"Item Id","Item URI","Dublin Core:Title","Dublin Core:Subject","Dublin Core:Description","Dublin Core:Creator","Dublin Core:Source","Dublin Core:Publisher","Dublin Core:Date","Dublin Core:Contributor","Dublin Core:Rights","Dublin Core:Relation","Dublin Core:Format","Dublin Core:Language","Dublin Core:Type","Dublin Core:Identifier","Dublin Core:Coverage","Item Type Metadata:Text","Item Type Metadata:Interviewer","Item Type Metadata:Interviewee","Item Type Metadata:Location","Item Type Metadata:Transcription","Item Type Metadata:Local URL","Item Type Metadata:Original Format","Item Type Metadata:Physical Dimensions","Item Type Metadata:Duration","Item Type Metadata:Compression","Item Type Metadata:Producer","Item Type Metadata:Director","Item Type Metadata:Bit Rate/Frequency","Item Type Metadata:Time Summary","Item Type Metadata:Email Body","Item Type Metadata:Subject Line","Item Type Metadata:From","Item Type Metadata:To","Item Type Metadata:CC","Item Type Metadata:BCC","Item Type Metadata:Number of Attachments","Item Type Metadata:Standards","Item Type Metadata:Objectives","Item Type Metadata:Materials","Item Type Metadata:Lesson Plan Text","Item Type Metadata:URL","Item Type Metadata:Event Type","Item Type Metadata:Participants","Item Type Metadata:Birth Date","Item Type Metadata:Birthplace","Item Type Metadata:Death Date","Item Type Metadata:Occupation","Item Type Metadata:Biographical Text","Item Type Metadata:Bibliography","Item Type Metadata:Player","Item Type Metadata:Episode","Item Type Metadata:Season","Item Type Metadata:Episode Type","Item Type Metadata:Explicit","Item Type Metadata:Block",Zotero:Artist,"Zotero:Attorney Agent",Zotero:Author,"Zotero:Book Author",Zotero:Cartographer,"Zotero:Cast Member",Zotero:Commenter,Zotero:Composer,Zotero:Contributor,Zotero:Cosponsor,Zotero:Counsel,Zotero:Director,Zotero:Editor,Zotero:Guest,Zotero:Interviewee,Zotero:Interviewer,Zotero:Inventor,Zotero:Performer,Zotero:Podcaster,Zotero:Presenter,Zotero:Producer,Zotero:Programmer,Zotero:Recipient,"Zotero:Reviewed Author",Zotero:Scriptwriter,"Zotero:Series Editor",Zotero:Sponsor,Zotero:Translator,"Zotero:Words By","Zotero:Item Type",Zotero:Note,Zotero:DOI,Zotero:ISBN,Zotero:ISSN,"Zotero:Abstract Note","Zotero:Access Date","Zotero:Application Number",Zotero:Archive,"Zotero:Archive Location","Zotero:Artwork Medium","Zotero:Artwork Size",Zotero:Assignee,"Zotero:Audio File Type","Zotero:Audio Recording Format","Zotero:Bill Number","Zotero:Blog Title","Zotero:Book Title","Zotero:Call Number","Zotero:Case Name",Zotero:Code,"Zotero:Code Number","Zotero:Code Pages","Zotero:Code Volume",Zotero:Committee,Zotero:Company,"Zotero:Conference Name",Zotero:Country,Zotero:Court,Zotero:Date,"Zotero:Date Decided","Zotero:Date Enacted","Zotero:Dictionary Title",Zotero:Distributor,"Zotero:Docket Number","Zotero:Document Number",Zotero:Edition,"Zotero:Encyclopedia Title","Zotero:Episode Number",Zotero:Extra,"Zotero:Filing Date","Zotero:First Page","Zotero:Forum Title",Zotero:Genre,Zotero:History,Zotero:Institution,"Zotero:Interview Medium",Zotero:Issue,"Zotero:Issue Date","Zotero:Issuing Authority","Zotero:Journal Abbreviation",Zotero:Label,Zotero:Language,"Zotero:Legal Status","Zotero:Legislative Body","Zotero:Letter Type","Zotero:Library Catalog","Zotero:Manuscript Type","Zotero:Map Type",Zotero:Medium,"Zotero:Meeting Name","Zotero:Name of Act",Zotero:Network,"Zotero:Num Pages",Zotero:Number,"Zotero:Number of Volumes",Zotero:Pages,"Zotero:Patent Number",Zotero:Place,"Zotero:Post Type","Zotero:Presentation Type","Zotero:Priority Numbers","Zotero:Proceedings Title","Zotero:Program Title","Zotero:Programming Language","Zotero:Public Law Number","Zotero:Publication Title",Zotero:Publisher,Zotero:References,"Zotero:Report Number","Zotero:Report Type",Zotero:Reporter,"Zotero:Reporter Volume",Zotero:Rights,"Zotero:Running Time",Zotero:Scale,Zotero:Section,Zotero:Series,"Zotero:Series Number","Zotero:Series Text","Zotero:Series Title",Zotero:Session,"Zotero:Short Title",Zotero:Studio,Zotero:Subject,Zotero:System,"Zotero:Thesis Type",Zotero:Title,Zotero:University,Zotero:URL,Zotero:Version,"Zotero:Video Recording Format",Zotero:Volume,"Zotero:Website Title","Zotero:Website Type","Zotero:Attachment Title","Zotero:Attachment URL","PDF Text:Text",tags,file,itemType,collection,public,featured
198,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/198,"Box 71, Item 3: Draft of Some ethical aspects of energy options","Typescript of draft, one page corrected with whiteout, undated. Paper published, Routley R and Routley V (1979) 'Some ethical aspects of energy options' in Diesendorf M, Bartell R, Casey C, Day A, Day LH, Gifford RM and Saddler H (eds), Energy and people: social implications of different energy futures, Society for Social Responsibility in Science A.C.T.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.","Richard Sylvan^^Val Plumwood","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 71, Item 3","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[16] leaves. 14.29 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:b32aba5",,"SOME ETHICAL ASPECTS OF ENERGY OPTIONS.
R. and V. Routley
Plumwood Mountain
Box 37 Braidwood, NSW. 2622.
Major ethical issues intrude conspicuously into the question
For example, the Kantian question:
of energy choice.
what ought
we to do (or try to do) in the awkward circumstances that will shortly
face us on the energy-front?
And Aristotle’s question:
What is a
a question transposed these days into questions as
good life like?
to quality of life and the extent to which quality genuinely depends
on quantity of energy (Aristotle thought, by the way, that a good
life required only a modicum of material goods.)
questions such as:
And traditional
What are we morally entitled to do to others,
and with respect to nature?
a question extended to include future
others and now asked seriously as regards wild nature.
modern questions such as:
And more
which sorts of consumer demand —
especially of energy-intensive goods - should be met?
It is evident enough then, without going into details , that
ethical questions have an important bearing on main issues on
energy choice and that a pure social engineering
approach to
the problem is bound to write in much that calls for examination
or rejection.
But it is often supposed - mistakenly - that the
ethical issues are adequately taken care of in the structures we
already have, e.g. through internal political and legal structures
and by international legal arrangements.
Suppose, it is said, the question of replacement of burners in
a Japanese electricity station arises, and the Japanese decide to
replace the burners by nuclear ones.
routine political way.
wider morality?
for the Japanese.
The matter is approved in a
Who are we to say that the matter is one of
It is a matter of internal pclitical arrangements
Suppose, to begin to see that this is not so,
that a nation decides to install(or replace in the course of modern
2.
isation) the burners in a concentration camp, and that the matter
is approved in a routine political fashion and meets all internal
legal requirements.
We are almost all going to say that the matter
is one of wider morality.
And so also is taking choices on the life,
health and well being of future people in a nuclear adventure.
More
generally, pollution, and especially non-local types of pollution
such as nuclear pollution, raises ethical issues which transcend
conventional national and political boundaries.
For the effects of
pollution are often not locally contained, polluted air or water may
move far afield to affect even features of the world, such as climate
and ocean levels.
The idea that the ethics of such matters is satisfactorily
regulated by international legal arrangements - agreements, pacts,
contracts and the like or international regulatory agencies (where
they operate) - is likewise unsound.
For the arrangements commonly
bear little relation to what is considered right or just:
they
may have been arrived at by expediency or, at best, through moral
compromise, and they may reflect immediate self-interest rather
than morality.
Just as legal principles are in general neither
necessary nor sufficient as moral principles, so international
legal arrangements are no substitute for morality, and usually do
not even offer, a poor reflection of ethical arrangements.
More difficult to dispose of, and more insidious, are
engineering approaches to morality built into models of an economic
cast, e.g. benefit-cost balance sheets, risk assessment models, etc.
§1.
It is a commonplace nowadays that there is no method of pro
viding for future energy needs which will not involve substantial
costs to someone, and that these costs must just be accepted as
part of the price we pay for our advanced technological society and
our high living standard.
""If you want the benefits you must be
prepared to pay the costs"" is part of the new conventional wisdom
3.
on energy.
The model is that of a simple economic transaction, for
example someone going into a shop and buying paper towels — she
wants the paper so she must be prepared to pay over the money
representing the equivalent of the cost of the paper in unpleasant
labour, forest destruction, etc.
But here, on energy, as in so many other places, the conventional
wisdom is not to be trusted.
For the transaction model suggests
that the costs and benefits are evenly distributed, that those who
benefit pay the costs and vice versa.
is very often
But with energy options this
not so, and in fact this is one of the more important
ways in which the ethical aspects of the energy issue arise.
The
conventional transaction model is an attempt to gloss over crucial
ethical aspects of the problem.
Again, the energy issue raises
questions about the goals (ends) and values of society, and is not
just a disagreement about the best means of achieving unquestioned
or accepted goals, and it has an important bearing too on the
distribution of power both economic and political between various
groups.
Thus are involved then crucial political as well as ethical
aspects, and these too the simple transaction model attempts to sweep
under the carpet.
The simple transaction model, despite its appeal
to the technological mind, and to those who are anxious to maintain
the myth of the political and value freedomness of science and
technology, is quite inadequate, for it does not reflect significant
distributional features of the energy problem.
It is in fact an
attempt to ignore, deny or gloss over the crucial political and
ethical aspects of the energy issue, and to avoid facing the social
and ethical choices involved.
A more sophisticated relative of the transaction model is
now called risk assessment, which purports to provide a comparison
between the relative risks attached to different energy options which
settles their ethical status.
The following lines of argument are
4.
encountered in risk assessment as applied to energy options:
(i)
if option a imposes costs on fewer people than option b
then option a is preferable to option b;
(ii)
option a involves a total net cost in terms of cost to
people (e.g. deaths, injuries, etc.) which is less than of option b,
3
which is already accepted; therefore option a is acceptable.
For example, the number likely to be killed by nuclear power stations
is less than the likely number killed by cigarette smoking, which is
accepted:
So nuclear power stations are acceptable.
A little
reflection reveals that this sort of risk assessment argument involves
the same kind of fallacy as the transaction model.
It is far too
simple-minded, and it ignores distributional and other relevant
aspects of the context.
In order to obtain an ethical assessment
we should need a much fuller picture and we should need to know at
least these things:-
do the costs and benefits go to the same parties;
and is the person who undertakes the risks also the person who
receives the benefits or primarily, as in driving or cigarette smoking,
or are costs imposed on other parties who do not benefit?
It is
only if the parties are the same in the case of the options compared,
and there are no such distributional problems, that a comparison on
such a basis would be valid.4
This is rarely the case, and it is
not so in the case of risk assessments of energy options.
Secondly,
does the person incur the risk as a result of an activity which he
knowingly undertakes in a situation where he has a reasonable choice,
knowing it entails the risk, etc., and is the level of risk in
proportion to the level of the relevant activity, e.g. as in smoking?
Thirdly, for what reason is the risk imposed:
or a relatively trivial reason?
is it for a serious
A risk that is ethically acceptable
for a serious reason may not be ethically acceptably for a trivial
reason.
Both the arguments (i) and (ii) are often
trying to justify nuclear power.
employed in
The second argument (ii) involves
5.
the fallacies of the first (i) and an additional set, namely that
of forgetting that the health risks in the nuclear sense are
cumulative, and in the eyes of many people already high if not too
high.
Despite a certain superficial plausibility, so-called risk
assessment as a method of comparing the ethical status of energy
options is little more than a bundle of fallacies deceptively
packaged in pseudo-scientific wrappings.
It purports to give a
simple apparently precise and scientific method of evaluating the
ethical status of energy options, but in fact it depends on a number
of hidden assumptions about which factors are relevant and which can
be ignored in an ethical assessment, which when brought out for
examination can be seen to be guite unacceptable.
§2. The maxim ""If you want the benefits you have to accept the
costs"" is one thing and the maxim ""If I want the benefits then you
have to accept the costs (or some of them at least)"" is another
and very different thing.
It is a widely accepted moral principle
that one is not, in general, entitled to simply transfer costs of a
significant kind arising from an activity which benefits oneself
onto other parties who are not involved in the activity and are not
beneficiaries.
This transfer principle
is especially clear in
cases where the significant costs include an effect on life or
health or a risk thereof, and where the benefit to the benefitting
party is of a noncrucial or dispensible nature.
(Thus one is not
usually entitled to harm, or risk harming, another in the process of
benefitting oneself.)
Suppose, for example, we consider a village
which produces, as a result of the industrial process by which it
lives, a noxious waste material which is expensive and difficult
to dispose/ye^t creates a risk to life and health if undisposed of.
Instead of giving up their industrial process and turning to some
other way of making a living such as farming the surrounding
6.
countryside, they persist with this way of life but ship their
problem on a one-way delivery service to the next village.
The
inhabitants of this village are then forced to face the problem
either of undertaking the expensive and difficult disposal process
or of sustaining risks to their own lives and health.
Most of us
would see this kind of transfer of costs as morally unacceptable.
From this arises a necessary condition for energy options:
that to be morally acceptable they should not involve the transfer
of significant costs or risks of harm onto parties who are not
involved, do not use the energy source or do not benefit corres
pondingly from its use.
Included in the scope of this condition
are future people, i.e. not merely people living at the present time
7
but also future generations (those of the next villages).
The
distribution of costs and damage in such a fashion, i.e. onto non
beneficiaries is a characteristic of certain widespread and serious
forms of pollution, and is one of its most objectionable morel
features.
It is a corollary of the condition that we should not hand the
world on to our successors in substantially worse shape than we
received it - the transmission principle.
For if we did then that
would be a significant transfer of costs.
(The corollary can be
independently argued for on the basis of certain ethical theories,
in particular contract theories such as Rawls’.)
Some philosophers8 have attempted to undercut the trans
mission principle, arguing that we are not morally obligated to
make sacrifices for the future.
Making sacrifices is however signifi
cantly different from refraining from passing on costs, and it is
the latter which is mainly at issue.
We might be making sacrifices,
for example, if we made ourselves worse off than future people might
be normally expected to be in order that they might be better off
than us.
We are passing on our costs when we make them worse off
7.
than they would normally be because of some activity which benefits
us.
We may not be morally obliged to make sacrifices for future
people, but we do have a moral obligation not to pass on our costs,
and our obligations in this respect do not just apply to the next
generation, but to any set of people who could be affected.
In terms of the necessary condition we can undertake some
limited comparison of energy options from an ethical standpoint.
It is very doubtful that the main options that are being seriously
considered meet this condition for moral acceptibility ;
in particular
it is extremely doubtful that nuclear energy options do so.
Nuclear
energy appears to represent a classic case of passing on costs and
risks to nonbeneficiaries, especially future people, because of the
way in which nuclear waste created now produces risks and problems
for future people.
Unless a rigorously safe method of storage is
employed, as many as 40,000
generations of people have to face costs
in the shape of risks to health and life arising from the energy
consumption of at most perhaps 10 generations.
even worse when
The situation is
one reflects on the fact that many of the purposes
for which this energy will be required are of a dispensible and
unnecessary (and even undesirable) nature, and energy use of an
extravagant and needless kind would undoubtedly be involved in order
for the big increases in per capita energy consumption which justify
much of the nuclear expansion program in the industrialised world
to be reached.
Not only would costs be passed on to people in the
distant future to whom no benefits seem to accrue but his is done
9
for reasons that cannot be seen as pressing or needful.
The waste
disposal aspect of nuclear power production is not the only way in
which the nuclear option may pass on problems and costs to nonbene
ficiaries:
unless an unrealistic perfection in the handling, mining,
transport and processing and reprocessing of nuclear fuels and waste
8.
is assumed, various forms of widespread radioactive pollution could
occur which would affect not only those who use and benefit from
the energy source but also very many who do not, especially m the
third world.10
We have heard a good deal recently from some local quarters
(the PR machinery of the Australian National University) about how
the nuclear waste disposal problem has been solved, and the objections
on the grounds of waste disposal eleminated.
Of course a number
of similar claims have been made in the past, and there never
was a problem according to hard-line nuclear advocates of nuclear
power.
There are good reasons for treating these claims with some
scepticism, and not merely because of disagreement among the parties,
but because what we have in effect with the final ""solution
is
yet another proposal for a possible method of treating waste with
significant gaps in the arguments, a considerable lack of experimental
and practical support, and so on.11
We must be satisfied beyond
reasonable doubt that there is a completely safe procedure
before claims can be responsibily made that a problem of such
seriousness has been technically solved.
It is irresponsible,
especially on the part of university authorities, to give the
impression that such a problem is solved or eliminated when so much
remains to be done and when reasonable doubts may still be raised
as they may in this case.
An even more important reason why the
claims that the problem has been eliminated have to be rejected is
that even if a method of disposal can be experimentally (or even
commercially) demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to be completely
safe, it is not the technical possibility of safe disposal that is
important from an ethical standpoint but the actual practical
likelihood of such a method being used.
Firstly, it is worth
9.
bearing in mind that the new miracle method was immediately
rejected by some of the pronuclear establishment as both expensive
(despite optimistic cost estimates) and unnecessary, which does
not give a very hopeful prognosis for its use.
There are moreover
reasons for thinking that governments may not want or favour
permanent irretrievable disposal methods.
They may want to keep
open their options for employing waste either for military purposes
or for use in breeder reactors or elsewhere.
There is in fact
little reason to believe that nuclear pollution will be treated
in a different fashion from other forms of pollution, where the mere
fact that there are satisfactory methods of control is by no means
sufficient to guarantee their effective employment, especially if
they are expensive.
It would be methodologically unsound to ignore
these risk elements arising from social and political factors and
to regard the problem as a purely technological one which can be
classed as eliminated the moment someone puts forward a promising
looking technical proposal.
The practical likelihood, even with a
disposal method proven safe beyond reasonable doubt, remains - that
nuclear power will impose costs on future people who do not benefit,
that future people will either be forced to go to great expense and
trouble to dispose safely of the nuclear wastes generated by our
consumption, or that they will have to pay the price in their own
lives and health for inadequate disposal or storage of the wastes
generated by us.
For these reasons, we belive that the nuclear
energy option remains morally unacceptable!
and unacceptable not
merely from a particular ethical standpoint, but in terms of common
ground from a range of ethical positions.
§3.
One cannot pretend that the future energy option that is
frequently contrasted with nuclear, namely coal, is particularly
attractive - because of the likelihood of really serious (air)
10.
pollution and associated phenomena such as acid rain and atmosphere
heating not to mention the despoliation caused by extensive strip
mining all of which will result from its use in meeting very high
Such an option would also fail,
projected consumption figures.
it seems, to meet the necessary condition, because it would impose
widespread costs on nonbeneficiaries for some concentrated benefits
to some profit takers and to some users who do not pay the full costs
x. 13
of production and replacement.
These are the conventional options and a third is often added
which emphasizes soft or benign technologies, such as those of
solar energy.
The fundamental choice, such options tend to neglect,
is not technological but social, and involves both the restructuring
of production away from energy intensive uses:
at a more basic level
there is a choice between consumeristic and nonconsumeristic futures.
These more fundamental choices between social alternatives, con
ventional technologically-oriented discussion tends to obscure.
It
is not just a matter of deciding in which way to meet unexamined goals
but also a matter of examining the goals.
That is, we are not just
faced with the question of comparing different technologies or
substitute ways of meeting some fixed or given demand or level of
consumption, and of trying to see whether we can meet this with
soft rather than hard technologies;
we are also faced, and primarily,
with the matter of examing those alleged needs and the cost of
society that creates them.
It is not just a question of devising
less damaging ways to meet these alleged needs conceived of us
inevitable and unchangeable.
(Hence there are solar ways of
producing unnecessary trivia no one really wants, as opposed to
nuclear ways).
Of course one does not want to deny that these
softer options are superior to the clearly ethically unacceptable
features of the others.
lie
But it is doubtful that any technology however benign in
principle will be likely to leave a tolerable world for future
people if it is expected to meet limitless and uncontrolled energy
consumption and demands.
Even the more benign technologies such
as solar technology could be used in a way which creates costs for
future people and are likely to result in a deteriorated world
being handed on to them.
Consider, for example, the effect on the
world's forests, which are commonly counted as a solar resource, of
use for production of methonal or of electricity by woodchipping,
as already planned by forest authorities in California and contem
plated by many other energy organisations.
Few would object to the
use of genuine waste material for energy production, but the un
restricted exploitation of forests - whether it goes under the name
of ""solar energy"" or not - to meet ever increasing energy demands
could well be the last nail in the coffin of the world's already
hard pressed natural forests.
