Nuclear Ethics And Options: Perceptions And Reflections CSC 1986 SUBJECT AREA General NUCLEAR ETHICS AND OPTIONS: PERCEPTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 1. PROBLEM: THE PERCEPTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS 2. THE NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING 3. AN APPROACH FOR THE INTERESTED, DISINTERESTED, AND INFORMED 4. THE ETHICAL AND EMOTIONAL PROBLEM 5. WEAPONS CAPABILITIES AND CATEGORIES 6. USE OF SHORT RANGE WEAPONS 7. THE MESSAGE 8. NOTES 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. PROBLEM: THE PERCEPTION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS Originally, this article was going to be about the best way to employ tactical nuclear weapons. This changed, however, when it became apparent that the use of nuclear weapons is not considered desirable or even feasible by very many people, to include a large number of professional soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen. This antinuclear feeling grew even more in the wake of Chernobyl, which caused a massive antipathy against nuclear power that also increased the feelings against nuclear weapons. Again and again, in conversations and articles, one or more of the following thoughts surfaced: 1. Doubts of the morality of nuclear war: "Nuclear war is wrong: ending the world is not the way to win a war." 2. Misconceptions of the true capabilities of nuclear weapons: "If we start popping nucs in Germany, they won't be growing potatoes there for a while." 3. Doubts of the utility of fighting such a war: "If we start shooting nucs, I figure there'll be just enough time to grab one last beer before the world ends." These three general comments sum up the beliefs that many people hold about nuclear weapons: that they are omnipotent, vastly different from conventional weapons, inhumane, immoral, unnatural, and the sure cause of a major change in the battlefield, if not the end of civilization. The perception is that even a limited use of such weapons will necessarily cause enormous collateral damage, insidious residual contamination, and such chaos in command systems that escalation into a major strategic exchange is inevitable. In short, the perception of these weapons is that they are so immoral and evil that their very use is inconsistent with any situation less severe than total war to maintain the existence of the nation state, ideology, and economy. The basic tenet of this article is that although these fears and perceptions are not completely baseless, they lack accuracy and perspective. We shall see that nuclear weapons are neither the all powerful panacea nor the all consuming evil they are painted to be, and their use is not necessarily unethical. Much of the problem comes from mixing perceptions of radically disparate nuclear weapons, and much comes from a general lack of knowledge, due to either lack of interest or opportunity to study the subject. This article will examine nuclear weapons in general, with a focus on the smaller, shorter range weapons found in the Army and Marine Corps. 2. THE NEED FOR UNDERSTANDING It would not be a major problem if such perceptions were held only by civilians, but they are present and perhaps even widespread in our armed forces. For this reason they need to be examined, since nuclear weapons play a major role in our defensive strategy, and these very same armed forces are expected to use these weapons. Admittedly, nuclear war is not the most likely war, but popular belief is surely correct that it is the most dangerous. We must not allow distorted and inaccurate beliefs to cause us to ignore or misuse a major element of our nation's arsenal. If the day comes that we must use nuclear weapons, we will most probably be in very dire straits. It therefore behooves us to make every effort to optimize our use of those weapons, to ensure that such a momentous step also turns out to be a decisive and correct one. 3. AN APPROACH , FOR THE INTERESTED, DISINTERESTED, AND INFORMED A large part of the problem is that the issues and technical aspects of nuclear war are extremely complex, tempting the average citizen to seek out the path of least resistance. This leads to one of two reactions: a Knee jerk condemnation of all aspects of nuclear war, or a complete withdrawal from the subject, leaving the field to experts.1 As members of armed services that are prepared to use such weapons, we can not ethically follow the first course of action, and we really can't follow the second one, either, since we should be the experts. This article is split into three main parts, one for each of the three main general areas of ethics, capabilities, and utility. Thus if you the reader feel that you already understand one or more particular aspect of this field, you can choose what you'd like to review. Some of you have undoubtedly used all that spare time on your training schedule to think through nuclear ethics, and incredibly, there are some of you who don't care about the pros and cons of the morality of our most powerful weapon. So look deep (or not so deep) into yourself, and use your own state of karma to decide if you want to read the first section and revisit (or visit) St. Augustine and study your ethical doubts. Many of you have used your free time to memorize the 101-31 series of Army field manuals, and thus need no review of nuclear capabilities. But others of you have been denied access to these excellent manuals due to their classification. For these latter deprived souls, the second section is written to allow you to revel in yield data without the burden of S-2's, if you feel your grasp of nuclear capabilities is a little weak. Several of you have spent your afternoons after work or even evenings leading (or at least partaking in) discussion groups on nuclear strategy. But for those of you denied this opportunity due to the recalcitrant or pacifist leanings of your neighbors, the third section is written to allow you to ponder warning shots across the bow, first use, and other such arcana, if you have any doubts as to the utility of such weapons. Although random conversations indicate otherwise, it is possible that there are those of you who truly have had a lot of time on your hands and thus already know everything. There may even be people who just don't want to fight through