The Ethics of Research of the Private Nuclear Strategists

CIAO DATE: 8/99

The Ethics of Research of the Private Nuclear Strategists ₁

1979

Center for Global Security and Democracy
Rutgers University

Author’s Note: This paper was written twenty years ago and, for a variety of personal reasons, was never submitted for publication. Nonetheless, it remains one of the very few attempts to discuss the ethics of research by actually asking researchers what they think. As the Cold War ends and nuclear policy proceeds apace, its questions remain distressingly relevant. It therefore seems useful to make it available to a wider audience.

Abstract

Private nuclear strategists have moral problems significantly different from those of the professional military. A questionnaire in 1966 asked what subjects would not be studied for the government. A 1975 questionnaire repeated the earlier question and asked what funding agencies might be unacceptable and whether private strategists are responsible for government actions based on their research. Respondents who had and had not done government research differed considerably on the first two questions, but they had similar responses to the third, suggesting a starting place for a renewed debate on the morality of research in this area.

One major development of the Cold War era was the rise of a potential competitor to the professional military in shaping nuclear strategy, civilians not directly employed by the government (the “ private nuclear strategists” ). Members of this groups have written most of the literature on nuclear weapons policy, conducted a public debate on the issue for twenty years, formulated the specialized concepts and vocabulary of American nuclear strategy, introduced and developed the notion of arms control, and been influential in both the formulation and criticism of American nuclear policy. They have done this work while employed by institutes under government contract, universities, peace groups, private corporations, foundations, and independent research groups. (The best single study of this process, although now somewhat dated, is Lyons and Morton.)

Their unprecedented status has raised a series of new moral questions. They share with the professional military the responsibility which comes from dealing with issues affecting the life and death of mankind. In the words of one observer:

For all his attention to practical things like hardware and money, despite his concern (hopefully) with philosophical abstractions like power, the strategist must be affected by the fact that he dwells in the macrocosm. His reach is intercontinental, his resources are scaled in national wealth, his memory encompasses all of recorded history, his aspirations exist in the form of ideology, and the stakes of his actions are the survival and well-being of societies. However far-fetched or impudent this analogy may seem, there can be no question that these are the terms in which the strategist must think, at least part of the time, and this is the scale of the consequences of the actions which he helps determine. (Posvar, 193)

Unlike the military, however, the private strategist’s impact on policy is likely to be indirect and outside of his control. The military man will usually be in charge of implementing the policy he recommends; the private strategist knows that he will not. Indeed many of the ethical dilemmas of the military arise in carrying out orders; he may be unsure of whether he should do so, but the effect of his actions usually fairly clear (and when it is not, he is often excused from personal responsibility). The private strategist, on the other hand, creates knowledge which others many or may not use in carrying out policies of which he many or may not approve. If he makes his findings publicly available, he has no control over his audience, much less over what they will do with his work. What sort of responsibility, if any, does he have to his employer, his country, humanity and himself?

Although much interest has been generated over the ethics of the professional military, to the point where the state has enacted a special set of laws and courts to handle cases arising from them, there has been, as yet, relatively little serious debate on how the same questions affect the private nuclear strategists. However, certain issues do seem to have emerged. One is whether the magnitude of the nuclear weapons policy issue is so great that the private strategists bear any moral responsibility for the impact of their work upon public policy. A reasonable case could be made that they do not, since it is necessarily so indirect as to be outside their own control; responsibility, according to this argument, rests solely with the government officials who made the decisions. However, many authors argue that anyone involved in the process at any stage is responsible for its outcome, particularly if he might reasonably have foreseen it.

Another issue evolved in the early sixties from the controversy that swirled around Herman Kahn’s commitment to “thinking about the unthinkable.” One side argued that Kahn, by arguing that the United States could in fact survive thermonuclear war, made such war more likely by making policy-makers less afraid of the consequences (Newman). Kahn argued that one might study something in order to prevent its occurrence, much as doctors study disease, and that refusing to think systematically about some possibility would not make it go away (Kahn).

