Is it immoral to use nuclear weapons in war?

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StudentMI said:
And all for economic advantages.
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So, the lives of our service men were of no importance in your view?

And the proof is quite a bit in the pudding, in modern times, post World War II, Japan has done fairly well.

So, indeed, this is revisionism you put forth, we had to bomb even a 2nd city.
 
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tafan2 said:
Because I posted that it was immoral to target cities and civilians , and you quoted that in your defense if the nuclear bombings of Japan.
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Your exact words were “It is immoral to target civilians and non-combatants in a just war”, and I didn’t disagree with that. Rather, I pointed out that there were no civilian noncombatants in Japan at the time.

Japan’s own strategy caused the reality that the entire city was a factory, that there was no way for aerial attacks to discriminate between military and non-military targets in the industrial cities, and that the entire populace was mobilized to fight in an invasion and die to the last man.
 
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It dissipates because the air is thin up there and miles separate the blast from the surface.
 
Because we had seen what happens when we let an aggressor off the hook like that. Nothing short of regime change and disarmament was acceptable, because anything short of that meant another war was inevitable.
 
mythbuster1 said:
It dissipates because the air is thin up there and miles separate the blast from the surface.
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OK, so not like water that can transmit a tsunami a long distance. That makes sense; then the radiation will have a much bigger radius, because there isn’t any material to absorb it.
 
Air is a lousy radiation shield, but miles of it will still block radiation.
 
mythbuster1 said:
Air is a lousy radiation shield, but miles of it will still block radiation.
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Well, and like it or not the earth has already been exposed to radiation from lots of nuclear explosions detonated in the atmosphere. It isn’t like they just popped off one or two.
 
And what’s the Pope’s plan for dismantling existing nuclear arsenals? Dismantling nuclear weapons without burning up the cores actually increases the danger of nuclear weapons being used, because it only takes a few kilos of weapons-grade material to build a bomb, and it’s easy for a few kilos of fuel to fall into the wrong hands. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States started a public-private partnership to convert Russian nuclear weapons into reactor fuel, providing cheap fuel to the US and keeping Russian scientists on the payroll so they wouldn’t get into weapons trafficking or nuclear weapons development for third-world dictators. Even so, it took half of our nuclear power plants 20 years to burn up all that fuel, and that was just what Russia declared surplus.
 
Earth has always been bombarded by radiation from the Sun and deep space. Like anything else, it’s a question of dose.
 
mythbuster1 said:
Earth has always been bombarded by radiation from the Sun and deep space. Like anything else, it’s a question of dose.
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Well, yes, that’s why carbon-13 dating works. I’m still glad they decided to quit atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. Breathing in a few extra alpha emitters is in no one’s best interest.
 
It’s C-14, and fallout mostly produces beta-gamma emitters, but you’re right that they’re dangerous. To this day, people receive about 2 mrem/year from residual fallout in the food chain.
 
mythbuster1 said:
And what’s the Pope’s plan for dismantling existing nuclear arsenals?
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i am waiting for the next edition of the Catholic Catechism. I haven’t seen the details yet, but according to the press reports the teaching of His Holiness Pope Francis is that both the use and the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral and this should be added to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
 
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Hiroshima was a true human catechesis on cruelty. Cruelty. I was not able to visit Hiroshima museum because I was only there for the duration [of the encounter] because it was a challenging day, but they say that it is terrible, terrible: letters from Heads of State, from generals which explain how a greater disaster could be made to occur… And there I reaffirmed that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral —this must also be included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church —, and not only its use, but also its possession because an accident [due to] possession, or the madness of some government leader, a person’s madness can destroy humanity. Let us think about that quote from Einstein: “World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.
http://w2.vatican.va/content/france...-francesco_20191126_voloritorno-giappone.html

For her part, the Catholic Church is irrevocably committed to promoting peace between peoples and nations. This is a duty to which the Church feels bound before God and every man and woman in our world. We must never grow weary of working to support the principal international legal instruments of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation, including the Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Last July, the bishops of Japan launched an appeal for the abolition of nuclear arms, and each August the Church in Japan holds a ten-day prayer meeting for peace. May prayer, tireless work in support of agreements and insistence on dialogue be the most powerful “weapons” in which we put our trust and the inspiration of our efforts to build a world of justice and solidarity that can offer an authentic assurance of peace.

Convinced as I am that a world without nuclear weapons is possible and necessary, I ask political leaders not to forget that these weapons cannot protect us from current threats to national and international security. We need to ponder the catastrophic impact of their deployment, especially from a humanitarian and environmental standpoint, and reject heightening a climate of fear, mistrust and hostility fomented by nuclear doctrines. The current state of our planet requires a serious reflection on how its resources can be employed in light of the complex and difficult implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in order to achieve the goal of an integrated human development. Saint Paul VII suggested as much in 1964, when he proposed the establishment of a Global Fund to assist those most impoverished peoples, drawn partially from military expeditures (cf. Declaration to Journalists , 4 December 1964; Populorum Progressio , 51).

http://w2.vatican.va/content/france...20191124_messaggio-arminucleari-nagasaki.html
 
mythbuster1 said:
And what’s the Pope’s plan for dismantling existing nuclear arsenals? Dismantling nuclear weapons without burning up the cores actually increases the danger of nuclear weapons being used, because it only takes a few kilos of weapons-grade material to build a bomb, and it’s easy for a few kilos of fuel to fall into the wrong hands. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States started a public-private partnership to convert Russian nuclear weapons into reactor fuel, providing cheap fuel to the US and keeping Russian scientists on the payroll so they wouldn’t get into weapons trafficking or nuclear weapons development for third-world dictators. Even so, it took half of our nuclear power plants 20 years to burn up all that fuel, and that was just what Russia declared surplus.
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From what I gather, the Pope considers an already-functional weapon more likely to be used by falling into the wrong hands than the raw materials of a dismantled weapon. (After all, what means of protection of functional warheads cannot be used to safeguard non-functional warheads?)
 
Very respectfully, I totally respect the Catechism of the Church but it is often nuanced as well.

It is immoral to use and possess nuclear weapons, alright but there would seemingly be a good chance that once promulgated, it would have to read very closely. It is that way with many issues in the church.
 
What is it about nuclear weapons that makes them immoral? Is it their yield? Or their radioactivity? Surely there is nothing in the nature of Uranium or Plutonium that is inherently immoral.

In any case, it seems that nuclear weapons can be made with as small or as large a blast as one desires. Should only the high yield weapons be considered immoral?

And there is a difference between fission weapons and fusion weapons (although current nukes use a mix of both.) Fission weapons always create dangerous and long lasting radioactive fallout. Fusion does not. If it were possible to produce fusion only weapons without a fission trigger, one could have nukes with no fallout which could be quite low yield or high yield. I doubt that could ever be possible, but never say never.
 
No, it wouldn’t be immoral for Limited Tactical Battlefield Nuclear Weapons used only in combat on combatants; this would be no different than any other weapon on the field of battle.
Of course the Just War requirements would apply as well.
 
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