all this. For these two groups, you are invited to skip to the last section and compare your findings and feelings to mine. 4. THE ETHICAL AND EMOTIONAL PROBLEM Nuclear weapons raise such emotions that it is impossible to separate their use from their perceived ethical and emotional ramifications. Since this article is aimed at examining nuclear war in comparison to conventional war, we will base our ethical inquiry on the theory that war in general can be ethically acceptable.2 Thus confirmed pacifists need read no farther, since if one does not accept that any war is acceptable, one will obviously not accept that nuclear war is acceptable. Most of the world, however, accepts that war has a utilitarian and ethically defensible, although generally not desirable, place in human society. Granting that, we shall try and see if nuclear weapons can be included as an element of ethical war, or if they must be excluded due to their very nature. In contrast to conventional weapons, nuclear weapons are frequently considered inhumane, unnatural, and immoral by their very nature. We need to see if the basis for these opinions is logical or emotional. First, radiation is seen as an unnatural and different way to kill, and thus there are many people who decry it per se. This is not a frivolous feeling, since there is a theory in international law that maintains that weapons that produce radiation are different from other weapons solely because of that radiation and not because of the magnitude of the destruction they will cause.3 This is perhaps due to the fact that radiation is unseen, unfelt, and largely impossible to defend against, and thus is considered unfair and insidious. Adding to this perception of unfairness is the perception that it is wrong to use an omnipotent weapon that no defense can survive. And no matter how well dug in you are, the radiation from a nuclear detonation that is close enough will preclude survival. Yet another aspect of nuclear weapons that causes great fear is the sheer magnitude of destruction their use would entail, and the likelihood that this destruction would be visited upon the centers of our societies and cultures. Many fear that the use of nuclear weapons would result in the literal obliteration of whole cities at one fell swoop. A collateral fear is that nuclear weapons would very likely cause a vast number of civilian casualties. This is seen as extremely undesirable, since civilian casualties are considered a facet of war that should be avoided, so long as the ends of the nation can be reasonably carried out without theme. Another great fear of nuclear weapons is that of their residual effects, specifically nuclear radiation and fallout. These aspects of nuclear war are seen as especially unfair in that they visit destruction over vast areas of the world that are clearly innocent of any belligerence, and worse yet this destruction will affect the health and lives of generations yet unborn. These potential effects are a large cause for the fear of any nuclear activity, to include peaceful power production. We can sense the worlds emotional response to residual damage when we see the general feelings towards the minefields left in the Falklands, the persistent chemical effects of Agent Orange, or the radiation leakage at Chernobyl. But even the worst residual effects of conventional and chemical war or nuclear power accidents pale in comparison to the centuries of radiation contamination and permanent genetic damage that widespread nuclear war could cause. These fears combine to cause the widespread feeling that the use of nuclear weapons will cause the end of civilization. The sheer order of magnitude of their destruction, combined with their residual and side effects and their damage to centers of culture, has led to a real fear that they will literally remove human culture from the face of the earth. Consider that Hiroshima was largely destroyed by a small nuclear explosion,4 and multiply that destruction by the four million fold greater nuclear arsenal in existence now.5 The result would be so catastrophic as to be incomprehensible, as well as devastating to the entire planet. Recent research and debate has proposed that there is yet another death multiplier in that the worlds weather would be so affected that there would be a nuclear winter. In short, this concept is that the dust from explosions will combine with the soot from massive fires to lower the earth's temperature enough to cause another ice age, and perhaps provide a coup de grace to an already mortally wounded world.6 In summary, the ethical problems are: 1- the insidious nature of radiation death, 2- the massive scale of destruction, 3- the enormous number of civilian casualties, 4- the vast amount of collateral damage, 5- the residual effects, and 6- the potential to destroy civilization, due to: - a combination of the above effects, - the outright destruction of the centers of civilization, - or nuclear winter. Let us examine the ethics of these problems one at a time. Looking at the first one, we must remember that although war is generally accepted to be an ethical business, it is not accepted as a nice business. In the widely quoted words of Smedley, " All's fair in love and war."7 Just because nuclear death is perceived as insidious or unfair does not make it ethically less acceptable: it is merely another version of death, albeit one fraught with strong emotional overtones and many ancillary problems. If we accept St. Augustine's theory of the just war, we can't throw out nuclear arms merely because they are efficient at the business of killing or different in their actual method of causing death. The key to thinking about this problem is to consider that the reason that you kill someone is more important than the means you use to accomplish the deed. The only proviso to this is the general dislike with the use of excessive violence, which will be discussed later. As for the massive scale of destruction that nuclear weapons may cause, we shall initially consider only physical destruction. Civilian casualties and nuclear contamination will be discussed in later paragraphs. The main fear of physical destruction is of a repeat of the massive destruction wrought upon Europe during the Second World War. Note that this fear is really a fear of an aspect of