Air University Review, July-August 1985
CHRISTIAN churches are taking stronger stands on the ethics of nuclear deterrence. Such statements as the U.S. Catholic bishops' Pastoral Letter on War and Peace are important to me, since I am both a Christian and a professional military officer serving in America's nuclear deterrent force. Many Christian churches have made ethical judgments about nuclear deterrence that strand me in an intolerable moral paradox. The churches condemn the strategy of nuclear deterrence as an indiscriminate attack on civilians and as a disproportionate threat to mankind, yet they acknowledge this strategy as the best method available now to prevent war.
This simultaneous devotion to both discrimination and deterrence is an unseemly moral compromise. An absolute requirement to discriminate between the enemy's military forces and civilian noncombatants is physically impossible. Moreover, this principle of discrimination would indict the God who commanded his people to exterminate the Canaanites. I believe in the proportionate good of defending the freedom of the human race by retaliating against the aggressor who attacks that freedom. I believe in the superiority of spiritual life and values over mortal life and earthly values. I am a Christian professional military officer; I serve a purpose greater than my mortal life.
The churches attack nuclear deterrence and retaliation as immoral under two criteria of the just war doctrine. Of all these Christian condemnations of national policy, the May 1983 Pastoral Letter on War and Peace approved by the U.S. Catholic bishops is the most influential and representative. The bishops assert both noncombatant immunity (discrimination) and proportionality (the preponderance of good over evil in the results of a moral action) as "universally binding moral principles."1 Their ensuing commentary can be summarized: the use of nuclear weapons against almost any target is immoral because the massive destruction these weapons produce will indiscriminately kill large numbers of civilians. The bishops do not allow an intention to strike only military targets to excuse the use of nuclear weapons:
We cannot be satisfied that the assertion of an intention not to strike civilians directly or even the most honest effort to implement that intention by itself constitutes a "moral policy" for the use of nuclear weapons.. . . Such a strike would be deemed morally disproportionate even though not intentionally indiscriminate.2
The bishops continue their condemnation of deterrence:
A nuclear response to either conventional or nuclear attack can cause destruction which goes far beyond "legitimate defense." Such use of nuclear weapons would not be justified.3
Nevertheless, the bishops declare an illogical "strictly conditioned acceptance of nuclear deterrence."4 This astonishing reversal seems intended to keep the pastoral letter in line with the position of Pope John Paul II.5 However, the bishops' subsequent encouragement to military professionals, acknowledging their service to defend and maintain peace, offers little practical value for moral guidance.6 Indeed, the bishops conclude:
In simple terms, we are saying that good ends (defending one's country, protecting freedom, etc.) cannot justify immoral means (the use of weapons which kill indiscriminately and threaten whole societies).7
Thus, deterrence becomes morally unmanageable.
The churches have accepted and even encouraged deterrence, at least for now, but they censure retaliation. The result is an ethical dilemma, as explained by Gregory S. Kavka.8 This paradoxical position requires me to corrupt myself. My best moral option for deterring war is to form the intention to commit an immoral act. More simply, I do right by intending to do wrong, because this right intention prevents the wrong deed.
So I turned in my research to the Bible itself, which the Catholic bishops said provided no "detailed answers" but does provide "urgent direction."9 Christ commanded us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44) and not to resist one who is evil but rather to turn the other cheek (5:39). But there is considerable debate over whether these principles are intended for all possible circumstances and for nations as well as individuals. For when Jesus was slapped, he questioned the justice of the blow. (John 18:23). More significantly, Christ used a whip to drive the merchants out of the temple (John 2:13-17). I note an important principle here: Christ was defending the spiritual welfare of a people and not his own physical safety.
Both Christ (Matt. 22:21) and Paul (Rom. 13) counsel us to give obedience to the state. But most biblical commentaries hold this principle to be a matter of ensuring domestic tranquillity rather than providing the common defense. We must be careful not to misapply Jesus' standards of individual conduct to international relations. As an individual, Christ refused to defend himself but attacked evil when it threatened the spiritual life of the nation or the world.