The effects of such additional demands on the maintenance of the
forests are often discounted, even by soft technologicalists, by
the simple expedient of waving around the label 'renewable resource'.
Most forests are in principle renewable, it is a true, given a
certain (low) rate and kind of exploitation, but in fact there are
now very few forestry operations anywhere in the world where the
forests are treated as completely renewable in the sense of the
renewal of all their values.in many regions too the rate of
exploitation which would enable renewal has already been exceeded,
so that a total decline is widely thought to be immanent if not
already well advanced.
It certainly has begun in some regions,
and for some forest types (such as rainforest types) which are being
lost for the future.
The addition of a major further demand source
that for energy— and especially one which shows every sign of being
not readily limitable,
on top of the present sources is one which
12.
anyone with a realistic appreciation of the conduct of forestry
operations, who is also concerned with longterm conservation of
the forests and remaining natural communities, must regard with
alarm.
The result of massive deforestation for energy purposes,
resembling the deforestation of England at the beginning of the
Industrial Revolution, again for energy purposes, could be extensive
and devastating erosion in steeper lands and tropical areas,
desertification in more arid regions, possible climatic change, and
massive impoverishment of natural ecosystems.
Some of us do not
want to pass on - we are not entitled to pass on - a deforested world
to the future, any more than we want to pass on one poisoned by
nuclear products or polluted by coal products.
In short, a mere
switch to a more benign technology - important though this is - with
out any more basic structural and social change is not enough.
The deeper social options involve challenging and trying to
change a social structure which promotes consumerism and an economic
structure which encourages the use of highly energy-intensive modes
of production.
This means, for instance, trying to change a social
structure in which those who are lucky enough to make it into the
work force are cogs in a production machine over which they have
very little real control and in which most people do unpleasant or
boring work from which they derive very little real satisfaction in
order to obtain the reward of consumer goods and services.
A society
in which social rewards are obtained primarily from products rather
than processes, from consumption, rather than from satisfaction in work
and in social relations and other activities, is bound to be one which
generates a vast amount of unnecessary consumption.
(A production
system that produces goods not to meet genuine needs but for created
and non-genuine needs is virtually bound to overproduce.)
Consumption
frequently becomes a substitute for satisfaction in other areas.
13.
§4. Conclusions.
The social change option is a hard option, but
it seems the only way to avoid passing on serious costs to the
future - and there are other sorts of reasons than such ethical
ones for taking it.15
The ethical conditions thus lead
us into
political issues, but this is not very surprising, as there is no
sharp division between the areas (and political theories always
presuppose an ethics).
This kind of social change option tends
to be obscured in most discussions of energy options and how to
meet our energy needs, in part because it questions underlying
values of current social arrangements.
The conventional discussion
proceeds by taking alleged demand (often restated as wants or needs)
as unchallengeable,16 and the issue to be one of which technology
can be most profitably employed to meet them.
This effectively
presents a false choice, and is the result of taking needs and demand
as lacking a social context so that the social structure which
produces the needs is similarly taken as unchallengable and unchange
able.
The social changes that the option requires will be strongly
resisted because they mean changes in current social organisation
and power structure, and to the extent that the option represents
some kind of threat to parts of present political and economic
arrangements it is not surprising that official energy option
discussion proceeds by misrepresenting and often obscuring it.
FOOTNOTES
(1)
A more detailed case would look at what is involved in
decision methods for choosing between options on energy
and would show that general decision modellings, e.g.
optimisation modellings for best choice, necessarily involve
evaluative factors, some of them of a>n ethical kind.
The ethical components are particularly conspicuous in
elementary decision theory where the assessment of each
outcome is obtained by multiplying the probability of
the outcome by its desirability, the desirability being
an overtly evaluative question often involving ethical
components.
Any idea that decision theory is somehow a
value-free way of reaching decisions is thoroughly wrong.
The pure theory may be a logico—mathematical one, but its
significant applications are not.
(2)
The pernicious underlying assumption - that major ethical issues
are not really a matter of individual concern and can, and
perhaps should, be left to elected government_or appointed
bureaucrats - can be despatched in a rather similar way.
(3)
Even then relevant environmental factors may have been
neglected.
(4)
There are variations on (i) and (ii) which multiply costs
In this way risks,
against numbers such as probabilities.
construed as probable costs, can be taken into account in
the assessment. (Alternatively, risks may be assessed through
such familiar methods as insurance).
A principle varying (ii), and formulated as follows:
(ii') a is ethically acceptable if (for some b) a includes
no more risks than b and b is socially accepted,
was the basic ethical principle in terms of which the Cluff
Lake Board of Inquiry recently decided that nuclear power
development in Saskatchewan
is ethically acceptable:
see Cluff Lake Board of Inquiry Final Report, Department of
Environment, Government of Saskatchewan,
1978, p.305 and
p.288.
In this report, a is nuclear power and b is either
activities clearly accepted by society as alternative power
sources. In other applications b has been taken as cigarette
smoking, motoring, mining and even the Vietnam war(’)
The points made in the text do not exhaust the objections to
principles (i)-(ii’). The principles are certainly ethically
substantive, since an ethical consequence cannot be deduced.from
nonethical premisses, but they have an inadmissible conventional
character. For look at the origin of b: b may be socially
accepted though it is no longer socially acceptable, or though
its social acceptibility is no longer so clearcut and it would
not have been socially accepted if as much as is.now known.had
been known when it was introduced. What is required in (ii’),
for instance, for the argument to begin to look convincing is
then 'ethically acceptable1 rather than ’socially accepted'.
But even with the amendments the principles are invalid, for the
reasons given in the text.
It is not disconcerting that these arguments do not work.
It
would be sad to see yet another area lost to the experts/ namely
ethics to actuaries.
2.
(5)
A main part of the trouble with the models is that they are
narrowly utilitarian, and like utilitarianism they neglect
distributional features, involve naturalistic fallacies, etc.
Really they try to treat as an unconstrained optimisation what
is a deontically constrained optimisation: see R. and V. Routley
'An expensive repair kit for utilitariansim'.
(6)
Apparent exceptions to the principle such as taxation (and
redistribution of income generally) vanish when wealth is
construed (as it has to be if taxation is to be properly
justified) as at least partly a social asset unfairly monopo
lised by a minority of the population.
Examples such as that of motoring dangerously do not constitute
counterexamples to the principle;
for one is not morally entitled
to so motor.
(7)
As we have argued in detail in R. and V. Routley 'Nuclear energy
and obligations to the future \ Inquiry 21 (1978), pp. 133-179 .
(8)
For example, Passmore in Man's Responsibility for Nature,
Duckworth, London, 1974, chapter 4.
(9)
A further problem of a less obvious kind is also created for
future people; the postponement of the switch away from energyintensive economies, which nuclear power is designed to effect,
creates a situation of increasing and critical dependence upon
energy-intensive uses at a time when there is eve.ry prospect that
Nevertheless
they cannot be sustained for more than a short time.
the growth of energy-intensive societies and lifestyles is encouraged
and fostered.
The switch is accordingly made far more difficult
than it is at present, and thus we may well be placing future
people in very difficult positions, with a real energy crisis.
Continuance on a high energy path in the present circumstances
seems then to violate the commonly recognised principle that we
have an obligation to hand on to the next generation a society
that is not conspicuously worse than that which we received.
(10)
A few nuclear plant accidents, for example, would significantly
increase background levels of radiation, so that millions of
people who are not involved might have to carry risks or costs
because of the energy consumption of a few wealthy nations or
wealthy elites. The increased risk of nuclear war is another
way in which global risks are imposed because of the determination
of industrial nations to maintain and increase lavish energy
consumption levels.
(11)
For an excellent discussion of the limitations of the proposed
disposal method see B. Martin, 'Radioactive waste disposal:
is Synroc the solution?'
(12)
For the reason that the consequences of failure are so serious:
see R. and V. Routley, op. cit. footnote 1.
(13)
Certainly practical transitional programs may involve temporary
and limited use of unacceptable long term commodities such as
coal, but in presenting such practical details one should not
lose sight of the more basic social and structural changes, and
the problem is really one of making those.
Similarly practical transitional strategies should make use of
such measures as environmental (or replacement) pricing of energy,
i.e. so that the price of some energy unit includes the full cost
3.
footnote 13 continued.
of replacing it by an equivalent unit taking account
of environmental cost of production. Other (sometimes
coootive)
strategies towards more satisfactory alter
natives should also, of course, be adopted, in particular
the removal of institutional barriers to energy conser
vation and alternative technology (e.g. local government
regulations blocking these), and the removal of state
assistance to fuel and power industries.
(14)
Symptomatic of the fact that is it not treated as renewable
is that forest economics do not generally allow for full
renewability - if they did the losses and deficits on
forestry operations would be much more striking than they
already are often enough.
It is doubtful, furthermore, that energy cropping of
forests can be a fully renewable operation if net energy.
production is to be worthwhile; see, e.g. the argument m
L.R.B. Mann ’Some difficulties with energy farming for
portable fuels', and add in the costs of ecosystem maintenance.
(15)
Certainly it is the only sort of option open to one who takes
a deeper ecological perspective.
(16)
Thus it is argued by representatives of such industries as
transportation and petroleum, as for example by McGrowth of
the XS Consumption Co., that people want deep freezers, air
conditioners, power boats,- It would be authoritarian to stop them
satisfying these wants. The argument conveniently ignores
the social framework in which such needs and wants arise or
are produced. To point to the determination of many such
wants at the framework level is not hower to accept a Marxist
approach according to which they are entirely determined at
the framework level (e.g. by industrial organisation) an .
there is no such thing as individual choice or determination
at all. It is to see the social framework as a major factor
in determining certain kinds of choices such as those for
travel and infrastructure and to see apparently individual
choices made in such matters as being channelled.and directed
by a social framework determined largely in the interests o
private profit and advantage. See R.,and V. Routlev,
'Towards a social theory for ecotopia'.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 71: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/75fc64a2f672780af3de8a71e4e815bb.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
153,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/153,"Box 71, Item 1: Working draft of Australia's defence philosophy: investigations of the nonexistent # MX504","Computer printout of working draft. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'On the alleged inconsistency, moral insensitivity and fanaticism of pacifism', Inquiry (Oslo), 27(1): 117-136. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201748408602030.","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff","Richard Sylvan","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 71, Item 1","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[48] leaves. 32.19 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:d048645",,"WORKING DRAFT
AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE PHILOSOPHY? Investigations
of the nonexistent # MX504
'The opinions of philosophers, with regard to the conditions of the
possibility of a public peace,
shall be taken into consideration by
states armed for war'' (Kant,
'A [the only]
secret article for
perpetual
peace',
p.158,
an article flattering no doubt
to
philosophers, but neglecting their dominant bellicose tradition).
A defence philosophy is much more than a defence policy.
A policy can be
merely by a list of directives as to what do in various
given
at
even
its
philosophy
policy
best it need only involve practical
into a theoretical
setting,
contrast,
integration
of
a
the
which looks at the key concepts involved:
security, stability, control,
here,
By
wisdom.
goes deeper and requires theoretical wisdom,
circumstances;
protection, defence, interests, national
interests, intelligence, war, etc. Defence philosophy is a branch of political
and
social
philosophy,
and has long been treated as such,
though under such
more familiar and honest headings as ""of war"" and ""of peace"" (see Appendix
Like
most
of philosophy it can be applied,
parts
in
regional
3}.
among
ways
others.
defence
A
approaches
to
philosophy should embed appropriate defence arrangements
war
not merely
and peace,
or
superficially
into
and
""foreign
policy"", but into the way and intended way of life of a country, both into on
going
culture
policy
defence
power
and
into the intended or planned
typically takes prevailing socio-political
structures for granted;
questioning
of
merits
cultural
arrangements.
arrangements
a defence philosophy again penetrates
or rejecting features of these structures,
enquiring as
things and institutions of which defence is planned,
society should be defended by what sort of appropriate
sort
of
what
lengths.
What,
for
instance,
1
is Australia
what
are
A
and
deeper,
to
asking
methods
the
what
and
Australi ans,
concerned to defend, aiming to defend?
defending,
How much of what others have,
Abroad?
region?
defending,
Does
preserving?
defending?
Would
Indonesians
made
anyone
a
Randwick
stage
a
or what we have,
Eagle
or
racecourse,
last stand
for
is
worth
Farm,
merit
Estate?
Oaks
strike in Australia .just
lightning
In the
Here in Australia?
to
If
remove
the
B.jelke-
Petersen, should we resist?
of the necessary prerequisites have been adequately thought about in
Few
Australia,
unplanned
where
muddling
through
immediate problem - reactive contingency
1
generous
- is the main style of political
""planning"",
life,
immediate
if
you
help
to
supply it with one or more,
to
problem
want
and ipso facto
of
be
to
defence
Its phi1osophers
Australia does not yet have a defence philosophy.
planning.
could
from
and to inject
some
depth
into
broader defence theorizing.
1.
Australian
defence
inappropriate
""policy"";
incoherent,
obsolescent
American,
Indeed Australia seems to lack even a clear and coherent defence
This
pol icy.
charge (made even by friends of Defence
commonplace
interested
in
2
obtaining extra public funding for defence and elements of C3I).
The reasons
is
concern
not
merely
the
major unsolved issues
of
exactly
what
is
being
defended, what things and objects and what interests, and whose, what freedoms
and
values;
and
what
role American defence facilities
in
Australia
supposed to have in this - but a range of more detailed lacunae such as:
of
clearly-defined
on what needs defending and how it is
priorities
accomplished;
doubtful
contingencies
in
are
lack
to
be
capacity of present defence forces to handle low-level
and to the north of Australia and in
maritime
zones;
and
1.
The point, which is not uncontroversial, is argued in effect in Gilbert.
2.
Amazingly,
in
the Strategic Basis Papers, Australia criticizes New
Zealand because 'it has still developed no policy for national
defence
and
tends to
look
to ...
the US as its primary source of defence
guidance''
(p.29) .
Note
that C3I abbreviates the mouthful ,
Command,
Control, Communications and Intelligence.
2
unsatisfactory (or no)
defence
civil
and
administration,
arrangements and planning for
use
of
protection
civil
infrastructure,
key facilities and
of
""defence-in-depth"",
wartime
mobilisation,
areas,
and
for
post-nuclear
organization.
is
equally damaqinq, if its policy makers do have a coherent policy it
3
nowhere satisfactorily revealed to the peoples of Australia.
It is
left
to
.journalists
And,
what
out
installations may be for and to make various conjectures as
defence
the
newspaper-watching academics to winkle
and
policy
may
Australian policy makers
As to coherence,
be.
local
to
what
have
only
recently found out that Australia has a (purely) regional defence role,
one.
global
they
were told by the Americans in
Hashington
to clarify commitments under treaty arrangements with the
designed
begins
thus
This
to look as if Australia's defence policy is as
much
not a
talks
in
It
USA.
determined
abroad, by US policy makers, as it is locally in Australia.
Much
circumstantial
evidence can be assembled to confirm the claim
Australia defence policy can now be stamped Made in USA,
the last Nor Id Har (and British abandonment),
one
thing,
as it
that
before
used,
to be stamped Made in UK.
Australia has had a bipartisan defence policy,
For
so it is claimed.
That ""policy"" has however been essentially shaped by the Liberal party,
has
governed most of the time (as senior partner in a
for ANZUS)
Hashington
the
Liberal
and still does.
US
and
in
of
US
The Strategic Basis
give virtually unqualified support
Military practices and to the American view of
situation,
the
the latest package from
packaged under a local cover.
endorsed by the Labor Government,
Papers,
planned
Party ""Defence and Foreign Policy Unit"" consists largely
Defence Department material
to
For instance,
But
coalition).
Party simply took over US arrangements for Australia (as
Liberal
which
commit Australia to supporting,
the
global
strategic
without any due reservation,
3. An Australian policy should moreover fit with the genuine needs and
shared aspirations of the people - to the extent, presumably, that these
are
commendable.
3
4
American positions in world forums.
be reached by more devious arguments.
out it had a regional defence role?
could
longer
no
The same dependent policy conclusion can
When,
for example, did Australia find
afford to police the world on their own and would
delegate some of that role
have
to
and offload some of the heavy associated costs, on
towards
and also after Labor took some faltering steps
reliable dogs-bodies;
they
After the Americans had found that
a broader foreign policy with some indigenous elements (Hayden was
developing
promptly flattened by Schultz).
Australian
but Iags it.
respects,
and
foreign policy simply copies American
older American defence policy,
American
war policy.
American
administration
main
in
The Australian defence policy presented by the Labor
to the extent that it is visible,
government,
with
defence
is conservative;
and diverges from the new
it coincides
(.post-Reagan)
the
For Australian Labor defence policy supports what
used to support, namely
DI.
nuclear
Multilateral
disarmament (within the framework of a series of treaties and agreements), and
D2.
Deterrence in the interim, deterrence through mutual
The
presence
.justified
assured destruction.
of American military facilities in Australia is supposed to
in the framework of these assumptions.
For they are to assist
be
in
making deterrence under D2 effective and to provide verification for the
arms
There is
much
reduction arrangements under DI (both stabilizing functions).
evidence
indicating
however that American policy makers have
both DI and D2 and any serious attempts at nuclear arms
they
4.
have
now
5
control .
moved on to the following highly destabilizing
abandoned
Certainly
doctrines;
namely
For theJe amq^ing evidence that Australia falls into the inexact class of
cl ient states the following Australian contribution is noteworthy:
'The
US prefers to act as a member of a group, and a contribution by Australia
can also assist in demonstrating to Congressional and public opinion that
the objectives sought are significant enough to attract allied support'
(SB, p.28)
5.
As to DI and arms control,
see, e.g. Mack PR. As to D2, 'USA has now an
announced
first-strike
nuclear
targeting
policy'
technologically
reinforced (Hayes, p.4).
The goal
of the Reagan administration
is
superiority (a conveniently ambiguous term).
4
war-fighting;
Nuclear
war
American
government,
al 1
Labor
1985
may
policy
nuclear wars;
Limited
of these
government.
well be accepted by
military doctrines,
and
Star
the
next
this
While
wars.
coalition
Liberal
are explicitly rejected by the
Since the American ""Joint"" facilities in
Australia
also facilitate the rejected objectives, the problems concerning these dubious
facilities are much aggravated.
information
withholding
their
particularly
Government
concerning the full range of
war-fighting
certainly unsatisfactory,
the
The Government's approach concerning them
appears
their
functions,
roles from Parliament and the
as several of its members realise;
in not atypical
disarray,
further
public
and
- is
and as a result
grist
for
the
incoherence theme.
is a coherent Australian defence policy somewhere
6
public exposure, it is almost certainly an ol d American policy.
If
there
away
from
But in that
case it certainly lacks - what it in any case appears to lack - justification.
7
For American interests by no means coincide with Australian .
Consider,
for
such
instance,
matters as enriching Americans,
American business,
for
undercutting
to
Nicaragua,
differently
Allende's
government in Chile to
again,
its
escalation of the nuclear arms
and all
Europe
Southern
as
Consider,
practices
methods.
race.
against
Consider,
consider
Or
the game- and decisi on-theoretic models
concern just USA and its adversary USSR,
which
its
its extensive export of arms and violent
strategic planning,
American
American.
promoting Americans and things
American practices in Latin America (or elsewhere in the world),
differently,
from
making conditions favourable
part of the monolithic West,
perhaps
occasionally
adding
but rarely or never considering
Hemisphere - so that either Australia is part of America
as
the
Poland
It had better be away from too much public exposure because Australians,
no more* th-atffrNew Zealanders, mostly do not like being pushed around, even
by Americans.
7.
Nor, though this is a longer story , does Australian culture by any means
coincide with American:
see CPD.
Thus a uniform treatment is entirely
inappropriate.
Similarly,
a single overarching treatment for a mono
lithic West is thoroughly inadequate.
5
8
may be of Russia or it is nothing.
Or consider American interests not merely
in Soviet and communist containment, but. in containing socialism such as might
(under more auspicious conditions) flourish in Australia.
to
answering
inappropriate
American interests is accordingly inappropriate for
Australia,
for
their
defence
thinking
applies
also
and
to
work out a policy appropriate
Australian
do
Australians should
Antipodean socialism.
for
Australia.
representatives,
political
who
implausible American views and begin on developing
parroting
and original ones.)
local
An American policy
America,
like Russia,
own
(That
should
stop
genuinely
some
is busy meddling in Africa,
(SB, p.24) .
but 'Australian security interests are not directly involved'’
Should we be tagging along after the Americans in support of installation
of
the
their free-enterprise (rip-off) capitalism everywhere feasible (i.e.
socialists
state
seriously
course
- or
of
Much
opposition
governments,
in
has,
freedom umbrella,
active
already
this
sort
What
'keeping the free
world
of
context,
multiple
what mainstream American culture
to and undermining of social and
socialist
quite
free7?
Of
meanings
and
admits
mainstream Australian culture would exclude:
bullying
they
control)?
heavily
is it laughingly - call
freedom
associations.
don't
that
under
the
for instance,
programs
and
of smal1 countries that impose barriers to US business
part of ""free enterprise""), etc.
freedom Misinformation,
agree about,
to live and work where one chooses,
on. These are certainly important freedoms, better upheld in
some parts of the unaligned West (e.g. Sweden, Switzerland)
of
the
Eastern Block.