all war, not just nuclear war. Since conventional weapons today are much more destructive today those of forty years ago, a conventional war today on the European continent would cause even more destruction than World War II. In fact, the difference in levels of destruction between a massive conventional war and some kinds of nuclear war would probably not be that great, and the destruction from a conventional war could be the worse of the two.8 This would be especially true if the comparison was between a drawn out conventional war and a nuclear war that stays at low yields and uses weapons designed to minimize unwanted effects and damage. As for civilian casualties, we must realize that there will be unwanted deaths in any war. The fact that bystanders are killed is sad, but that must be accepted as a byproduct of all war, not just nuclear war. The key ethical points to consider when weighing civilian deaths are the aims of the overall war, whether or not the deaths were intentional, and the propriety of the level and type of force that caused the deaths. The first of these ethical points is rather simple: if the intent of the overall war is ethically unsound, then the use of any weapons in such a cause is wrong, be they clubs or nuclear missiles. This fact does not let us differentiate ethically between nuclear and non-nuclear arms, but merely returns us to a basis for our original assumption that war can be just. This point does bear on the ethicality of all- out nuclear war, however, since although the announced intent of the war may be to save the earth from the yoke of Communism or Imperialism, the actual end of the war would probably be a silent, smoking planet. Each of us must draw our own conclusions as to the ethicality of such an action, based on our own cultural, religious, political, and ethical backgrounds. But it is an old ethical axiom that no right action aims at greater evil in the results, and my personal feelings on all out war is that there is no provocation that can ethically support such devastation.9 In the eloquent words of John Bennett, "How can a nation live with its conscience and . . . kill twenty million children in another nation . . .?"10 As for the second point, ethically, there is no real difference between a civilian killed by a stray bullet or a stray radiation dose if both casualties are unintentional. If your target is intentionally a concentration of non- combatants, then your ethical correctness is decided by the necessity of that targeting to achieve the aims of the nation and the ethical correctness of those aims, and not by the means with which you attack the target. Thus ethically, you could make a case that the civilian casualties during the My Lai operation were far worse than a much greater numbers of unintentional civilian casualties that could result from future nuclear strikes, as long as those strikes were aimed at enemy troops. At least such a nuclear attack would be aimed at combatants, while My Lai is considered an atrocity because it is generally accepted to have been an action conducted against non-combatants. Note also the ethical position that you shouldn't destroy one set of innocents" for the sake of another set of "innocents" closer in natural or social affinity.11 The key is that we must restrain from all such destruction unless it is essential to our total objective.12 The next ethical point may be summed up as a general desire that belligerent forces use a reasonable and not excessive amount of violence. There are some problems with this guidance, as we shall see in the following paragraphs. First, it is subjective, and thus a commander's opinion of the force and violence required to accomplish a mission that will literally risk the lives of the people in his unit may not agree with the opinion of a newspaper editor 10,000 miles away or a historian 20 years later. Due to this subjectivity, we shall have to accept unanimity or virtual unanimity as the only judge of what is excessive. This unanimity is very difficult to achieve, however. Even in the extreme case of a strategic nuclear exchange that would destroy human civilization, there is no agreement on the acceptability of that level of violence. Some say that civilization should not be completely destroyed, no matter what the political and social cost, while others maintain that life under some forms of government is not worth living and must be opposed even at the cost of a nuclear holocaust. A second problem with force propriety is that the cause and effect relationship that would seem to mandate the amount of force required is not always clear, in that the results of an engagement are not simply the designation of an immediate winner and loser. It may be more important in the long run to have inflicted a certain percent of casualties on the other force than it is to occupy disputed terrain, or to have forced the enemy to withdraw, even unharmed, in a particular direction. Thus a tactical operation is not graded by bodies counted or grid squares occupied: it is a part of a larger campaign or war, and its importance and relationship to that larger entity may not even be clear after the battle, much less before it. The problem is that since the commander on the spot is rarely sure of the importance of a particular impending battle, he or she is apt to assume it is important and thus to bring to bear the largest amount of violence possible, in the hopes of swaying a possibly critical engagement in the right direction. The third and most difficult problem with force propriety is that the use of extremely violent and apparently excessive force may have a tactical or even strategic role, in that it can break the will of the enemy, and thus lead to a quicker and perhaps less costly resolution of the battle at hand or even the entire war. This is an extremely difficult point, however, since, if granted, it essentially allows imperialism, terrorism, and torture to be acceptable means to wage war. The problem is the classic one of comparing the means used with the ends achieved. St. Augustine's concept of just war apparently opens the door for allowing any means to achieve an end, since it allows the undesirable means of killing in the pursuit of the noble aim of a just peace. But there is clearly a limit to the brutality that a culture will accept: