Deterrence

Three decades after the Cold War’s end, do we still need a nuclear arsenal today? Edward Ifft thinks not and in Christianity Today urges his fellow Christians to believe likewise. Peter Feaver, William Inboden, and Michael Singh disagree.

Matthew Kroenig’s The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy provides an immensely important and forceful rebuttal to those nuclear scholars who have gained influence among average American citizens as well as within the walls of the Pentagon where nuclear strategy is conceived and carried out. In doing so, the central theme in Logic also exposes the vacuity of the moral “arguments” mainline Christian “thought leaders” have pushed in the name of US disarmament advocacy.

Westminster Abbey recently held a commemorative service to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Royal Navy submariners’ continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent, carrying the Trident nuclear missile system. Some Christian anti-nuclear activists were unhappy.

Following the Christian just war tradition, could the assassination of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad be justified, despite its illegal nature?

If Assad is permitted to continue employing chemical weapons with impunity, he will successfully normalize them. US forces, our allies, and civilians in the region and around the world will be in great danger of becoming victims of the same.

The United States must be able to convince our adversaries that Americans have the will and capability to inflict punishment on them in response to an act of aggression such that they would not carry out the act of aggression in the first place, and so the United States won’t have to inflict the punishment it promises.

With the consequential economic depression, the heavy influence of Russian propaganda, the presence of former Soviet officials receiving a monthly check from Moscow, and being far from Riga in so many ways, Daugavpils appears to be NATO’s “soft” underbelly.

As the Book of Job illustrates, there are those who simply cannot be deterred from particular behaviors or compelled to “change one’s mind”.

As the number of missile-wielding states grows and as the nuclear club expands, the likelihood of a missile being unleashed against the American people or their allies—whether by mistake, miscalculation, or a madman—also grows. Missile defense doesn’t eliminate the danger, but it does give us a fighting chance to confront it.