But many of the older freedoms
century,
such as freedom to travel,
requires
permits,
8.
licences,
than in most parts
have
to work and live abroad,
passports,
...
vanished
etc.;
And many more of these
this
now one
former
Australian planning should be looking at strategic models (game-theoretic
and other) which include Australia.
For,
as argued below,
adandoning
the uniformity assumption of the monolithic West,
of the West as one
parish, makes very significant differences to the results yielded.
6
are being or have been eroded;
•freedoms
restricted
zones,
nuclearism
in
soon it will be identity documents-,
as already in parts of the ""free
ID cards,
Now
West"".
to
protect,
[the Greens] point to the new laws proposed in 1983 designed to keep
citizens
Europe 'is devouring the very freedom it is said
assembling to protest deployment of the Pershing II and cruise missiles'
from
of
security
'secrecy,
the
lack
state,
of
Further structural changes required for
pp.58-9).
(Capra and Spretnak,
incompatible
with
permanent
commentability,
freedoms,
democratic
emergency,
the
include
of
concentration
authority, peacetime militarism, extensive apparatus of state intelligence and
Nuclearism is not a smart strategy to preserve
police'’ (Falk, in Feith p.24) .
remaining freedoms.
Inherited
2.
other-reliance,
and
the
populist
and
elitist___ cases—for
patronaqe.
Australia's
defence
rather than regularly
policy,
such as it is,
(re)thought through.
the legal method of precedence,
may wel1,
furthermore
But that procedure - essentially
and here does,
applied to defence.
exclude significant
The unsatisfactory decision-making practices that will
For
al ternatives.
be revealed in the
of defence are by no means restricted to defence but are typical of
case
kind of advanced age (or aged)
1abours
those
both
inheri.ted
whatever its very limited satisfactoriness in
legalistic decision making - is defective when
precedence
is
under.
Cock
capi tali sm Australia operates under,
has summed up these practices neatly in
features of aged capitalism (what he calls
the
or rather
setting
the Corporate State)
New Left and the Alternative Australia movements were
the
down
which
reacting
revoI ting against:
Decisions were made from the top and on the basis of vested political
interests,
rather than by rational goals and means that served public
interests.
The people were rarely consulted effectively before a
decision and often only partially informed afterwards.
Pl an ni ng..was.
based on a mere extension of the present.
...
activists felt
they
were given little opportunity to choose how they lived or worked. The
availability of space,
time,
trees and air was also determined by
others . ..(2/(p.l8 italics added).
7
or
As also is one's defence,
military and civil, the matter of whether one lives
in a nuclear target or not, etc.
A major inherited assumption is that of other reliance,
defence depends on other more powerful allies.
Australia
That ally was firstly Britain,
but in any event the assumption is that to be
and since World War II America;
safe
that Australia's
needs a powerful patron,
a protector.
A corollary is
that
Australia adopts a suitably submissive relation to its patron, making expected
And for the most part it has;
10
policy does not come cheap.
concessions.
The
however such a defence insurance
other-reliance assumption is unsound,
important,
it
for
several
reasons.
characteristically depends upon the following themes,
Most
all
which lack solid foundation:
1.
Austral i ar/ is threatened - or at least
1A. Australia/ is likely to be threatened in the near future.
2.
Australia cannot defend itself.
3.
It can however rely upon its patron (or ally?, i.e. upon the USA.
three themes in fact make up what has been cal led the populist case for
11
the ANZUS alliance.
It is very different from the elitist case for ANZUS,
These
said to hold sway with the Australian government,
which, while insisting upon
premiss 3, essentially rejects 1 and 2 and claims instead
4.
Australia has a vital
interest in global stability.
9, (From previous page)
Cock goes on:
'These basic
issues
increasingly
become lost in the array of consumer choices'.
[Add Covernment__ react_ive
poi n t].
10.
It costs not only money,
but independence.'... the serf societies - more
or less willingly - accept the status of ""allies"",
i.e. protection with
rights and duties as in feudal societies.
They become client countries'
(Galtung, p.169).
11.
So-called by Mack PC.
But
the formulation presented follows G.
Davidson's more satisfactory account in Canberra Times, Wednesday, May 8,
1985,
p.2.
Mack considers that what amounts to the elitist case is the
'altogether more sophisticated argument
[which]
holds sway
...
in
government' (p.l).
8
Global
5.
stability is under threat (constantly)
by an expansionist
Soviet
Un ion.
6.
Only USA can contain the Soviet threat and hold the global balance.
But the USA technique for holding global balance is in part through a
network
of alliances like ANZUS.
further
Obviously
premisses are required to reach the
that
conclusion
Australia should be participating in an alliance, and what is more, hosting US
defence
facilities
and so forth.
A first such premise is
no-shirking
the
theme that Australia should be contributing its part to ""holding the balance"".
Even this first further step is pretty shaky;
in
a
rather ramshackle case,
(and
since premisses 5 and 6 are decidedly
4 may involve some equivocation).
Australia’s
vital
interests
as we shall see, one shaky step
are not
dubious
For it can be plausibly argued
guaranteed
by
US
techniques,
that
which
threaten to upset the whole applecart, and can be obtained by alternative more
satisfactory means outside of such soft alliances as ANZUS.
contends,
Mack
it
In any case,
is unclear that our contribution enhances global
as
nuclear
stability (see Davidson).
There
is a more pernicious regionalist version of the elitist
which might be called the offshore el i t i st. position.
Australia can defend itself against regional
2R)t.
position,
This position grants
threats, and can look after
i tself regional Iy.
But
it does not (as indeed other qualified elitist positions may
1A.
Nhat the offshore position insists is
1AH.
Since
these
interests
companies abroad,
internal
Australian
Australians
or
or whatever - may have little or nothing to
do
-perhaps
security,
concerned
with
this premiss
trade,
represents
an
extremely
important shift (a shift not unrelated to the inverse bureaucratic shift
war
In
grant
Australia's interests could be threatened in the near future.
Australian
with
not)
to defence).
extended
form
from
It goes further than what has been called forward defence.
the offshore position does call
9
for some
sort
of
global
or police force ready to intervene whenever a ""free port""
policeman
looks like closing its doors,.
the
elitist
position
is
anywhere
Part of the difficulty in getting to grips with
that it tends to slide
to
through
the
offshore
position (by way of now evident immediate positions).
against both the populist and elitist cases,
arguments
The
against
virtually
justify
but a fairly brief outline of some of the main points
course
a
just
couple
of themes 1 through 7 are
but there have been
through
some
indeed
familiar
sufficiently
of defections from themes 1
both cases,
defeat
logically
al 1
and
Of
involved.
would
7
to
serve
repair
interesting
attempts, designed to float the arguments on diminished premisses.
3.
The brief against the popular populist case.
While Australia is not at present under notice of
Contra
1 and 1A.
veiled
threat or harassment from abroad,
appears
to
believe that it is.
or parliamentary view,
view
as
persists,
kept
deliberately
parties
are
populist
well
case
alliance (e.g.
the public.
in
way
in
the dark (or even
purposes.
enough
false,
are
aware that the
misinformed),
main
main
this
because
assumptions
the
to
interest
In particular they have gone out of their
cast doubt upon the connected assumption that US is
to
the
American
are much more difficult to sell
a
reliable
threats.
Thus long-standing Australian psychological
allowed
suits
underlying
Accordingly the parties and Government have no political
to
been
political
Australian
the reasons for which they support
those of the elitist case)
guarantor against all
been
informed,
the
The populace has
it has.
Although both
undermining the populist case.
not
not
it is worth inquiring why the popular
the opinion polls reveal
government
bipartisan
a (bare) majority of its population
As the popular view is
administrative,
threat,
stand,,
and
has
informational and educational effort.
10
not
been
insecurity about security has
assuaged
In particular,
by
any
requisite
older attitudes to Asia
X
persist not far below the surface of popular Australia:
fear,
and
mistrust
xenophobia, patched over by a pragmatic attachment to trade and tourism.
This
misplaced insecurity is fuelled by popular misconceptions of Australia and its
place in the world: metaphorically, that Australia is a luscious plum ripe for
instead of the Asian view that Australia, so far as they are
Eastern picking,
as a remote desiccated place perhaps good for some trade.
aware of it at all,
to get towards more concrete assumptions,
Or,
Australians apparently tend to
view their country as affluent but underpopulated,
resource rich but
largely
Yet not far to the north are Asian hordes who are impoverished,
defenceless.
12
resource poor, etc.
The view is seriously out of touch with reality.
Parts of Asia are
at least as affluent (on conventional economic indicators.)
do
not see themselves as overpopulated,
as Australia.
now
They
in a way that calls for mass exodus;
and in those areas which are as overpopulated as Europe,
such as Java, bribes
and force are required to move people on transmigration programs to relatively
unoccupied parts of the Indonesian empire.
can
So far as they require them, they
purchase Australian resources - which are not unique - much more
(even
carrying significant local
cheaply
subsidies) and easily than they could obtain
13
them by seizure.
For these sorts of reasons, and because Australia itself poses no threat,
no
other state has an interest in attempting to invade Australia.
for interests,
to
launch
so it is for capabilities.
a successful
invasion of Australia,
capacity in the near future.
TF.
No regional
As it
is
power has the capacity
or is likely to have
such
a
As the joint Parliamentary Committee concluded,
The
""Asian hordes"" fd\dn one of the less spoken about successors
to
Yellow Peril,
of immediate past days of the Asian communist threat
the
and
the Domino theory.
13.
As Stephenson argued,
less fortunately, 20 years ago.
Even when around
World War
II
Japan,
did have interest in access
to strategic raw
materials,
the Japanese High Command decided against invading Australia
because of
the difficulty of dealing with the people - a point of much
impor tance.
11
Currently
only the United States would have the physical
launch a -full scale invasion of Australia,
motive to do so (TAS, p.94) .
to
capacity
and it clearly lacks
any
As the report also stated, quoting Synnot (former Chief of Defence Staff),
...
to raise the sort of force which would be required for a mass
invasion of Australia could not possibly be done in under five years
by other than the superpowers (TAS) .
But
neither superpower is at all
likely to expend effort or resources to such
an end.
obvious
An
which
at once arises is:
(A later serious question to entertain is:
defence?
on
question
security,
collectively provided global
forthwith
to unilateral disarmament?
now-standard
telling
bother
Why
with
why not be a free-rider
Why
such as it is?)
Mack for one,
then
not
proceed
having reassembled
the
for
the
case that Australia is not threatened 'now or
foreseeable future', and so having broken the populist argument, is confronted
by
the awkward option of unilateral disarmament for Australia.
proceeds
and
points to the dependence of premisses 1 and 1A on premiss
retreat,
hasty
to claim that 'the populist case for ANZUS is
without premisses 1 and 1A.
While
it
sustained'
assumptions
which
is
approximating
appears
capabilities
it
decisive
of potential
2,
even
may sometimes take
it is true that the arguments against 1 and 1A
resistance,
a
It is however a decidedly problematic retreat.
for granted that Australia can look after itself to some
some
He stages
far
from clear that
premiss 2.
given
the
invaders.
they
Consider the
(estimated)
put
up
essentially
on
extent,
depend
no-interests
argument,
limited
invasion
very
The main consideration adduced
appears
to depend in no essential way, indeed in no obvious way at all, on Australia s
dynamic
fighting forces.
Australia mineral
resources,
for
instance,
obtained more readily and cheaply by market methods than
simply
be
ones.
What this seems to show is that a rather minimal
military
streamlined force, if
any, would presently meet Australia's military requirements.
12
can
It
is
as
not
if
Australia
The whole
nonmilitary defence is available on a continent well
popular training in defence methods,
character
that
apparatus
of
suited to its use, though
requisite
to
Australia would be a difficult place
govern, Australians a difficult lot to subjugate.
Australian
a
But even without
a population trained in its techniques.
lacking
without
defenceless'’
'entirely
1 ike a babe-in-arms.
mi 1itary force,
conventional
is
deterred
It was such features of the
the Japanese
a
on
previous
occasion
^If
the invasion is attempted,
the Australians,
in view of
their
national
character, would resist to the end.
Also,
because
the
geographical
conditions of Australia present numerous difficulties in
a military sense,
it is apparent that a military venture in
that
country would be a diff icul t one** (.TAS, p.62) .
The
still hold good,
points
parts
any such program of nonmilitary
to
putting
and could be strengthened.
defence:
making
it
abroad (ideally with dinkum Australian exaggeration)
it
several
There are
happen,
and
that it
has
happened.
the issue of alternative defence we are bound to
To
when
Australia is not threatened,
appropriate,
is a good occasion to reconsider
adapt defence arrangements.
now,
For
return.
and,
if
For example, it looks very much as
if enormous sums, which could be valuably directed elsewhere, are being spent,
But a much more effective and
to make many Australians feel secure.
largely
inexpensive way to such results would be through requisite mass education
therapy - with,
psychological
if it were well
done,
much more
and
satisfactory
results, a more secure and better informa^~popu1 ace.
Contra
2.
As
capabilities,
basically
enormous
isolation.
well
in
a
a result of post-War developments in weapons systems and
the military defence of Australia has become much easier.
matter
advantages
strategic
In
advance
of enhancing through robust
particular,
of
and
Australia enjoys by
reliable
virtue
of
systems
through modern
destroyed by precision guided munitions.
radar
warning
It is
the
geographical
any maritime invading force can now be
arrival,
C3I
detected
systems,
and
And any invaders that did manage to
gain a foothold on Australian soil would face severe logistic problems, and be
13
subject
deal
There is
to disproportionate response -from local defence.
Boys'’
of
and
weapon
Own War Games stuff concerning contemporary
great
a
which would serve to turn Australia into a pretty invulnerable
systems
C3I
armed
fortress, and into an extremely difficult territory even were the oceanic moat
crossed and the fortress entered (see especially D. Martin).
such
Under
invasion
even
armed neutrality and fortified Australia defence
from outside the region by an inimical world
resisted with reasonable prospect of success.
to
such an invasion;
mount
There is no power at all
Nonetheless the threat
their
elected
representatives.
But
the
Soviet
undertaken such a long-range massive force projection,
so,
be
likely
one
ooviet
a
of
is taken seriously not only by the larger populace but by committees
invasion
of
could
there is apparently (according to TAS) only
the Australian population!).
of
power
our good ally the USA (reckoned however a likely invader by
power that could,
6-77.
scenarios,
has
military
never
is ill-equipped to
do
lacks any plausible reason to try such a stunt (for details see e.g.
and
The only credible Soviet threat to Australia is in the context of
D. Martin).
a superpower war, when American facilities in Australia and perhaps Australian
would be struck at by intercontinental missiles.
cities,
it is highly unlikely that it would be followed or accompanied by
bad enough,
an
Soviet forces are once again not sufficent,
invasion.
sufficient
elsewhere
While this would be
by the Soviets for that sort of diversion;
in a superpower war;
and
not
thought
they would be required
and they would be devastated,
unless UoA
is
militarily even more incompetent than sometimes depicted.
Contra
3.
cannot
be relied upon,
rash
What will be argued is not the negation of 3,
but that premiss 3 is dubious,
to place excess reliance on American protection.
that the Americans
and that it would
That
being
so,
be
and
other patrons being even less promising, Australia should look more to its own
resources, as the American administration is kindly advising.
Especially
since the American ""Vietnam debacle"" and the fall of
14
Saigon,
things
have changed in important ways which cast doubt on the reliability
of
American patronage.
The relative economic and military strength of the USA has declined.
a.
no longer has such a large share of world product(ivity)
a
of policy,
matter
(see Appendix 1);
US world warfighting aspirations have
Its ability to act as,
reduced.
It
as
explicitly
been
and afford to be, global policeman has also
significantly declined (see further Appendix 1) .
b.
The willingness of Americans to engage in foreign wars has correspondingly
tumbled.
hawks,
sure,
be
to
American administration includes
the
Although
more
people and Congress are no longer in
the
enough
than
for
a /mood
gratuitous foreign adventures, especially when the fun may not appear to be in
American
This ""Vietnam syndrome""
popular opposition to overseas military involvement.
has
major
a
as
served
strong
US opinion polls regularly show
Since Vietnam,
interests.
constraint
on
US
military
policy
foreign
and
involvement.
c.
One
Doctrine
manifestation
important
called
which
196'?,
of
the foregoing
of
elements
upon US regional allies
responsibility for their own defence in regional conflicts.
to
the
is
take
Guam
primary
Another important
are
outcome is Defense statements to the pointed effect that before US troops
committed
abroad
there
must be reasonable assurance
no US vital
each
and
'such
is impossible to guarantee - especially for remote countries
where
national
Certainly
that
Congressional
As Mack comments,
popular support (Weinberger,
assurance
of
no
interests are at stake''.
more is assured under the ANZUS treaty which only
signatory
constitutional
consultation;
reported in PC p.14).
'act to meet the common danger in accordance
processes'
(article 4).
All
reassurances?
15
its
is
Isn't the treaty backed
None that are not undermined by
in American administrative multiple-speak.
with
the treaty strictly requires
there is no undertaking or commitment.
up by informal verbal
provide
others,
the elite view is that Australia has to 'work ...
Even
'the threshold of direct US combat involvement could be quite
For
the
of US support'"" and that the Americans cannot be counted upon always.
prospect
to help Australia in other ways'"".
a
However
special
case
has
been made
American
for
military undertakings (in Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran)
common
friendship,
and shared values and democratic
interests,
second,
and,
culture
earlier
traditions.
as
first,
and slow constitutional
already indicated, the basis is shaky.
And here, a
common
pleading:
hardly sustains the adequacy of the basis
evidence
in
to
as to the adequacy of the basis for the possibility
the American people,
Congress,
cases.
reliability
- on the basis of permanent
There are two difficul ties with this type of special
His tori cal
(SB, pp. 29-30) .
case - as opposed to examples of American abandonment of
Australia's
and
cannot rely upon Ub support in a
...
defence emer qen c y ar i s i n g w i t h i n ou r own n e i gh bou r h ood'
the basis,
high,
at the time could significantly limit US willingness or ability
circumstances
a
to maximize
significantly on quite crucial
issues.
rather
America:
shared by Australia and
processes.
analogous
in
For there is not
values
diverge
interests always common,
Even
as missile testing and nuclear ships issues in the South Pacific have recently
confirmed.
Common
Indonesia
opposing
did not appear wheir? Australia was
interests
claim
to West Papua.
It is
dubious
at
considering
least
that
American interests would coincide with Australian in disputes or confrontation
with Asian nations to the North, e.g. Indonesia, Japan, etc.
special
case argument did hold water, Australia and America really were mates,
There was in fact no treaty in operation in
then the treaty would be otiose.
1942;
Of course if the
but
by
then
American
interests
in
countering
the
are at
present
Japanese
were
independently aroused.
14.
Although
neighbourhood
contingencies ...
impossible', as the pauper ap-i+e-’
16
assessed
a
4.
Other-reliance and regional self-reliance
A major problem with other-reliance for defence is then that it cannot be
entirely reliable,
deemed
be tolerated.
yet this is a place where unreliability can hardly
for
When the Indonesians are rolling into Brisbane it won't do
Defence to call up with a message like that from Services, ""We can't get there
tomorrow"",
till
""Or
until
after Congress meets"".
More
seriously,
handing
defence over to others means handing control of our lives over to others,
nuclear defence,
given
very
which Antipodean administrations have opted
means for many of us handing our lives
likely
In principle,
Another problem is its cost.
over,
and
for,
it
literally.
quite
if a btate hires out its defence
it would no doubt look, other things being equal, for the cheaper bidder - if,
that
defence
is,
meterological
market
is
complexion
is
a
services,
monopolistic,
15
,
who
commodity
a
sort,
like
The trouble with global
etc.
with
currently
only one
at a national
level,
All
shipping,
national
of
supplier
right
the
i •
making
and has
this part of the case,
the
that
defence is
accordingly can exact a very high price,
the whole country a nuclear target.
appreciated
of
enough
well,
for not trying to force defence,
which
is
plainly a collective good, into a marketable commodity.
When a country can provide its own defence,
it certainly makes very good
for it to do so, since it normally has a stronger interest in
sense
its
own
defence
than
matter,
then self-reliance not Just makes good sense but pays; other-reliance
does not.
most other parties.
Should it also be cheaper
in
costs
that
But in that event, it does not need nuclear patrons, or to farm out
some of its defence.
15.
The French, who operate a global network second only to the Americans and
more extensive than the Russians, with many forces in the Pacific region,
have never been seriously considered. Yet in certain significant respects
French social and cultural
arrangements are closer to Antipodean ones
than American arrangements are.
In these days of technological warfare,
the post-Waterloo loss record of the French should not be given too much
weight; we don't
after all look very hard at the American record of
defeats and incompetence.
17
r
self-reliance
Such
as ANZUS and much of the apparent point
such
alliances
undermines an important part of the older
such
of
alliances.
newer bipartisan approaches to defence try to combine them (thus e.g.
However
Beazley as reported by Davidson) - approaches which thus begin to empty
of
what
content it had.
little
understanding,
content,
a
but
are
merely
vague
ANZUS
clear
no
contain
of
articles
simple course is of course to allow them to be
emptied
an expensive and outdated insurance
that the alliance,
so
Since the arrangements
consultations
beyond
commitments
of
policy,
It may however be death by seizure or convulsion should
dies a natural death.