witness the western response to NAZI tactics. But is it more desirable to conduct a constrained but long, casualty filled, and ruinous war or a brutal war that is short, savage, and torture-ridden but not as destructive in overall numbers of casualties? Just exactly how can we compare the physical destruction of the drawn out war with the psychological and spiritual damage of the more brutish conflict? To put this quandary in nuclear terms, is the world as a whole better off because the U.S. used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and thus ended the war quickly, but loosed the nuclear genie and killed tens of thousands of noncombatants? Or is the world better off because the U.S. did not use the bomb in Vietnam, when perhaps such use would have resulted in a U.S. victory, with the resultant increase in U.S. prestige, morale, and (perhaps) global democratic societies, but a concomitant leap in the general fear of nuclear weapons and perhaps a spread of nuclear imperialism? We shall have to let this particular ethical quandary remain unresolved as it applies to nuclear weapons, since any resolution depends on a historical perspective that we don't have. Although we did not really resolve the problem of the end justifying the means, we have resolved that the problem is not nuclear means, but any means. The ethical dilemma is the use of any excessive violence to achieve a just end. The problem is with the use of excess itself, not with the nuclear or conventional nature of the excess. Further, we can now see that judging the ethicality of a tactical operation based on the appropriateness of the violence used is difficult and very open to debate, whether or not the violence in question is nuclear or not. To sum up the response to the ethical problem of civilian casualties, we can say the following: 1- War in general causes such casualties, so if the war is just, then casualties are both expected and accepted. 2- Unintentional civilian casualties are more acceptable ethically than intentional ones, but even the latter are acceptable if they are a necessary adjunct to the pursuit of a just war. 3- Violence is an element of all war, and excessive violence is both difficult to define and perhaps ethically unacceptable. The arguments in defense of collateral damage are the same as those in defense of civilian casualties. Since the damage of physical structures is ethically easier to defend than the killing of the people in the structures, we may assume that if we solved the ethical dilemma of civilian casualties that we have solved the problem of collateral damage to manmade and natural physical structures, as well as other non-human living things. The next problem, residual effects, is severe, since it is hard to condone extending the deleterious effects of a war for centuries. It is difficult to think of any justification for such a far reaching action. Essentially, we must address this problem as an extension of the problem of proper levels of violence, since residual effects are really just the extension of violence into the dimension of time. Conventional war does this to some extent, as in the destruction of a city, which stays as a pile of rubble until rebuilt. As we shall see in later sections of this article, some uses of nuclear weapons would result in contamination similar in area and persistence to conventional weapons, and we must accept the ethicality of such nuclear contamination under the same just war guidelines that we accept conventional contamination. However, residue from conventional war is typically limited to a small area and a few years, while some types of nuclear contamination could literally cover the globe and last for centuries. There is obviously a great difference between these instances: we can safely say that we have found a case of nuclear violence being markedly different and worse than conventional violence. This case can be looked upon as an instance where nuclear violence is truly excessive, since any large and persistent area of contamination is almost unanimously condemned. If Chernobyl has done anything, it has raised our global awareness of the severity of radiation contamination. We shall have to conclude that any great amount of residual contamination is ethically supportable only if one accepts the idea that any means may be used to reach a just end. Although St. Augustine opened the door for the use of any means, he also stated that the justifiability of a war depended upon its reaching a just peace.13 A gently glowing countryside may be serene, but it is unlikely that it accurately reflects the type of peace St. Augustine had in mind. In short, any large scale persistent residual contamination is a means that we can't ethically defend. This leads us to the last and most difficult problem with nuclear weapons: that they risk nuclear holocaust. This holocaust is a case of extreme (excessive?) violence, since it may very well entail the end of all human civilization as well as the destruction of numerous other forms of life (probably everything except cockroaches). It is difficult to see how such a war can be viewed as following St. Augustine's just war standard of creating peace. Even outside the precepts of just war, it is hard to see the utilitarian aspects of such a war. It is extremely hard to defend as a step towards ultimate good, unless you believe that the world needs to be completely destroyed and started anew. Since nuclear holocaust is a combination of massive destruction and residual effects, possibly including the remaking of all life on the planet through genetic mutations and nuclear winter, it is essentially just an extension, albeit extreme, of the combination of excessive violence and residual effects. Since our earlier analysis of these two areas failed to provide an ethical framework for either of them even in isolation, we shall not even begin to try to defend their combination, nuclear holocaust, as ethically acceptable. Since our ethical inquiry has not resolved the problems of holocaust and great residual contamination, at first blush one may think that this implies that nuclear weapons are thus not ethically defensible and we have essentially not made much progress, but this is not the case. We must remember that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still with