You Can’t Hug your Children with Nuclear Arms

TOPIC: #8 Final Blog

TITLE: You Can’t Hug your Children with Nuclear Arms

SOURCE: Religious Studies course I took this semester (RS 300);

Bernard T. Adeney’s book Just War, Political Realism, and Faith

RELATION: The Anthropology of a Nuclear Weapons Laboratory (Robbins pp 193-195).

This semester, I took a Religious Studies course, where the topic is War and Peace. Our final unit is on the opposing perspectives of just war theory and pacifism. One of the big no-no’s for both viewpoints is nuclear warfare. To be honest, I never saw myself being interested in this topic at all, however as I was reading the final chapter of Robbins’ Cultural Anthro, I came across a study by Hugh Gusterson. He researched the opinions of the scientists who design and build nuclear weapons. To this point, I had only thought of nuclear weapons as something that was built to detonate, their main purpose to blow up enemies. When I read the opinion of some of these scientists, that “working on nuclear weapons is more ethical than working on conventional weapons, since conventional weapons are more likely to be used. Nuclear weapons… are simply symbolic chips in a game, the goal of which is to avoid using them” (Robbins 194), I decided to do some further research.

During this research, I read a portion of Bernard T. Adeney’s book Just War, Political Realism, and Faith. In it, he quotes J. Bryan Hehir, whose justification is very similar to that of the nuclear scientists. He asserts that weapons of mass destruction’s only purpose is that of deterrence, and that “If conflict occurs this policy has failed and we move into a new realm of action, combat policy…the weapons exist to be not used; their purpose is to threaten, not to strike” (Adeney 116).

Adeney argues that even when not used, the threat of nuclear strike is unethical. “According to traditional moral theology,” he says, “it makes little difference that there is no intent to carry out the threat. The threat is still immoral…” (Adeney 117). He is basically saying it is just as evil to threaten to blow someone up, as it is to actually blow them up. This speech act is being used in a coercive political way, in an attempt to intimidate and persuade the enemy. Even if not physically detonated, this threat is an act of terrorism, however I do not think the United States would see it as so.