American
defence
facilities
American
nuclear
equipped or powered transport be excluded
passage
be c1osed or internationalised and
from
of
Australia.
treaty
would no doubt sacrifice the deterrence and other advantages the
That
for
case
16
supposedly
affords
,
while
making
way
for
the
greater
advantages
o+
neutralized nonalignment, of no longer being a nuclear target, etc.
self-reliance pure and simple is insufficient.
But
consist of separable isolated pieces,
dramatically,
picture
Australia
will
self-sufficient
not
as becomes increasingly evident.
Most
winter.
The
such as plants which are
not
not escape the effects of nuclear
is much the same as for other objects,
internally
The world does
but depend crucially on their
environment
- and
indeed as for States themselves. The question then is what form the additional
holistic component of policy should take?
that
appropriate
the
cricket
game
move is not taking sides (as in a kids'
that is already set up) and doing one's bit for
For that will not contribute to stability,
rather
to
Put this way, it is almost obvious
sectionalism and fragmentation,
war
game
or
confrontation.
to a proper holistic approach, but
and to
bringing
nuclear
winter
cIoser .
757
If Australia is not likely to be threatened there is no real
deterrence
advantage because nothinq to deter.
Other advantages of
the ANZUS
alliance such as access to high-level intelligence are not only dubious
(see PC, Martin) but not always guaranteed by
the alliance as the black
out of New Zealand shows.
18
Other-re 1iance and self-reliance typically present a false contract,
certainly
do with pure self-reliance - a false contrast like that of
partism
and
(EE,
or
p.223),
at a particular level
of
and
holism
versus
dependence
In between lie a range of positions, one of which - favoured by
isolationism.
a long line of peacefully-disposed philosophers from Rousseau and Kant onwards
- might be called integrated reliance or federated reliance.
reach only certain inadequate levels,
may
which
alignment,
the monolithic East (or West).
5.
Against elitist arguments
stability,
very
as
related arguments revolve around that
securi ty
and
side,
are
value-laden
terms,
of
are
which
But
security.
not
cultural
What stability comprehends in American administrative perception
invariants.
is
other
and
4 and 5 of the elitist argument turn around the crucial notion
Premisses
stabi1i ty
the level of modern alliances
are essentially coupled with opposition to an
e.g.
of
But integration
different from what highland villagers take it to
include.
In each case a system is stable if it returns to a given stationary state
But relevant states and
under perturbations of sufficiently small magnitude.
the stationary among them are both relative to given frames of reference, /e.g,
what
is stable at a macrolevel may well not be at a microlevel.
said
of the superpowers,
even
remote events can threaten their interests or their associates '
and
stability.
disturb
Trudeau
As
'they share a global perception according to
But lesser states or people,
not
counting
which
(p.10)
remote
IVA
business
or
military^ as
invariably
view
stability;
by
relevant,
report
bombs a* necessary to stability,
contrast philosophers
increasingly
terrorism and as characteristically antithetical
ad 4:
a vital
no
and the
see
nuclear
bombs
as
fix
a*
tools
of
to peace.
interest in global stability and secur i ty?
1?
Bureaucrats
instability.
Of course Australia
have,
does
what sizeable nation does not.
interpretation conceals crucial differences,
For
Australia.
in
highly material
to the argument.
stability may well mean something different in USA from
global
means
Certainly vitai
interests are different.
interested in containing socialism (in Australia as elsewhere),
in
rhetoric at least,
popular
more
to socialism (or Mon-Soviet communism)
global
upset
to
containing
equate
communism and both with Soviet containment.
containing
motherhood
But the determinable
stability
on
American
in Latin America,
it
America
is
and it tends,
wi th
socialism
A continental
swing
or i n Africa,
wou 1 d
indeed
wou I d
and
perception
what
significant effects on US business and investment; but it wou 1 d not on its own
or affect most Australians or directly threaten
upset
and it certainly need not affect nuclear stability.
Antipodean
stability,
Australians generally are
not opposed in principle to socialism or notably interested in containing
perhaps the opposite).
(indeed
spread
not
ought
to be interested in defence of the
the
in
system,
Australia is not interested
defence
(American)
it
in,
or
enterprise""
“free
wherever
of advanced capitalism
its
is
presently
initiated or imposed.
It can be conceded, without granting the main thrust of the premiss
Contra 5.
that
the Soviets are expansi onistic,
in
interested
empires,
extending their influence where they can.
including
American
academics and sales people).
spread,
Marxism-Leninism,
everywhere.
in at least a weak sense that they
The
and
are
So also
are
most
matter
are
many
Indonesian (so for that
But the Soviets have an ideological message
an
ideology
they
anticipate
Americans also have a capitalist message,
being
installed
free enterprise,
which they are working to sell pretty much everywhere accessible to them;
they
need to be expansi onistic to have it adopted,
Chinese
little
would
and
whereas the Russians
and
need simply wait for history to take its determined course (though
assistance
surely
- reflecting legitimate doubt about
spread progress wi thou t interfering).
message is pernicious:
this
a
determinism?
Bu t (^he\^jreb^ Russian
both are pernicious (for familiar reasons;
20
to
see
e.g.,
Erlichs).
some
in
threatens,
proper question is whether Soviet international activity
The
damaging
way,
stability.
global
Soviet-American
doubt
No
confrontation, as in the Cuba missile affair, does threaten stability; but not
in
way that has any bearing on Australian defence.
a
expansionary
none
Australia,
military
tendency,
or
has
otherwise,
fact
In
direct
a
of significance reaches into the Antipodes.
Russian
no
effect
on
bo what is all
the local excitement and anticipation about?
The effect of Soviet expansionism is much exaggerated and
from the Antipodes it is hardly a problem,
Viewed
qet
locked
addressed.
of
into
unless the Soviets
confrontation with USA - a real
military
internationalism,
be
hardly
the
heavies
But confrontation apart, Soviet
a great success story,
does not seriously
disturb
stability, as seen from Australia.
should
distinguished
be
military
access,
involvement
World
control
involving
anything
since
influence.
War II,
In actual
of
global
on
the
militarily,
that of Afghanistan,
have
accomplished,
especially in Europe.
but
success
in
western
strategic
lacks
Europe,
has
they
the force ratio
And
21
case
little
had
concerns
might.
not
attempt
lacking much plausibility.
needed to
be
assured
of
both by their own standards of what is required
standards.
by
But the idea of Soviet military adventure
Europe is a Western invention and bogey,
military
what
striking
conspicuous
The usual Western apprehension
stability.
and
expansion
the Russian record is hardly
new territory,
Soviets
military
The one
with
influence
military,
with the USA or several other states.
comparison
effect
mere
and
potential
-military,
expansion
types of
a proper assessment of Soviet internationalism,
For
Soviet
to
problem
a third nonaligned group which helps to referee and to prize
global
should
With that problem however, the Antipodes can better assist as part
apart, not by seconding and inciting the USA.
in
overexploited.
the
Soviets have
no
good
The
military
and
by
reasons
or
in undertaking such an exercise which would draw them into
interests
war.
They
client
nuclear
already -Face economic difficulties and trouble with East European
states which they cannot control satisfactorily.
The
of Soviet inf1uence has largely been in the Third
extension
But it has hardly been successful,
with as many failures and losses to record
as Soviet ""gains"" - gains which add to the imperial burden
countries wracked with problems,
world.
such as Uietnam.
since they involve
The Third World exercises
are marred by Soviet ineptitude and limited by the state of their own economy.
They scarcely displace the global
structure enough to test its stability;
and
they produce no shock waves or even ripples in the Antipodes.
6.
Contra
the
dancers
the
in
East-West dance
confrontation between the lead dancers.
have
destabilizing
new
weapons
arms
tension
control
an
from
escalating
the
With this US policies and
Recent US
practices
and indeed highly destabilising,
and weapons systems,
because of rejection of arms
race on earth and begin a new one in space.
A
vast
practices
more
are
because of
control
and because of star wars preparation which both
and
accelerate
increase
in
and suspicion accompanies the arms race which is in large measure due
to US intransigence and US war-fighting doctrines,
built-in
but
than Soviet ones,
Soviet proposals,
the
death,
of
as much to do as USSR ones.
least
at
of
The main current threat to world stability comes not from one
incentives
(see FAC).
alliance
or
for pre-emption,
new weapons systems,
and deliberate abandonment
of
with
arms
Such considerations duly assembled demolish the theme that
alignment
with
USA
helps
increase
stability.
American
practices are to be resisted as much as Soviet.
6.
The East-West balance argument; alignment versus neutrality.
The need for Australian alignment with the USA is supposed to be shown by
the
East-W^st
balance argument.
This balance argument,
which
17
premisses with the related elitist argument, runs as follows
;
7. Global
stability is the key to world peace.
shares
key
8.
of the international order is a matter of maintaining a
Stability
global
But
balance.
5. The global balance is constantly threatened by an expansionist USSR.
The threat is [only] checked by the USA, which (6A.1) guarantees an open
6A.
and pluralistic international
■?.
order.
indeed most vital
Australia's primary security concern,
is this
interest,
stability. Hence
Australia's
10.
role is to help America maintain the balance.
The rest of Australia's in tervolvement
to follow.
taken
then
before
practical
assumes much that has already been rebutted,
argument
threat
argument
But there are many reasons for halting the
reaches this stage of moral and
it
Soviet
with American military arrangements is
thesis is correct (i.e.
detail.
The
for instance that
the
stabilizing
5) and that US policy is
It also takes for granted,
balance
what now is at least
(part
of 6A).
doubt,
that American policy is directed at balance and deterrence, rather than
serious
in
what the administration appears to be aiming at, straight superiority.
event,
that
is not really engaged
Australia
balancing
in some longer term
so much as in helping USA win a nuclear war,
feat,
But in
contradicting the goal
of
world peace of premiss 7.
and its derivation.
Contra
10
follow
that
strength
is
indicate,
the
Ta
role is such a lackey's one.
leaning
America's direction,
in
as
be
If
most
the
Presumably
premiss
balance
of
seems
to
evidence
5A.1 is designed to exclude
putting its weight where it is effective,
this
not
does
team (that is what such images as the balanced tug-of-war
of Australia teaming up with totalitarians.
thouqht,
should
Australia's
it
then Australia should surely be throwing its slight weight in
Eastern
suggest).
The derivation is inadequate;
with
would
deplorable
Nevertheless Australia
given its
own
broader
(From previous page)
After some reconstruction,
that
is.
For
the
argument, curiously referred as that of ""central balance in newspaper
level publications of academics, is never presented in requisite detail
which is one reason why it has proved hard to criticise and refute.
interests
objectives,
could
Australia
fulfil
and
principles.
which would enable it to make
to world peace,
contribution
There are several
satisfactory
more
among them nonalignment and neutrality.
A more direct approach may
Thus 10 is hardly wel1-supported or evident.
be
a
better than throwing our Australian weight unrefIectively on one
the balance.
roles
different
of
side
the balance images and argument
As a little reflection attests,
points not in the direction intended, but towards nonalignment.
Contra
4A
(and
peace,
the
preserves
if of course false.
USSR in this munitions dance,
the
escalation
(the
USSR
relation).
balance,
hence
and
Again it takes two at
least
to
checks
the
the history of the dance reveals that
pace flowed from the interaction of the one partner
of
with
the
but for the USA, the USA would not be required to check the
That is,
other.
the
it can be granted that the USA is interlocked with and
While
tango.
The theme that US maintains
4).
interaction
is
two-way
as
with
Hegel's
master-slave
famous
Furthermore it looks as if, on a different historical
trajectory,
the main states of Western Europe could match the Soviet Union militarily (for
they have comparable combined GNP,
etc.)
Thus
it
is doubtful
see Appendix 1,
resources,
technological
that the current Soviet
build-up,
produced
in
interaction with the USA, could only be, or have been, checked by the US.
de
6A.1.
As the premiss is only of marginal relevance to the
argument,
need only be noted that the international order the USA helps maintain
very much to be desired.
In its intervention,
militarily,
it
leaves
economically and
indirectly, USA has assisted substantially in reducing plurality and openness,
as well as in establishing or propping up rotten regimes,
side of American imperialism is well enough documented,
etc.
The negative
if not widely
enough
read or known by Americans.
ad
8
and
maintaining
pass,
the
the
equivocation on the balance.
While balance is
one
stabi1i ty in the world arrangements that have presently
balance
structure can only carry so much loading.
24
way
of
come
to
Add too
much
weight (of arms,
and so forth)
tension,
The increasing probability of catastrophic
probably catastrophically.
fail,
to both sides and the structure will
breakdown, for a variety of reasons (accident, miscalculation, computer error,
human interference, etc.), has been argued elsewhere (e.g. WPI) .
While a certain neither overloaded nor overstressed balance may serve for
stability,
the present increasingly stressed balance will probably not.
however,
balance argument,
neglects this dynamical situation,
illegitimately
balance
switching from a (certain) balance in premiss 8 to the (on-going)
subsequent
premisses.
The
balance
argument
itself
The
breaks
in
down
through
of
removing
equivocati on.
What
dynamic picture also indicates is the importance
the
weight -from the balance,
some
reduction.
position
It
most obviously by arms limitation and
tension
to a
neutral
points to a different role for Australia,
too
within the nonaligned grouping.
It is to the emerging case
for
a
different role for Australia, and to action for achieving this different role,
that the positive argument will now gradually swing.
The
attacks
inadequate
upon
East-West
proposals
(its
to repair it.
alleged
good
administrators
This
For example,
Australia
than
with
American
trade
argue,
is a nonsequitur,
and
lots
to the argument, and do not
against nonalignment or neutralism is set
pervasiveness of nuclear winter.
for
for
The additions are inessential
confusion and dust.
the
for a different role
combined
The main effect of these additions is to generate extra
alliance and service.
serve
balance argument is typically
of
other
He might as well
things),
so
aligned
be
our
sagacious
because if the control balance fails we are all
worse than ex nihilo quodlibet (for it also
that balance is necessary for the stability).
dead.
suggests
But, in the main, the attack is
irrelevant because the point of nonalignment, is to help remove overload and to
break down confrontation and its escalation to war;
before winter descends,
it is a thing to do
to delay or halt its descent,
25
now,
and most important,
to
reduce its severity.
Australia's weight may be slight,
another irrelevant addition goes,
psychologically it is important for the West.
disease"" would show the weakening
f or
Sovi e t ex pan s i on ism.
virtual 1y
alignment,
Australi a
gives
the
Bell,
Any further spread of the ""Kiwi
of Western resolve, and give the green light
a leading exponent of the balance argument,
impression that if Australia dropped
through
the isles to
Russians would be on the road down
18
the
tomorrow.
Much of this sort of rhetoric i =■ reminiscent of
f
such military interests,
set
route,
major
American
of
out
the
The Russians have no
baseless fear-mongering of an earlier pre-Uietnam time,
and
but
out,
t ie
or present capabli
A
of
they would be met by substantial resistance along most
the
for one,
has
and
the
resistance obtaining Western assistance.
interests,
Philippines,
strengthening
And if they were to gear up
different
as well
the
from
Australia's,
as elsewhere in East Asia.
depends,
argument,
in
For America,
Indonesia
in both
The addition,
its ""green light
from
so far
for
expansion""
comparison, on the previously faulted premiss 5 of Soviet expansionism.
or another
In fact most of the case against alignment of one sort
it is argued. for often nonalignment and neutrality are,
au th or i tar i an
assumptions.
style,
Cat 1ey,
simply
for
denounced
example,
- turns
- when
in good old-fashioned
upon
al ready
another exponent of ""central
fau1 ted
balance"",
presents the following 'consideration'':
... whatever the Swedes or Swiss may think about the matter, Australia
is
locked by considerations of culture,
economics,
and political
philosophy into the defence of the Western world.
It has both an obligation and a duty to contribute its share to that
cannot
easily be
defence
if necessary by hosting facilities which
located elsewhere (p.15).
The premiss is false for reasons essentially indicated:
Nay
sustains the conclusion,
prescriptive
18.
and the premiss in no
the argument involving among other things,
(is-ought) fallacy.
Consider the premiss.
Australia is
See the discussion of Bell's claims in D. Martin and in Mack PC.
26
the
not,
k
unless Catley has information withheld from most of the rest of us,locked into
Western nuclear defence,
its
but in principle free to reconsider and rethink
use of the ""facilities"" is not irrevocable,
and shortly
options.
(American
comes up .
>,
economics
and political philosophy provide locks and chains for Australia but
f©.r reconsideration.)
in principle at least,
not for nonaligned Western European states?
part
USA or altogether a client
of
frameworks
economic
and
They do not:
state;
and
philosophies
political
significantly different (for details,
defence
(as,
practices
e.g.,
ANZUS in al 1
of
culture,
Australia is not a
cultures,
the
interests,
are
nations
two
But even if the ideological
see CPD) .
frameworks were much more similar than they are,
the
How do
that would not entail
its weakness
similar
nor
shows),
any
defence obligations.
of
Most
worse.
the arguments against nonalignment are of Catley
Fortunately,
calibre
- or
the case against nonalignment is (as with several
then,
o-f the above points) developed in detail elsewhere, especially by 0. Martin in
his
examination
of counter-arguments to
Australian
armed
neutrality,
legally recognised nonbelligerent form of nonalignment he favours.
al 1
of Martin's argument is couched in negative form;
very brief.
make
this
his positive brief
us secure against such dangers as we may one day have to meet,
needlessless
is
exposes to other dangers,
correct enough,
Virtual 1y
alignment or alliance with the USA
It reduces to thi
including nuclear war'
and in need of wide propagation,
exhausts
the positive case for nonalignment.
posi t ive
case of much theoretical
interest,
the
it
cannot
while
means
no
In particular there is a
to be drawn from the
it
Wh i 1 e
(p.l).
by
is
more
burgeon i ng
theory of collective goods and action.
7.
Free riding, group size, and increasing variety.
The
with
strategic
more
convenience)
world situation we now confront can be viewed as
than 100 players,
major
a
game
counting in nation-states and leaving out
(for
organisations
such
as
the
largest
100
transnational
These
compan i es.
organisational players align themselves around
two
arge
poles. East and West, as indicated:
EAST
NON-ALIGNED
N
WEST
N
India
N
Sweden#
Swi tzer 1 and#
Tanzani a
Most Latin
.
American States!
##
Costa Rica
State
commmun i st
State
capitali st
N: Nuclear weapons states
#:
Neutral states
##: Nonmi 1i tary states
Key:
There are various - a great many - games these state players are playing,
Some of these
of which are practically important for peace and for stability.
such
games,
as
representation),
World
are
Empire
and
Chicken
(already
There
are several problems about East-Nest games:
have,
the
Russian
what
under
played
played essentially between the East-Nest
representation
negative sum characters of some games.
may,
as they will with the Big One),
end after one round,
And the monolithic East -
way
simplifications may).
So game theoretical
representation
they
like
the
monolithic
Nest dichotomy is misleading, and, as will appear, discards crucial detail
the
one
superplayers.
repeatability of the games (clearly some nuclear games
roulette,
=ome
will
(in
be
approached differently and more obliquely.
Nor 1d
security,
(technically,
in
like regional and local
joint
security,
is a collective good
supply and precluding exclusion).
28
That is not
of
to
course
say that there are not conditions under which security
for instance where security is guaranteed by a narrow and
much to be desired,
intolerant despotism;
provisioning,
it can be argued,
but then,
not the particular product.
collection of N nation-states.
It is,
the trouble lies with the
It is a collective good G for the
furthermore,
a collective good
permits the possibility of free-riding by nation-states.
perspective
the American complaint about its allies,
insufficient expenditure on defence,
their
leave
may
which
Looked at from this
and
Japan for example,
is a complaint about their
free
riding.
Within the balance of power framework the conditions for free-riding
extracted by Pettit) are satisfied,
disarming states.
For
to
the achievement (or maintenance) of G by any will make every member
and
any,
unilaterally
is available to all N members of the collective if it is available
G
1.
for instance by neutral and
(as
better off.
2.
G
is
achieved iff some number m^K contribute towards
its
provision,
where under the balance of power assumption
IICTK^N and II = (USA, USSR}.
The
3.
expected value of contributing to G or its maintenance is less
than
the expected value of not doing so, i.e. likely costs exceed likely benefits
except for perhaps members of II given that G is provided by II.
is
There
pegged
by
what
free-rider
problem,
members of II for whom the free-rider option is not open
- within
ran be called a pegged (or
asymmetric)
the confines of the balance of power assumption - and for whom condition 3
only satisfied under certain ways of looking at the matter (e.g.
a
war
10
years down the road so the expected costs
each—year
is
there will be
exceed
the
expected benefits).
There
regional)
is
a
straightforward
case
for
recommending
free riding on the balance of power provision of 6.
2?
Australian
(and
Some arguments,
beyond or adding to those already in effect presented, are these:-
Either
If it does then the region is better off than it would be if
or it does not.
(strongly)
the
as
and there is a large-scale war
stability breaks down catastrophically
aligned because it is unlikely to be (so heavily)
targetted.
(Here
dreadful new argument that nuclear winter means that the Antipodes
might
well
be involved gets challenged and rejected:
see
MF).
doesn't break down then the region has the benefits in any case,
enhances global
USA
stability,
indeed, as remarked and wi11
etc.;
regional
weight
significant?
of
delusional
the
in
That
power?
framework.