us, and although there are still aftereffects, both places are essentially normal in spite of the massive devastation that they underwent. Further, we must remember that we now have weapons with yields that are less than one percent of those used on Japan.14 And further still, we had very limited knowledge on the side effects of the weapons in the early days, and we are much more aware of them now and much more capable of engineering weapons so as to minimize fallout, contaminated areas, and other such potential civilization wreckers. Thus we have won part of the ethical battle, in that we have found that nuclear weapons as a means are as ethically acceptable as any other means of making war, at least as long as they avoid nuclear holocaust and excessive residual contamination. Now we shall address how we can use nuclear weapons in such a way as to overcome even these problems. As an aside, note that other nations don't draw the same marked distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons. The government of the U.S.S.R. contends that there is no logical break between conventional theatre war and limited nuclear theatre war.15 Note that the Soviet government does draw a clear distinction between strategic nuclear war and theatre war, whether the latter is nuclear or not. 5. WEAPONS CAPABILITIES AND CATEGORIES To understand how we can use nuclear war as a tool without endangering our entire society, we must first examine the general capabilities of nuclear weapons. Obviously, their primary effect is the quick destruction of large targets with relatively little effort and low cost. This destruction is caused by blast, thermal damage, radiation, and electromagnetic pulse, but it is important to realize that most military uses of such weapons, radiation is intentionally used as the primary factor in causing casualties. This is not due to malevolence, but rather to its efficiency and ability to penetrate protective material. The other facets of the detonation provide both militarily desirable damage and undesirable collateral damage. A salient aspect of nuclear weapons is that they are a very large family of devices with a vast span of destruction. The range of yields varies immensely: without treading upon classified ground, we shall note that the range of yields studied in the unclassified parts of the FM 101-31 series is from .1 kiloton16 to 100 megatons17. The difference in the ends of that scale is a factor of one million, or 6 orders or magnitude. Such a range makes it difficult to generalize or even conceptualize the subject, since the lower end of that scale can be duplicated with conventional weapons, albeit with great difficulty,18 while the upper end of that range is beyond comparison with any combination of conventional weapons. Weapons of the lower end of the scale are definitely destructive, but we must understand that their magnitude of destruction simply does not threaten civilization. They are potent engines of war, but if one were set off in the middle of the Mall in Washington, it would leave people standing in the open untouched if they were one kilometer away.19 Thus both the president and Congress might continue to work, unfazed and probably unaware of the explosion. There is also a vast difference in the ranges of the various weapons, from hand emplaced nuclear mines to the 14 kilometers of a 155 mm howitzer to the 10,000 miles of an intercontinental ballistic missile. And yet another key facet of these weapons is the potential for engineering the proportions of their energy released in each type of destruction. This means that it is possible to design a weapon that has less blast and more radiation, for example. But a far more important way to change the effects of the weapon is much simpler, since merely selecting the height of burst of the weapon is the key factor in creating or avoiding fallout. Fallout results when the detonation is low enough to allow dirt and dust from the surface to be is sucked into the center of the explosion. This matter becomes radioactive, and then spreads through the air, to such an extent that it can literally affect a continent or more, as Chernobyl did. It is essential to realize that sub-surface, surface, and near-surface bursts will cause fallout, while low-airbursts and high-airbursts will avoid it.20 It is thus apparent that we do have at least one important tool to control residual effects and collateral damage.21 However, almost all heights of burst will cause some contamination directly underneath their detonation, due to radiation directly induced in the soil by neutrons released during the nuclear detonation. But this contamination will typically be small in area for yields of 1 MT or less, the maximum contaminated radius is about 1400 meters. It is usually substantially less, depending on the yield and height of burst, and it is fairly short lived, in that routine occupation of the area is possible from 2 to 5 days after the burst.22 Such contamination, limited in its temporal and geographic scope, seems to be within the bounds of acceptable violence to our society. It is the continental scope and generational time frame associated with fallout that disturbs us. Although we are upset at the high levels of local (non-fallout) radiation present in the Chernobyl reactor site that actually killed fire-fighters, we are far more furious at the fallout effects visited upon Polish school children, even though the radiation levels are much lower. Earlier we established that the real ethical problems with nuclear weapons are that they may cause a nuclear holocaust and enormous residual contamination. But as we have just seen, not all nuclear weapons cause these effects. One possible key to our ethical acceptance of the use of nuclear weapons is their separation into categories, some of which cause ethically acceptable results and others of which do not. Further, the variance in range and destructiveness of the various weapons is too large to logically include them all into one class, anyway. Let us therefore look at some major differences between the various types of weapons and see if we can find a rational place to divide them into classes. Although the division of nuclear weapons into categories might be completely logical, we must realize that it goes very much against the grain of popular