Air University Review, January-February 1985
AS military professionals, we are caught up in one of the oldest and deepest of moral dilemmas: We have attempted, and are still attempting, to build a nation on certain clear moral and social principles, yet the need to protect our nation often causes us to contemplate or take actions that directly contradict these principles. Although the conflict between needs and ideals is manifest throughout the full spectrum of society's endeavors, it is when societies resort to war that the conflict reaches its most immediate and frightening dimensions. For the ten millenniums prior to 1945, the conflict has been kept to manageable proportions because destruction was usually, although not always, limited by the capabilities or objectives of the opponents––even when whole peoples became involved in a conflict. Since the detonation of the first nuclear weapon in 1945, the conflict between needs and ideals has assumed a greater significance, since they gave man the ability to destroy whole peoples and societies (indeed, perhaps even civilization).
Recently, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops attempted to deal with the moral dilemma posed by nuclear weapons in its pastoral letter titled "The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response." More specifically and to the point for men and women in the U.S. Air Force, the pastoral letter examines the morality of nuclear deterrence and using nuclear weapons. Although a minority (approximately 25 percent) of the military is Roman Catholic, the relevance of the statements contained in the letter is far more extensive. For this reason, it is important that we understand the major ideas expressed by the bishops, their implications in terms of current U.S.-Soviet military capabilities, and some of the major moral problems not addressed in the letter.
The term pastoral letter is actually a misnomer. The document is more like a treatise than what one would normally think of as a letter, containing approximately 40,000 words. The letter deals with several complex problems in addition to the nuclear issue and draws from secular as well as religious sources. Many current and former government officials, including Caspar Weinberger, Eugene Rostow, Edward Romney, Harold Brown, and others, appeared before the drafting committee. Writing the letter took more than two years and required three major drafts before the Catholic bishops of the United States approved it by a 238-9 margin in May 1983. Four sections of the final document are particularly relevant to the Air Force mission: just war theory, use of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and steps to promote peace.
just war theory
Western societies have wrestled with the just war concept for centuries, and the Roman Catholic Church has been a driving force in this struggle. The discussion concerning just war in the pastoral letter is worth considering because the bishops' position probably closely reflects what the American military institution would regard as just war.1 The letter distinguishes between when it is permissible to resort to war (jus ad bellum) and what is permissible in the conduct of war (jus in bello).
The best way to describe the letter's position on when it is permissible to take up arms is that it is pacific, not pacifist. The Church opposes any war of aggression and reluctantly supports defensive wars once all peace efforts have failed. The letter carefully explains that nonviolence best reflects the teaching of Jesus, but that force, including deadly force, can be justified in certain instances and that nations have a right to provide for their own defense.2 As Pope Pius XII stated: "A people threatened with an unjust aggression, or already its victim, may not remain passively indifferent, if it would think and act as befits a Christian."3 Specific guidelines for when war is permissible include a just cause, competent authority to commit the nation, right intention, a reasonable probability of success, proportionality, comparative justice, and last resort. Essentially, the nation's leaders must carefully subject the use of military force to each just war criterion and resort to force only when the action meets all criteria.4
Once a nation becomes convinced that it must resort to force to protect itself, the conduct of the war is subject to two general principles: proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality refers to the amount of military advantage that can be obtained from a military action weighed against the amount of damage caused by it. If the damage exceeds the advantage, the act is immoral.5 It is worth noting that proportionality is not linked to the concept of revenge; that is, the fact that the other side commits immoral acts does not render moral similar acts on your part.
Differentiation is the ability to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants and to direct attack at the former. Of course, recognizing combatants, like recognizing beauty, is somewhat dependent on the eye of the beholder. In reality, selecting valid combatants in a conflict can vary between the extremes of defining combatants narrowly as only armed forces and considering every person, every asset, and virtually everything a resource to be used in war. World War II bombing illustrates the difficulties in making such distinctions.
The British described the German bombing of Warsaw as immoral yet themselves engaged in an enormous campaign of bombing civilian targets in Germany. In the case of the British bombing, the morale of the German people had been selected as the military target. Still, this campaign bothered not only religious leaders but others too, perhaps most notably the British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart, who wrote:
A new directive to Bomber Command on February 14, 1942, emphasized that the bombing campaign was now to "be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular, of the industrial workers." That was to be the "primary object." Thus terrorisation became without reservation the definite policy of the British Government, although still disguised in answers to Parliamentary questions.6
One is also struck by President Truman's unequivocal statement that he never had any moral reservations about dropping atom bombs on two Japanese cities.
