ABSTRACT
This chapter considers what are the particular moral difficulties posed by any use of nuclear weapons judged by the just war criteria. The single most obviously relevant fact to any moral assessment of the use of nuclear weapons is their immense power and destructiveness. This is well brought out in the 1979 survey of the effects of nuclear war undertaken by the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment. The moral constraints presented by the application of the principle of proportion to a decision whether to resort to war in the nuclear era would thus press hard on any contemplated use of nuclear weapons in the conduct of the war. The inhabitants of Moscow or Washington could reasonably regard the distinction as somewhat metaphysical that they had been incinerated as the result of a multimegaton attack on military targets within the city rather than as the result of a deliberate counter-population attack.