A third issue is whether an individual should accept money from an institution whose fundamental aims he disagrees with or whose morality he is uncertain about. This issue became a major one on college campuses during the Vietnam War protests when it was argued that anyone who worked with an organization was in part responsible for its actions. Some argued ht many organizations did not impair the intellectual freedom of their employees; others contended that the only way for these organizations to change their goals was to have people with different objectives inside them. Much of this debate centered around the role of the university in such research, as well as whether the work was secret or not, but in several cases the argument reached the point where individuals who had worked for such organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency or the RAND Corporation were denied university positions because of this fact.

The fundamental question underlying all this, of course, is whether a private nuclear strategist is morally responsible for the consequences if his advice is translated into policy by a government. We do not have many precedents to suggest how this position might be implemented; of these the decisions at the Nuremberg War Trials concerning “crimes against peace” seem the most applicable. These decisions, which remain highly controversial, essentially held that an individual within a government who had participated in planning and carrying out a government policy could be held individually responsible if that policy was a violation of international law. This represented a break with the tradition that individuals could not be held responsible for the consequences of state actions (Davidson; Coplin). These decisions, of course, were applied only to individuals within the government, but presumably something similar would be applied to private strategists by proponents of the moral responsibility argument.

Most of the literature in which these issues have been raised has been normative, arguing what the correct moral position of private nuclear strategists should be. This paper is the result of an attempt to discover what the moral standards of these individuals actually are. There are several ways to determine this; probably the best would be to systematically measure by observation their actual behavior. I have used another technique, asking them. While these data are easier to gather, they are less obviously valid; whether someone will be candid on this delicate subject remains uncertain. I believe that my respondents were quite candid, but the reader must decide for himself how much faith to put in these results.

Several years ago, I conducted a major study of these individuals, using a mail questionnaire as my major data source. The question of their ethical standards in accepting or rejecting government research contracts was one of the many areas of interest, and I included some questions on the subject (Licklider, 133-152). The most important one listed several rather extreme subjects and asked if the respondent would refuse to work on any of them for political or moral reasons. Several points emerged from the results. The private nuclear strategists generally agreed that the researcher was morally responsible for the consequences of his research in government policy decisions. There was much less willingness to study the use of nuclear weapons domestically than abroad, there was no perceived difference between studying techniques for violating proposed and existing arms control and disarmament agreements, and there was general willingness to study world government and unilateral disarmament.

In further analysis, the sample was divided into those who had worked on a government research contract on nuclear weapons policy and those who had not. Their reactions to the question varied a great deal; I concluded that he two groups had different ethical systems. Those who had not done government research work generally found the questions easy to answer. Those who had participated were much more likely to argue that the subject of the contract was not the decisive factor in shaping their moral reaction to it. Government researchers had essentially a “situation ethic,” in that they resisted the explication of general decision rules, preferring to make each separate decision “on its merits;” they were consequently reluctant to criticize the morality of others who exercised this discretion in ways with which they might disagree.

For this study I decided to send another questionnaire to the same people which would focus on what criteria were used in deciding whether or not to accept a government research contract. It had two justifications: broaden the inquiry to include all of the four issues discussed above, and determine if there has been any change among our respondent in the nine years since the first questionnaire was completed, perhaps as a result of the discussion about morality created by the Vietnam War protest.

In the original study, I isolated a population of 491 individuals who had written one book or three articles on nuclear weapons policy from the beginning of 1946 through 1964. They were all sent the original questionnaire; 191, 39% responded. Analysis of the available data suggested that, except for over-representing political scientists, this first sample was generally representative of the population (Licklider, 205-210).

Ideally, for this study, I would have conducted another literature search to identify individuals who have written during the past ten years and then send a questionnaire to the entire population. However, I did not sufficient resources to do this. I therefore sent it only to the 191 individuals who had responded to my first questionnaire. 85, 44% responded. This is therefore not a representative sample of the current group of private nuclear strategists, and its results will necessarily have to be regarded as tentative. In particular it excludes new members of the group entirely.

