Conceptions of politics, morality, and war in the nuclear policy debates
During the resurgent nuclear debates from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, analysts sharply disagreed about the appropriate means and ends of strategy. Deterrence dominance strategists argued that America required a countervailing capacity to sustain a viable deterrent posture and to contain Soviet adventurism. Proponents of pure deterrence claimed that the risks endemic to mutual vulnerability would suffice to moderate the superpower rivalry. Advocates of denuclearization charged that reliance on nuclear weaponry posed the greatest danger to human well-being and called for diplomatic measures to establish a disarmament regime. While scholars have systemically explored the strategic and technological components of the controversy, few studies have examined the political theoretic dimensions. Through a textual exegesis of the writings of key participants, this work seeks to demonstrate that contending conceptions of politics and morality inform dissension about the viability of coercive power in the nuclear age. Justifications of deterrence dominance proposals generally conflate political and ethical considerations through variants of Hobbesian skepticism or liberal just war interventionism. Such arguments perceive the state as the locus of societal values and sovereignty as sanctioning extensive activities in the global system. Pure deterrence notions posit an irreconcilable tension between politics and morality that corresponds with a tragic vision: war may be a necessary element of sociality, but it seldom has truly creative consequences. From this perspective, the state is a morally ambiguous agent that can preserve and endanger societal well-being. Finally, associated with the denuclearization school is a conviction that progressive social movements can conform politics to essential ethical precepts by minimizing the role of coercive power. In this view, the state and its claim to sovereignty are primary sources of the war system, hence must be radically altered.
- Research Organization:
- Denver Univ., CO (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 7184796
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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