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Abstract

At the present time and for the foreseeable future, likely, there is no defence, strictly speaking, against nuclear weapons. Nations facing a threat of attack involving nuclear weapons, therefore, have only three alternatives: resort to deterrence, try to get by with conventional defences, or surrender. It is discussable which of these is the most prudent option for any given nation, but I argue that we cannot accept any view entailing that the first is not a right. What we can do, however, is to insist that even deterrence be as nearly as possible a purely defensive effort. This can be done by maintaining a military establishment which is incapable of serving offensive purposes, however capable it is of serving defensive ones. If all of the world’s States were thus equipped, there could be no rational prospect of nuclear war. (It may be argued also that the inclusion of nuclear weapons in the major States’ military establishments effectively eliminates the possibility of conventional war among them as well; it is not obvious that we are not on balance better off thereby, so long as there are military establishments at all. But of course there should not be.) The recently developed Cruise Missile exemplifies a weapons system that would make this possible.