Abolishing Nuclear Weapons
By Anthony Gregory • Wednesday March 26, 2008 1:24 PM PDT • 12 Comments
Jonathan Schell has a good article addressing some of the arguments against total nuclear disarmament. Interestingly, he turns one potentially pro-nuclear argument around: Some proponents of nuclear weaponry say it is futile to rid of them, since people will always be able to create them, now that the technology is known. But Schell says this is a reason not to worry that some rogue nation with the only nukes in the world can hold the planet hostage—the larger powers could always create nukes if they needed to for deterrence, and the threat of doing so and retaliating is an effective sort of deterrence in itself.
The article cuts nicely to one of the main problems with the current reality of a world with 25,000 nuclear weapons: “Human beings are fallible. A single mistake in the nuclear realm can mean the end of cities, nations or all of us. Fallible human nature and instruments of annihilation make bad company, and should be parted. Let’s remember the deterrence formula—a threat to use nuclear weapons that aims to produce non-use. The trouble is that the world is held perpetually on a knife’s edge, uncertain about witnessing the non-use that’s hoped for or the use that’s threatened.”
From a natural rights perspective, and practicing a methodological individualism in our analysis, we can see the problem with nuclear weapons as devices of self-defense. Pro-war Second Amendment enthusiasts and anti-gun, antiwar liberals alike will often argue that the difference between nuclear arms and personal arms is a mere difference in degree, not kind. But as Murray N. Rothbard put it:
“It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one.[4] But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even “conventional” aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.“
Surely, even in cold strategic terms, nuclear weapons are no sensible or effective remedy to America’s foreign enemies of today—terrorists hijacking planes, setting off improvised devices or, God forbid, launching bio warfare. Nuclear weapons offer even less deterrence against stateless terrorists than they did against the USSR. After the Cold War, Robert Higgs asked if nuclear weapons could be scrapped. I must agree fully with Higgs’s characterization of the anti-nuclear weapons cause as a “crusade for sanity.”
Tags: War 
Let me play skeptic:
“Surely, even in cold strategic terms, nuclear weapons are no sensible or effective remedy to America’s foreign enemies of today – terrorists...”
This assumes that yesterday’s enemies, and today’s great military powers, will never act aggressively. I can envision a situation, such as WWII, where a military power launched a preemptive massive destruction of the United States (even those not hit would be starved by the EMP effect on distribution, communication, etc.). THAT is assuming a lot.
On preemption, isn’t the rationale for the Iraq war that Hussein may have scrapped his arsenal but kept the KNOWLEDGE and scientists captive, ready to use at a later date? I can see how you might get around that argument, but it makes it difficult to persuade most people that we ought to disarm (when the “criminal states” won’t–and some, like North Korea, might “bargain” their dangerous reputations for Western cash).
In the future, state military powers will be a challenge (including our own military power). To assume we have reached the end of military history with the introduction of nuclear weapons is to assume that human nature has changed. Given the wide range of expression in “human nature,” there will always be “evildoers.”
I’m not defending an aggressive or interventionist foreign policy but simple disarmament doesn’t sound like the best argument for “putting defense back in national defense.”
Partly, this is a matter of tactics. While I share your general foreign policy view (I think), libertarians OF ALL PEOPLE need to persuade people with effective words and arguments. Is this what you would start off with?
Sincerely,
Your devil’s advocate
Jonathan Bean | Mar 27, 2008 | Reply
Good points. The trouble is, ultimately, a large part of the argument for disarmament is moral. The counterarguments tend to be pragmatic. I should indeed think more about how to respond to some of the pragmatic considerations.
In terms of “national defense,” you and I might have very similar views on many particular wars, but I think I might go further on this: I believe collective security and state-sponsored national defense are myths. I don’t think the government, on balance, makes us more secure at all.
Anthony Gregory | Mar 27, 2008 | Reply
So, you take an anarchist view, and I am a minarchist? If you take the anarchist view, and if nuclear weapon knowledge is necessary to counter stateless terrorists, etc., then
1. Why limit such knowledge to the state?
2. Can we trust individuals with nuclear weapons? Your argument seems to suggest they are different. Well, if they are different but still needed as a deterrent, how do individuals protect themselves??
3. Gun control analogy: If you envision stateless defense, then isn’t what you propose a lot like gun control? How do you square that with your argument? Who is going to disarm whom? !
