Just-War Doctrine in a Nuclear Context

Abstract

A SUSTAINED DEBATE continues over the moral issues of nuclear deterrence, defense, and arms control. Much attention has been given to the draft pastoral letters on this subject prepared by the NCCB Ad Hoc Committee on War and Peace. A final version of this letter is to be issued by the American Catholic bishops this spring. The extensive publicity surrounding the drafts of the pastoral letter and the concomitant debates over the nuclear freeze and related antinuclear initiatives have resulted in a widespread familiarity with the principal assumptions and judgments, as well as the methodology, of the American bishops' committee. Official indications are that the final version of the letter will be essentially the same as the second draft. However, the committee chairman, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, has stated that further clarification of the committee's views on the communist threat and nuclear deterrence will be forthcoming. In any event, the pastoral letter to be issued should be viewed more as a starting point for continued study and discussion than as a definitive moral analysis of the dilemmas of nuclear deterrence, defense, and arms control in a world of conflict. Accordingly, this analysis proceeds independently of the work of the bishops' committee. Cognizance is taken of the pastoral letter as an important source of Catholic teaching. However, as the committee itself has acknowledged, many of the normative judgments in the letter turn on factual assumptions and projections about which reasonable people disagree. Moreover, the committee's application of just-war doctrine to nuclear issues is subject to criticism. This article anticipates the promulgation of the spring pastoral by submitting an alternative view. This view is based on a different reading of the material facts and just-war doctrine pertinent to nuclear deterrence, defense, and arms control than that evidenced in the second draft pastoral letter and to be anticipated in the final version. This alternative view is offered as a contribution to the further study and debate that will surely follow the bishops' letter. The analysis will proceed in the following order: (1) The meaning of just-war doctrine will be explored in the light of the injunction of Vatican