Ethics of Nuclear Weapons and National Security Intelligence

Abstract

Ethics of Nuclear Weapons and National Security Intelligence

Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, USA, mmandregg@stthomas.edu

for Presentation to the International Ethics Section of the ISA, San Francisco, April 6, 2013

Introduction

From the beginning of the nuclear age there have been fears that we may have invented a weapon that will destroy us all. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped build the first fission bombs, commented often on this (1). Albert Einstein, whose letter to then President Franklin Roosevelt helped convince him to fund them, talked about the imperative to seek peace and new ways of thinking about everything as he neared death (2). Bertrand Russell coauthored a Manifesto with Einstein (and nine others) to warn the world that everything had changed (3). Yet thousands of thoughtful people still felt compelled by the urgencies of World War II to make nuclear weapons and to use two of them against other human beings. To end the war, they said to each other, and perhaps to show the Soviets who would be the big dog following.

But then what?

Another arms race had begun, and bigger, badder WMDs would be developed soon.

As soon as more than one nation had nuclear weapons, some strategy had to be conceived for their use. Mutual Assured Destruction was the main result, and millions learned the irony of a “MAD” strategy, where safety was to be assured by capabilities and declared will to destroy human civilization if we were frightened enough by any enemy. Those we terrified produced similar weapons and strategies. Herman Kahn and colleagues wrote books like “Thinking the Unthinkable” (4) to explain this theory to lay publics unanointed by the priesthood of nuclear physicists. Many nominally good people were hired to build thousands of nuclear warheads and delivery systems. Thousands more were trained to use them to blow up half of the world if so ordered. Their reliability was tested relentlessly, to pull the trigger or push the button if so ordered, and our bureaucracies learned how to exclude anyone who might hesitate if their duty called. Our adversaries did the same. We shared the lethal technologies with some allies, as did they. And retired nuclear physicists started a magazine, called the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, to warn people basically not to do what they had done.

Later we invented modern biological weapons, ever so secretly, and a new community of biologists and doctors learned to sin like physicists . And chemical weapons were ‘improved’ by development of modern, binary nerve agents, much more effective than old mustard gas, Zyklon B and such, despite strict prohibitions that were rationalized around. Scientists and intelligentsia pondered how we had wandered into this thicket of moral conundrums. Meanwhile we stumbled on, driven by something. One purpose of this paper is explaining that.