I must admit that foreign policy is an area where the tension between moral arguments and pragmatism becomes most critical. So I’d like to continue this conversation.
Jonathan Bean | Mar 28, 2008 | Reply
I do not think that the US or other “friendly” nations should reduce their nuclear arsenal. Murray Rothbard was right on a lot of things. But he did not fully appreciate the benefits of Mutually Assured Destruction in preventing usage of nukes.
Nuclear weapons make nation-states friendly towards each other. For example, the US stood up to the Soviet Union (with their 40,000 nuclear warheads) in a far more more rational way than they did against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which the Bush administration arguably KNEW did not have WMDs. There’s no way President Bush would have been so arrogant had Iraq had a fully stocked arsenel of WMDs.
It’s the same argument for the second amendment right to own a gun. Widespread gun ownership makes for a polite society.
Although I’m not happy that nations like North Korea have a nuke, I can understand their motivation. It’s the only way to prevent being bullied by the US.
Pablo Escobar | Mar 29, 2008 | Reply
I fully concur with Pablo.
Though Anthony is spot in referencing Rothbard on the completely different nature of nuclear weapons, it’s their actual implementation that we ought be worried about. And there is much to be said for MAD and the more or less even diffusion of WMDs.
So, if it’s a choice, I’d prefer focusing my energy on keeping the US from preventing other nations from acquiring nukes, not attempting to dismantle those already in existence. It’s a purely practical consideration, considering that yes, the “cat is (already) out of the bag”.
Dain | Mar 29, 2008 | Reply
Nuclear weapons also provide “full spectrum deterrence” against the quest for “full spectrum dominance” by any ‘baboons’ posing as hominids.
If interested, see its full deconstruction in
“Response to Zia Mian’s ‘How Not to Handle Nuclear Security’”
(humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2007/12/response-toziamian-nuclear-security.html)
and
“Beware of Red Herrings on Nuclear Security spun by Hectoring Hegemons and their patsies!”
(humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/2008/03/beware-redherrings-nuclear-security.html)
Zahir Ebrahim
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org
Project Humanbeingsfirst.org | Apr 2, 2008 | Reply
i think neuclar war fair is stupid because there is no use for them if you can’t find a target
lenny | May 15, 2008 | Reply
I think that TRUE libertarians believe in the right for nations own all weapons including nukes, just as even the most devout conservatives believe in a ban in any private ownership of nukes. Most libertarians in my view, contrary to a lot of libertarian sites, do not believe in the abolition in nuclear weapons, yet they believe they should only be used in self defense. I’m not libertarian, and I do believe in banning citizens from owning nukes, but libertarians are just about on average almost fully pro-weapon on average.
C. P. | Feb 3, 2009 | Reply
C.P., libertarians believe states have no rights. Governments have privileges. Individuals have rights. So no government could have the right to own a nuke if individuals do not.
They cannot “only be used in self defense” because unlike guns and even aircraft, tanks and large projectile weapons, they cannot be used defensively. Nukes cannot be pinpointed against aggressors. They invariably hurt and kill and destroy the property of innocents. They are offensive weapons and their use or threatened use is contrary to libertarian ethics. If their use cannot even be threatened without threatening the rights of innocents, they are useless for self defense.
This is not to say governments should engage in any and all activity in the name of banning nukes, either, but that’s a different question. States will often violate rights in the name of international peace. Indeed, tthere is certainly nothing unlibertarian about not wanting states to have nuclear weapons.
Anthony Gregory | Feb 3, 2009 | Reply
Anthony Gregory, on the contrary, libertarians believe in states rights more than federal gov’t rights, not anarchy, though anarchists helped form libertarianism. However, thank you for defending my position that states can own nuclear weapons in a libertarian-style gov’t. Still, would you like it if the Washington bureaucrats and judges kept on being unrestricted since we have no constitutional amendment to give them term limits, I ask you? Libertarians believe in a constitutional amendment to give members in Congress such limits and even limits on those judges in all federal courts, including the Supreme Court. If you don’t believe me, see the website on the Constitutionalist Party. In that site, they mention a “careerist” poltical system and the need to limit it.
C. P. | Feb 12, 2009 | Reply
@C. P.: The Constitutionalist Party are not libertarians. Libertarianism is rooted in the non-aggression principle. Taken to its logical extreme, it means no monopoly states.
Anthony Gregory | Feb 12, 2009 | Reply