These examples illustrate the problem of discriminating between military and nonmilitary targets, so it is not surprising that the American bishops had difficulty with the issue also. The bishops recognized that modern war requires the mobilization of significant portions of the political, social, and economic sectors of a society. Nevertheless, the bishops concluded that even under the broadest definition of combatants, it is not morally permissible to consider certain classes of people as combatants (namely, children, the elderly, the ill, farmers, and industrial workers engaged in nonwar-related endeavors). According to the letter, such groups may never be directly attacked.7 Instead, one must link the concepts of proportionality and differentiation in determining how many noncombatants may be killed or injured indirectly during an attack on a valid military target before the military advantage is outweighed and the attack rendered immoral.
Because of the unprecedented potential of nuclear weapons to produce collateral death and destruction, many, including the American bishops, feel that nuclear warfare raises new moral questions. In its extreme form, nuclear warfare between the superpowers could lead to the destruction of each side's civilian population. Clearly, warfare has never before posed the possibility of such a moral and physical catastrophe.8
use of nuclear weapons
Faced with the immense destructive capability of nuclear weapons, the bishops attempted to reconcile the use of nuclear weapons with the two concepts of proportionality and discrimination. Where counterpopulation strikes are concerned, they concluded that such strikes are in no way morally permissible. This prohibition applies even if our own cities have been destroyed. "No Christian can rightfully carry out orders or policies deliberately aimed at killing noncombatants."9 In the same category are counterforce strikes on a scale that would cause so many civilian casualties as to be virtually indistinguishable from a countervalue strike, especially given the commingling of military, political, and militarily significant industrial targets with civilian population centers. Thus, significant counterforce strikes are to be judged immoral in terms of both discrimination and proportionality.10
It should be noted that many secular authorities also object to counterforce targeting. Their objections are largely based on the nature of the Soviet bases that would be targeted. Many Soviet military facilities are closely interspersed with civilian population centers, making high collateral damage and civilian casualties probable in a counterforce strike. Twenty-two of the thirty-two major air bases, some three-quarters of the IRBM and MRBM sites and more than half of the twenty-six ICBM fields are located west of the Ural mountains, many in densely populated areas of the Soviet Union.11
Collateral damage during a counterforce strike quickly approaches that of a countervalue strike if one also includes political centers, command and control centers, and the rail network as valid military targets. In fact, U.S. strategic target planners have always recognized the possibility of collateral civilian damage when attacking military targets and during the 1950s referred to such damage as the "bonus effect."12
Only a limited nuclear war in which destruction would be both discriminate and proportionate is morally acceptable, according to the pastoral letter. Moreover, the letter makes clear, the bishops have strong reservations about the ability of the superpowers to keep a conflict contained once nuclear weapons have been used, especially in a confused battlefield situation. Thus, since there are virtually no situations in which nuclear weapons can be used and be guaranteed to remain within the bounds of acceptable morality in terms of discrimination and proportionality, the conclusions of the pastoral letter are tantamount to denying the moral acceptability of any use of nuclear weapons.
nuclear deterrence
If the use of nuclear weapons is essentially judged immoral, then what can be said about the national defense policy of deterrence, which rests on the possession of nuclear weapons and the unalterable determination to use them in response to a nuclear attack? Clearly, the possession of nuclear weapons and the determination to use these weapons in a manner that is neither discriminate nor proportionate poses moral difficulties. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that Pope John Paul II, during the U.N. Second Special Session on Disarmament in June of 1982, rendered the following clearcut moral appraisal of nuclear deterrence:
In current conditions, "deterrence" based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself, but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged to be morally acceptable. Nonetheless, in order to ensure peace, it is indispensable not to be satisfied with this minimum, which is always susceptible to the real danger of explosion.13
Obviously, the Pope recognizes the efficacy of nuclear deterrence in preventing a nuclear war. Yet he realizes too, as do most responsible people, that nuclear deterrence is so fragile that we cannot live forever with the status quo. The pastoral letter echoes these awarenesses.