The first substantive question repeated the question of my first questionnaire to see if there had been any significant changes among this group in the past nine years. Table 1 shows the responses of the 1966 and the 1975 samples.


Table 1. Subject of Contract, 1966 and 1975

“Can you imagine any government contract on which you would refuse to work for political or moral reasons? Please check any of the following on which you would refuse to work.” Figures are percentage of each group who would refuse to work.
Subject	1975	1966
Techniques for staging a military coup in the U.S	73%	67%
Establishment of a Doomsday Machine by the U.S.	74%	64%
Strategy for combating a revolution in the U.S. with nuclear weapons	72%	56%
Technique of starting a catalytic war between the Soviet Union and China	68%	56%
Techniques and utility of preventive war launched by the United States	60%	46%
Techniques for violating an existing arms control agreement by the U.S.	67%	46%
Techniques for violating a prospective agreement on complete and general disarmament by the U.S.	54%	41%
Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the U.S.	48%
Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the USSR	39%
Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the People’s Republic of China	35%
Unilateral disarmament of the U.S.		34%
Establishment of a world government	12%	8%

Percentage of respondents indicating “yes”—No government contract would be refused for political or moral reasons	7%	11%

N=	81	169

Three conclusions suggest themselves: the strategists remain concerned about the moral implications of their work; after nine years the sample is significantly more likely to reject any of the contract topics; and the ranking of the alternatives remains about the same.

The first point is supported by the decline in the very small number of respondents who would not reject any government research contract for moral or political reasons. There was a good deal of concern about whether this study was the appropriate way to study this delicate question, but almost no one took the extreme position that the question was unimportant.

The second trend is quite clear. On every one of the eight hypothetical contracts (unilateral disarmament was inadvertently omitted from the second questionnaire) the percentage which would refuse to work on them increases, while the percentage saying that no government contract would be refused declines by figures ranging from 4 to 21 percent and an average of 12.8 percent. What these figures mean is no quite so clear. If one accepts subject of a research contract as an adequate criterion for judging its morality (I do not), one might conclude that the private strategists are becoming more moral. A more cynical explanation is that outside pressure has made them less willing to accept these contracts. I prefer a more restricted interpretation, that Kahn’s argument that studying topics whose implication one would oppose in order to prevent them seems less plausible.

However, the original distinctions between different contract topics remain. The original survey concluded that domestic uses of nuclear weapons, catalytic war, and preventive war would not be popular research topics; these continue to be the least popular topics in 1975. World government remains the least unpopular topic, essentially not changing. One change is that the insignificant difference between studying violation techniques for an existing arms control agreement and for a proposed general and complete disarmament agreement has increased considerably, from five to thirteen percent. This suggests that, along with greater concern about the implications of studying unpalatable alternatives has come a bit more sophistication in distinguishing between them. The Kahn argument is particularly strong in evaluating a proposed agreement; this seems to have remained a relatively “unthinkable” topic, while studies about violating an existing agreement have become more “unthinkable.”

Three new alternatives were added in the second questionnaire, to test the commitment of private nuclear strategists to the current deterrence system based on invulnerable second-strike nuclear forces. The results suggest considerable disagreement as to whether the elimination of these systems is an appropriate topic for study. In retrospect the question should have specified whether the “elimination” would be peaceful or not.

