Rothbard on Nuclear Weapons

The bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran by the United States makes more salient than usual a vital issue. What is an appropriate libertarian policy for libertarians regarding these weapons? Is it all right for nations to possess them? If they do possess them, is it all right to threaten to use them or even to use them?

In seeking guidance on these issues, we should consult the work of our greatest libertarian theorist, who was thoroughly familiar with the just war tradition and also had a vast knowledge of contemporary events. I refer of course, to Murray Rothbard, and in today’s article, I’m going to discuss a part of his epochal essay “Two Just Wars” that deals with the issues I’ve mentioned.

Murray first discusses a point that would derail his whole analysis if it was accepted. Some people, such as the CIA agent William F. Buckley Jr., argue that killing millions of people isn’t morally worse than killing one person. Thus, if you argue that nuclear weapons kill people indiscriminately, it doesn’t matter.  That of course is a terrible argument. Even if its premise that killing millions of people isn’t morally worse than killing one person is accepted—which of course it shouldn’t be—it wouldn’t follow that it is morally no worse to kill noncombatants than combatants. And nuclear weapons can’t discriminate between these two groups. But Murray takes the argument on his own terms and pulverizes the premise: “William Buckley and other conservatives have propounded the curious moral doctrine that it is no worse to kill millions than it is to kill one man. The man who does either is, to be sure, a murderer; but surely it makes a huge difference how many people he kills. We may see this by phrasing the problem thus: after a man has already killed one person, does it make any difference whether he stops killing now or goes on a further rampage and kills many dozen more people? Obviously, it does.”

For Murray, whether a weapon can discriminate between combatants and noncombatants is the key issue in assessing the morality of using the weapon. He explains this point here: “It has often been maintained, and especially by conservatives, that the development of the horrendous modern weapons of mass murder (nuclear weapons, rockets, germ warfare, etc.) is only a difference of degree rather than kind from the simpler weapons of an earlier era. Of course, one answer to this is that when the degree is the number of human lives, the difference is a very big one, But another answer that the libertarian is particularly equipped to give is that while the bow and arrow and even the rifle can be pinpointed, if the will be there, against actual criminals, modern nuclear weapons cannot. Here is a crucial difference in kind. Of course, the bow and arrow could be used for aggressive purposes, but it could also be pinpointed to use only against aggressors. Nuclear weapons, even ‘conventional’ aerial bombs, cannot be. These weapons are ipso facto engines of indiscriminate mass destruction. (The only exception would be the extremely rare case where a mass of people who were all criminals inhabited a vast geographical area.) We must, therefore, conclude that the use of nuclear or similar weapons, or the threat thereof, is a sin and a crime against humanity for which there can be no justification.”

Because these weapons cannot discriminate, it is wrong to use or possess them. Moreover, getting rid of them should have the highest priority for libertarians. Doing this is much more important than privatizing the economy, even though that is also very important: “This is why the old cliché no longer holds that it is not the arms but the will to use them that is significant in judging matters of war and peace. For it is precisely the characteristic of modern weapons that they cannot be used selectively, cannot be used in a libertarian manner. Therefore, their very existence must be condemned, and nuclear disarmament becomes a good to be pursued for its own sake. And if we will indeed use our strategic intelligence, we will see that such disarmament is not only a good, but the highest political good that we can pursue in the modern world. For just as murder is a more heinous crime against another man than larceny, so mass murder—indeed murder so widespread as to threaten human civilization and human survival itself—is the worst crime that any man could possibly commit. And that crime is now imminent. And the forestalling of massive annihilation is far more important, in truth, than the demunicipalization of garbage disposal, as worthwhile as that may be. Or are libertarians going to wax properly indignant about price control or the income tax, and yet shrug their shoulders at or even positively advocate the ultimate crime of mass murder?”

Murray was always alert to objections, as long as they were serious objections, and one objection he took very seriously indeed is that his views are inconsistent. He opposes wars between nations because he thinks they will almost inevitably lead to nuclear war, but he sometimes supports revolutions within a state. He answers that his views are perfectly consistent: “Now there are crucial and vital differences between inter-State warfare on the one hand and revolutions against the State or conflicts between private individuals on the other. One vital difference is the shift in geography. In a revolution, the conflict takes place within the same geographical area: both the minions of the State and the revolutionaries inhabit the same territory. Inter-State warfare, on the other hand, takes place between two groups, each having a monopoly over its own geographical area; that is, it takes place between inhabitants of different territories. From this difference there flow several important consequences: (1) in inter-State war the scope for the use of modern weapons of destruction is far greater. For if the “escalation” of weaponry in an intra-territorial conflict becomes too great, each side will blow itself up with the weapons directed against the other. Neither a revolutionary group nor a State combating revolution, for example, can use nuclear weapons against the other. But, on the other hand, when the warring parties inhabit different territorial areas, the scope for modern weaponry becomes enormous, and the entire arsenal of mass devastation can come into play. A second consequence (2) is that while it is possible for revolutionaries to pinpoint their targets and confine them to their State enemies, and thus avoid aggressing against innocent people, pinpointing is far less possible in an inter-State war. This is true even with older weapons; and, of course, with modern weapons there can be no pinpointing whatever. Furthermore, (3) since each State can mobilize all the people and resources in its territory, the other State comes to regard all the citizens of the opposing country as at least temporarily its enemies and to treat them accordingly by extending the war to them. Thus, all of the consequences of inter-territorial war make it almost inevitable that inter-State war will involve aggression by each side against the innocent civilians—the private individuals—of the other. This inevitability becomes absolute with modern weapons of mass destruction.”

Let’s do everything we can to get rid of nuclear weapons. A good way to do this is to go all out to distribute Murray article “Two Just Wars.”

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