Ne shouldn't:
we
believe
seriously
it
and if we do we're
is
the
in
living
in
a
Australia has been left out of the picture in virtually
strategic planning exercises,
all
do
Australian voice makes much real difference
the
Northern
Western block,
be
As regards Australasian
further argued, the evidence points to the contrary.
halls
the
without
For there is no clear evidence that our alignment and cooperation with
costs.
the
stability
If
most difference-making peace
initiative^,
etc., etc.
Now
riding,
Eastern
rather
countries would hardly
block
th an
suppor t
of f ering
object
(h owever
to
free
Antipodean
c omf or t
trifling),
an d
Furthermore free riding is how the Americans,
incitement to their opposition.
the rational
would expect Australia to act,
on their theoretical principles
self interested procedure (see CPD). It is economically rational; contributing
is not.
But won't the Americans make things economically dear for Australia?
In threats and theory,
do
yes; but in practice, no more than they threatened
already in the case of New Zealand with the nuclear-ships issue.
short
term
arrangements:
aberrations,
America
will
never
give
up
trade
But
or
to
for
market
one gets the impression that America would trade with the Devil
Himself if it could open some new markets in Hell.
Despite its political stigma,
way
immoral or irregular.
voluntary payment system,
free riding need be no problem,
Perhaps the buses are free;
perhaps there
to which only some need contribute,
30
or in any
etc.
i =>
a
Hi th the
contributing is not (see
nuclear fix, free riding is indeed the moral course;
HPI).
Free riding, though often portrayed as a problem, is only a problem in
certain
and
desirable
sufficiently
riders.
collective
of
cases
is
This
in
Australia
stays
the
the escalating treadmill or gets
is,
off
is
involved
many
too
free
which
will
whether
or
security,
and precarious way that it
curious
on
good
will not be provided because of
the situation with global
not
the
provided,
where
provisioning,
rides
and
be
not
free.
Australia's free riding may be a problem for America; it is not for Australia.
Interests diverge again.
of
stability
by
building,
tripod
or
bipedal
one,
for example,
if it is a wind tower or
of
supports
increases stability.
instance in the theory of ""spreading the risks""
certain
a
cybernetics.
free
The
increases
and
by
similar
Then
a
than
a
has
in
diversity
ecology,
for
The related theme,
(see EH).
stability,
that
theme
The
elaborated
been
in
core eco-systemic idea to be developed is that Australia's
and consequent nonalignment in defence
riding
variety,
variety
topple
point
the
Increasing the diversity,
with stability has been sharpened and confirmed
correlates
that
ground.
a quadrapod tower is much less likely to
and requires less guying to stay up.
variety,
certain
increasing its rigid ties or supports to the
better
terms,
pictorial
structure is typically increased up to a
it more adequately;
securing
or
a
In
riding increases stability.
free
Judicious
enhances
diversity
accordingly increases stability (especially if done in
and
concert
with other client states).
Two
hardly
interlocked
well
precarious
guyed,
structure
well dug
in
but
stability
of
the
Hhat makes engineering sense
is
not
supports in tension,
are
inadequate
of world peace.
East and Hest,
for the
long
term
however
strengthening the supports that are there,
balance
is disturbed by the Host's surging ahead and likely overburdening the
structure,
helping the East when the
but increasing the variety of supports, enlarging and diversifying
31
group size.
East-monolithic
monolithic
The
West
picture
misconceptualism perhaps convenient ■for some players.
in conceptualism,
main reason for mistakes concerns group size.
collective
but
is
significantly
differs
behaviour of large groups
theory
in
group size is a highly significant factor (though
group
■from that of smal I
One
Whereas 11+ = (West, East) is a
N of nation-states is not.
number
the
group,
a
It may ■force mistakes
convenient simplification, e.g. for strategic thinking.
smal1
than
more
much
is
i t s pr ec i se i mpor t is increasingly contested).
N of nation-states is a large
group
The
group,
of
interested parties, indeed of substantially economic actors.
the American theory of collective action applies:
that
interest,
counterintuitive way.
a
in
behave
self
essentially
So we may expect
wi 1 1
that the groups
Though expec ted to act
in
the
to obtain security in particular, the collection will not.
common
On this
account (that elaborated by Olson), the common interest can only be guaranteed
by outside influence or imposition (coercion in Olson's rapid thinking).
there is, as experience has shown, no outside
with the collective of nations,
mediator
collective
or
influence
good.
The
But
of sufficient authority to ensure attainment
prognosis
looks very
gloomy:
this
of
the
important
most
(though far from unique) collective good will not be provided.
Fortunately the reasoning,
has
been
containing
shift
economic
virtually
(subjectively)
back
actors
though large.
highly
is
to basics,
all
privileged,
for whom costs of war exceed benefits
in perspective from the earlier free riding condi t i on
important
that
The group,
too swift.
several
like much of the ""logic"" of collective action,
3).
effect of the knowledge of an ominous nuclear
actors involved should now be
expected
in
that
(note
in
the
Indeed
an
winter
is
posit i on;
costs of nuclear war have become very high.
for
go
Olson's grand theory is based on the accountants/-----tautology
(defining 'net')
32
gross agent benefits - gross agent costs.
net agent benefit
i.e.
A
for each agent or actor i
ymbols,
in
show
i
for virtually all
that
in N.
is positive for some i
is privi1eqed if A
group
(in collective N) ,
European
to
benefi t s
of global security are decidedly positive (e.g.
respective future GDPs would expectedly fal 1
needs
1
the
net
wi th a nuclear
war
nation-states
argument
their
It
to near zero).
The
fact
the group of nation-states is privileged does not however imply that the
that
good i nvo1ved,
c o1 Iec t i ve
longer term.
error,
stability
■ JI
instabi1i ty.
dynamics,
An
achieved
improved
particularly in
wi11 be supplied,
secur i ty,
dynami c ;
it takes no account of mistake.
through
superiority
modelling
or
intermediate
- which can take some account
iterated games — is gained by returning to
through
the
the
of
game theoretic
ground
A free rider ""problem"" is tantamount to a dilemma of some sort; according
to
conventional wisdom,
the
contrast
Taylor
and
Hard).
it is a prisoners'
(cf.
dilemma
The argument can go this
but
Pettit,
way;- a
free
rider
problem or issue is defined in terms of the provisioning of a collective good;
theory
the
but
of collective goods is equivalent to that
of
a
prisoners
20
dilemma.
dilemma;
in
detail
which
more
Certainly
the
global nuclear situation
as much is a commonplace claim.
appears
Elsewhere (HPI)
that it does indeed present a moral dilemma.
to
present
a
it has been argued
Here the argument
can proceed through the theoretical route just sketched above or in the
piecemeal way to be indicated - is that it is also a prudential
dilemma
21
(for members of N).
19.
The
less than perspicuous symbolism is that used in Hardin
(82,
p.20,
p.39),
but with agents'
costs or contributions,
C,
duly agent
relativized.
Hardin misleadingly treats C as a fixed parameter,
thus
strictly falsifying the tautology.
20.
Thus Hardin who (in 82) claims to 'demonstrate the equivalence of
the
logic of collective action and the Prisoners'
Dilemma'
(p.4).
The
demonstration, which will be contested elsewhere, is given on p.x.5ff.
21.
But of course the two types of dilemma interconnect.
the range of apparent two party games being played by the US
Hardin 83),
Union
Soviet
(labelled US and SU respectively)
administration
regards the moves of further nuclear armament.
(It is supposed,
A,
from
the
or nuclear disarmament, N.
It is important here,
as other
French
that
The American people seem rather
more
were clearly opposed to the new nuclear missiles their
people
the
towards nuclear disarmament than their administration;
inclined
to
proceeded
German
administration
The strategy games involved are then
install.
shots
It is administrations or governments
etc.
take people into war;
to
places,
administration - which for the most part calls the
the society and the people.
generally
as
that the game is set in some background context,
naturally,
Chinese nuclear armament).
distinguish
and
1985
in
nuclear disarmament is not considered in isolation from on-going
e.q.
and
(e.q.
since these have obtained some discussion
us consider -first,
Let
administration
which we can suppose to be played over successive time intervals, e.q.
games,
years; so there is interaction and feedback as the games go on - until
the Big
Ones explode.
The
apparent games of US and SU are those diagrammed next:
Pr i soners'
A
4,1
D
2,2
O
1,4
this
being
played.
According
professions!1ez
the
A
1,4
CP
presumably
also
represented US policy,
it
no
aggressive,
D
A
4,1
D
3,2
US
CP
1,4
to Hardin, 'giving evidence of
Dilemma
Prisoners'
ordering of virtually all
that
A
4,1
that
simplistic setting those represent the apparent games
Within
and
D
D
3,3
US
IJS
A
SU
SU
SU
D
New Initial Game
Revised Game
Dilemma Game
in
(PD)
'represents
[his]
deformation
the
preference
the articulate policy analysts in the United
the
Soviet Union'
(p.248) .
While
PD
there is considerable evidence (as already
longer does,
war-fighting,
34
That
is,
the
US has
States
may
have
indicated)
that the US administration has shifted to
phase.
are
a
interchanged
more
its
rankings of (D,D)
Soviets,
The
have
who
been
much
more consistent
no
(and
bound to try to keep up with the Americans,
their
changed
However they are
have stuck with deterrence and no-first-strike.
but
better
doubt
appear not to have
in their policy pronouncements,
censored)
game,
and (A,A), presumably some time between 1978 and 1984 games.
and so pushed towards the Revised
Game shown, which p1easan11y restores symmetry.
Stable or equilibrium outcomes for each game are circled.
said
be
to
stable
if neither player has
unilaterally on the strength of the game,
influencing
provide
in
broad sense,
a
and dangerous outcome.
strategy for each player;
dominant
that equilibirum
In all
All
strategies.
is
hence
its
economic fascination.
results
which
are
socially suboptimal
(and
games that might plausibly be taken to represent
situation,
and
A
recognisably
guaranteed by the independent ""stable"" strategies.
substantial
to
political
substantially
the
games
satisficing
the
suboptimal
superpower
outcome
socially
superior
is
there are
What is worse,
and military incentives for the superpower players
adjust their preferences in
after repeated games,
an
And the same applies to suggested
alternative
Chicken.
other
a
below
all
as
in
Pareto-
even
But as the
threshold),
such
achieved
yet in the PD game that is
these games are di 1emmas.
games
these
the apparent games arming is
and
suboptimal,
strategies
switch
i.e. to alter the outcome except by
player also to alter
other
dilemmas
undesirable
deliver
the
to
incentive
An outcome is
not
directions
but to do what the US appears to have done, to make the
situation worse.
socially preferable would be change to a coordination game of
Much
some
sort, for instance, to the game which neutrals tend to play (and which Lackey,
in contrast to other more bellicose utilitarians, sees utilitarian superpowers
playing;
hence Hardin's label
diagrammed,
WN
inclined neutral
represents
a
for this game,
'Lackey's Game').
Western-inclined
(e.g. Yugos1avi a):
neutral and
EN
In the game
an
Eastern
A
3,2
D
D
(D
A
2,3
NN
Now
4,4
dilemmatic and coordination games are not played in
the
integrated
since
[Other coordination games, with
(D,D) assigned (1,1) 1
in
settings
such as Uni ted Nations' committees
games
coordination
are
(and
games
peoples'
-frequently
but
isolation,
elsewhere,
as
well).
Superimposing the games, as applied to US and SU games, leads to the following
augmented games:
SU
SU
SU
A
D
A
2,2
4,1
1
2/3
3,3
•
1
4,1
.
2/3
1,4
•
2/3
2,2
D
J,3
■
4
1,4
■
A
2/3!
A
m represents a sequence of ms,
and 3s in some order.
As the agumented games reveal,
a stable deadlock.
on the superpowers.
4
i ■ e? ■
2/3
4
■
2/3 a sequence of 2s
m < m w rn
in fact in several ways.
on
For example,
would
For one, enough significant
much
greater
as a
Superpower
militarism
Australia's
nonaligned
free
impact,
rider
for disarmament and regional nuclear freedom (instead of by
wash polemics and token ambassadors,
US support) .
36
strategy
with less support, unilateral action by US
arms build-up can be exposed.
be
in
much more pressure can be brought to bear-
power excursions would stand naked, and unsupported.
seriously
<2,3
to play with a superpower is to help reinforce
For another,
towards disarmament.
particular,
1,4
A
a coordination game can alter the overall dominant
playing
administration
4,1
•
2/3
But playing an independent coordination game can help
breaking the deadlock,
players
3,2
■
D
1
US
US
US
A
D
D
D
New
Game, Augmented
Revi sed
Game, Augmented
Prisoners"" Dilemma
Augmented
and
in
pressing
white
undermined by a none-too-tacit policy of
8.
On the need for, possibility of, and prospect of basic structural change-
The
peace
(in
world has changed enormously since the time of Kant's proposals
and even since the time of Veblen's more cynical
(of 1795),
additions
Hard science and destructive power have grown enormously; and even
1917).
especially that admitting
knowledge of collective behaviour,
theoretical
game-theoretic treatment,
what
for
though still
has increased markedly.
slight,
be accomplished politically has in certain
can
little, since Rousseau complained (around 1761)
of
respects
But
changed
very
that governments were probably
too short-sighted to appreciate the merits of his project for perpetual peace.
Governments
have
obstacles to peace.
long
of
source
been seen as Xthe main (contingent)
if the peace is
Thus Veblen rightly maintains that ' ...
to be kept it will have to come about irrespective of governmental management,
- in spite of the State rather than by its good offices'- (p.7) .
against
the
State
on the basis that 'governmental
Veblen argues
and
establishments
powers ... are derived from feudal establishments of the Middle Ages; which in
turn,
However
a predatory origin and of an irresponsible
of
are
character
Christian-feudal origin of the State provides only one
the
(p.r).
- and
a
coercive - evolutionary pattern of organisation (pp. 12-13).
There are major blockages to peace proposals and projects at two main and
critical
levels
of
organisation,
that,
organisation of collectives of states and,
organisation
deep,
and
domination
of
removal
and
to
nothing
set
in part by devolution,
themselves.
these blockages,
and
exploitation of other forms,
sights rather lower,
short
organisation
of
states,
upon,
The problems involved
ones
intertangled
appears to call
genuine global
appear
adequate.
impossible in present political climates.
37
Yet even much
the
for
are
concerning
extensive
reached,
to
be
attained,
levels
of
political
stability
of extensive structural changes at both
would
of
that of the
Indeed if a permanent and satisfactory peace is to be
adjustments.
or
individual
focussed
already
smaller
changes
look
There is little doubt that certain sorts of structural change are
to
conducive
peace and that certain fundamental
permanent peace.
for
changes would be
With that in view they have long been
least from Rousseau and Kant onwards.
transform the structures that lead to war'- (B.
theme
immune
to
criticisms,
obvious
further desiderata,
modest material
freedoms,
~ at
advocated
for
'it is also necessary
instance
to
To render this
Martin, p.12).
that
straightforward
extension of certain established structures could bring an
authoritarian
to war,
sufficient
But it has also long been supposed that
such changes are necessary for lasting peace:
some
highly
end
typically presupposed, are invoked, e.g. certain
standards of life, etc., and the type of necessity
involved is set at some lower technical
level
(not excluded however by present
These adjustments make the necessity theme more difficult to
practicalities).
assess, but also difficult to sustain.
are
There
part,
critical
positive
part,
part
negative
According
marxist
demolishing
and
range of arguments
a
defence,
from
a
negative
determinism,
of
comprising
direct arguments for
the
theme.
22
this enterprise will simply be illustrated.
to deterministic and mechanistic approaches,
technological
determinism,
human
nuclear
weapons,
The
large
such as that
like
of
megamachines
They are an integral part of the business of
generally,
are
no aberration.
industrial
and
ecological conquest,
a further stage in
human
intervention
which has already involved substantial disruption through pesticides,
etc.
The argument tends to the fatalistic.
made,
and once made they wi11
22.
and
etc., that arrangements have to be more or less the way they are, and
nature,
a
parts to its assessment
two
be used.
wastes,
The megamachines of conquest are
No change in political
arrangement,
More of the negative enterprise is attempted elsewhere,
e.g.
a critique
of
the supposed strait-jacket of human nature is begun
in CPD.
From
Plato through Hegel and into contemporary times it has been supposed that
war,
like aggression,
is part of human nature,
that war is a permanent
condition of human and social existence.
38
would
which
enthusiasts
any
make
difference,
possible.
is
their position and luck,
push
While there is, unfortunately, a
induction from the manufacture of weapons,
batches
machines
are
to this one,
depl oyed) ,
never
(and
organisation
deterministic
position
would
possible either; political
not frustrate
the
and
other,
is false,
Different political arrangements,
been
have
inductions.
broader
The
are
changes
arrangements too, like the rest of social
not
life, are
But (nonanalytical) determinism,
technologically or economically determined.
technological
many
that a change in background
of course that such background
is
made
of
But even the good inductions do not
that weapons of various sorts must be used,
political
many
invention
from
induction's:-
machines that do eventually get
many
reinvented or independently discovered).
show
of any given type (for
or the like to their manufacture are unreliable and subject to
counterexamples
or
weapon
there is no stopping progress.
But in doing so they overextend themsleves.
fair
technological
that a
even further,
once invented by humans will be used:
device
Sometimes
so it is argued
which alleviate problems,
are
possible and would be different in differently evolved worlds.
CPD).
(JB,
elsewhere
technically
Things did not
and do not have to be the way they are or the social and political sort of way
they are.
Many routes,
dominant
require
none of deductive strength,
political
extensive
lead to the conclusion that the
structures of our time,
evolved from feudal
structural alteration.
In particular,
institutions,
they need
to
superseded by alternative structures which do not promote or lead to war.
theme has been argued directly from the nuclear fix (see e.g.
But
suppose,
improbable as it may seem,
thereby removing the current nuclear fix;
quietly
seif-destructing,or
nuclear
disarmament
HF I,
p.4/ft.).
that nuclear weapons all
vanished,
for instance,
thermodynamic
actually took place.
The
they turned out to be
miracle
occurred,
or
not
be
The problem of war would
t-hat of nuclear war would only be given a short respite.
23
Conventional
the structural arrangements for war would remain intact.
removed
For
a massive
be
and
even
3'?
remain,
weapons
would
weapons
such as chemical and biological ones,
were
they
prevent
the
in sot ar
3S
could seem
be
Nu clear weapon s,
if nuclear power plants remained
especially
nothing
and
intact;
development of (Star wars) weapons more
nuclear-
as
dangerous
caches are easily hidden away),
removed (""for smal 1
replaced,
would
along with weapons perhaps as
than
diabolical
nuclear ones.
War cannot be eliminated while leaving the rest of society as it is
by freezing the status quo.
... The structural conditions for war
need to be removed - not reinforced as appeals to elites may do - and
superseded by alternative structures which do not lead to war
(B.
Martin, p.12).
Structural adjustments
peace.
An
can provide conditions for
Kantian
initial
for the
argument
satisfactory
lasting
proposition
that
is
peace
possible, presented by Latta (introducing Permanent Peace), runs as follows:Peace, perpetual peace, is an ideal, not merely of a speculative kind but a
practical
ideal, a moral principle.
ought to be realised, i.e. there ought (morally)
Hence this ideal
to be peace.
But ought entails can; therefore peace is possible.
From
Heracleitus
philosophers
by
24
be
with war as one limit, is essential
swarm
more
widely
conceded,
ought
to
though
often
not
on
of
Some are even captivated
stop,
to motion and progress.
the recent shift in philosophical fashions the second premiss would
Kantian
grounds,
now
but
Such grounds do support the theme that peace ...is—desirable
be realised,
indicate what sort of peace.
but are more discriminating in
Unfortunately,
premiss does not sustain the conclusion,
23?
impressive
such extravagant counter-claims as that with peace everything would
consequentialist.
and
there buzzes an
Hegel
who have rejected the second premiss.
that competition,
With
through
that
they
help
however/ it is done, the second
ought does not entail can,
as
many
(From previous page)
As B. Martin, who uses this important form of
argument for institutional change to get his thick book
started,
points
ou t (pp. 12-13).
24.
The
swarm includes some anomalies,
ecology, Spinoza: see Appendix 3.
40
such as that tarnished hero of
deep
dilemmas reveal
moral
Fortunately
(see MD) .
conclusion that peace is possible,
method of (semantical) modelling:
societies
where
recall
persists
present in detail
scenarios
of
it may be
necessary
to
(for the sceptical
with n = 1 or n = 0).
n-human models,
the
to
That is the more
and indeed is feasible.
elaborate
peace
route
a more satisfactory and revealing
is
there
This sort of thing is of course
in more pleasing fashion than logicians could hope to emulate if
25
less precisely,
by novelists.
Hhat all these scenarios point
to,
already done,
rather
however,
are societies considerably different from our own, not in the people
involved
who have their weaknesses,
forth,
and so
their power drives,
but
because of significant structural alterations in the societies depi c ted.
way of such modellings we can not merely argue to the feasibi1i ty
By
peace,
sorts
restructured
push ahead with the argument - that societies
but
desirable alternatives to contemporary
are
For those of us
industrial arrangements.
pacific
the
alternatives,
Heilbroner
is
has
and
possible
said
thoroughly entrenched,
of
the
desirable,
human
and enforced,
power.