There is, of course, another explanation for these differences. Less than half of the original respondents returned the second questionnaire; perhaps the second sample is composed of individuals who were more inclined to take these positions after 1966. (This is particularly possible since several respondents felt that the questionnaire was biased against those with complex motivations.) While the problem of sample representativeness remains in any study such as this, there is evidence to suggest that the two samples are not very different. Sixty-four respondents to the second questionnaire signed their names, as requested; ₂ I could therefore compare their responses with those of the samples in 1966 and 1975. This smaller sample was very close to both. In 1966, for example, its responses were very similar to those of the 1966 sample. On the nine questions about contract subjects, there was an average difference of 4.7 percent, which was rather high, but the differences were in one direction for five cases and in the other for four. In 1975 it was even more similar to the total 1975 sample; the average difference was only 2.2 percent, and nine were in one direction while three were in the other. To put it differently, this smaller sample went through the same change which this analysis suggests affected the larger group. It may be, or course, that those who did not go through such a shift did not reply to the second questionnaire.

Table 2 shows the responses of the 1975 sample to various funding agencies.


Table 2. Funding Agencies which would not be Acceptable

“Are there organizations from which you would refuse to accept funds to study nuclear weapons policy for moral or political reasons? Please check any that apply.” Figures are percent of total sample who would refuse to accept funds.
Potentially revolutionary group in the United States	70%
Potentially revolutionary group of another country	64%
Government of the Soviet Union	61%
Private group whose basic attitudes on nuclear weapons policy differed fundamentally from your own.	51%
Government of Israel	40%
Government of a non-nuclear country	29%
Military branch of the United States government	20%
Government of the United States	12%
	N = 84

By and large the private nuclear strategists are reluctant to work for revolutionary groups, a logical development considering their apparent distaste for studying the domestic use of nuclear weapons; there is little less distaste for working for a revolutionary group from another country than one in the United States. The Soviet Union is not a popular client either. More surprising is the fact that just over half the sample would not work for a private group with a fundamentally different position on nuclear weapons than their own. This may be a reaction to the unique problem of the private strategist, an inability to choose his audience, and a sense that whatever is done might be used in ways of which he would disapprove. On the other hand it may simply reflect an expected lack of intellectual freedom in such an environment; some respondents observed that it would depend upon their own limitations in the particular situation, particularly their freedom to do their own research and publish the results independently. Despite all the discussion about the morality of working for the American government, only 20% were unwilling to work for the American military, and only 12% for the American government in general. Considering the breadth of political opinion encompassed by the sample, this was surprising and perhaps suggests the limits of their alienation from the American political system.

Table 3 shows the reactions of the sample to a series of questions about the Nuremberg principle of individual responsibility for governmental actions and whether or not it should be applied to private nuclear strategists.


Table 3. Policy Implications of Research

	Yes	No	Other	Don’t Know	No Response
“The Nuremberg war trials held that individuals within a government could be held criminally responsible for certain acts by that government. This position remains highly controversial. Accepting it for the sake of argument, could such Responsibility be extended to individuals outside of Government studying nuclear weapons policy?”	27%	46%	2%	21%	2%

“If YES: Have you ever been asked to participate in a project, while you were not directly employed by the government, which you felt violated the guidelines of the Nuremberg doctrines?”	6%	48%	0	1%	45%

“If YES: What did you do?” (all said they refused)

“Do you believe that the Nuremberg doctrine of individual responsibility for governmental actions should be applied to individuals in high civilian and military positions within the government?”	67%	12%	5%	14%	2%

“If YES: Do you know of such individuals in the United States who seem to you to violate these principles?”	36%	15%	1%	20%	27%

“ Do you believe that the Nuremberg doctrine of individual responsibility for governmental actions should be applied to individuals not directly employed by the government?”	39%	38%	0	20%	2%

“If YES: Do you know of any individuals in the United States who seem to you to violate these principles?”	18%	21%	0	15%	45%

N=84

A majority feels that this principle cannot be applied to them as things stand, but it splits almost in half on whether it should be applied to them. Considering that this is an extreme example of applying and enforcing moral judgements on the private nuclear strategist, I thought this level of support surprisingly high. Moreover, half of these felt that individuals within the U.S. had violated these principles. On the other hand, only five individuals said they themselves had ever been asked to participate in a research project which they felt violated the Nuremberg principles; all had refused to participate.

