ETHICS AND ARMED FORCES CONTROVERSIES IN MILITARY ETHICS AND SECURITY POLICY ISSUE 01/2020 The Core Question: Nuclear Deterrence in the Focus of Peace Ethics and Security Policy SPECIAL Nuclear Weapons, Service and Conscience CONTENT THE CORE QUESTION: NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IN THE FOCUS OF PEACE ETHICS AND SECURITY POLICY Editorial Nuclear Arms Control, Veronika Bock Page 03 Disarmament and Nonproliferation Regimes in Deep Crisis The Ende of the “Interlude”: Nuclear Tom Sauer Page 50 Deterrence in the Light of Roman Catholic Social Teaching „No Way Out“: Nuclear Weapons Heinz-Günther Stobbe Page 04 Remain an Important Factor in International Politics Waiting for Armageddon: Michael Rühle Page 57 Theological and Ethical Aspects of Nuclear Deterrence Russian Nuclear Weapons: Drew Christiansen Page 12 Reason or Feelings? Konstantin Bogdanov Page 64 The Relevance of the Heidelberg Theses Today China’s Nuclear Strategy in a New Ines-Jacqueline Werkner Page 18 Geopolitical Environment Sven Bernhard Gareis Page 70 Exposing Flaws in the Logic(s) of Nuclear Deterrence as an Inter­ national Security Strategy: SPECIAL: NUCLEAR A Feminist Postcolonial Perspective Madita Standke-Erdmann/ WEAPONS, SERVICE Victoria Scheyer Page 25 AND CONSCIENCE We Are the Bomb: Military Personnel in Conflicts of Opaque Financial Flows Conscience: Between Church and Unwitting Involvement Idealism and Political Realism in Nuclear Armament Markus Bentler Page 78 Robin Jaspert Page 32 The Nuclear Question: Pious Hopes Extended Nuclear Deterrence and Real Opportunities and Sharing: Overcome Together, Burkhard Bleul Page 85 Don’t Go It Alone Wolfgang Richter Page 39 Impressum/Alle Ausgaben Page 91 2 ETHICSANDARMEDFORCES.COM ETHICS AND ARMED FORCES 01/20 WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON Author: Drew Christiansen THEOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL From the beginning, nuclear weapons have car- ASPECTS OF ried a sense of ultimacy that required religious language to voice their human significance.1 NUCLEAR DETERRENCE Following the detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity site in July, 1945, Robert Op- penheimer recited the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita, “Now I am become Death the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer intuited the latent religious dimension of the Manhattan Pro- ject: The atom as the first flash of creation and as the explosive instrument of its annihilation. When General Leslie Groves inquired why Op- penheimer had named the test explosion Trini- ty, the physicist replied, “I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Abstract Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love : Nuclear weapons have always been associated with the “end of As West and East days”. A repertoire of concepts and images to express this religious In all flat Maps—and I am one—are one, dimension can be found in the Bible and in theology. However, it is So death doth touch the Resurrection.” apparent that these associations do not provide us with a consist- Oppenheimer continued, “That still does not ent assessment of the phenomenon of “nuclear weapons”. Instead, make a Trinity, but in another, better known de- contrary positions are supported with reference to the same biblical votional poem Donne opens, 2 motifs. This is explained by the interrelationships between reli- Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” gious symbols, basic religious attitudes, and personal dispositions. The first citation from Donne’s Hymne to God in my sicknesse, meditates on dying as the way to Furthermore, even an identical assessment – such as a rejection of resurrection. The second poem, Batter my heart, nuclear weapons – can be used to justify different responses. three person’d God, prays for liberation from all Political and ethical debates about the legitimacy of nuclear that holds the poet back from surrendering to weapons and nuclear deterrence have in each case taken account God. Whether Oppenheimer was unconsciously of changes in technological and political environments. During thinking about his own liberation from the coils the Cold War, they have moved from the question of a ban in of his research or voicing guilt over constructing principle to the conditions under which the use of nuclear weapons the bomb, we can only conjecture. Nevertheless, could be justified. But fundamental skepticism toward attempts to he seems to have been alert to the religious im- declare weapons of mass destruction compatible with the Just War plications of the test. principles has been reflected not least in the 1983 pastoral letter by the U.S. bishops, “The Challenge of Peace”. While this influential The Theology of Nuclear document did not rule out the possible use of nuclear weapons in Deterrence defense of fundamental values, it opposed nuclear war-fighting and Theology is the language in which we articu- allowed deterrence only under strict conditions. late the religious dimensions of our