thought. Although many antinuclear war protesters tend to lump all such war together, the basic proposition of this article is that the correct basis for the fear of nuclear war is the fear of nuclear holocaust and widespread and persistent nuclear contamination, not nuclear weapons per se, and that it is possible to use some nuclear weapons without causing these catastrophes. In fact, even some ardent antinuclear activists accept that the real problem is the "great" nuclear war.23 True, many fear that any nuclear war will lead inevitably to escalation, but even in these cases, we can see that the only damage they fear is the damage of a massive nuclear war. In further defense of classification, note that conventional weapons are always thought of in classes, since it is not convenient nor logical to think of hand grenades and 2000 pound bombs together merely because they are both weapons based on chemical explosives such as TNT. If one of the major problems with nuclear weapons is nuclear holocaust, then we should logically try and split nuclear weapons into those that cause holocaust and those that don't. The first element of nuclear weapons that we should consider is yield. A weapon of small yield just doesn't have the punch to destroy a city and bring on nuclear winter. But there is no clear line as to how small a weapon has to be before it is too small to cause such damage. A a .1 KT weapon is too small and a 100 MT weapon is big enough, but there is a continuum in between that does not lend itself to a division. The next most evident thing to look at is the range of the weapons. Any weapon that is incapable of reaching our seats of civilization, which is to say our large cities, probably can't cause a holocaust. But since many large cities of Europe are close to the NATO-Warsaw Pact borders, if we use range as a key to our division, then only those weapons of extremely short range can be considered to be "civilization safe." Range may thus be the real crux of any classification. In fact, it has been proposed that the key to the nature of a nuclear exchange is not the weapons, but the targets. And as with any weapon, the first factor in deciding whether or not you will attack a target is whether or not you have the range to reach it.24 Another basis for the logical division of the weapons is residual contamination. Since this is a major problem, we can split the weapons into those that will necessarily cause enormous contamination and those that are designed to avoid it. This doesn't restrict our yields much, however, since even large yields will cause minimal residual contamination if they burst high enough. The salient fact is therefore height of burst, and we will have to exclude any weapon from our stable of potentially ethical tools if it is designed to cause a ground burst or an air burst low enough to touch the ground. A final characteristic that can be used to divide the weapons is their threat to command and control. Such a threat is a partial measure of the likelihood that the weapon in question will cause escalation. Even the grimmest outlook on nuclear war should not hold that escalation is inevitable, and we need to do our best to help prevent it.25 Of course, there are other aspects of nuclear weapons usage that impinge upon escalation, but controlling the war is one key. We can probably assume that the leaders of the major powers don't want to start an all out nuclear war, but if the entire top level of the government is wiped out, the scattered, confused, and demoralized remnants of the chain of command are much more likely to push the ultimate button.26 The key element is probably range: those weapons that have the range to attack national command centers belong in the escalation-sensitive category, while those that will be targeted against tactical command centers are escalation-safe. The critical factor here is the ability to transmit your intentions to win the war clearly, but at the same time to leave the enemy the command and control capability to understand your intentions and act upon them.27 Since the enemy's reading of intentions is critical we shall have to ensure that we don't inadvertently imply a incorrect intention. For example, the launching of a massive B-52 propaganda pamphlet strike against Moscow would be rather foolish, since any deep penetration of Russia will invite nuclear holocaust. The Russians could not afford to wait to find out if the planes contain propaganda leaflets or 9 MT warheads.28 Note that weapons with a range too short to cause severe command and control chaos must be intended for use almost solely against tactical military targets, since any meaningful civilian targets are out of range. And conversely, any weapon that can't range major European cities from the probable front lines obviously also can't range national command and control centers. A look back at this discussion indicates that we should perhaps split nuclear weapons into three general categories: those that cause nuclear holocaust or massive contamination, those that cause serious command and control problems to the enemy and thus risk escalation to holocaustal weapons, and those that are usable without causing holocaust, massive contamination, or command and control problems. In short, the safest weapon is one that does not cause a holocaust in itself, doesn't cause any significant contamination, and causes little risk of escalation. Such a weapon should be short range, low yield, and designed to have a fallout safe height of burst. Just such weapons exist today, chiefly as tactical nuclear field artillery. 