The support for the applications of these principles to government officials is overwhelming, and over a third of the sample felt that some government officials had violated them in the U.S. (several mentioned specific examples related to Vietnam). There is then a remarkable amount of support for the idea that the Nuremberg principles, despite the problems which have been illuminated by the debate about their use, are reasonable guidelines for use on government officials and indeed perhaps for the private nuclear strategist as well. Of course there was no specific question about agencies to apply these principles to individuals, so it is unclear whether “apply” here mean moral disapproval or legal sanctions.

My earlier study concluded that those who had not done government research found the question about what subjects they would refuse to work on congenial and were consistently more opposed to studying the topics (except for unilateral disarmament and world government) than the government researchers. These, on the other hand, tended to feel that the question was really inappropriate and that it missed the point. A series of interviews suggested to me that the government researcher had developed a “situation ethic” (Fletcher; Sartre, 26-33; Robinson, 105-121), judging the morality of any such proposal “on its own merits in terms of his inner moral commitment rather than external fixed rules” (Licklider, 148). This, of course, allows the individual the maximum amount of freedom in making his own choices. However, I feel this view is based on a false presumption. Situations do not have “their own merits”; rather an individual selects out and values different aspects of a situation in accord with a set of underlying norms. This sense of dissatisfaction is one reason why I wanted to do this study.

An identical question was used on both questionnaires: “Have you ever worked on a government research contract in the area of nuclear weapons policy?” Both sample divided almost equally between those who had and those who had not. Indeed, of the 64 whose earlier responses could be checked, 58 gave the same response to the questions and only 3 who said “no” in 1966 said “yes” nine years later (suggesting that the barriers between these two groups are substantial). 3 more who said “yes” the first time and “no” the second time were eliminated from the analysis, as was one who said “don’t know.”

Table 4 shows the 1975 sample’s response to the question about subject of research, divided into those who have and have not done government research.


Table 4. Subject of Contract and Government Research Experience

“Can you imagine any government contract on which you would refuse to work for political or moral reasons? Please check any of the following on which you would refuse to work.” “Have you ever worked on a government research contract in the area of nuclear weapons policy?” Figures are percentages of each group who would refuse to work.

Subject	Govt. Res.	No Govt. Res.

Techniques for staging a military coup in the U.S.	61%	83%

Establishment of a doomsday machine by the U.S.	69%	83%

Strategy for combating a revolution in the U.S. with nuclear weapons	58%	85%

Techniques of starting a catalytic war between the Soviet Union and China	50%	85%

Techniques and utility of preventive war launched by the United States	47%	73%

Techniques for violating an existing arms control agreement by the U.S.	44%	85%

Techniques for violating a prospective agreement on complete and general disarmament by the U.S.	33%	70%

Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the U.S.	33%	58%

Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the USSR	19%	53%

Techniques for eliminating the nuclear second-strike capability of the People’s Republic of China	19%	49%

Establishment of world government	17%	8%

No government contract would be refused for political or moral reasons	11%	3%

N=	36	40

The fact that the sample as a whole had become less willing to do work on these topics suggested that the differences between these two sub-groups might have disappeared. Table 4, however, reveals that this is not the case. The differences on world government and not refusing any government contract are too small to be significant with this sample size, but the government researchers are less likely to reject all other ten contracts; the differences range from 14% to 41% averaging 25.8%. The identical pattern appeared in 1966, where the average difference was 27% (Licklider, 146). In the intervening years both groups have become less willing to work on these subjects, retaining their relative positions in the process.

Government researchers continue to resist specific moral or political criteria for contracts, a conclusion reinforced by comments of respondents to the second questionnaire. They should therefore be more willing to accept contracts from almost any source, and Table 5 suggests that this is true; all the differences are in the same direction, and the average is 22.2 percent. Once again the rankings are almost identical.


