaty, and the basic principle that a nuclear order cannot be maintained and strengthened over time on the basis of inequity. Double standards on matters as materially and psychologically important as nuclear weapons will produce instability and non-compliance, creating enforcement crises that increase the risk of conflict and nuclear anarchy.” —Perkovich & Acton, p. 16

11. The current debate: threats and needs “Bilateral relations between the two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, are frayed, and there are continuing difficulties in effectively addressing emerging nuclear threats in North Korea and Iran, punctuated recently by a test explosion in North Korea. Combined with the dangers of suicidal terrorist groups, the growing number of nations with nuclear arms and differing motives, aims and ambitions poses very high and unpredictable risks. Our age has stolen fire from the gods. Can we confine this awesome power to peaceful purposes before it consumes us?” —FH, 2007 “New nuclear states do not have the benefit of years of step-by-step safeguards put in effect during the Cold War to prevent nuclear accidents, misjudgments, or unauthorized launches.” —FH, 2013 “The actual existing threats… cannot be resolved using our nuclear arsenals. The world is spending vast sums on producing and maintaining nuclear arms…” —Global Zero report

12. Conclusions • Ethical content drained from the disarmament debate along with war • Disarmament debate / obligation is technical and political • Ethical considerations being historically important motives, the current debate is disoriented • Ethical thinking, and the debate, has not been updated to account for changed strategic conditions • The prospect of widespread harm and certainly extinction have diminished • safe has inverted, but the danger is not as acute • intent is more pressing (Schell) • Arguments from threat (harm, extinct, safe) are less compelling • Arguments from identity (intent, peace) are stronger, but silent

13. Implications • Disarmament activism is effectively silenced in politics • Smaller and less motivated • Congressional interest is low • We cannot afford to debate disarmament without a firm grasp of reasons • A debate about an aspirational goal is about an end • Considering means without ends will lead to myopic recommendations and take the burden off opponents • Explore contemporary ways to frame arguments from identity • Not zero-sum • Draw on and fortify the taboo • Reflect extant strategic realities