the search for peace
Recognizing that nuclear deterrence, while morally acceptable as a temporary measure, is too dangerous to be accepted forever, the bishops offer some guidelines and steps toward achieving a more acceptable state of the world. The measures that they suggest in the letter go beyond prevention of war, encouraging positive peacemaking initiatives. To begin with, there should be immediate, bilateral, verifiable agreements to stop the testing, production, and deployment of new nuclear weapons. Efforts should also be directed toward a significant reduction in current nuclear arsenals, starting with counterforce weapons. Simultaneously, renewed efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and to control expanding conventional arms sales should be initiated. Nonviolent means of conflict resolution should be taught and encouraged. Finally, nations should pursue political and economic policies designed to protect human dignity and rights for every person.14
Obviously, this agenda goes far beyond putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle. As the bishops acknowledge, there are significant obstacles to achieving such broad, utopian goals. How does one reconcile two opposing political systems to a reduction and eventual elimination of the nuclear threat? The bishops recognize that we face in our Soviet antagonist a political leadership whose ideology and concepts of morality are fundamentally different from those of our country. They further recognize that despite Soviet claims of good will, a better indicator of true motives is Soviet malevolent behavior in the world. Nevertheless, they believe that these circumstances must not prevent us from conducting meaningful negotiations.15
Overall, the letter is well balanced, well researched, well written, and well worth reading. In preparing it, the Catholic bishops considered some of the most complex and pressing issues facing the human race today. Although the letter clarifies or can help clarify one's thinking about the moral issues involved with nuclear weapons, there are two crucial areas where the letter is inadequate.
morality and the new soldier
At this moment, there are thousands of American service personnel who are assigned duties related to America's nuclear arsenal and who are duty-bound to use these weapons on receipt of a lawful command to do so. It seems to me that these modern military professionals are caught in a moral dilemma of considerable dimension. If one momentarily accepts the American bishops' definition of what is moral and immoral, the dilemma becomes quite obvious: As long as these people simply carry out their duties to provide deterrence, their actions can be viewed as moral. However, should deterrence fail, our men and women may need to choose between following legitimate orders, in which case they would be condemned by the Church for committing immoral acts, or violating their oath and military ethic arid disobeying the order to fire, in which case their refusal would be judged moral by the standards stated in the bishops' letter. By pronouncing nuclear deterrence moral, yet defining virtually any use of nuclear weapons as immoral, the American bishops appear to have posed a moral dilemma for military personnel. How can we sustain a moral condition (deterrence), which itself depends upon a commitment to use nuclear weapons when necessary, an act that the bishops define as immoral?
Perhaps the solution to this dilemma can be found in one of two ways. First, we could abandon the concepts of proportionality and discrimination and declare the opposing population as a legitimate military target. Essentially, this position is what the Soviets have adopted; they do not concern themselves with the concept of morality in war. Lenin simplified the whole debate for the Soviets by declaring that morality is not even to be considered in determining a course of action. This line has been followed consistently by all subsequent Soviet leaders.16 Thus because the Soviets have dispensed with the concept of morality and "led the way" on the matter, we could follow suit, putting aside comparisons between the moral stance of the Soviet military service and our own.
However, abandoning morality is not acceptable to Americans. We as a people do not solve moral problems by simply doing away with morality. We must look, therefore, for another solution to our dilemma.
A second possible solution would be to recognize that the concepts of proportionality and discrimination must now be applied within a much larger context for nuclear weapons than for conventional arms. The whole issue of nuclear weapons must be examined in terms of the consequences if deterrence fails. Is it possible that there is no circumstance where the military value gained by use of nuclear weapons is proportionate to the collateral destruction of nonmilitary targets?
The proportionality of the limited use of nuclear weapons to end a general confrontation as envisioned by Sir John Hackett in his popular book, The Third World War: August 1985, can be viewed two ways. In the strict sense, the destruction of the military targets in and around the city of Minsk, as Hackett depicts it, did not justify the attendant loss of the civilian population. This would be the position of the Catholic bishops. However, if the limited use of nuclear weapons results in the termination of the general war and an acceptable peace, then it is difficult to argue that civilian losses in a particular city are disproportionate to the military advantages gained.
The Catholic bishops deny the possibility of proportionality where limited use of nuclear weapons is concerned by stating that they cannot envision any realistic situations in which the use of nuclear weapons would remain limited. Many secular authorities agree with this thesis. If we momentarily accept this major assumption, we are left only with the proportionality of general nuclear war to consider.
It is difficult to imagine any national strategy, Soviet or U.S., that would call for the start of a general nuclear war. Nevertheless, let us assume that the United States has just endured a Soviet first strike that disarmed us significantly, destroying most of our counterstrike capability. The bishops would have us do nothing with the remaining nuclear strike force because any generalized response would be, by their definition, disproportionate and immoral. The implication of this is clear: the United States must give up. In so doing, we would be electing to do the "moral" thing, but the result would be that a political leadership that recognizes no morality would have a military capability far greater than that of the rest of the world combined. Under these circumstances, what would become of our surviving countrymen? Furthermore, and in more general terms, what would become of our West European allies? Who can believe that they would be spared the loss of their freedom and dignity?