Table 5. Funding Agencies and Government Research Experience

“Are there organizations from which you would refuse to accept funds to study nuclear weapons policy for moral or political reasons? Please check any that apply.” “Have you ever worked on a government research contract in the area of nuclear weapons policy?” Figures are percentages of each group which would refuse to accept funds.

Organization	Govt. Res.	No Govt. Res.
Potentially revolutionary group in the United States	60%	74%

Potentially revolutionary group of another country	54%	69%

Government of the Soviet Union	51%	71%

Private group whose basic attitudes on nuclear weapons policy differed fundamentally from your own.	34%	62%

Government of Israel	23%	55%

Government of a non-nuclear country	23%	36%

Military branch of the United States government	6%	33%

Government of the United States	3%	21%

N=	35	42

The same logic wold seem to imply that government researchers would be less willing to apply the principle of individual responsibility for governmental action, but Table 6 indicates that this is not true.


Table 6. Policy Implications of Research and Government Research Experience

“Have you ever worked on a government research contract in the area of nuclear weapons policy?”
	Yes	No	Other	Don’t Know	No Response
“The Nuremberg war trials held that individuals within a government could be heldcriminally responsible for certain acts by that government. This position remains highly controversial. Accepting it for the sake of argument, could such responsibility be extended to individuals outside of government studying nuclear weapons policy?”
Government research experience No government research experience	36% 19%	42% 50%	0 5%	17% 26%	6% 0

“If YES: Have you ever been asked to participate in a project, while you were not directly employed by the government, which you felt violated the guidelines of the Nuremberg doctrines?”
Government research experience No government research experience	8% 2%	50% 48%	0 0	0 2%	42% 48%

“Do you believe that the Nuremberg doctrine of individual responsibility for governmental actions should be applied to individuals in high civilian and military positions within the government?”
Government research experience No government research experience	61% 71%	17% 10%	6% 5%	14% 12%	3% 2%

“If YES: Do you know of such individuals in the United States who seem to you to violate these principles?”
Government research experience No government research experience	33% 38%	22% 9%	3% 0	8% 33%	33% 19%

“Do you believe that the Nuremberg doctrine of individual responsibility for governmental actions should be applied to individuals not directly employed by the government?”
Government research experience No government research experience	44% 36%	33% 43%	0 0	19% 19%	3% 2%

“If YES: Do you know of any individuals in the United States who seem to you to violate these principles?”
Government research experience No government research experience	22% 14%	25% 17%	0 0	11% 21%	42% 48%

N= 36 (government research experience) 42 (no government research experience)

The groups disagree radically only on one question, and the government researchers are considerably more likely to agree that the Nuremberg principles could be applied to private nuclear strategists. The primary lesson of Table 6 is that the division between these two groups essentially disappears on the subject of moral responsibility for the policy outcomes of their acts, at least as tapped by these questions. Both groups agree overwhelmingly that this principle should be applied to government officials and about a third of each group feels that there are individuals in the United States who violate these principles. Both groups divide evenly over whether the principles should be applied to private nuclear strategists and whether violations have occurred.

This certainly does not mean that there is no disagreement on these questions, simply that this division cuts across that of government research experience. This is particularly true on the central question from the point of view of the group, whether the Nuremberg principle should be applied to it. But if there is no unanimity on the issue, it is at least a question on which there is some basis for discussion between those who have and have not done government research. If a dialogue is to be opened, the moral responsibility for the policy implications of the result seems a more useful starting place than either the nature of the subjects being discussed or the funding agencies involved. And indeed this would certainly seem the most appropriate subject in any case, since it is at the heart of the issue.

But do we need such a new dialogue? I believe that we do. Some of the strategists have been accused of being cold, unfeeling, and amoral. This may be true, but these studies suggest instead a group of individuals aware and concerned that their work has profound moral consequences but divided about the confidence with which this consciousness can be translated into general rules of behavior. Government researchers resist the application of the rather simple criteria of subject of contract and nature of funding agency, perceiving the problem as more complex. At the same time they show little interest in exploring these complexities to reach any conclusions and instead prefer to leave the problem to each individual, which has the dual benefit of allowing each individual maximum freedom of action himself and relieving him of the responsibility of judging the behavior of others.

