Since no nation can divest itself of its own rearmament capacity, nuclear disarmament amounts to (what Steven Lee calls) weaponless deterrence. But, he thinks, weaponless deterrence can escape the deontological objection to nuclear hostage holding because it only threatens to put unwilling innocents at risk. I argue that neither a weaponless deterrence – nor for that matter even (what I call) no-deterrence deterrence – can escape the deontological objection, and that therefore some species of the very moral revisionism Lee rejects is inescapable.

Categories: Papers My Wife Said I Should Have Published Long Ago, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: abolitionist, autonomous effects, credibility, deterrence, hostage, Kavka, moral, moral revisionism, nuclear, philosophy, Principle of Double Effect, prudential revisionism, risks, Steven Lee, strategic revisionism, threat, war, wrongful intentions principle