That has not deterred social
before
him and many after him,
Kant,
25.
in
his
search
these
military
or
then who want to move towards such
from
inference,
feasibility
and
we shou1d begin on the real work of structural change.
desirability is clear:
Peace
practical
of
of
but
the
prospect).
prospects
Present
poor
(as
arrangements
are
are
both ideologically and by much physical
theorists such as Kant, who like Rousseau
were concerned with obtaining lasting
for the indispensible conditions
peace.
for__ 1 asting—peace,
Perhaps Kant had some such modellings in view in his theme that peace is
empirically possible, which he coupled with his striking claim that it is
morally and rationally imperative.
The latter claim,
running in direct
opposition
to the longline of bellicose philosophers,
really relies on
the correct but controversial assumption that states are subject to
the
same moral relations as individual persons.
Both then have an obligation
to seek peace derived from forms of the categorial morality, notably from
rational autonomy , the universality of maxims, and the ultimate value of
persons (or, more chauvinistically, of humanity).
41
claimed,
others
as
have claimed since,
that peace is
not
possible
present structural arrangements of a competing nation-states kind.
times
changed,
have
and so have state structural
In particular there is now,
under
To be sure
since
arrangements,
in the shape of the United
Kant
Nations,
a
very weak reflection of what Kant looked for, a world (or European) federation
of nations.
namely,
But crucial
the
at
ingredients in Kant's resolution are still
upper level,
what is required for a standard resolution
Dilemma type situations - some surrender of
Prisoners
lacking:-
of
sovereignty,
national
26
especially as regards war;
Much
has now accumulated that more
evidence
the
and, at the lower level, ""republican"" state*.
nation-state level
far-reaching
changes
if peace is to be secured,
or
required
at
movement
is even to get its message through already fixed channels
control
systems.
succeed,
tn
informational
and democratic
are
practical
27.
and
not
(p.52) ,
to
alter
which
the
theoretical arguments for
not that it has fallen very
Kant's
claim,
as
well
as
arguments of an inductive sort.
Such is also the new message from America:
for the peace movement to get
through to the administration, American democracy must be overhauled and
revitalised,
capitalist democracy superseded by
true democracy or
""republicanism""
(see e.g.
Cohen and Ragers).
But the message, like the
US peace movements'"" very limited demands for peace,
leaves the state, as
the bringer of wars, and the main source of violence, essentially intac.;
the structural changes suggested, which will be slow to achieve, are much
too narrowly conceived.
28.
state
has traced some of the economic consequences of 'the rise and
subsequent fall of the American imperium'’
There
to
The significant decline of the American imperium
Heilbroner
26^
peace
Movements on a single front, such as peace, are unlikely to
channels,
27
character and membership of state control system^.
widen
APPENDIX 1;
a
need to be linked into a broader plurality of movements,
but
are
My thanks for information to David Bennett and Andrew Mack.
'Empires
f ar .
empire
was
no
Thp =h<=pr military cost ... for the United States a 1 one ...
12
px c e p t i on «
is
always been expensive and the American
have
ten
roughly
imperial
American
dol1ars)"".
GNP for the last 25 years
...
percent of
supplemented
spending
enhanced poverty,
countries fueled inflation,
what it was represented as required by,
$2X10
in
capitalist
other
by
1972
etc., and was complemented by,
counterexpenditure and efforts by the
USSR.
establishment of an American hegemony [consisted and] resulted
'The
just
in
American
large
very
capital
American-owned
billion""
payments
and
Between 1950 and 1970,
equipment abroad 1 eaped from $ 12
(negative
build-up
of
value
of
the
to
billion
""capital
flows"" and
balances),
and
a
$78
growing
On this sort of basis Heilbroner speculates that
of IOUs.
operation
rapid
A result of the expenditure abroad was a serious balance of
problem
accumulation
mere
investments abroad.
plant
(p.54).
but in the
military expenditures,
not
of the American imperium by itself - deemed of such
'the
critical
importance to preserve the peace and security of the capitalist world - was in
likelihood
all
a
inflationary phenomena'
the
for
the
globalisation
of
the
(p.57 with insert from p.56).
According to Heilbroner,
that
condition
sufficient
'Long before the Vietnam debacle,
it was clear
American arms could not prevent the rise of revolutionary governments in
under-developed
collapse
there
world""
(p.57).
is presented by Heilbroner;
But
and seemingly there
little
is
evidence
little.
is more substantial evidence for is the marked dec H ng of *he
imperium in the period (1973-3) concerned.
decline
really very
in
America's
select leading national
share of World GDP,
economies:
43
of
What
American
One piece of evidence is the sharp
shown in the following
table
of
POPULATION
SHARE
(1984 est)
SHARE OF WORLD GDP (X)
RANK
1968
1975
1984
USA
1
35.0
24.3
25.0
5.2
USSR
2
11.1
11.0
13.8
6.2
.JAPAN
3
5.2
3.0
9.5
2.7
GERMANY FDR
4
5.1
6.7
5.7
1.5
FRANCE
5
4.6
5.4
4.4
1.3
CHINA
6
2.9
4.8
4.3
22.6
UK
8
2.8
2.8
2.3
1.3
INDIA
12
1.3
1.5
1.1
15.1
AUSTRALIA
15
1.1
1.4
1.0
0.3
COUNTRY
The
qrand
table
empire,
also make it clear that if the USA cannot
should
nor can the USSR.
sustain
A totalitarian Pax Sovietica is even
a
le=s
likely than a capitalistic Pax Americana was.
APPENDIX 2:
A pluralistic framework for defence policy
The policy (broadeni ng Cami11 er izs suggest ions)
1.
ensures Australian security to some minimal but reasonable extent;
2.
is entirely non-nuclear (.and so is not aligned);
3.
is
defensive
in
posture
with
weapons
system
devoid
of
offensive
application and capacity, focussing on direct defence of Continent,
is decentralised, comprising wel1-trained, dispersed but coordinated small
units.
is partly at least social,
defence,
nonmilitary
deploying,
in combination [?] with territorial
forms of popular resistance trained in
noncooperat i on.
44
sabotage
a
APPENDIX 3?
The philosophical record; a preliminary tabulation.
Reflection on war and peace has had a strong polarising effect,
dividing
philosophers into two main groups:
Group B.
Those who regard war as inevitable, perhaps even as desirable;
Group G.
Those who consider war an evil, capable of being replaced by lasting
and
peace through goodwill or improved social arrangements.
The groups are not however exhaustive;
fence-sitters;
and
there
are
there are ambivalent philosophers, and
those who have
the
supported
battered themes of a war to end wars and of world empire.
at one stage in his development,
to
a despotic world state,
peace.
Russell,
idealists.
reached by imposition or war,
B and G are sometimes described,
But
while
Thus, for example,
who looked, like Dante before him,
So strictly the classification is (once again)
Groups
historically-
as a guarantor
of
four valued.
respectively,
as realists
and
these overworked terms reflect accurately enough
the
historic human condition and the present prospects,
they are prejudicial, and
they conflict with other classifications using these terms; for instance, both
Plato
and
Hegel,
condition
of human existence.
idealists
would
Northedge,
accept war as
normally accounted idealists,
have
been
a
Such concoctions as war-realists
preferable
to the
labels
from whom much of the record is drawn,
the
c on serva t i ve t r ad i t i on a n d aboli t i on i sts.
the
concoctions,
45
terms
and
of
sets the contrast:
peace-
which
namely
We shall prefer adaptions
namely war-riors and peace-niks,
simply (real) baddies and goodies.
in
permanent
or,
not to be
of
partisan,
DEFINING POLES
R adi c a 1 s
GROUP 8:
war-riors
RESIDUE GROUP
GROUP G
peace-niks
Virtually all classic
Greek phi1osophers
except early Stoics:
especially Heracleitus,
Plato (P)
Author of
Revel at ions
Early Christians
(non-violence
pr i n c i p 1 e)
Dubois (1306);
but with anti
Musi im aim
Erasmus ( 1570)
Cruce (1623; early
world order model
Roman Stoics and Christians
Scholastics: Aquinas (P)
Dante
•Just war theorists:
(Au Qu s t i n e) , SuIr ez,
Grotius (1425)
IJ t op i an s: More (war
games of modern
utopias in direct
descen t)
European peace
projects, some extended
to (Christian)
wor1d:
Bel 1ers ( 1710),
Penn (1693), abb£ de
Saint-Pierre (1713)
European peace
and hegemony:
Duke of Sully
(1620)
Nation-state theorists
Machiave1 1 i, Hobbes,
Locke, Spinoza
I-<2'1 b n /f’-j
German idealists:
Hegel, Schopenhauer
Perpetual peace:
Rousseau, Kant
Mili t ar i st s: Nietzsche;
Treitschke, Bernhardi,
Clausewi tz
Some utili tar i ans:
Bentham, the Mil Is,
Bren tano
Some anarchists and
1ibertarians:
Kropotkin (?),
Spencer
Russel 1
■James
Hi t tgenstei n
Key:
In
Dewey
P, peace a prime objective.
sort of investigation there are disappointments as
this
Spinoza
was
admiration
madness
to
a
major disappointment,
of Greek thought,
allow
Brentano a
find.
well
For,
as
finds.
despite
his
'Brentano was a decided pacifist and thought it
questions of international
fortunes of war'- (Kraus in Brentano, p.122).
46
justice to be
decided
by
the
REFERENCES
H.G. Andrewortha
Birch,
and L.C.
University of Chicago
The Ecological Neb,
1984.
Press,
H.R. Ashby, Design -for a Brain, Second edition. Hi ley. New York,
I960.
S. Beer, Desiqninq Freedom, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto,
F. Brentano,
The
Origin of our Knowledge of Right and Wrong,
Keegan Paul, London
1969.
'Setting
the
J. Camilleri,
disarmament
agenda"",
l?/4.
Routledge
and
Peace------ Studies
9,
( 1984) ,17-19.
F. Capra and C. Spretnak, Green Politics, Hutchinson, London,
R. Catley,
with the Bomb ...
'Along
Australian Magazine, 7-8 April,
(Review o-f
1984.
Martin),
D.
The—Weekend
1984.
1979.
P. Cock, Alternative Australia, Qu ar t er Book s, Me1 hourn e,
J. Cohen and J. Rogers, On Democracy, Penguin, New York,
1984.
P. and A. Erlich, Popu1 ation, Resourses, Environment, Second edition, Freeman,
San Francisco,
H. Feith,
197x.
'Richard Falk,
Peace Studies 24 (June 1985)
World order radical',
24-5.
J. Galtung, There are Alternatives, Spokesman, Nottingham,
17’84.
A. Gilbert,
'The state and nature in Australia', Au s t r a 1i an Cu 1 t yral—Hist or
1981 (ed. S. Goldberg and F.B. Smith), Canberra, 1982, pp.9-28.
R. Hardin, Co 1 1 ec 1 tive Action , Resources -for the Future, Washington,
R. Hardin,
M.D.
Hayes,
Ph i 1 osop_hy—and—Pub He
236-254.
'Defending
September 1983)
mutual disarmament',
versus
'Unilateral
Affairs 12 (1983)
the sunburnt country',
Chain Reaction
33
(August
11-17.
R.L. Heilbroner, Beyond Boom and Bust, Norton, New York,
19/8.
I. Kant,
Perpetual
Peace (trans,
and
introd. M.
Campbell
Sonnerschein, London, 1903 (first published 1795).
A. Mack, 'Farewell
1?82.
Smith),
Swan
to Arms Controls' 9 (1984) 9ff.
A. Mack, 'The pros and cons of ANZUS', Fabian ANZUS Conference, Lome, 4-5 May
1985;
referred to as PC.
B. Martin, Uprooting War, Freedom Press, London,
1984.
D. Martin, Armed Neutrality for Australia, Drummond Books, Melbourne,
47
1984.
Northedge,
'Peace , war and philosophy',
in Encyclopedia of Phi 1osophy
(ed. P. Edwards), Volume 6, Macmillan, New York, 1767, 63 t>< .
M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
Mass.,
1965.
P. Pettit, 'Tree riding and foul
dealing', typescript, Canberra,
J.-J. Rousseau, A Project for Perpetual Peace C trans.
1927 (first published 1761).
E.M.
1985
Nut tai), London,
large-scale nuclear war and nuclear deterrence,
'On the ethics of
R. Rout ley,
out' ,
Discussion__ Papers__ in
Environmental
and
the political
fall
School of Social Sciences, Australian National
Ph i1osophy #5,
Research
University, 1984.
R.
R.
Routlpy,
'Metaphysical fall-out from the nuclear predicament', 1 Ph 11osophy
""and 1 Social Criticism 3/4 ( 1984) 19-34; referred to as MF.
Rout ley and V. Plumwood, 'Moral dilemmas and the logic of deontic^notions ,
'ni\r,.^.ign Papers in Environmen tai ..Philosophy #4,
Research School
of
SociaT~Sciences, Australian National University, 1984; referred to as MD.
P.R. Stephen son, The Foundation s of Cu1t u r e, N.J. M i1es, oydn ey,
R. Sylvan,
'Culture
Canberra,
1985;
and
the
roots of
political
divergence',
1 ? 36.
typescript,
referred to as CPD.
M. Taylor and H. Hard, 'Chickens, whales, and bumpy goods: al ternative models
of public-goods provision', Poli tical Studies 30 (19821 350 370.
The Strategic Basis of Australian Defence .Policy,
the National Times, March 30-April 5,
leaked extracts published in
1984, 23-30.
to Australian Security,
Pariiamentary Joint Committee for Foreign
Affairs and Defence, Australian Government Printer, Canberra; referred .o
3. s TAS.
T. Veblen, An
Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of
Perpetuation, Viking Press, New York, 1945 (first published 191,).
48
its
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 71: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/32f5493dacdd446e2ae9e35b3cc88d4d.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
104,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/104,"Box 71, Item 4: Two drafts of Metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament","Two typescript drafts, one with handwritten emendations, the other with typed corrections. Paper published, Routley R (1984) 'metaphysical fallout from the nuclear predicament', Philosophy & Social Criticism, 10(3-4):19-34, https://doi.org/10.1177/019145378401000303.
","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
","Richard Sylvan","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 71, Item 4","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[33] leaves. 26.34 MB. ",,"Manuscript ","https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223e07d",,"■k
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, r’own to metaphysical levels; in this the series contrasts
The most
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary,
circulated and influential text of the series is undoubtedly that of the
with the
widely
slightest of the ""prophets"", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth,
This skillful piece of
unc annily redeploys some of the apparently deep phenomenological
themes of Anders.
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
be considered together,
media-philosophy
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
their work.
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its vivid and horrifying scenarios of
arrangements.
the
exhibits,
both
the
claim
that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense
...’
of
aftermath
nuclear
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
’without
is
it
Some of
simply rubbish:
to
take
one example,
consider
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
morally neutral.
compared
with
Moral
more
issues remain moral issues:
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
they don’t cease to be so when
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders.
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
In the absence of humans, very many notions,
not only those of morality and
value, but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
more
sympathetic
philosophical
form,
these
notions
depend
for
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption) .
their
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’
It is applications of
philosophical depth,
paradoxical
and Schell’s work some of its apparent
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
propositions
But
generated.
the
frequent
applications
S2
of
depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
the
Granted that
assumption SI
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
technological
means appear
available
extinct;^
granted
centres of
prospect
the
of
to make it
large-scale
nuclear
Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate -
true,
to render Homo sapiens
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
Even in Canada, which
information.
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is extremely flimsy.
It depends,
for example,
Schell’s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North American thing, of contracting the world to North America.
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least,
to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e.
eliminated
in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
(All that matters,
its human population will be
the data
upon,
Schell relies
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the .ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
Southern Hemisphere,
such as
New Zealand
and southern
at
indicates that parts of the
latitudes of
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
may appear
to have
gained new
purchase
through
recent
belated) scientific forecasts of a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war,
extinction assumption3.
they do not sustain the
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no doubt with new complications and simplifications, for example^ in many southern
mid-latitude coastal reqions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
life will go on,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
/r
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
the
upon
of
""impossibility
unlearning”
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
theory
Daniken’s
of an
""high""
earlier
In virtue
technology).
they would
of S2,
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
no longer made
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
sense.
But
what
message
is
the
-
as
if
technology
the
they
again want
inevitability
having
learnt
to
suggest
have
been advanced.But
technological advances
cases of
they
that have
are not
not been
tenable.
the
development
and
else
was
of
the
the
means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views
with
There
all
Certainly such
are many
taken advantage of,
and
examples of
there are even
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
Even if this were true just
""experiments"".
weapons, notably that they do not allow ""experiments""
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
And in fact
the previous argument against the inevitability of nuclear weapons.
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
scientific work, 1to large-scale weapons and independent experiments which do not
Again they have
interfere with the■ observers and those outside the ""laboratories"" .
latched onto major points: in particular, we have at present no way of testing the
cumulative effects of large nuclear weapons in concert, e.g. for more holistic
effects,
such
circulation and
enough with it
in character,
or changes in coupled atmospheric
Short of a large-scale nuclear war, and likely
radiation fields.
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
as
fireballs
or
firestorms,
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2 .
The penetration
Schell
and
Anders,
of
but
in S2, is not something peculiar to
Western philosophy, European philosophy
human
chauvinism, as
is
product
a
of
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
It has also deeply
of S2 being just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy, and has been extended under the influence of
especially.
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product of human conventions, and would vanish with humans! Such are alleged
MB
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
As
very many propositions
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
Schell,
Kantian
obnoxious
is
chauvinism
human
dished
Thoughts and
form.
up
a
in
particularly
time
propositions,
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
-
future or merely potential
past or
humans are certainly not enough.
humans are not enough,
persons
that are not
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
’... the
thought ""Humanity is now extinct"" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
soon as it is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
a
later
rational
Though we no doubt have it
into past,
(p.143).
local
may
well
be
able
to
truly.
it
have
Schell
there is no ""later"" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)*^.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
divides time
creature
The thought is however
... ’.
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
present and
future’: so annihilation cannot
’come to pass’
But it is simply false that the tenses are human; the tenses depend on a
time
ordering
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
other
than
humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
argument for the demise of time, that ’what has been will no longer be
Anders’
even what
has
been’ ,
is also explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verificationist :
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the
to
many
sorts
of
things
difference;
organisms would be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
recorded
in
many
still
other
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
does
what
exist)
not
Thus,
for
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom
example,
takes
Schell
dubious
over
it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators""
as
refuting
the
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
clause goes
second
The
is
there
counterfactual situations which undermine both Freud’s
distance
difficulty
great
no
a good
describing
in
The
claims.
towards
same, goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
’... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
harm,
or
service
lamenting
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
must
there
be
life ,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
(p.171).
been exposed and criticised elsewhere/, e.g. HC).
Naturally many
things will disappear with the extinction of humans:
trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities,
human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
accordingly be
’no thought,
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song ...'.
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
than humans with emotion,
creatures
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
struggles, songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been ’all in vain’, meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
A
activities were not worthwhile.*
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared
assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
is
reckoned
meaningless
rendered
and S2.
a
and
species
death’,
and
all
extinction came
redeployed by both.
’second death’ ,
already
already ’overhung with death’
’a second
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
’seems
(S p.166).
because
to
Thus,
not merely one’s own but
future
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
by
’The death of mankind ,
S2 and
dead’
(AA
SI
p.244,
remaining
S p.166)
life
is
and
is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of
this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
From SI,
together with the minor principle that extinction being an absolute
in degree,
doesn’t differ
theme that
the universality of peril
comes
’we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
with
SI.
In
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
recognise’,
event,
any
are
peoples
southern Patagonia
Indians of
the
all
not
This theme falls
S p.150).
by
imperilled
equally
the
better placed
being rather
nuclear
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
Germans of northern Europe.
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
likewise,
Nor,
Schell
are all
contrast
(in
to
people equally responsible,
a pernicious
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
This
is
theme^ which,
the
theme,
Pogo
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there is also, mixed in,
a weaker more
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo theme11 runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
they
though
now menace
the earth with nuclear
At least, this is
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies'
(pp.229-30).
pose
since we pay for extinction and
sense,
threat of it,
the
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a positive
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
while for
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world
it is
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger)
(p.152).
But
this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
revealing
its
allegedly
govern,
insensitivity
not
to
and
unresponsiveness
to
affected
by
mention
those
its
the
activities
populace
who
are
they
not
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
represented at all (namely foreigners).
points:
of
many
'... we are potential mass killers.
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
it makes of all of us underwriters of the slaughter of hundreds of millions'
And again '[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
(p.152),
that
not only is not sacred but is worthless; that ... it had been judged acceptable for
to be killed' (p.153).
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
attributes
decisions
to
certainly
— or
everyone
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in ""liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies""
who
have
of
potential
to worth
done
less.
Schell illegitimately
Responsibility for
even by representatives
(in the unlikely
event of
this happening in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers a complex and often
ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in
the (uncommon)
can responsibility,
event of a clear
still of a qualified
single issue referendum, which is adopted,
sort, be
for it, not to everyone in the community.
sheeted home, to those who voted
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
critique of
the
theme (indicated
state whi?V
the conclusion
arrives at
is,
that
by and
pp.187-8).
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered
large,
the nation-state
and
has outlasted
Schell
fragmentary.
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
the nuclear dilemma come,
way,
from the Top Down;
(cf.
p.230).
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
those who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government, through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
especially p.227,
treaties,
bottom paragraph).
