Can a state be justified in having a nuclear-weapons deterrent?

       It does seem to be justified to have a deterrence for wars as it does prove successful in stopping conflicts and damage happening. Though, only restricted forms of deterrent are at all justifiable and nuclear weapons are certainly not justifiable. Nuclear weapons are not justified because of the unethical danger involved in mass killing civilians or potential damage caused to yourself, however, given the notion of a large scale deterrence that can discriminate to only attack military targets, that could be justified.
      There are many reasons why a country may go to war, some of which are just, such as self-defence or to protect another country; others unjust, such as attempting to enforce your beliefs on another state. Most commonly, war will be avoided through diplomacy and agreement of terms, though when diplomacy is not a viable option, war can be a necessity. In the result of conflict, a safe way to protect yourself from actually going to war on a state or for a state to wage war on you would be to have a viable threat to the adversary and therefore deterring any conflict due to the potential harm and bringing about the end of the conflict without any actual damage. A deterrent arises under these conditions where the adversary recognises the power held and because of the potential damage to yourself, it prevents an attack, or at least causes hesitation and changes the face of warfare. A historical example of this would be  Spartans as a warrior kingdom often posed a huge threat to any countries that desired to attack them because of the skill of their warriors. When Spartans did go to war they were powerful in combat, though often war would not happen as adversary may have been unsure of their ability to win a conflict against them, as being considered some of the best warriors in the world is a threatening deterrent. Under these grounds it seems reasonable that the more serious the threat, the more likely that warfare will be deterred completely, which would justify having nuclear weapons because they are a very serious threat and a more effective deterrent.
       Using the deterrence theory, it seems reasonable that the most effective deterrent is justifiable and nuclear weapons are one of the most effective weapons we currently have. However, in order for owning threats to become an actual deterrence, you must also have the intention of using the weapon and the use of a nuclear weapon cannot be justified. Intention is necessary as the adversary must actually believe that you are willing and capable of using the weapon in order for it to be a threat. If the adversary thinks there is no chance of you actually launching your nuclear weapon, then you owning it becomes significantly less of a threat. So for a deterrent to work, you must also have the intention of using the weapon you are using to deter. (Howlett, 2000)
       Nuclear weapons cannot be morally justified due to the amount of suffering they cause, particularly to innocents. The notion here is that in a just war, the killing of innocents is wrong, considering they are no reasonable part of the opposing war effort, so the suffering brought about by their death cannot be justified. Normally, in war it seems difficult to be discriminate with targets, and so there will inevitably be civilian casualties, however, the intention is largely important to this. It seems more justified to bring about the end of the war in the fewest deaths possible and to carry out attacks that focus on the opposing war effort with the intention of crippling retaliation attacks – it is, however, difficult to argue whether collateral damage is justified so long as the intention is to avoid it as much as possible. It seems that the intention of using a weapon is not much different from actually using the weapon, as there could be many reasons that you don’t carry out the act, such as luck or the other person’s ability to avoid it; the idea still remains that you are not exempt from the immoral action. For example if there is an argument in a bar and one person breaks a bottle with the intention of murdering the second person, but the second person happens to run out of the pub faster and gets away alive, it is still immoral because the intention to murder is still there. You can escalate this to states owning nuclear weapons as a point of deterrence, you would still need to have the intention to use them for them to be a threat, and this seems like an unjustifiable position.
       The problem here is the contrast between the deterrence being used to avoid casualties and conflict through war, against the possession a nuclear weapon holding the potential to do the opposite of this by causing more suffering. So the question comes to rise: 'do we need deterrence?' being the idea that perhaps no weapons to that effectiveness are justified enough to deter warfare. The alternative, as Freedman suggests, is to simply pick fights, as with no real threats other than fair combat, states could go to war over a disagreement significantly more commonly, which would result in deaths and destruction anyway. The idea Freedman suggests with nuclear wars is that the threat is so large As a result it seems we need some kind of threat, though nobody should have the responsibility to have or use nuclear warfare as the potential damage is more than necessary (Fisher, 1985; Freedman, 2004). Furthermore, due to the potential of nuclear-weapons to get out of control, what is used as a deterrent initially could possibly end in a devastating strike. For example, if two super powers were to engage in a cold war and keep building better and more effective nuclear weapons, it stands to reason that they could reach a point where rather than deterrence of war, it is simply a matter of being pre-emptive and causing enough damage so the other cannot retaliate, essentially annihilating an entire country. There seems to be a limit to how far deterrence can reach before ‘effective’ becomes ‘too much’.
       The question, then, becomes at what point does the deterrence become unjustifiable? To determine this would be to find a viable threat that can be justified, as there does seem to be a scale of excessiveness within weapon usage. (Fisher, 1985) This is because some weapons are more unjustifiable or immoral than others: for example, while nuclear warfare is a serious threat, biological warfare is considered much worse and is already accepted as a weapon that is never to be used by anyone. Chemical warfare is the other form of ‘mass-destruction’ weapons, and is arguably less serious than nuclear warfare – while still remaining unjustifiable. The main similarity of these weapons of mass destruction is the potential to be uncontrollable and simply to kill many people in one attack, including innocents. As well as the destructive force as a result of intention, it does seem like more can go wrong with owning such things as nuclear weapons. For example, the difficulty of containing the weapon, with use of security that could be worked around, putting nuclear power in the hands of any thief clever enough to work out how to get past security. Alternatively, in the result of an accidental detonation within your own state, causing you a large scale damage simply for the reason of deterring damage to yourself. There are many things that could go wrong with nuclear weapons, and as a result of these issues, nuclear weapons simply cannot be justified.
