5. The Psychology of Nuclear Believers

(The fifth in a series of occasional short pieces designed to stimulate new ideas and challenge accepted assumptions about nuclear weapons.)

Let’s try slipping on the stodgy, not-very-fashionable shoes of a government official in a nuclear-armed state. You’re wearing a serious, dark blue suit. You are not a flashy, non-conformist, upstart success. You are a solid, reliable team player. You value courtesy and much of your work—outsiders would be surprised to learn—is done by consensus. You have had some professional success and have risen to a position of responsibility in the government. You’ve learned to navigate the culture and values of your fellow government officials and along the way you’ve probably absorbed a good deal of those values and beliefs. To a certain extent, you self-identify as a “government official” with all the secure salary, authority, and responsibility that goes with that.

My guess is that government officials worry a fair bit about about being wrong. Risk takers become entrepreneurs. The culture of government—where mistakes can affect thousands or even millions—is by nature cautious. So if you're a government official dealing with nuclear weapons, you probably feel the burden of your job at night. I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t wake up in the small hours worrying if you have done what was best for the country (and also your career, but mostly your country). It seems likely that responsibility occupies a large place in your thoughts.

So now that we’ve thought our way a little into the culture of government officials in nuclear-armed states, let us look specifically at their attitudes toward nuclear weapons. When they think about nuclear weapons, they probably think about the responsibilities associated with them. They feel the weight of the grave danger and sense the power that comes from possessing such awesome weapons. Rather than thinking that the most important thing about nuclear weapons is that they are immoral, they have probably absorbed—during the acculturation they received as they rose through the ranks—the establishment view that (first and foremost) nuclear weapons are necessary. They are the ultimate assurance of national survival, they prop up the world order, and they provide their possessors with influence and prestige. They’re essential weapons.

The tendency to think that nuclear weapons are necessary would be especially strong in government, I would imagine, since the alternative is to admit that your country (let’s use the United States as an example here)—that the United States has been acting immorally for seventy years. —To admit that the foreign policy of the United States has been based on a willingness to do something truly horrific. As good patriots and as people who want to believe in their country (and its government), what government officials would like to believe that?

But let’s go a step farther. Let’s try to think our way deeper into the minds of government officials who deal with nuclear weapons. But rather than talking about nuclear weapons, where there are a lot of pre-conceived notions (i.e. nuclear weapons are the ultimate guarantee of survival), let’s go at this using an analogy. Imagine you are a father protecting your family. You believe that one of your most important duties is to protect your family and you think (whether it’s true or not we’ll leave aside for the moment) that the only way to protect your family is to keep dangerous and powerful bottles of nitroglycerin with you at all times. To get their full protection value, you have to be ready to throw them (at bad guys) at a moment’s notice. You also believe that having the courage to carry nitroglycerine gives you status in the community. In part, this comes from the fearful way that people behave around you. Unfortunately, you live in a rather confined, crowded space, say, a tightly packed city. If you ever have to actually fulfill your threat and throw a bottle of nitroglycerin, lots of innocent people will be injured and killed.

You understand this. You understand that if you ever had to do this horrible thing it would be a stain on your soul that could never be washed away. But you are willing to pay this price, to suffer this moral cost, in order to protect your family. Sometimes people approach you and admonish you that what you are doing is wrong; they tell you that using nitroglycerine is dangerous and immoral. But you respond, “Well, yes. I suppose you’re right. It is immoral. But it’s necessary.” For you, this is an unanswerable argument. You see the immorality, but you judge that ensuring the survival of your family is more important. And most people would find it hard to disagree: most people would be willing to do almost anything to ensure the survival of their family.

This is the way (I imagine) government officials feel. It’s not that they don’t see the immorality of threatening to use nuclear weapons. (Or even using them.) They see the immorality plainly. They’ve probably lain awake at night feeling conflicted about that immorality. Perhaps they see the moral costs more clearly even than those who are not forced by their jobs to confront the issue every day. Part of being a responsible official, after all, is to confront the potential impacts of what you are doing. But they feel there is a more important countervailing argument: necessity.

This gives insight into how we should try to confront them. Government officials don’t need the moral arguments explained or emphasized. They won’t change their minds if they’re shown one more picture of destruction at Hiroshima. They’ve decided that necessity is more important—that if it’s a choice between protecting the lives of American citizens (assuming we’re still using the example of the United State here) and doing something immoral, they choose to do the immoral but necessary thing.

There’s a marvelous essay by Michael Walzer called “With Blood on Their Hands.” In it, Walzer explores the dilemma faced by government officials who confront a situation in which there is no clearcut moral solution. No matter which option they choose, someone will die. President George H. W. Bush, for example, thinking about intervening to reconquer Kuwait after the Iraqi takeover in 1990, faced a blood on his hands choice. If he did nothing, then innocent Kuwaitis would probably die, and Iraq might invade Saudi Arabia, killing both soldiers and more innocent civilians. But if he declared war, then some American soldiers would likely die. None of the options he had were cost free: any plan he chose would leave him with deaths on his conscience. There is no wholly pure, completely moral choice.

Walzer argues that people who insist on their own moral purity make poor leaders. The leaders you want to elect, he says, are those who are willing to get their hands dirty. They are the ones who will be willing to do what’s necessary to keep the country safe. Walzer’s article left me with a new appreciation for the fact that there are some situations that are truly moral dilemmas—where there is no simple right answer. And it left me with a profound respect for those leaders willing to take on morally difficult situations like these. It is, I suppose, what is meant by the hard choices and responsibility of leadership.

I imagine that government officials in nuclear-armed states see themselves this way. They see that nuclear weapons are not optimal or entirely moral weapons. But they believe that they don’t have any choice because the current structure of international politics and world power makes nuclear weapons necessary. Not only will moral arguments not reach them, they may actually offend them. Government officials, after all, may take secret pride in their choice.

Perhaps they even feel a little like Colonel Jessep in the movie A Few Good Men: angry that their sacrifice is unrecognized. “I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. … You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. … And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. … I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said ‘thank you’ and went on your way.” They might not put it as angrily as Colonel Jessup, in fact I’m almost sure they wouldn’t. (It’s a little unfair to compare anyone to the imaginary Colonel Jessup.) But I would guess they may have a similar sense of their own sacrifice and how little it gets recognized.

So if we want to persuade government officials, we should resist the urge to try to use morality or horror—to wave one more horrific picture under their noses. We should argue instead on the grounds that they find irresistible: realism.