Holding Hostages

Nick Clegg has suggested that the Trident nuclear weapon system should maybe, possibly, perhaps, be scrapped.

Although Mr. Clegg has spoken firmly in favour of the deterrent system in the past, and though his opposition now may be political rather than moral, he is right to show such opposition.

We can, I hope, all agree that the usage of nuclear weapons – the actual launching of weapons of nuclear devastation – is morally wrong. While there undoubtedly exist characters of unfathomable evil, countries of serious threat to our own and international peace and security, the indiscriminate killing involved in dropping a nuclear bomb can never be without moral qualms.

While Roosevelt justified the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by arguing that more lives would have been lost during a ground invasion, there is little doubt that the deaths of innocent Japanese civilians remains morally reprehensible, no matter whether there was a net gain (or rather, a lower net loss) in the long run.

Simply, the deaths Roosevelt was promising to save were soldiers. Those lost would be civilians.

However, the arguments against nuclear deterrence are less clear-cut.

Many would – very fairly – argue that by maintaining a nuclear deterrence – a system of weapons that are aimed at key cities of current and potential enemies – we prevent the horrors of using such weapons from actually arising.

We threaten evil in order not to do it.

This certainly seems a morally laudable aim, and, surely, threatening violence of such horrific magnitude is a far cry from actually enacting such violence, is it not?

Maybe. But despite such arguments in favour, there remain deep-rooted morally objectionable implications of deterrence systems such as Trident.

Consider the idea of hostage holding. When an individual or a group takes a plane, train, bus, politician, celebrity, aid worker or any other person hostage, they threaten violence to their hostages in order to extract some victory, prize, concession or trophy from a third party. The hostages themselves are incidental – as well as innocent – to the aim of the hostage holders, and have done nothing to deserve the threat placed upon their lives.

For example, the hostages held until recently by Islamic militants in Iraq were not responsible for the grievances of their captors. They had not sent US troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia, nor initiated war in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They were simply used as tools to extract policy concessions from a third party – in this case the British Government. The hostages were simply used to send a message. They were reduced to a method of communication and persuasion. And as such, deprived of the dignity and honour of human individuality.

It is this use of hostages as means, as opposed to ends, in addition to the undeserved threats made against their lives that leads to condemnation of the acts of abductors, regardless of whether the hostages are ever actually harmed. The harm, if it is to occur, is certainly to be condemned, but the threat itself does not require the actualization in order for it to be morally repugnant. The threat alone is enough.

Systems of nuclear deterrence – such as the one currently employed by the British government – can be seen as analogous to situations of hostage holding. Nuclear weapons are not aimed at those who are responsible for our grievances – i.e. foreign governments – but rather at innocent people whom we threaten violence against in order to condition the actions of others. Again, as in the hostage example, human beings are reduced to a component of communication, the threat against their lives is nothing but a deadly message to those who are in control.

The threat of nuclear attack on Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, or any of the other thousands of cities that could be reached by the Trident submarine missiles, constitutes a threat against innocent life, and treats the individuals of such cities as a means to an end. However noble that end might be, its nobility does not offset the monstrous immorality of the nuclear threat.

Mr. Clegg is right to suggest an end to Trident, but his argument – which focuses on the financial and practical problems of the system – lacks a robust moral case against deterrence.

If we are ever to talk seriously about moral government and an ethical foreign policy, Trident must be scrapped.