But this position does not seem entirely satisfactory, even to those who hold it, as shown by the eagerness of most individuals in the field to avoid discussing the moral aspects of their work. This tends to be done either by saying that it is a private matter or by associating solely with those of similar positions. The literature on nuclear weapons policy is immense, that on the moral implications of it or working on it miniscule. In my first questionnaire I got more negative response to the one question dealing with morality than to all the others combined (admittedly it was a pretty crude question). Part of this withdrawal is undoubtedly due to the personal animosities which it stirs up, and the strategists have vivid examples in the debate over Herman Kahn’s work an the Vietnam protests. But surely part of it also stems from a sense that the “situation ethic” will not withstand prolonged scrutiny.

The Vietnam debate illustrates the difficulties of reasoned debate on the moral implications of a public policy involving life and death; I suggest that it also shows that unless moral positions can be clearly delineated, debate on substantive issues is impossible. We could afford the luxury of avoiding discussion of this issue as long as either there was a consensus of as long as one school of thought controlled most of the major institutions. This consensus-dominance has broken down, and we face the real possibility that government researchers will withdraw into their institutes while the remainder will control the universities, destroying the intellectual linkages which are one of the private strategist’s distinctive contributions to the policy process. If this is to be avoided (and perhaps it cannot be) we must come to terms with the morality of what we are doing, and we seem to have a starting place in the policy results of our work. Wesley Posvar was making a different point, but he seems to sum up the feeling of our sample:

While responsibility in the form of accountability may be measured and allocated to individuals in proportion to the power which they exercise, the need to commit oneself...is not parceled out among strategists in relation to their institutional remoteness from the strings of power. This shared responsibility is an indivisible entity, and, like hydraulic pressure, it exerts the same force on all points of the surface which it covers. It falls fully upon all who serve as strategists. It rests equally, and heavily, upon the President, the Secretary of Defense, the RAND analyst, the Pentagon staff officer, and the professor—whoever gives counsel or exercises choice....It is a ubiquitous sword of Damocles bringing discomfort to everyone who contributes to strategic decisions. Max Weber said, “Whoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends—and every politician does—is exposed to its specific consequences....He lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence.” This is the unavoidable, morbid, and shared burden of those who make strategy (Posvar, 266).

Bibliography

Coplin, W.D., (1965) “International Law and Assumptions About the State System,” World Politics 17 (July) 615-634.

Davidson, E. (1966) The Trial of the Germans: Nuremberg 1945-1946.New York: The Macmillan Company.

Fletcher, J. (1966) Situation Ethics: The New Morality. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

Kahn, H. (1962) “In Defense of Thinking” in H. Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable.New York, Horizon Press, 17-37.

Licklider, R.E. (1971) The Private Nuclear Strategists. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Lyons, G.M. and Morton, L. (1965) Schools for Strategy: Education and Research in National Security Affairs. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers.

Newman, J.R. (1961) “Two Discussions of Thermonuclear War,” Scientific America 204 (March), 197-204

Posvar, W.W. (1964) Strategy, Expertise and National Security, unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April.

Robinson, J.A.T. (1963) Honest to God. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

Sartre, J.P. (1947) Existentialism. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc.

Endnotes

Note 1: This paper was originally presented at the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, Chicago, 1975. I acknowledge with gratitude the financial support of the University Research Council, Rutgers University. Back.

Note 2: One interesting change in the responses to the two questionnaires is that less than 1% of the first chose to be anonymous, while 21% did so nine years later. This may indicate that they are both wary and weary of questionnaires; I have been feeling the same way every since I found that one I had answered was being used to support Richard Nixon’s nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. Of course this questionnaire was solely concerned with this very touchy area of personal ethics, while the original one had the one question on morality buried toward the rear. Back.