Deterrence is the most effective means of preventing conflict.

Therefore, the possibility of eventual disarmament hinges upon one fundamental question: will the future leaders and citizenries of all nuclear states, and other actors who may desire nuclear acquisition, accept the argument that nuclear weapons are both immoral to possess and practically useless?

Many leaders, scholars, and populations at large do not currently accept this. For them, nuclear weapons provide a public good which is both morally defensible and clearly useful: deterrence. Whilst there is a fringe of political and strategic thinking in some countries (most notably, the US) which sees other and more aggressive benefits coming from nuclear weapons (Kroenig 2018), there is a widespread political consensus in the existing nuclear states (and some of their allies) that a secure nuclear arsenal dissuades other nuclear states from attacking them and their close allies, a condition that provides them with an easy security, makes for a general peace among the nuclear powers, and permits some of them to avoid spending massive sums on conventional forces (Martin 2013). The historical record supports this belief. During the Cold War, the two superpowers never came to blows despite numerous crises, their antithetical ideologies, and the violent history of great-power conflict in the first half of the twentieth century, a fact that most historians attribute to the fear of nuclear war over everything else.3 Stalin merely reflected a widespread view at the end of the Second World War when he said that the major powers will recover for a few years, and then ‘we’ll have another go’. He was wrong, and the reason he was wrong is that later Cold War leaders like Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Khrushchev recognized that a nuclear war would be a catastrophe and found ways to avoid ‘having another go’. Since the end of the Cold War, ‘medium’ nuclear powers like China have chosen to rely upon a modest nuclear arsenal for their security rather than wielding expensive and modern conventional forces, while small ones like North Korea are able to protect themselves from attack by infinitely larger enemies, namely the US, simply by possessing a few nuclear weapons. At the same time, states which have given up nuclear projects, like Libya, Iraq, and the Ukraine, have been attacked by nuclear powers, a fate that may also await Iran.

The basic reality of nuclear deterrence—it has made even the most powerful states too afraid of nuclear retaliation to launch a major war against other nuclear powers—is as close to a material fact as exists in the world of international politics, and the cause of anti-nuclear advocacy is not served by denying it.5 Not only do such claims fly in the face of mountains of historical evidence and simple logic; it also contradicts the moral reasoning of the anti-nuclear cause. This cause is justly driven by the unique dangers of a nuclear war: namely the slaughter of millions or hundreds of millions at the touch of a button, its catastrophic environmental effects, and the possible extermination of the human race. But it is precisely these consequences which have dissuaded states from running the risk of nuclear conflict, even in showdowns, too numerous to mention, in which they would otherwise have almost certainly gone to war. One cannot reasonably insist that the revolutionary dangers of nuclear war demand radical action but at the same time deny that these dangers have an important effect on political practice. It may make us feel superior to believe that ‘we’ care about preventing nuclear apocalypse whilst political leaders ignorantly court it, but the historical record reveals otherwise.6