The only biblical war outside of the Apocalypse is found in the Old Testament. Here I find God ordaining the Jewish conquest of Canaan, a campaign that included the intentional slaughter of noncombatants in their cities (Deut. 7 and 20; Josh, 6:21; 8:24, 10:28-40, 11: 11-23). Now I have faith in God's absolute goodness, and I am not trying to demonstrate the moral validity of total war against so-called godless Communists. But I do question absolute sanctification of the man-made principle of discrimination in war, especially when it proscribes our best morally legitimate option.
WAR must always be considered as an evil, even when, as the least of all other evils in a crisis, it is the best moral choice. The just war doctrine should be cherished as an attempt to limit that evil, not as a standard of absolute morality, because the God who redeemed us through Calvary also ordained the complete destruction of the Canaanites. Peter C. Craigie, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, comments:
The war narratives of the Old Testament are a safer guide to the reality of war than are the various formulations of the "Just War" theory that have emerged in the history of Christianity.10
The principle of proportionality is a natural and obvious law: the benefits of an action must be proportional to the evil results of that action in order for the action to be a moral choice. The difficulty occurs in objective judgments on the good and evil probabilities and their relative proportions.
Nuclear retaliation repays the enemy with the destruction he is inflicting on our own nation. This attack and the counterattack are stupendous evils. Is there a good proportional to the evil of adding to the destruction through retaliation? Once the certainty of our country's actual or impending annihilation is established, what is our moral duty at that moment?
I submit that nearly all of this decision must be made prior to such a crisis, at a time when reason and resources can be used to make intelligent, objective choices. Certainly, the commander in chief would make the decision at the moment of crisis, weighing his limited information against prior contingency plans and options. But the limits on time and information available at such a moment require that the moral dimension of this decision be considered ahead of time.
Those of us on missile or bomber crews must also make the decision now. Before taking the oath of office or donning the uniform, we must commit ourselves to duty. We must decide now that our mission is compatible with our morality, or else we must resign our commissions.
My own decision is to prepare to retaliate. I believe that the good of minimizing further Soviet aggression against world freedom would justify the evils of nuclear retaliation. The surviving postwar world would be worthy of, and in need of, defense against modern Communist totalitarianism and oppression. I have studied the controversy over the predicted effects of a major nuclear war enough to be satisfied that major portions of today's world would survive intact. Should the Soviet Union or its Warsaw Pact allies also survive, their military power would achieve the global domination that has long been their goal.
Communist world domination is an evil that merits prevention even if the American nuclear deterrent force must be unleashed. If this statement sounds like a "better dead than Red" philosophy, then I deny that label. The purpose of our retaliation would be to guarantee the end of this threat to world freedom after deterrence has failed.
Potentially, the evil of modern Soviet communism endangers the spiritual life of manking; therefore, the American nuclear deterrent must be used toprevent Soviet domination of the world. This danger is evident in both the political and spiritual life that must be endured under Communist tyranny. Reinhold Niebuhr describes the nature of Communist evil as having four dimensions:
Thus, the state becomes the only entity to enjoy political life, expression, or freedom in a Communist country.
Spiritual life in a Communist country is simply repressed as a subversive distraction from absolute loyalty to the state. State control of everything in the Soviet Union includes subjugation of the church itself for political purposes. Pro-Soviet and anti-American peace demonstrations are tolerated, but independent and more genuine peace movements are ruthlessly suppressed. The Russian Orthodox Church is a vocal supporter of the regime, even as the regime attacks the religion and persecutes its worshiping members. The state's secret police (KGB) are in control of the priesthood. A recent defector from the KGB has explained that the Russian Orthodox Church is often a front for Soviet intelligence, with priests sometimes giving lists of the names of people attending church to government officials.12 In a Communist-ruled world, an individual's spiritual and political life is repressed by a ruthlessly totalitarian state.