6. USE OF SHORT RANGE WEAPONS The question we must now ask ourselves is whether or not such limited nuclear weapons can be of any real tactical use. Further, we must ask if their use will be of enough value to offset the potential of escalation into a strategic exchange and holocaust. Short range nuclear weapons may allow us to avoid a conventional defeat, either by actually destroying enough of the enemy that they cease to fight or by convincing the enemy that the U.S. has the force of will to win the war at any cost, to include escalation to nuclear levels. Short range nuclear war may be not only fightable, but barring escalation, vastly preferable to the alternatives of a lost or even protracted conventional war. And even if damage is severe, the actual magnitude of damage caused by short range nuclear weapons may cause much less of a change to the world as we know it than the conquest of the western world by the force of conventional Russian arms. Further, since a limited nuclear war is going to be quick, there will be no reason to attack the industrial base of the adversary, and with targets limited to groups of combatants, there will perhaps be fewer noncombatant casualties than in a protracted conventional war.29 And although short range weapons are obviously more likely to be used on central European soil than Russian or American soil, this should not be a grave drawback to Europeans accepting their use. With targets limited to enemy troop concentrations on the very borders of the countries in question and weapons limited in their residual radiation, collateral damage will be very limited. In fact, the battlefields from a limited war will probably be unremarkable from a nuclear standpoint, and as easy to visit as Gettysburg or Verdun. Short range weapons are also cheap and efficient means of mass destruction, and may well be the only weapon capable of balancing the massive Warsaw Pact edge in conventional weaponry and personnel.30 As an aside, if nuclear war as a means is acceptable, then the timing of the use of the means should not be an issue. If first use of nuclear weapons is the best way to achieve the desired end, then ethically it is just as acceptable as retaliatory use. And pragmatically, first use of nuclear weapons may well be the most efficient use, since it shows the most force of will to win, has the best potential to cause the largest number of enemy casualties, and may allow us to cause the least amount of civilian casualties and collateral damage to our own countries as well as those of the enemy, since if we strike invading armies just as they cross the borders, they are farthest from the population and cultural centers of both forces.31 And as another aside, if nuclear war is acceptable, the exact ratios of energy output are not critical. Thus a "neutron bomb" is actually just a weapon that has been designed to produce more radiation for the same amount of blasts. Another way to consider it would be as a reduced blast weapon, which is designed to produce less blast for the same amount of radiation. But in either case, it is essentially just a nuclear weapon and should be treated as one. In fact, if anything, its use is ethically superior to regularly designed weapons, since it could be used in ways that would reduce the risk of civilian casualties and collateral damage. Essentially, enhanced radiation weapons could completely prevent collateral damage, in that it is possible to design them so that the undesired effects of the detonation, blast and fire, will cover less area than the desired effects, radiation.32 Thus the only civilians that you would have to worry about would be those that were colocated or intermingled with the opposing military forces, just as with conventional weapons. The end result of such nuclear engineering would be very beneficial, in that a 1 KT weapon could replace a 15 KT weapons and the total arsenal worldwide could decrease.33 Further, if that arsenal were ever used, it would cause much less fire, and thus have a smaller chance of bringing on nuclear winter. Of course, such a useful weapon does have one drawback: due to its very efficiency, it is more likely to be used. And thus the psychological line between conventional and nuclear weapons is more likely to be crossed. 7. THE MESSAGE The final message is simple: controlled nuclear weapons are ethically acceptable as elements of war, and they are also useful. Their warfighting capabilities are not unlimited, but they have the punch to do a lot. By now, you should have assuaged your ethical doubts, refreshed your nuclear knowledge, and accepted selected tactical nuclear weapons as viable weapons. However, we must be especially sensitive to limited nuclear war because it is the more likely, although not mandatory, precursor to a strategic nuclear exchange and resultant holocaust than conventional war, for three main reasons.34 First, once the nuclear threshold is crossed, a psychological barrier of some magnitude will no longer stand between the decision maker and the abyss. Second, the world will have already assigned the term "atomic aggressor" to the first user of nuclear weapons, and that aggressor could thus perceive that it has little to lose in terms of world opinion, while the aggrieved party may feel that the wrath of the world will descend upon the original aggressor in the event of a holocaust, since the aggressor "started it."35 And third, even limited nuclear war puts a severe strain on our command and control system, leading to the increased possibility of mistakes and misunderstandings. As a member of the armed services, you are a part of that system to some degree, and you owe it to your nation as well as the world as a whole to do your utmost to ensure that those mistakes and misunderstandings do not happen. To do this, you must be informed on the subject of nuclear weapons, and you must do your best to educate others. The alternatives to such knowledge and education are grim: an almost pathological fear of using one of our most powerful weapons even if our essential freedoms are in extremis, or an uninformed use of those weapons in such a way as to bring about the greatest evil, nuclear holocaust. 8. NOTES 1- Kenneth W. Thompson, Ethical aspects of the nuclear dilemma, " Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), pg. 69. 2- Generally accepted to have been first espoused by St. Augustine in the fourth century A. D.. See The City of God, translated by Gerald Walsh, et al (New York: Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1958), pg 447. 3- Nagendra Singh, Nuclear Weapons and International Law (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1959), pg. 38. 4- Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), pg 36. 5- Arkin, William M. and Richard W. Fieldhouse, Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1985), appropriate multiplication of the data from tables on pp. 42, 44-46, and 57-59 gives an approximate size of the world's arsenal as 60,000 MT, or 60,000,000 KT, which is 4,000,000 times the size of the 12.5 KT explosion at Hiroshima. 