The Harry Truman dilemma

[pro_universal]

What good is a threat if you can’t back it up?

What’s that have to do with Catholic teaching on warfare?

JimG,

There’s nothing about a credible threat that requires using the bombs on civilians. MAD was considered okay because it prevented the use of nukes, not because nukes were used to demonstrate willingness.

The use of nuclear weapons has been uniformly condemned, hands down. It is a crime against God.

Are you saying that the Church permits crimes against God sometimes?

 

[JimG]

Michael, you are probably right about the smaller size of the warheads on current weapons. In the early days, I believe that they tended to make the weapons a higher yield because they did not have multiple warheads per re-entry vehicle. The MIRVing of the RV’s resulted in smaller individual (and independently targeted) warheads.

Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were simply not the sorts of detailed discussions one sees here about the morality of nuclear weapons. For one thing, no one had any experience of them, even those who helped to make them. For another, there was simply not a lot of discussion about the morality of tactics during WW-II. When it came to bombing, it seems that industrial targets were always considered fair game, and industrial targets contained civilians.

I don’t disagree with the proposition that it is immoral to target civilians. If that’s the criteria, though, a great deal of the war besides the use of those 2 nukes was inherently immoral. I’m not sure the war could even have been fought in a strictly moral fashion. But one has to ask if the surrender of one’s country to an evil power is a moral option, especially for a president.

In Truman’s shoes, knowing his options and the situation at the time, I doubt that he could have made any other decision. As others have mentioned, it was not just the potential casualties from an invasion, but the possibility of Japan falling to the Soviets. Knowing Stalin’s history today, that in itself would likely have resulted in more casualties and more suffering than did the nukes. I’m only too happy that it was Truman’s decision to make, and not mine.

 

[JimG]

Are you saying that the Church permits crimes against God sometimes?

No, but I’m wondering why the bishops would have given even limited approval to the policy of deterrence, since the policy itself implies the use of nuclear weapons. If the USSR had been truly convinced that the U.S. would never use nuclear retaliation for moral or any other reason, then deterrence as a policy fails.

I’ve made the point before, but Ike even used a credible threat of massive nuclear retaliation against the USSR homeland as a deterrent to a Soviet invasion of Europe using conventional weapons. (i.e., you invade Europe, and here come our B-52s loaded with big nukes, right into the USSR.) And it seems to have worked.

 

[pro_universal]

No, but I’m wondering why the bishops would have given even limited approval to the policy of deterrence, since the policy itself implies the use of nuclear weapons. If the USSR had been truly convinced that the U.S. would never use nuclear retaliation for moral or any other reason, then deterrence as a policy fails.

They explain why in their writings on the subject. It’s because at the time people coined the phrase, it had already worked to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. The reason they grudgingly approved is that it meant the weapons wouldn’t be used.

Hence, it’s not that MAD implies using them that makes it good, it’s that it prevents the use of nucleear weapons. What’s the operating principle there?

That using nukes is bad.

I’ve made the point before, but Ike even used a credible threat of massive nuclear retaliation against the USSR homeland as a deterrent to a Soviet invasion of Europe using conventional weapons. (i.e., you invade Europe, and here come our B-52s loaded with big nukes, right into the USSR.) And it seems to have worked.

Threats are not uses. The fact is, if he had used them to retaliate for such an attack, he would’ve been guilty of a crime against God and man. Can you agree to that?

 

[JimG]

Threats are not uses. The fact is, if he had used them to retaliate for such an attack, he would’ve been guilty of a crime against God and man. Can you agree to that?

Yes. It was a scary time. It seems to me that Eisenhower was more prepared to use nuclear bombs than either side ever was during the cold war. But JFK seemed ready to threaten their use during the Cuban missile crisis as well.

Still, it seems to me that nuclear weapons are often labeled immoral in themselves, when they can be as small or as large as we wish. Conventional weapons can have equally devastating results, as can gulags and swords.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Yes. It was a scary time. It seems to me that Eisenhower was more prepared to use nuclear bombs than either side ever was during the cold war. But JFK seemed ready to threaten their use during the Cuban missile crisis as well.

Still, it seems to me that nuclear weapons are often labeled immoral in themselves, when they can be as small or as large as we wish. Conventional weapons can have equally devastating results, as can gulags and swords.

It is possible that Eisenhower used the same logic as Harry Truman when Eisenhower ended the Korean War.

The Korean War began in June 1950 [during the Truman Administration] when North Korea invaded South Korea. In September 1950, the U.S. used whatever forces were available after demobilization to land behind North Korean lines at Inchon. In November 1950, the Chinese crossed the Yalu River in mass attacks and pushed the U.S. (and UN) troops back. For the next 2+ years, there was a bloody back and forth. Long story.

Eisenhower pledged to end the Korean War.

There is a body of thought that he ended it by firing a nuclear weapon.

What happened was that in June 1953, Eisenhower had the U.S. Army fire the Atomic Cannon at the Nevada Test Site (a suburb of Las Vegas) with the shell aimed at Frenchman’s Flat. It was done with full media participation; in fact, the reviewing stand is still there.

Within a couple of weeks, the Korean War ended.

One could postulate that the North Koreans and Chinese figured Eisenhower might start blasting away with nuclear artillery shells at their massed troops.

The North Koreans and Chinese already had been experiencing the effect of B-29’s dropping fragmentation bombs on their troops, killing thousands at each attack. Tens of thousands were killed.

They may have figured that we would amp up their casualties by firing spreads of nuclear artillery shells.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

I implore you to read Veritatis Splendor - particularly the sections on proportionalism and the object of the moral act.

The proximal object or the remote object?