Pope Francis, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy

National Catholic Register, 26 November 2019

The visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was symbolic and a powerful call for peace. But its effect on nuclear policy around the world will be limited.

In Japan, visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Pope Francis made three key points regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. He declared the use of nuclear weapons immoral; the possession of nuclear weapons immoral; and endorsed the call of the Japanese bishops to eliminate the use of nuclear energy.

The three points were not a surprise, especially the first. But the implementation of the second and third raise issues that challenge the history of non-proliferation efforts.

The first point, that the use of nuclear weapons is immoral, is a long-standing application of Catholic just-war doctrine. Mass bombardment that does not discriminate between combatants and civilians has never met the criteria for conduct of a just war. The same would apply to certain techniques of conventional bombing, but nuclear weapons offend more obviously against the traditional just-war teaching.

The second point, that possessing nuclear weapons is itself immoral, was first made by the Holy Father two years ago. His argument follows two lines. The one that appears more prominent is that the cost of nuclear weapons cannot be justified when there is poverty to be ameliorated. The same arguments could also be made about expensive conventional weapons; indeed, arguments have been made that the presence of nuclear weapons in Europe during the Cold War was less costly than the conventional forces that would otherwise have been needed.

The second line of argument holds that if nuclear weapons are immoral to use, then the only reason to hold them is for deterrence, the concept known as “mutually assured destruction” (MAD). MAD is morally untenable, Pope Francis argues, as it depends upon having the power to visit destruction to the enemy that is itself immoral.

Interestingly, the only leader who actually controlled nuclear weapons to make that kind of argument about the “madness” of MAD was Ronald Reagan. He wanted the abolition of all nuclear weapons and proposed as such at Reykjavik in 1986. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused him then, and the NATO alliance was horrified that Reagan would consider removing the “nuclear umbrella” that protected Europe against the threat of Soviet aggression.

After the end of the Cold War, it seemed that the time to tolerate grudgingly the madness of MAD had perhaps passed. In 2010, the Holy See under Benedict XVI argued that “the conditions that prevailed during the Cold War, which gave a basis for the Church’s limited toleration of nuclear deterrence, no longer apply.” The Cold War offered a certain stability in which MAD had a certain perverse logic. Does the same apply today?

Nuclear proliferation has been largely contained, with only North Korea recently acquiring nuclear weapons. The other current membership of the nuclear-weapons club — the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and (presumably) Israel — has been stable for many years.

Yet non-proliferation took a serious blow with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and its annexation of Crimea. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on its territory. It had physical control, even if Moscow retained operational control.
What should newly-independent Ukraine do with its nuclear weapons? It was persuaded to give them up, to have them removed from Ukraine or destroyed. The Bucharest Memorandum of 1994 was the instrument by which Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan all gave up their Soviet-era nuclear weapons, the only time a nuclear power has gone non-nuclear.

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