6- Thomas Powers, "Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Strategy" (The Atlantic Monthly: Nov 84, v 284, n 5), pg 58. 7- Francis Edward Smedley, Frank Fairleigh, ch 50. See Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown, and Co., 1980), pg. 564. 8- Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957), pg. 188. 9- Paul Ramsey, "The case for making 'just war' possible", Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), pg. 146. 10- John C. Bennett, "Moral urgencies in the nuclear context," Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), pg. 101. 11- Ramsey, pg. 147. 12- Ramsey, pg. 157. 13- St Augustine, pg 452. 14- William M. Arkin and Richard W. Fieldhouse, Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1985), pg. 57 says that the 155 mm warhead is .1 KT, or less than one percent of the 12.5 KT Hiroshima blast. 15- John M. Collins, U.S.- Soviet Military Balance: 1980-1985 (Washington, D.C. et al: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985), pg 74. 16- FM 101-31-1, pg E-1. 17- FM 101-31-1, pg B-7. 18- At this point we have to admit that to a certain extent we're mixing apples and oranges, since a nuclear weapon's energy is approximately 50 percent blast, 35 percent thermal, and fifteen percent radiation and electromagnetic pulse, while a conventional artillery shell's energy is spent on a combination of blast and imparting kinetic energy to shell fragments. In fact, only about 6 to 10 percent of the weight of a projectile is explosive. Although that explosive may be more powerful than standard TNT, it will not be much greater (per Linus Pauling, No More War, pg. 17.) Since it is not easy to compare these effects, we shall make the comparison simple and equate the KT of the nuclear explosion with ten percent of the weight of artillery projectiles. We shall thus assume that the non-blast effects of nuclear weapons are roughly equal in importance to the effects of shell fragments from conventional weapons. 100 battalions of field artillery, 50 with 24 guns of 155mm, 30 with 18 guns of eight inch, and 20 with 18 guns of 105mm, firing at their maximum rate of fire for three minutes produce 1200 155mm cannon x 4 rounds per minute x 95 pounds per round x 3 minutes = 1,368,800 [155] + 540 eight inch cannon x 1.5 round per minute x 200 pounds per round x 3 minutes = 486,000 [8"] + 360 105mm cannon x 10 rounds per minute x 33 pounds per round x 3 minutes = 356,400 [105mm] = 2,211,200 pounds of projectiles, which equals approximately 221,120 pounds or 110.56 tons of explosive, or approximately the .1 KT mentioned as the lower end of the nuclear effects scale. However, note that this was achieved by massing the maximum fires of every field artillery battalion in the Army for three minutes. 19- FM 101-31-3, pg 4-3. 20- FM 101-31-1, pg B-2. 21- FM 101-31-1, pg B-11. 22- FM 3-12, pg 5-15. 23- Linus Pauling, No More War (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1958), pg. 31. 24- Kissinger, pg. 185. 25- Roger L. Shinn, "Faith and the perilous future," Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), pg. 183. 26- Shinn, pg. 183. 27- Solly Zuckerman, Nuclear Illusions and Reality (New York: Viking Press, 1982), pg. 69. 28- Kissinger, pg. 184. 29- Thompson, pg. 80. 30- Thompson, pg. 79. 31- Kissinger, pg. 178. 32- William R. Van Cleave and S. T. Cohen, Tactical Nuclear Weapons: An Examination of the Issues (New York: Crane, Russak, 1978), pg. 39. 33- Van Cleave and Cohen, pg. 34. 34- Kissinger, pg. 177. 35- Kissinger, pg. 176. 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY FM 3-12/FMFM 11-5, Operational Aspects of Radiological Defense, 21 Aug 68, w C 1 & 2. FM 101-31-1/FMFM 11-4, Staff Officers' Field Manual: Nuclear Weapons Employment Doctrine and Procedure, 21 Mar 77. FM 101-31-3/FMFM 11-4B, Staff Officers' Field Manual: Nuclear Weapons Employment Effects Data, 30 Jun 77. Arkin, William M. and Richard W. Fieldhouse. Nuclear Battlefields: Global Links in the Arms Race. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1985. Augustine, Saint. The City of God, translated by Gerald G. Walsh, Demetrius B. Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel J. Horan. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1958. Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations. Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown, and Co., 1980. Bennett, John C. "Moral urgencies in the nuclear context." Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett, pp. 93-124. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. Collins, John M. U.S.-Soviet Military Balance: 1980-1985. Washington, D.C., et al: Pergamon-Brassey's, 1985. Glasstone, Samuel and Philip J. Dolan, compilers and editors. DA Pam 39-3, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977. Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Bantam, 1946. Hudson, George E. and Joseph Kruzel, editors. American Defense Annual 1985-1986. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co., 1985. Inglis, David R. "The nature of a nuclear war." Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett, pp. 41-68. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. Kahn, Herman. Thinking About the Unthinkable. New York: Avon, 1962. Kissinger, Henry A. Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957. Lifton, Robert Jay and Richard Falk. Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psycholoqical Case Against Nuclearism. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1982. Office of Technology Assessment. The Effects of Nuclear War. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. Pauling, Linus. No More War. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. 1958. Powers, Thomas. "Nuclear Winter and Nuclear Strategy". The Atlantic Monthly, Nov 84, v 254, n 5, pp. 53-64. Ramsey, Paul. "The case for making 'just war' possible." Nuclear Weapons and the Conflict of Conscience, ed by John C. Bennett, pp. 143-172. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962. Russell, Bertrand. Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959. Scott, Bruce K. "A NATO Nonnuclear Deterrence: Is it Affordable?" Military Review, vol 1xiv, no 9 (Sep 84), pp. 56-69. Shinn, Roger L. "Faith and the perilous future." Nuclear
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