... And the Moral Price of Nuclear Peace

The moralists' indictment of the atomic bombing of Japan implies that nuclear morality since then has been superior. But in truth it degenerated during the Cold War, leaving no moral high ground from which to condemn President Truman's decision. Stephen Rosenfeld's "The Revisionists' Agenda" [op-ed, Aug. 4] defends Truman against the moralists' attack, but he too fails to confront the moral price of the half-century of nuclear peace that ensued after the bombing.

The slide into the moral dark ages began with the simple fact that the inherent destructiveness of nuclear weapons rendered all countries permanently vulnerable to annihilation and hence permanently insecure. Nations never abandoned the hope of removing this vulnerability and restoring real security, as illustrated by the endless pursuit of missile defense.

Moral obfuscation resulted from trying to extricate ourselves from the predicament by magically transforming this vulnerability into a virtue. We allowed that since our enemies were just as defenseless against nuclear attack as we, any nuclear aggression on their part was suicidal. Nations involuntarily entered into a suicide pact. We clung to this theory for want of an alternative that offered real physical protection against annihilation.

But the theory and the harvest of peace Rosenfeld says we reaped lean on the thinnest of moral reeds. In threatening each other with apocalyptic retaliation, hundreds of thousands of military personnel have had to make a solemn and resolute commitment to carry out orders that would kill tens and probably hundreds of millions of civilians. The nuclear age put them (and the whole of society that sanctioned this policy) in a dubious moral position whose justification demanded at minimum a leap of faith in the deterrent effect. The absence of nuclear war during the past 50 years reinforced that faith: Most shared Rosenfeld's view that deterrence deserves some credit, however incalculable, for the Cold War peace — but absolution it was not.

To ease the burden of this moral dilemma, nuclear planners tried to concoct options that would reduce civilian casualties. But like the vain pursuit of impenetrable defenses against enemy ballistic missiles, the high-minded pursuit of lowering civilian casualties fell far short. Most of those called upon to enforce the suicide pact still needed to strike a bargain with their conscience.

Moral paradox remains a central fact of the nuclear situation. Notwithstanding the official line that countries no longer aim nuclear weapons at each other, thousands of strategic warheads stand ready for launch at a moment's notice against their Cold War targets. Every major city, along with quite a large number of minor ones, in the target countries still has many facilities on the nuclear hit list. The chains of nuclear command are constantly tested from the top down to the individual launch commanders, practicing procedures that would result in the annihilation of those cities half an hour after the issuing of their death sentences.

Before exhausting themselves second-guessing or defending Truman, today's moralists should reflect on the broad consensus that for more than 50 years has supported a nuclear policy whose central characteristic, if not its explicit purpose, is that of a mass revenge killing of people. Whether or not the local holocausts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki qualify as unmitigated atrocities, the threats and risks of global holocaust still made and still run by the world's leading powers surely invite repudiation on moral grounds. That many nations are fully prepared today to inflict devastation on a scale that dwarfs the Japanese destruction also cannot be glossed over as "wise policy," as Rosenfeld paints it.

The nuclear age diminished not only our security and morality but also our freedom. The normal democratic process faltered. Secrecy enabled a tiny nuclear priesthood to escape the democratic scrutiny normally exercised by Congress, the media, the public and even senior officials of the departments of defense and energy. The chosen few took chances with public health and safety and took dangerous operational shortcuts — for example, putting thousands of nuclear weapons on "hair-trigger" alert and delegating nuclear launch authority to persons, including military commanders, who were outside the legal chain of presidential succession. Rosenfeld imputes far too much wisdom to the history of nuclear policy.

In the last decade or so, the veil of secrecy slowly rose on many of these matters, and the democratic process began to better assert itself. But many important decisions continue to be made under a shroud of excessive secrecy by a small circle of anointed officials.

Today America drifts rudderless on the currents of Cold War inertia, oblivious to the weak moral underpinnings of its nuclear policy. Whether or not Truman evaded moral principles in making his wartime decision, we abandoned them for the next 50 years.

The writer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,* was a Minuteman launch officer in the 1970s.

* In March, 2000, the writer left the Brookings Institution to begin service as President of the Center for Defense Information.

By Bruce G. Blair, Ph.D CDI President bblair@cdi.org

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