Given the record of
these organisations and
the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But some of the requisite deeper analysis of the nuclear situation and , more
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders$f and elsewhere.13 The roots of
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically-aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and
controlling classes,
their
military,
their supporting bureaucracies.
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
power and domination (and, often,
superiority by the
[nuclear]
science
interrelated forms.
surplus
product
nature)
to
super-states, to
involves
accumulated
can be
is
enables
is the
for
Thus the push for
domination,
large nation-state,
at home
(from
the drive
be achieved through military-oriented
and
main power-base
The
feature
the accompanying privilege).
which
technology,
and
and crucial
a conspicuous
and
from
abroad,
several
in
where enough
and
bled
from
proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the high-
technology research and development means to ever more expendable power and energy.
In changing
the prospect of
to eliminate
arrangements
structural
the
nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the main power-base, the nation
state;
it
sweepingly,
also
is
important
remove
to
state
relations,
political
alter
trouble-making
political arrangements,
in
to
key
components
patterns
embedded
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
relations,
but
in
of
in
state,
and,
all
these
social
and
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
more
the
relations;
to
male-female
in
remove,
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
chauvinistic relations.
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
separately.
And there
the problems
can largely be narrowed
to certain problems of
states and certain key components of states.
In what analysis he does offer of the
contrast of
familiar false
""raison
d’etat""
and
the
justifies the means is
themselves
to
problem with states,
state expediency with morality,
Socratic-Christian
ethics.
every sort’
(p.134).
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
argument is
as a
contrast between
teaching
that
’the
end
the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
commit crimes of
extinction nullifies
The
Schell repeats the
So
’states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all
humans were extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
actual
or
not.
The
ends-means
argument
can
however
be
repaired
to
remove
such
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by ’relevant’, in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
its nuclear policies.a nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses,
would
undoubtedly
frustrate
the realisation of relevant
state ends.
9
So
even
expediency
an
from
perspective,
policies
super-state
are
open
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
power
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity^
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
sovereignty.
is impossible
side, without war it
On the other
for war.
to preserve
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
The
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
nonmilitary states.
the macro-state system is entrenched, it
Now that
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the ""realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
readily
are
arrangements
aggression,
dismissed
as
of international
It is on this basis
hatred.
fear,
is however
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.185).
Schell’s
further
nuclear ""war""
that
theme
is not
war
threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
Fortunately the not-war
theme needs much qualification, and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
very different from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP) .
that war requires an end which nuclear ""war"" does not have.
to claim
Schell goes on
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side
’no one’s
happen,
But
being defeated
what
these
on a decision by arms.
strength fails
sorts
of
until
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear ""war
this doesn’t
both sides have been annihilated’
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success and
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
have
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
That conventional wars
Schell's argument
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined ""conventional"" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp.192-193).
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that war of
some sort has
to
be
the
final
court of appeal
between nations (for
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
e.g.
joint referenda).
The
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the 'logic of war
theme also
imports the
theme) that war has to
proceed to the technological limit — as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
and ruleless activities.
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from ""the logic of war
but from what is
now called ""the logic of deterrence"" and the ""logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
now
entangled
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
rational.
However
Logic in no way justifies the
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
logics of decision (as presented, e.g.,
be applied
planning;
in strategic
but
this
There are
for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
they do not
yield
specific results without
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency^?.
For the most part,
however, ’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
and rational
considerations entering
into
the
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
policy or strategy of’.
the term ’logic of’, should write of 'the illogic of deterrence', for he emphasizes
its unreasonableness.
supposed
rationality
(even from a national
fail:^ yet
threat of
the
this
further and
For
of
stresses (p.213)
instance he
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
success
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
of nuclear
the disparity between the
weapons and
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.201-2);
Nuclear deterrence may well be
11
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders’ of my monograph referred to as WP, where
Several points, only touched ijpcn in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors’ names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
1. The distinguishing term is from Foley’s Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up) , it still gives humans a further chance for goou
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper’s idea that ""the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives"" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
2. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders’ remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley Ju.
3. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
4. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency. It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora’s box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern
Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies.
Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worstQ '
case circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens
cannot be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario
described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to
extinctions immediately’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of
long-term human survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1287 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear
holocaust for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain ... uncertain ... because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... the
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere’, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
marxist
persuasion,
determinists
of
merely
by
technological
6. Not
induction
that
if the
argues
by
straight
Hackworth, a former US general,
use
it.
US military has a weapon it will
present and future (etc.) is
7. The appalling theme that humans create past,
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of ""the plan"",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
’the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons’ (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the 'free enterprise
(USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP §8, where too the case against
the state from
nuclear dilemmqj'is elaborated.
13. Anders’ explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
. .., for the
newer
Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference—satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not. C Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it. consists in maximisation,.a suitable mix of these virtues.
*
4
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes,
runs
into
Newcomb
’s paraj^dox and special cases
(individual or national)
situations.
The
maximisation of power, as
such as Prisoners Dilemma
Christian-Islamic
God,
encounters
the paradox of
the
symbolised in
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
the
omnipotence,
or
no
consistent
objects
which
are
omnipotent
There are
omniscience.
the
The drive for maximum consistency, often taken to be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads
leads to
to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements
and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytic) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
(ar
18. Even the
irrationality of /retaliatory * first-strike)
use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thougnt that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the ""missing
motive"" for retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology. Such a motive has been offered -tor
the conjecturAL targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US ""star-war"" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to ""negate"" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
15
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which Implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
REFERENCES
G. Anders,
Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, C.H.
Beck, Munchen, 1956; referred to as
AA.
G. Anders,
Zeitenende:
Endzeitand
Gedanken
atomaren
zur
Situation,
C.H.
Beck,
Munchen, 1972; referred to as AE.
7
'
F. Barnaby,
’Will
be
there
a
War' ,//» Aus tralia
Nuclear
Nuclear
War,
J
(ed.
M. Denborough) , Croom Helm, Australia, 1983?
I.J.
Benton
and G.W.
Partridge,
’""Twilight
at Noon""
overstated’,
13
Ambio
(1984)
49-51.
B. Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man
P.J. Crutzen,
Technology, Knopf, New York, 1972.
’Darkness after a nuclear war’, Ambio 13 (1984) 52-4.
M. Denborough (ed.), Australian & Nuclear War, Croom Helm, Australia, 1983.
P.R. Erlich and others,
’Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war’,
Science
222 (1983) 1293-1300.
G. Foley,
’Jonathan
Schell:
Genius
-
Philosopher
-
Rewrite
Man’,
typescript,
Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS.
G. Foley, Nuclear Prophets. The True and the False, typescript, Brisbane, 1983.
16
in
’A Soldier’s Refragfljt’, , Australia
D. Hackworth,
Croom Helm, Australia, 1983
vi^vC
Nuclear War,
(ed. M. Denborough),
/zor-/z
»
K. Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, (trans. E.B. Ashton), University of Chicago Press,
1961.
B. Martin,
Strategy Against
Roots
Grass
War,
Freedom Press,
1984, ""ter
Nottingham,
a-p-peax.
L. Mumford,
The Myth of
the Machine,
2 vols.,
Harcourt
Brifce
,
New York,
1970.
G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingencies 4. Nuclear Disasters, A Report to the
Commission for the Future, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1982.
R. Routley and
N. Griffin,
'Unravelling
the meanings of life’, Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy #3, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
R. Routley,
Meinong’s
Exploring
Jungle
and
Beyond,
Research
School
of
Social
Sciences, Australian National University, 1980; referred to as JB.
R. Routley, War and Peace I. On the Ethics of Large-Scale Nuclear War and Nuclear
deterrence and the Political Fall-Out, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy #5, Australian National University, 1984j
R. and
V. Routley,
Philosophy
(ed.
'Human
chauvinism
D. Manujson and
and
Environmental
others),
Research
ethics’,
School of
in
Environmental
Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as HC.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Knopf, New York, 1982; referred to as S./F.
R.P.
Turco
and
others,
'Nuclear
winter:
global
consequences
explosions’ , Science 222 (1983) 1283-92.
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
of
multiple nuclear
Appendix 1: On the fate of mankind and tht?_ _ea£_t]i, according to
SchelT~and Anders.
Nuclear prophets and prophetic rubbish. The extinction assumption.
Common emerging themes of Schell and Anders. The extravagant anthro
pocentric assumption, and some of what is wrong with it. Second death
dismissed. The universality of peril. The alleged universality of
responsibility: the Pogo theme. The correct, but undeveloped, whole
earth theme. Ultimately Schell offers little hope and superficiality.
Nuclear war is war. The logic and illogic of deterrence.
METAPHYSICAL FALL-OUT FROM THE NUCLEAR PREDICAMENT*
A series of nuclear prophets has produced a series of philosophically-oriented
works on nuclear war.^ The series is important for its deeper penetration into the
main nuclear predicament, down to metaphysical levels;
with the
widely
in this the series contrasts
transient superficialities of much of the political commentary.
circulated
influential
and
text
the
of
series
is
undoubtedly that
uncannily
some
of
the
the apparently
deep phenomenological
So, conveniently, main assumptions of Schell and Anders can often
themes of Anders.
be considered together.
their work.
redeploys
of
This skillful piece of
slightest of the ""prophets"", Schell’s The Fate of the Earth.
media-philosophy
The most
To criticise their assumptions is not of course to belittle
In particular, Schell’s little book, for all its political shortcomings,
is having a significant and much needed effect in shifting attitudes towards nuclear
It is especially valuable for its
arrangements.
the
aftermath
of
nuclear
vivid and horrifying scenarios of
Unfortunately
attack.
it
also
exhibits,
both
philosophically and factually, severe defects.
Some of
’without
is
it
simply rubbish:
to
take
one
example,
consider
the
... a world-wide program of action for preserving the [human]
nothing else
claim that
species
....
that we undertake together can make any practical or moral sense . . . ’
(p.173, rearranged).
This should certainly be rejected philosophically; for there is
no separate moral issue of such overwhelming importance that all other issues become
Moral
morally neutral.
compared
with
more
issues remain moral issues: they don’t cease to be so when
important
elsewhere, e.g. p.130).
moral
issues
(as
Schell
effectively
acknowledges
And the claim should be questioned on more factual grounds.
Humans form a highly resilient species, like rats a survivor species, unlikely to be
entirely exterminated under presently-arranged nuclear holocausts.
The example was selected however because it leads into, indeed presupposes, two
of the major defective assumptions in the work of Schell and Anders:
51.
Nuclear war will eliminate life, human life at least, on earth (the extinction
assumption); and
52.
value,
In
the absence of humans,
very many notions,
not only
those of morality and
but those of time and space for example, make no sense; or, to put it into a
form,
for their
X 2
actual human context (the extravagant anthropocentric assumption).
more
sympathetic
philosophical
these
notions
depend
sense
on an
2
S2 which give Anders’ and Schell’s work some of its apparent
It is applications of
and certainly induce much philosophical puzzlement through the
philosophical depth,
paradoxical propositions generated.
But the frequent applications of S2 depend
essentially on SI.3 For without total extinction there will be humans about, to make
past and future, good and evil, go on making sense!
Granted that assumption SI
the
technological
means appear
extinctgranted
the
prospect
is by no means ruled out as a real possibility, as
available to
of
make it
nuclear
large-scale
to render Homo sapiens
true,
war
does
threaten
leading
Even so SI appears unlikely in
centres of Western civilization with obliteration.
the light of present - admittedly inadequate - information.
Even in Canada, which
lies on the polar route of Soviet missiles, human life should be able to continue in
certain northern areas (according to Canadian medical studies).
SI
is
extremely flimsy.
for example,
It depends,
Schell s argument to
on an unjustified extrapolation
from the Northern to the Southern Hemisphere, but for the most part it does that very
North Zunerican thing, of contracting the world to North America.
(All that matters,
all worthwhile civilization, is in USA, or at least, to be more charitable, in North
America and Europe, which will also be wiped out, i.e. its human population will be
eliminated in
the nuclear
holocaust.)
Some of
the data
Schell relies
upon,
for
example the effect of nuclear explosions on the ozone layer, was significantly out of
date even when he wrote.
Other effects than ozone destruction, such as variations in
ultraviolent radiation and temperature levels, apparently extrapolate even less well
from North
A factually superior study of nuclear disaster produced at
to South.
about the same time as Schell’s, by Preddey and others,
indicates that parts of the
Southern Hemisphere,
latitudes of
such as
New Zealand
and
southern
Latin America
could escape relatively unscathed from even most massive northern exchanges.
Doomsday prophets
belated) scientific
may appear
forecasts of
to have
gained new
purchase through
recent
a nuclear winter following upon nuclear war.
(if
But
although these forecasts certainly add a new, and alarming, ecological dimension to
the very damaging consequences of large-scale nuclear war, they do not sustain the
extinction assumption3.
On the available evidence, human life will continue, though
no
doubt with new complications and
mid-latitude coastal
life will go on,
for example
in many southern
regions outside zones of radiation fall-out.
More generally,
simplifications,
though likely seriously and irreversibly impoverished through loss
of valuable nonhuman systems and creatures.
Nuclear prophets usually see the world (though with most of it carried along) as
already set
, in crucial respects, on the route to nuclear catastrophe.
Much of the
3
way taken is seen as both inevitable and irreversible.
insist
upon
unlearning""
of
""impossibility
the
Thus both Anders and Schell
means of
the
manufacturing nuclear
It would seem that extinction, which they both foresee, would furnish a good
bombs.
medium for unlearning nuclear technology (something very like this emerges from van
Daniken’s
of an
theory
""high""
earlier
they would
of S2,
In virtue
technology).
however exclude such a possibility as a case of unlearning, contending wrongly that
the notion
longer
no
made
sense.
But what
message
is
the
-
as
if
impossibility-of-unlearning
eventual
use
of
the
technology
they
to suggest
again want
learnt
having
the
of
inevitability
with
the
development
and
all
the means
determined, and manufacture and use ceased to be a matter of choice.
views have
been advanced.
technological advances
cases of
But
are not
they
that have
been
not
tenable.
Certainly such
are many
There
taken advantage of,
was
else
examples of
there are even
and
technological developments that have been manufactured but not marketed or
used. There is not something very special about nuclear apparatus that puts it beyond
the scope of such generalisations.
Both Schell and Anders do claim that there are very special things about nuclear
weapons, notably that they do not allow ""experiments"".
Even if this were true just
of nuclear weapons - and it is certainly not of smaller weapons - it would not rebut
the
argument against
previous
inevitability
the
of nuclear weapons.
And
in
fact
Anders and (even) Schell hedge their claims about testing, and the limits to nuclear
work,
scientific
large-scale
to
weapons
and
independent
experiments which
interfere with the observers and those outside the ""laboratories"".
latched onto major points:
cumulative
such
effects,
of
effects
as
in particular,
fireballs
or
Again they have
we have at present no way of testing the
wreapons
in
concert,
firestorms,
or
changes
nuclear
large
do not
e.g.
in
for
more
holistic
atmospheric
coupled
circulation and
radiation fields.
enough with
these crucial effects must remain largely untested and hypothetical
it,
in character.
Short of a large-scale nuclear war,
and likely
Nonetheless enough data can be assembled to carry through informative
modellings, which point to the improbability of SI, and so undermine applications of
S2.
The
Schell
penetration
and
Anders,
of human
but
is
a
chauvinism,
product
of
as
in S2,
Western
is not
something peculiar
philosophy,
European
to
philosophy
especially.
This chauvinism is unfortunately alive and still well, Anders’ version
of
just one striking illustration (cf. AA p.252ff.).
S2
being
penetrated Anglo-American philosophy,
and
has
been extended
It has also deeply
under the
influence of
Wittgenstein’s work, where even the necessary truths of mathematics are taken to be a
product
of
human
conventions,
and
would
vanish
with
humans!
Such
are
alleged
4
implications of extinction: but the fact is that the truths of arithmetic are in no
way dependent on the existence of humans or humanoids or of gods or giraffes.
with necessary truths and falsehoods so with contingent ones:
As
very many propositions
about the world do not depend in any way for their truth-value or content on humans
or their communities.
In
human
Schell,
obnoxious Kantian
form.
dished
is
chauvinism
and
Thoughts
up
in
propositions,
a
particularly
time
powerful
history and
tenses,
and
and
memories, values and morality, all depend on the life-giving presence of human beings
future or merely potential humans are not enough,
- past or
that are not
persons
Thus, according to Schell (p.140, e.g.),
humans are certainly not enough.
’... the
thought ""Humanity is now extinct"" is an impossible one for a rational person, because
as
it
soon as
is, we are not.
In imagining any other event, we look ahead
moment that is still within the stream of human time,
... ’.
a
later
rational
erroneously denies that:
present, and future ...’
into past,
divides time
may
well
be
to
able
ordering
time
it
have
Schell
truly.
there is no ""later"" ’outside the human tenses of past,
(p.140)7.
Human extinction eliminates ’the creature that
present and future’: so annihilation cannot
But it is simply false that the tenses are human;
(p.143).
local
creature
The thought is however
Though we no doubt have it
perfectly possible for humans; we can have it right now.
falsely,
to a
(perceptible
to
many
creatures
’come to pass’
the tenses depend on a
other
than humans,
but
not
depending at all on that perceptibility for its viability) relating other times to
to now (also a human-independent location, evident to other creatures,
the present,
and borne witness to by such sequences as the passing seasons).
And annihilation may
also too easily come to pass, for many humans in the North at least, as it came to
pass in recent geological times that humans began to exist upon earth.
Before that
there was a time before there were any human beings.
Anders’ argument for the demise of time,
even what has been’,
is also
that
’what has been will no longer be
explicitly (and narrowly)
’for what
verif icationist:
would the difference be between what has only been and what has never been,
is no
remain
one
remember the things
to
many
sorts
organisms would
of
difference;
be different.
that have been’
for
one,
Temporal
the
(AA p.245).
history
themes do not lack
if there
There would
still
many
other
recorded
in
’legitimacy because not
registered [or verified] by anyone’; truth, significance, still less meaning, are not
matters of human verification.
Here,
as
elsewhere,
the
human
chauvinism
is
mixed
with
other
distorting
metaphysical assumptions of our Western heritage, in particular, verificationism and
5
ontological assumptions (to the effect that there are severe difficulties in talking
about
exist)0.
not
does
what
Thus,
Schell
example,
for
takes
over
dubious
metaphysics from Freud, according to whom ""it is indeed impossible to imagine our own
death; and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still
present
spectators""
as
refuting
(p.138).
fact
In
first.
the
clause goes
second
The
there
is
great
no
situations which undermine both Freud’s
counterfactual
a good
distance
difficulty
claims.
in
towards
describing
The same goes
for
Schell’s extensions of human chauvinism into one of its main traditional strongholds,
value theory:
evil,
'... the simple and basic fact [sic!]
or
service
(p.171).
lamenting
harm,
rejoicing
or
that before there can be good or
there
be
must
life’,
human
life
These are no facts, but deeply entrenched philosophical dogmas (which have
been exposed and criticised elsewhere, e.g. LIC).
Naturally many things will disappear with the extinction of humans: trivially
there will be no more humans (unless humans re-evolve or are recreated), and thus no
more human communities, human institutions, human activities, human emotions, and so
But it is already going too far to suggest, as Anders does, that there will
forth.
’no thought,
accordingly be
no love,
sacrifice, no image, no song
no struggle, no pain, no hope, no comfort, no
For there are, and may continue to exist, other
...’.
creatures than humans with emotion, struggles,
songs,
...
Nor will the ending of
.
all such human ventures, if it comes to pass, show that all past human ventures have
been 'all in vain', meaningless, and already so to say dead.
The decay of the solar
system, or the heat-death of the universe even, will not show that worthwhile human
9
activities were not worthwhile.
Several of the other notions and themes common to Schell and Anders derive from
their shared assumptions SI
of a Second Death,
(in Revelations)
under
SI,
rendered
is
and S2.
reckoned
meaningless
a
and
species
and
all
extinction came
redeployed
'second death',
already
already 'overhung with death'
'a second death',
It is these that underlie the biblical notion
'seems
(S p.166).
because by
to
to
pass,
generations
the
(S
stronger
be
Thus,
not merely one's own but
future
by both.
'The death of mankind',
S2 and
dead'
(AA
SI remaining
p.244,
S p.166)
life is
and is
too, more trivially, a person faces
in addition that greater death of the
p.166,
p.115).
However
even
notion would not be vindicated,
if
nuclear
because
it
depends on the fallacious inference to the meaninglessness of preceding life and on
the very
questionable representation
of. this
meaninglessness as
a sort
of death.
There is no such Second Death: creatures die just once, perhaps all at about the same
time.
The idea of a Second Death lacks even a solid metaphysical base.
6
together with the minor principle
From SI,
doesn’t differ
in degree,
comes
extinction being an absolute
that
the universality of
peril
theme that
we are all
exposed to peril in the same degree’, which is accordingly ’disguised’ and ’difficult
to
recognise’,
with
In
SI.
situation,
there is no contrast (AE p.64;
because
any
event,
not
Indians of
the
peoples
all
Germans of northern Europe.
ihis theme falls
imperilled
equally
are
southern Patagonia
S p.150).
being rather
by
nuclear
the
better placed
than the
Nor are all people equally locked into the situation or
incapacitated by it; the prospects are different in different countries and places.