experience. Ultimately, the moral assessment of a phenomenon in accordance Theologians, preachers and religious activists with the Church’s social teachings always proceeds from a theolog- use biblical images to ground their positions on ical, ethical and social “overall view”. In view of conditions in the deterrence.3 Consider three root images drawn world today – including increasing international tensions, terror- from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures that ism and proliferation risks – the Vatican’s current condemnation of have been applied to nuclear weapons: Babel the deterrence policy leaves no doubt that it constitutes a heightened (Gen. 11: 1-32), Armageddon (Rev. 16:16), and risk to the future of humanity and the planet. the Kingdom of God (Matt. 5:9, 44). 12 ETHICSANDARMEDFORCES.COM ETHICS AND ARMED FORCES 01/20 Babel is a story of the construction of an Kingdom has already come and our duty is to live “earthly city,” as Augustine later wrote, “to the according to its demands, nonviolently.10 contempt of God.”4 The political theorist Michael Others like the US Catholic bishops in their Oakeshott considered Babel an object lesson in 1983 pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace, collective ambition.5 It evokes the hubris of tech- though they believe that the Kingdom has be- nological achievement, an apposite metaphor gun, also believe the fullness of the Kingdom is for construction of the atomic bomb. The French still to be. The incompleteness of the Kingdom Calvinist Jacques Ellul, for another, found in nu- allows a complex moral posture embracing clear power a rigid and irreversible system that both nonviolence and Just War. Accordingly, the resists reform.6 bishops’ nuanced just-war position allows just By contrast, Catholic Social Teaching sees enough ambiguity to make nuclear deterrence technology as in need of conscious human con- credible. trol (Pope Francis (2015), Laudato Si’, nos. 52, 114, 184; henceforth LS). “Never has humanity Fundamental Religious Attitudes had such power over itself,” Pope Francis wrote, The deeper human attitudes and dispositions “yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely” draw on a single experience to inspire a perva- (LS, no. 104). Humanity’s responsibility for na- sive response to life as a whole. The relation be- ture, including the use of nuclear energy, is a tween symbol and religious affections is recip- theme of Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ (LS, no. rocal.11 Symbols can inspire religious attitudes. 104, and Pope Benedict XVI (2009), Caritas in ver- Alternatively, religious attitudes may incline the itate, nos. 68-77). Pope Francis’ invocation of hu- imagination to certain metaphors or influence man responsibility applies the Second Vatican how a person interprets them. The symbols may Council’s teaching on the authentic exercise of evoke a particular affection, wariness or trust, conscience in history (Vatican Council II, Gaudi- e.g., and the affection in turn may lead to con- um et spes, nos. 9 and 16). struing a particular symbol in a certain way, say, Armageddon represents the Last Battle at the determining whether a nuclear Armageddon is end of history in which God’s enemies are utterly welcomed as divine retribution or serves as a destroyed.7 The prospect of apocalyptic destruc- motive to abolish nuclear weapons. tion fascinates biblical fundamentalists and Consider this example. While Augustine is readers of dystopian fiction. In Dispensation- the father of Christian just-war thinking, at one alist theology, the righteous long for the end of point an overwhelming sense of the chanciness history, and Fundamentalists may even regard of human existence led him to despair of moral nuclear war favorably as an act of divine retribu- choice in wartime, so that he cast himself on the tion. Armageddon even provides a hermeneutic mysterious ways of God: for anti-nuclear opinion. Both liberal Christians “… since the whole mortal life of man upon and secular critics invoke the catastrophic de- earth is a trial, who can tell whether it may be struction associated with Armageddon to focus good or bad in any particular case – in time of attention on the disastrous risks involved in de- peace to reign or to serve, or to be at ease or to terrence strategy.8 die – or in time of war, to command or to fight, The Kingdom of God images an everlasting or to conquer or to be killed? At the same time, reign of justice and peace. It provides the vision it remains true, that whatever is good is so by the for Christian pacifists who refuse to join in war as divine blessing, and whatever is bad is so by di- well as for meliorist Christians who hope to trans- vine judgment.”12 form human existence by instituting “a world Augustine appeals to the image of a remote without war” or, better, one in which the risk of sovereign God, who dispenses blessing and war is far less likely. Christian pacifists condemn judgment by no standard but his own whim. nuclear weapons and urge trust in God.