The Moral Irrelevance of the Counterforce/Countervalue Distinction

Abstract

Since the atomic era began in 1945, there have been three waves of moral criticism directed at American nuclear weapons policies. The first wave, which began around 1957 and ended in 1962 with McNamara's an nouncement of Flexible Response, focused on Dulles's policy of Massive Retaliation. The second wave, which began in the early 70's and ended in 1974 with Schlesingers announcement of Countervailing Response, fo cused on the Assured Destruction policy developed in McNamara's later reports to Congress. The third wave began in the 80's with Weinberger's remarks about ''prevailing in nuclear conflicts and may or may not end with the next MX vote or next strategic arms agreement.1 In each wave of criticism there has been a dominant moral note. From the moral point of view, the principal problem with Massive Retaliation is that the damage caused by a massive American retalitory strike would outweigh in scale any injury the United States might receive before the strike is launched. Thus, action according to the policy violates the just war canon of proportionality, which dictates that in a just war the projected damage should not be significantly greater than the damage suffered if the war is not fought. In the case of Assured Destruction, the main moral prob lem is the use of cities as targets and populations as hostages, a feature first dictated by missile inaccuracy and later provoked by the hardening of op posing strategic forces. Action according to Assured Destruction is thus widely thought to violate the just war canon of discrimination, the rule that noncombatants should never be the victims of military force. In the case of Prevailing Response, concern arises that steps taken to assure success in nuclear war increase the probability that nuclear war will be initiated, and that nuclear war, once initiated, cannot be controlled. Thus the Weinberger policy is thought to require reckless and immoral risks.2 The judgment that Massive Retaliation violates Proportionality is to day almost universally accepted, and to some degree this verdict may have influenced the abandonment of the policy, although Massive Retaliation was so riddled with strategic defects that it probably would have been aban doned on prudential grounds even if it had not been morally flawed.3 By contrast, the standard criticisms of Prevailing Response are somewhat