Nuclear Modernization from a Just War Perspective

Abstract

Just War Tradition has guided the conduct of warfare for over two thousand years. Despite ever advancing military technology and tactics its principles have remained nearly timeless over two millennia. Nuclear weapons however, due to their immense destructive power, posed a moral and scholarly dilemma challenging these principles. Contemporary events including Chinese expansion in the Pacific and Russian aggression in Syria and Ukraine are reigniting the long perceived dormant risk of nuclear war. Against this backdrop aging Cold War era nuclear weapon systems are driving the United States and its rivals to make significant investments into modernizing nuclear arsenals. This period of modernization provides the United States the opportunity to learn from historic lessons and to reemphasize the principles of just war tradition in its nuclear strategy. This paper explores just war principles along with elements of nuclear deterrence strategy. It analyzes publicly available nuclear strategy documents to determine if and how the United States incorporates just war principles into its nuclear deterrence strategy. It concludes that nuclear weapons, due to their immense power, while not totally excluded, have very limited application when applying the principles of just war, primarily due to the principles of proportionality and the differentiation between civilian and combatant targets.