ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to investigate how advocates of just-war tradition treat the issues raised in the contemporary debate over nuclear weapons. It explores various contemporary positions in the nuclear debate and explains the examination of the just-war positions with Reinhold Niebuhr, the dominant Protestant ethicist at the beginning of the nuclear age. Michael Walzer goes beyond Paul Ramsey, however, in rejecting attempts to fit nuclear war within the limits of just-war. The doctrine of just-war defines the moral limits of war in the nuclear age. Nuclear war is prohibited because it goes beyond the limits of moral criteria. People developing strategy for a morally legitimate defense should develop morally usable weapons which can replace strategic nuclear weapons. The debate within the Church is a microcosm of the larger debate. Many Catholics are leaders in the anti-nuclear movement and leaders in the national defense program.