         Elizabeth Anscombe made the distinction between intentionally targeting military or civilian targets as a notion of fairness in war. (Anscombe, 1983) She makes the claim that the intention of targeting military targets does justify the use of the weapon, as oppose to attacking indiscriminately and as a result having a large amount of collateral damage. With the intention comes the responsibility of use, so with this idea Anscombe suggests that having the deterrent and the intention is okay so long as the intention is to discriminate between targets. This would almost justify use of nuclear weapons, if it were possible to intend to use them to attack military targets. This sounds reasonable, however, it runs into a similar problem of general intent to use, in that many things can go wrong. (Anscombe, 1961) For example either if someone intends to target a military base with a nuclear weapon, with the knowledge that some innocents will get taken with it, or someone indiscriminately drops a nuclear bomb without caring who it hits, but ends up killing the same amount of innocents as the person who targeted discriminately – there still seems to be something wrong with this, even with the intention, as luck and adversary intention affects the outcome. It seems like a very bizarre idea that it is possible to discriminately pick targets with a weapon of mass destruction such as a nuclear weapons. There does seem to be something in Anscombe’s idea of deterrence by intention, however, as this is only an issue with regards to largely uncontrollable weapons, such as nuclear-weapons. The alternative example used to explain this is military drones. Military drones are deadly weapons which could accurately attack specific targets and therefore ultimately minimise damage to innocent civilians as the aim of winning a war is simply to overpower the adversary, not to wipe as many of them out as possible. With the use of drones it would be possible to target only the opposing state’s military and therefore pose a serious threat and justifiable deterrent.
Given the desire to minimise deaths whilst still maintaining a strong potential threat to the enemy, it seems very difficult to find a weapon that reasonably fits into both categories. It does however seem to suggest things like military drones are entirely viable and it is not reasonable to have nuclear weapons, as the ability to discriminate between targets give a more moral basis to use a threat given the intention to avoid civilians. It is certainly worthy of note that drones still have the potential to kill civilians given a wrong intention – it is entirely a matter of having the right intention when using such a weapon that makes it justifiable, just as Anscombe suggests. This means that, under a technicality, no weapon is really justifiable all of the time, it requires the right intention to use certain weapons that have the ability to discriminate. The problem with this being that if the opposing state knows of your moral intention, would it be enough of a deterrence? If not, it seems that nuclear and chemical weapons would be needed to even have any form of deterrence. (Freedman, 2004)
There is a largely psychological issue with deterrence and the idea that in order to actually be a potential threat the adversary must genuinely believe you are capable of using the weapon, so intention, and also they must be aware of how damaging the weapon can be. Given the idea of the adversary understanding you have a weapon but are going to use harsh discrimination in your attacks, it may weaken your position for deterrence. This seems not to be the case though, as with the ability to stop military and avoid innocents, you are still as damaging to the adversary as you would be by killing innocents, through fact that is innocents hold no threat to you, so their loss is needless damage with regards to the war. In killing only the military targets, you stop their ability to accurately retaliate and thus a threat would be crippling enough to use as a deterrent and would aid you to win wars should the intention to use the weapon go into practice.  This holds an entirely different position to a nuclear weapon on a moral basis, even if the intention is the same. For example if two generals both had the intention of destroying a military base that happens to be near a hospital, school or even a busy street, then there would likely be many innocents nearby. If the general had the intention of only destroying the military base, and dropped a nuclear bomb on the factory, it seems inevitable that it would both destroy the factory and other buildings, possibly killing many innocents too. Though if the general were to discriminate with a military drone, they would be able to take out the foundations of the building, or even the inhabitants of the building to shut it down, therefore dealing the same about of damage to the war effort and cause the same threat to stop the opponent and win the war without needlessly taking lives. The importance here is that the opposing military is the threat towards you and their fighting force for invasion, so the aim is only ever to damage their military or make it so their military will not invade – which gives you the upper hand in war. All non-military based civilians are innocent in this respect and therefore it is simply not justifiable to take action that will knowingly take their lives.
With the damage dealt being less without the aid of nuclear weapons, it does not really lose any of the threatening value of the weapon as a large portion of the damage involved is unnecessary and therefore unjustifiable. Also, the precision involved in discrimination seems to pose a large threat in itself in demonstrating the skill and ability to target and successfully destroy such a particular area or even person leaves a large potential for threatening action. So it does seem that non-nuclear threats do act just as much as a deterrent as a nuclear threat and given the right intention can entirely be justified in their use.
 Though they are a very strong deterrent, nuclear weapons are unjustifiable to even own, as they have too much potential to cause harm to civilians. With the owning of nuclear weapons you need the intention to use them in order for your adversary to believe you will use them, and with intention it becomes immoral to have them. Instead it is possible to discriminate between targets within war to bring about a serious threat, that deals only the damage necessary in order to halt the opposing state's war effort, whilst minimalizing civilian casualties. It is therefore a sufficient deterrent to war, enabling you to have the intention of using it, so long as that intention is only to discriminate between military targets, which is something that is not possible without nuclear weapons.


Refrences:
・ Anscombe, G. E. M, (1961). 'War and Murder'. In: Walter Stein (ed), Nuclear Weapons: a Catholic Response. 1st ed. London: Merlin. pp.43–62.
・ Anscombe, G. E. M, (1963), Intention, second edition, Oxford: Blackwell.
・ Anscombe, G. E. M, (1983). Ethics, Religion and Politics (The Collected Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe, Volume 3), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
・ Fisher, David, (1985). Morality And The Bomb. 1st ed. New York: St Martain's Press.
・ Freedman, L, (2004). Deterrence. 1st ed. London: Wiley.
・ Howlett, D, (2000). New Concepts of Deterrence. International Perspectives on Missile Proliferation and Defenses. 5 (), pp.