Viewed within this larger context, the concept of proportionality takes on new significance. As Western military professionals, we shudder at the thought of annihilating millions of Soviet civilians. Applying the concept of proportionality in its usual sense, perhaps the value gained by destroying the military targets in Moscow would not be worth the death of several million civilians. But if the alternative is the loss of basic human rights and dignity for hundreds of millions of our countrymen and allies, it is difficult to judge the destruction of the Soviet war-making capability as being disproportionate to the value gained by Western civilization, even assuming the death of tens of millions of Soviet civilians. Thus, in today's world, the concept of proportionality must be rethought on a global scale that considers not only the potential scope of modern warfare but the long-range results of victory or defeat.
shaping a peaceful world
The second serious deficiency in the pastoral letter is its discussion of steps that we should take (with our antagonists) to reduce the risk of war and create an acceptable, harmonious world in the future. I found two shortcomings in this discussion.
First, the bishops recognize that there are great moral differences between our society and that of the Soviets. However, they do not go far enough. The differences go beyond the fact that Marxist-Leninists operate from an entirely different moral basis than we do. The dialectic that forms the foundation of their political doctrine does not allow for the existence of our sociopolitical system alongside their own for any extended period of time. This point is crucial. The Communists see themselves as locked in a cataclysmic struggle with Western capitalistic societies, the conclusion of which can only be the utter and complete destruction of the capitalist system. This idea within Marxist-Leninist doctrine has been constant and unchanging since Lenin established the Communist state in 1917.
Furthermore, this doctrine gives the Soviet leadership a sense of being the "chosen" ones and a sense of inevitability about the ultimate triumph of their system. This attitude can be accurately described as close to an article of religious faith. It is one thing to deal with a political adversary who operates from different philosophical and moral precepts yet recognizes the right of others to live under different systems. It is quite another thing to deal with an adversary who is bent on the destruction of all other systems. This difference is not adequately recognized by the pastoral letter. Because of this shortcoming, the whole discussion of steps to promote peace takes on an almost Pollyanna quality in its oversimplification.
A second shortcoming in the bishops' discussion of peacemaking is the lack of specifics concerning what should be done. The bishops encouraged the United States to negotiate effective arms control treaties leading to disarmament, to ratify pending treaties, and to develop nonviolent alternatives. This is the usual advice that one can find in many sources, and who would disagree? The difficult and unanswered question is how. Aside from a broad suggestion that we should take advantage of Soviet-American mutual interests, the bishops offer no proposed initiatives, no insights, no moral perspectives that shed new light on this murky issue. The shallowness of this particular section of the letter is especially disappointing since we urgently need assistance in dealing with an adversary who openly proclaims our destruction as his final goal.
By not identifying this core problem and dealing with it in their pastoral letter, the American bishops missed a chance to make a lasting and significant contribution to the problem of attaining a just and lasting peace in the modern world. We can only hope that clergy in our nation will again consider these problems and develop more useful moral constructs to guide both policymakers and soldiers as we wrestle with the frightening realities of our nuclear world. If they chose to make the attempt, they would do well to remember these words of St. Augustine: "War and conquest are a sad necessity in the eyes of men of principle, yet it would be still more unfortunate if wrongdoers should dominate just men."
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
Notes
1. Kenneth H. Wenker, Some Introductory Notes on Just War Theory (unpublished paper, USAF Academy, undated), p. 5.
2. U.S. Catholic Conference, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response (Washington, D.C., 1983), p. 11
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., p. 13A.
6. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the Second World War (New York: Paragon Books, 1979), pp. 596-97.
7. U.S. Catholic Conference, p. 13A.
8. Ibid., p. 14A.
9. Ibid., p. 16A.
10. Ibid., pp. 18-19A.
11. Desmond Ball, "U.S. Strategic Forces: How They Would Be Used?" International Security, Winter 1982/3, p. 40.
12. David Allen Rosenberg, "Origins of Overkill," International Security, Spring 1983, p. 15.
13. U.S. Catholic Conference, p. 18A.
14. Ibid., p. 4A.
15. Ibid., p. 24A.
16. Lenin's comment about morality was, "We repudiate all morality from nonhuman and nonclass concepts. We say that it is a deception, a fraud in the interests of the landlords and capitalists. We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat (the in-group).... We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society (the out-group) and to unite all toilers around the proletariat, which is creating a new Communist society.... We do not believe in an eternal morality."
Major Bruce B. Johnston (USAFA; M.S., Air Force Institute of Technology) is Assistant Professor of Aerospace Studies at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. His previous assignments, all in contracting, have been at Hq USAFE, Ramstein Air Base; 6931st Air Base Squadron, Crete, Greece; AFIT; and 92d Bombardment Wing, Fairchild AFB, Washington. Major Johnston has previously written book reviews for the Review.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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