ABSTRACT
The most perplexing issue in the debate over the acceptability of nuclear deterrence is whether it is or could ever be morally permissible to fight a nuclear war if deterrence should fail. The Chernobyl reactor disaster and the Challenger debacle stand as suggestive surrogates for a nuclear warhead and its delivery means. The criteria of jus ad belium imply both a just cause and a reasonable prospect of success, and they should, in theory, be comparatively simple to fulfill. In military circles, the likelihood has been rated very high that the Soviet Union would retaliate on at least the same scale as NATO’s attack. The societies of the West are capitalist and pluralist; they produce prosperity and individual liberty to a quite unprecedented degree. There may be some comfort in the facts that both the Soviet Union and the United States are engaged in strenuous nuclear arms reduction exercises and that doctrines of minimal deterrence are being increasingly discussed.