These realities are evils that make the good of nuclear retaliation proportional to its collateral damage--a view expressed in the 1983 pastoral letter of the German Catholic bishops, whose conclusion on the issue of proportionality differs from that of the American bishops:
Physical death of the human race is not the worst evil. But spiritual evil is when we choose it because we have neither the moral courage or the intellectual acumen to recognize it and prevent it.13
Similarly, the author of just war doctrine, Saint Augustine, recognized the spiritual war waged against the souls of those who live in the grip of tyranny:
He, then, who prefers what is right to what is wrong, and what is well-ordered to what is perverted, sees that the peace of unjust men is not worthy to be called peace in comparison with the peace of the just.14
A third concept of the just war doctrine used to declare American nuclear deterrence policy immoral is the "likelihood of success" criterion. This principle demands that there be a reasonable likelihood of success before a war is engaged. I pray for peace and especially the avoidance of nuclear war. I believe that our strategic nuclear deterrent force is our best morally practical option for preventing war; but should deterrence fail, I am confident in the success of the mission to defend the people of the postwar world from political and spiritual tyranny.
SERVINIG as a Christian in the nuclear deterrent force, I have an obligation to be prepared morally and spiritually, as well as physically to respond to orders to execute my mission. Deterrence through nuclear strength is the best moral option of preventing such a war. Condemning this strategy as immoral under the just war doctrine is both absurd and immoral in itself. The vast majority of opinions on this subject support the deterrence strategy, at least for the short run. Invoking the principle of discrimination, some religious leaders place themselves and our nation in an untenable moral position. They accept the preparations and intention to do what they convict as immoral. Also, I find the principle of discrimination violated in the Scriptures by the ordained Jewish conquest of Canaan. I have confidence in the likely success, and the proportional good, of the mission to destroy the threat to the world's spiritual and political freedom. Each of us in the strategic nuclear deterrent force must establish a moral foundation for our service. Out will to unhesitantly fulfill our duty will strengthen deterrence, the morally best choice of action to defend, peace and freedom.
Castle AFB, California
Notes
1. "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," Pastoral Letter on War and Peace, Catholic Conference, Inc., 1983. Reprinted in Origins, 19 May 1983, p. 2.
2. Ibid., p. 18.
3. Ibid., p. 16.
4. Ibid., p. 18
5. Ibid., p. 17.
6. Ibid., p. 28.
7. Ibid., p. 30.
8. Gregory S. Kavka, "Some Paradoxes of Deterrence," in War, Morality, and the Military Profession, edited by Malham M. Wakin (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1979), pp. 505-25.
9. "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response," p. 7.
10. Peter C. Craigie, The Problem of War in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman' s Publishing Company, 1979), p. 53.
11. Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1953), pp. 33-39.
12. Vladimir Sakharov, quoted in "Priests Who Spy for KGB," The Register, 1 April 1984, p. 5.
13. "Out of Justice, Peace," Joint Pastoral Letter of the German Bishops, edited by James V. Schall in Vital Speeches of the Day (Southold, New York: City News Publishing Company, 18 April 1983), p. 74.
14. Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 12, in Great Books of the Western World edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Alder (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), p. 158.
To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer, you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. That is . . . a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men.
Robert E. Lee, speaking in
Michael Shaara's novel Killer Angels, pp. 195-96
Contributor
Captain Charles H. Nicholls (USAFA; M.S., University of Southern California) is Instructor Electronic Warfare Officer, 328th Bombardment Squadron, at Castle AFB, California. He has served as a squadron electronic warfare officer and as an instructor and evaluator in his field with the 441st Bombardment Squadron at Mather AFB, California. Captain Nicholls is a graduate of Squadron Officer School. His article in this issue received Honorable Mention in the 1984 Ira C. Eaker Essay Competition.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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