ABSTRACT
The political, strategic, and ethical dimensions of nuclear deterrence have particular meaning for the author because of his experience in chairing the US National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee that drafted the pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, in 1983. The official US nuclear policy—the strategy that guides the actual development, deployment, and role of nuclear weapons—has a unique status. For the last forty years, both the strategic literature and the ethics of strategy were built on the premise that fundamental political change in the superpower relationship was nearly impossible. Control in international relations-whether control of weapons, the environment, or our common economic future-requires cooperation, and cooperation, in turn, must be built on a common conception of a shared destiny.
