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Is Nuclear Deterrence Paradoxical?

It is a common claim in the moral and strategic literature on nuclear weapons that deterrence involves paradoxes. In two new books-one by Gregory Kavka, the other by John Finnis, Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., and Germain Grisezthe aspects of deterrence that are often said to give rise to moral paradoxes are discussed with greater rigor, imagination, and thoroughness than in any previous work. Indeed, these are the two best books yet written on the ethics of deterrence; they deserve and will repay careful study. They also present a curious paradox: for Kavka is a liberal who defends the practice of deterrence based on the sincere threat to engage in mass slaughter if deterrence fails, while Finnis and his two coauthors' are political conservatives who advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament by the West. This paradoxical mixing of views is, however, considerably easier to unravel than the paradoxes whose elements the authors discuss in their books. It is these latter paradoxes that I will examine in this review.