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Under what circumstances is it right to employ nuclear weapons?

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Taking almost any military action short of using nukes, especially invading a country with ground troops, inevitably risks the deaths of your country's own soldiers. Therefore, isn't the only non-self-sacrifical form of offensive military action to drop nuclear bombs on the enemy?

Edited by Asker of Questions
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If you are looking for a "one size fits all" solution as couched, then yes — if the deaths of your country's own soldiers is the only mitigating factor taken under consideration.

 

If the loss of one life is unacceptable in defense of upholding the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I would suggest, so close to the day that the "Declaration of the Causes & Necessity of Taking up Arms," was issued in 1775 and the American Declaration of Independence announced on front page of "PA Evening Gazette" in 1776 that there might be other relevant factors that need be taken under consideration.

 

For one, why is your unspecified country being invaded with ground troops? What is the unspecified level of threat? How many of its citizens pose a viable military threat? If you're only going in to neutralize one enemy combatant, a nuke is rather indiscriminate in this regard. If the entire country is actively working to finish building navel transports to invade your country with every man, woman and child available, then you have a rather different set of criteria to consider. 

Edited by dream_weaver
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Some people say that the United States is "policing" the world. It's a stupid word to use, and it's generally used as a disparaging term by opponents of US foreign policy, because acting as an agent for democracy and freedom, on a global scale, is very different from acting as a police force on a global scale, but it is nonetheless important to point out what the US is doing: it's not just responding to immediate threats, it is implementing a global strategy aimed at "westernizing" as much of the world as possible, and thus generally reducing threats.

 

Dropping nukes left and right most definitely wouldn't further that goal. Implementing such a global strategy  often requires subtle action. Most of the times, it's not military at all, it's just diplomacy, information gathering and covert action, backed up by the threat of military action if an opposing actor chooses to escalate.

 

Please note, that, like I pointed out, this strategy is NOT policing. There's nothing self sacrificial about it, and in a globalized world the only way the US and US interests can be secured is through this strategy. When US Presidents order the military to act as a police force, or a rebuilding team, in an occupied country, they are not implementing this strategy, they are conducting a humanitarian mission that is morally wrong to use the US military for.

Taking almost any military action short of using nukes, especially invading a country with ground troops, inevitably risks the deaths of your country's own soldiers. Therefore, isn't the only non-self-sacrifical form of offensive military action to drop nuclear bombs on the enemy?

That's not a valid inference, because being selfish doesn't mean you don't value other people's lives (so caring about other people's lives is not necessarily self sacrificial). Add to that the fact that the US has economic interests almost everywhere in the world (except NK and Iran), and dropping nukes becomes almost universally counter-productive.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Taking almost any military action short of using nukes, especially invading a country with ground troops, inevitably risks the deaths of your country's own soldiers.

Don't we risk death every time we cross the street, get on an airplane or fail to build a mechanism to prevent rogue asteroids from smashing into our planet?

We shouldn't generally try to reduce all risks (in any endeavor) to absolutely zero. For one thing, it isn't possible; as long as we're alive we will be in some amount of danger. For another, the attempt to reduce such dangers beyond a certain point will absolutely destroy you, emotionally.

While some degree of caution is usually prudent, there is a limit which we must not exceed.

Where that limit is, when it comes to war, depends on who we're at war with and why; it varies according to all sorts of factors that DreamWeaver has already touched on.

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  • 4 months later...

Agree with dream_weaver, Harrison and Nicky.

A nuke (or any weapon of comparable power) is fit to use only in case of a full-scale war with an enemy. There may be several objectives other than large scale destruction of an enemy, where limited military action achieves the objectives while a nuke would be counter-productive.

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Nuclear weapons are the most likely of any weapon to kill significant numbers of people who have not initiated force; they are highly indiscriminate weapons. 

I would say their use is only justified when literally everything is at risk - for example being attacked with nuclear weapons by another nation. Otherwise not only would it be self-defeating as others have pointed out above, it would  be immoral to use them. 

They do have a place in "consequence assertion", but as per the above, this is only fitting when faced with a significant threat. Using the threat of mass indiscriminate killing, to subdue your political foe, is not what you would expect to come from a civilised people.

Edited by Jon Southall
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