Nor,
Schell
likewise,
contrast
(in
all
are
to
people
equally responsible,
a
repeatedly infiltrates.
Anders)
pernicious
This
is
the
theme which
Pogo theme,
according to which
S3.
Responsibility for the present nuclear predicament (fiasco, really) distributes
onto everybody, it belongs to every human in the world.
But
there
is also, mixed
a weaker more
in,
plausible claim that gives lie
to the
stronger one, namely that we have some responsibility (the Nazi situation is
compared).
An especially blatant example of the Pogo themeH runs as follows: ’...
the
world’s
leaders
political
...
though they
now menace
weapons, do so only with our permission, and even at our bidding.
true for democracies’
(pp.229-30).
positive
pose
the
since we
sense,
threat of it,
At least, this is
theme is elaborated elsewhere:
The
... we are
(For the populations of the superpowers this is true
the authors of that extinction.
in a
with nuclear
the earth
pay for extinction and
support the governments that
the peoples of the non-nuclear-armed world it is
while for
true only in the negative sense that they fail try to do anything about the danger/
But this is more of an argument indicting representative government, by
(p.152).
revealing
insensitivity
its
unresponsiveness
and
to
many
of
the
populace
they
allegedly govern, not to mention those affected by its activities who are not
represented at all (namely foreigners).
But Schell conveniently neglects all such
’... we are potential mass killers.
points:
that it makes of all of us underwriters of
(p.152).
The moral cost of nuclear armaments is
the slaughter of hundreds of millions
And again ’[as] perpetrators ... we convey the steady message ... that life
not only is not sacred but is worthless;
(p.153).
everyone to be killed’
that
... .it had been judged acceptable for
Little of this is true.
Those who campaign against
nuclear arrangements, vote against nuclear—committed parties so far as is possible,
destruction,
and
responsibility for the nuclear situation does not simply distribute onto them.
Nor
and
the
are
like,
does responsibility
certainly
— or
everyone
attributes
to
decisions
taken
—
not
the
the unlikely
fall
in ""liberal
on
authors
opinions as
those
democracies""
who
have
of
to
done
potential
worth
Schell
less.
even by representatives
illegitimately
Responsibility
for
(in the unlikely
7
event of
this happening
in the case of anything as important as defence) cannot be
traced back to those represented, since among many other things, a representative is
only
representative of a
party which offers
a complex and often ill-characterised
package of policies, and a voter may vote for zero or more policies of this package.
Only in the (uncommon) event of a clear single issue referendum, which is adopted,
still of a qualified sort, be sheeted home, to those who voted
can responsibility,
for it, not to everyone in the community.
While S3 is false, there is an important
related theme that is much more plausible; namely that the present nuclear situation
generates responsibilities for every socially involved person.
When moreover the Pogo assumption is disentangled from accompanying themes, part
of what results is decidedly along the right lines; namely
S4.
The controllers [not to be confused, in Schell’s fashion, with all of us] have
failed to change our
pre-nuclear institutions.
The sovereign system is out of step
with the nuclear age, the one-earth system, etc. (the whole earth theme).
Though Schell remains relatively clear about the serious defects of the state and the
frequently immoral purposes for which the state is used, unfortunately he often loses
sight of
this important
arrives
at
state which is,
the
critique of
theme (indicated pp.187-8).
the conclusion
that
by and
large,
Yet S4 forms part of Schell s
scattered and
the nation-state has outlasted
fragmentary.
Schell
its usefulness,
and
that new political institutions more ’consonant with the global reality’ are required
as a matter of urgency.
But he evades what he admits is the major task, making out
viable alternatives.12 At most he makes some passing gestures, some pointing towards
the Way Up to world political control.
Solutions to
way,
the nuclear dilemma come,
from the Top Down;
(cf. p.230).
those
if not easily, in a similar simplistic
who can must appeal
to the Top,
to those who govern
Schell places his hope in treaties for arms reduction and limitations,
such as SALT, and in world government,
especially p.227,
bottom paragraph).
through the United Nations (see p.225ff. and
Given the record of
these organisations and
treaties, the negotiations and regulators, it is by now a pathetic faith.
Nor is a
serious need felt for further analysis of the nuclear situation, to investigate the
origins of nuclear technology,
to explore the roots of nuclear blindness, to consider
effective changes to military-industrial organisation and ways of life.
But
some of
the requisite
deeper analysis of
the nuclear situation and, more
The roots of
generally, of the roots of war can be found in Anders and elsewhere.
the nuclear predicament are not confined to the ideologically —aligned arrangements of
nation-states,
but
penetrate
also
into
key
components
of
those
states,
their
8
and their supporting bureaucracies.
their controlling classes,
military,
And both
within the arrangements of states, what accounts in part for the arrangements, and in
key components
of
states,
the
science
for
super-states, to be achieved through military-oriented
in several
enables
domination,
and
which
involves
superiority by the
and
technology,
forms.
interrelated
surplus
the drive
Thus the push for
the accompanying privilege).
power and domination (and, often,
[nuclear]
feature is
a conspicuous and crucial
product
can be
accumulated
at home
(from
where enough
large nation-state,
is the
The main power-base
from abroad,
and
and
bled
from
nature) to proceed with military and bureaucratic ambitions and to found the highj
15
technology research and development means to ever more expendable powei and energy*
prospect of nuclear
war, it is not ultimately enough just to downgrade the mam power-base, the nation
state; it is also important to alter key components of the state, and, more
sweepingly, to remove trouble-making patterns embedded in all these social and
In changing
the
structural
political arrangements,
in
state
relations,
political
arrangements
chauvinistic relations .
relations,
but
in
the
eliminate
namely patterns of domination,
organisation,
human-animal
to
patterns manifested not only
relations,
white-coloured
human-nature
relations;
to
remove,
male-female
in
short,
However not everything needs to be accomplished at once; and
the cluster of damaging power and domination relations tied into war can be tackled
And there the problems can largely be narrowed to certain problems of
separately.
states and certain key components of states.
analysis he does offer of the problem with states, Schell repeats the
familiar false contrast of state expediency with morality, as a contrast between
The teaching that 'the end
""raison d’etat"" and the Socratic—Christian ethics.
justifies the means is the basis on which governments, in all times, have licensed
In what
themselves
to
commit crimes of
every
sort’
(p.134).
So
'states may do virtually
Schell then argues however, that
extinction nullifies end-means justification by destroying every end; but again the
argument is far from sound, and depends on human chauvinism (as under S2) combined
anything whatever in the name of [their] survival’.
with ontological
assumptions.
Even if all humans were
extinguished (as under SI)
ends could remain, for instance for nonhumans such as animals and extraterrestrials,
The ends-means argument can however be repaired to remove such
actual or not.
objections: instead it is claimed that extinction nullifies ends-means justification
by frustrating the realisation of every relevant end - meaning by 'relevant', in this
context, those ends the realisation of which the state appeals to in justification of
I6
its nuclear policies.
A nuclear war, even without human extinction but with severe
enough losses, would undoubtedly frustrate the realisation of relevant state ends.
9
So
even
from
an
perspective,
expediency
policies
super-state
open
are
severe
to
criticism, for example as motivationally irrational in the nuclear risks taken.
As to the part of the state and (state) sovereignty in war,
Schell leaves us in
A sovereign state is virtually defined as one that enjoys the right and
no doubt.
power to go to war in defence or pursuit of its interests (p.187).
War arises from
how things are; from the arrangement of political affairs via jealous nation-states
Indeed there is a two-way linkage between having sovereignty and capacity
(p.188).
to wage war.
to organise
On the one side, sovereignty is, Schell contends, necessary for people
for war.
sovereignty.
On the other
side, without war it
is impossible
to preserve
The
Neither of these contentions is transparently clear as it stands.
first is damaged by civil war and the like, the second by the persistence of small
the macro-state
Now that
nonmilitary states.
system is entrenched, it is however
easy for conservatives (in particular) to argue from the ""realities
life,
which include self-interest,
that
peace
are
arrangements
aggression,
readily
fear,
hatred.
as
dismissed
of international
is on this basis
It
unrealistic,
utopian,
even
(amusingly) as extremist (cf. p.L85).
Schell’s further
theme
nuclear
that
""war""
is not
war threatens,
however,
to
undermine his case against the sovereign state; for example, his ends-means argument
and the argument based on its nuclear-war making capacity.
theme needs much qualification,
Fortunately the not-war
and starts out from an erroneous characterisation of
war as ’a violent means employed by a nation to achieve an end’ (p.189): but this is
neither necessary nor sufficient for war.
very different
What is correct is that nuclear wars are
from previous conventional wars
(cf. WP).
Schell goes on
that war requires an end which nuclear ""war"" does not have.
to claim
But nuclear attacks can
certainly have ends (even if large nuclear wars cannot be won in the older sense: but
It is also claimed that war depends on weakness; on
not all wars or games are won).
one side being defeated
’no
happen,
But
what
one’s
these
on a decision by arms.
strength
sorts
of
fails
war
this doesn t
until both sides have been annihilated’
considerations
nuclear wars are not wars, but
But in nuclear
contribute
to
showing
is
(p.190).
again
that they are not wars of certain sorts,
not
that
e.g., not
just wars (because they fail on such criteria as reasonable prospect of success anu
improvement), not rational wars (in a good sense), and so on.
that conventional wars
have
argument
persisted
into
nuclear
times
does
damage
to
Schell’s
that nuclear
weapons have also ruined ""conventional"" wars, and his connected theme that the demise
of war
court
has left no means
of
appeal
has
mistaken propositions:
been
to finally settle disputes between nations, for the final
removed
(pp. 192—193) •
The
theme depends
on a
pair of
that concerning the demise of conventional war, and the idea
10
that
war of
some
sort has
to be
final ""court of appeal"" between nations (for
the
there are other types of contests that could serve, and there is also the possibility
of more cooperative behaviour,
joint referenda).
e.g.
imports the
The theme also
social-Darwinian assumption of Clausewicz (the ""logic of war
that war has to
theme)
proceed to the technological limit ~ as if war and violence were thoroughly natural
activities, independent of recognised social settings (for winning, surrender, etc.),
On the contrary, wars are parasitic on social organisations
and ruleless activities.
such as states and are governed by a range of understandings, conventions and rules.
They are a social phenomenon, with a rule structure, if not a logic.
Much capital has been made not merely from ""the logic of war
but from what is
now called ""the logic of deterrence"" and the ""logic of nuclear [strategic] planning .
The message that is usually supposed to emerge is that the massive arrangements the
world
is
entangled
now
in
are
perfectly
sound,
logical,
represents little more than a cheap semantical trick.
rational.
however this
Logic in no way justifies the
present arrangements, or anything like them, or renders them reasonable.
There are
logics of decision (as presented, e.g., for the classical case in Jeffrey) which can
be applied
in
strategic
planning;
but
yield specific results without
they do not
desirability measures being assigned to alternative outcomes, that is without values
being pumped in, extralogically .
There are various ways these value assignments may
be determined, to meet moral requirements or not; but in nuclear strategic planning
they have invariably been settled on the basis of expediency
however,
to
cover
something
like
’reasoning
(even from a national
fail:18 yet
threat of
further and
of
stresses (p.213)
threatening
use
interest viewpoint)
the success
this
considerations entering
into
the
’the illogic of deterrence’, for he emphasizes
For instance he
unreasonableness.
rationality
rational
and
In these terms, Schell, who like others enjoys playing with
the term ’logic of’, should write of
supposed
lor the most pait,
’logic of’ tends to be used very loosely, as a word of general commendation,
policy or strategy of’.
its
.
of deterrence
unjustifiable and
the disparity between the
weapons and
of nuclear
the
irrationality
of actually using them should the threat
doctrine depends on the credibility of
irrational use.
the
Indeed Schell wants to go still
locate a contradiction in deterrence (e.g.
but
the argument
depends on an interesting confusion of contradiction with cancellation,
along with
the assumption that deterrence involves cancellation.
irrational, it is immoral, but it is not inconsistent.
pp.z-01~2>;
Nuclear deterrence may well be
ft
NOTES
This is a revised version of ’Appendix 1. On the fate of mankind and the earth,
according to Schell, and to Anders' of my monograph referred to as WP, where
several points, only touched upon in this review, are further developed.
References are by way of authors' names or else through obvious acronyms, given
in the list of references which follows.
. The distinguishing term is from Foley's Nuclear Prophets, where many
leading anti-nuclear prophets are assessed. One well-known prophet not so
considered there is Jaspers, presumably because his main work comes out in
entirely the wrong direction. It gives heavy philosophical attire to the
better-dead-than-red abomination. A main argument against Jaspers so
presented is simple. However bad being red might become (at present it is
debatably worse than living under some of the totalitarian regimes the
free West props up), it still gives humans a further chance for good
lives, since regimes fall or can be toppled: but total annihilation
removes that all-important opportunity.
But of course Jaspers does not present his position so simply. Rather his
contention is that there are circumstances where, and principles for
which, a person or group of persons ought to sacrifice even their lives.
Freedom is such: a life worth living is a free life. But the latter point
can be granted without conceding that sacrifice is a possible means to it.
While the sacrifice of one or a few lives may be a possible (if dubiously
effective) way to free lives for others, certainly the sacrifice of all
lives is not a possible route to free lives for all, since no human lives
remain.
To this extent Schell is right (on p.131) in accusing Jaspers of
an each to all fallacy.
Jasper's idea that ""the free life that they try
to save by all possible means is more than mere life or lives"" breaks down
when applied to all participating people.
None can gain free lives by
extinction of all: that is not a possible route to life even.
. A detailed comparison of Schell and Anders' remarkably similar versions of
S2 is made in Foley JS.
. Should S2 appeal, as it may, to suitable communities of humans, SI will
require reformulation in similar terms; and the argument that follows
needs minor adjustment, with appropriate groups replacing individuals.
. Thus the Last Person argument, important in environmental ethics (as HC
explains), is no longer merely hypothetical, awaiting for instance the
remote death of the Sun, but assumes new urgency.
It is this sort of
argument that connects environmental ethics and nuclear ethics, at a
deeper metaphysical level.
The Bomb and Bulldozer are out of the same
technological Pandora's box.
Nuclear technology is not the only route to human extinction, nor the only
Pandora's box.
Biological and chemical means are perhaps even more
effective, and certainly can be more selective in what gets extinguished.
Nuclear extinction would presumably require a different and more massive
exchange than is usually assumed in nuclear war scenarios, with heavy
12
targeting
in
particular
of
Southern Hemispheric
internationally-recognised nuclear-free zones).
sites
(including
5. Nor do recent scientific studies claim as much.
The most intrepid of
these studies, Erlich and others, only contends that in certain worst-case
circumstances, ’the possibility of the extinction of Homo sapiens cannot
be excluded’ (p.1299).
The study admits that, in the scenario described,
’it seems unlikely ... Homo spaiens would be forced to extinctions
immediately ’, and the difficulties indicated in the way of long-term human
survival are exaggerated.
In particular, many of the drastic effects predicted for Northern mid
latitudes are reflected in very much milder form in equivalent Southern
latitudes.
For example, temperatures for regions with maritine climates
appear likely to vary by only a few degrees and perhaps neglibly for many
agricultural purposes after 100 days (cf. Turco and others, p.1237 case
29, and p.1286).
Similarly the extent of nuclear darkness and of surface
ultraviolet radiation will be appreciably less in the South and perhaps
minor for many crucial purposes, such as photosynthesis and human outdoor
activity, after 100 dayss (cf. the data in Benton and Partridge).
No doubt some scientifically respectable sections of the environmental and
peace movements have an interest in exaggerating the probable effects of
nuclear holocaust
for life on earth, much as many statesmen and
strategists have an interest in minimizing them.
And there is certainly
substantial margin for error and for variation in conclusions drawn.
For
Crutzen (p.59) is right that ’analyses of the environmental effects of a
global nuclear war remain
. . . uncertain .. . because of a lack of
information on various important processes [among other things] ... The
environment might become extremely hostile, because of hitherto overlooked
changes in the composition of the atmosphere*, again among other things.
Such uncertainty bodes considerable caution as rational.
The way to err
is clear.
6. Not
merely
by
technological
determinists
of
marxist
persuasion.
Hackworth, a former US general, argues by straight induction that if the
US military has a weapon it will use it.
7. The appalling theme that humans create past, present and future (etc.) is
repeated elsewhere, e.g. p.173.
8. For detailed refutation of these assumptions, see JB.
9. Anders is here (AA pp.244-5) relying upon a version of the argument from
perserverence, criticised in detail in Routley and Griffin.
10. An interesting converse of this theme is sometimes advanced, that no one
is responsible, the whole thing is out of control.
The technological
version of this no-responsibility theme is discussed below (fn 15). More
satisfactory is the theme that nuclear arrangements are out of political
control, but for reasons, in terms of vested interests in keeping nuclear
things going, which enable responsibility to be distributed.
The vested
interests, which bear considerable responsibility, include the military
13
weapons industry, and research and academic communities (cf. Barnaby).
Under pressures for re-election especially, politicians give in to these
powerful groups, so losing control of political processes.
The argument
is flawed at its final stage.
For many influential politicians either
belong to or represent vested interests.
Thus, though there is no doubt
some ’lack of control’, political processes tend rather to reflect vested
interests than to run out of political control.
11. Another example of spreading the responsibility runs as follows: ’The
self-extinction of our species is not an act that anyone describes as sane
or sensible; nevertheless, it is an act that, without quite admitting it
to ourselves, we plan in certain circumstances to commit’ (p.185).
Even
for most of the planners, extinction is presumably not part of ""the plan"",
but an unintended consequence; and most of us have little or no role in
the planning, enough of us even campaign against the planning.
Further
'the world ... chose the course of attempting to refashion the system of
sovereignty to accommodate nuclear weapons' (p.194): the world? This
connects of course with the faulty ideological argument from defence of
fundamentals, e.g. for liberty, for the ""free enterprise"" (USA) nation,
and against socialism.
12. A more detailed discussion is given in WP ^8, where too the case against
the state from nuclear dilemmas is elaborated.
13. Anders' explanation is elaborated in Foley; some of the themes are
presented more straightforwardly in Martin.
The incomplete list of items
given, to be investigated in a deeper analysis of the nuclear situation,
paraphrases Foley JS p.164.
14. These motivating drives form part of a larger integrated package,
comprising maximisation drives for power, knowledge, control, wealth,
energy, speed, satisfaction,
..., for the ""newer"" Enlightenment (but
Faustian) virtues.
Frequently there are attempts (the human failing for
excessive neatness and simplicity manifested) to reduce the package to one
main component, preference-satisfaction, for instance, or utility.
And
the type of drive is justified (especially for those who have it, but
worry about it) not only as virtuous, which it is not, but also as
rational, which again it is not.
Rationality, the deeply entrenched myth
has it, consists in maximisation, of a suitable mix of these virtues.
Maximisation of the objects of the drives runs, however, into limitation
The maximisation of self-interest
theorems and associated paradoxes
(individual or national) runs into Newcomb's paradox and special cases of
The maximisation of power, as
it such as Prisoners Dilemma situations.
the
Christian-lslamic
God,
encounters the paradox of
symbolised in
the
parallel
maximisation
of
knowledge,
paradoxes of
omnipotence,
or
There
are
no
consistent
objects
which
arc
omnipotent
omniscience.
the
The
drive
for
maximum
consistency,
often
taken
to
be
omniscient.
epitome of rationality, also leads to inconsistency in the case of more
important theories, such as arithmetic and set theory (by virtue of
Godel’s theorem and associated limitative theorems).
15. R & D,
though directed by military requirements and the arms race, also
14
drives the arms race.
science.
Its role is partly disguised by the myth of neutral
There have been attempts, not only by those committed to technological
determinism, to involve technology more deeply as the main, or single,
source of the nuclear fix (thus especially Mumford, in part thereby
anticipating Commoner’s parallel indictment of technology-choice in the
ecological fix).
It is technology, the mega-machine, running out of
control, that has brought us to this predicament, the nuclear abyss.
Sometimes this serves to exonerate states and their key components and
those who control them, for they are simply caught up by this out-ofcontrol machine; but sometimes the state itself is seen as a machine also
running out of control.
But technological determinism, like other
varieties of stronger (nonanalytlc) determinism, is false.
Nuclear
technology was selected and proceeded with, after a well-known political
dispute involving distinguished scientists; it was deliberated, funded and
promoted, while other alternatives were not.
Damaging technologies of the nuclear age were not inevitable, but
deliberately chosen by certain components of the large nation-states. And
much as they need not have been chosen, so they do not have to be
persisted with.
The fashionable inevitability/determinism themes admit
not only of refutation by bringing out the many choices made in persisting
with often recalcitrant technologies.
They also admit of being made to
look ridiculous.
If the Bomb is determined, as part of human evolution,
then if it functions (as it probably will, a matter also determined), it
will serve as a human population control device, a matter also determined.
That is, the Bomb has its fixed evolutionary place in human population
regulation!
16. This reformulation was proposed by N. Griffin, who suggested that the main
qualification can be inferred from Schell’s context.
17. Selecting the usual game theory setting sees to this almost automatically;
for it is then assumed that each player plays to maximize his or her own
advantage. Thus too the presumption in Walzer, p.277, that ’the logic of
deterrence’ is based on eye-for-eye and tooth-for-tooth assumptions.
18. Even the irrationality of retaliatory (or first-strike) use has been
contested, e.g. it has been wishfully thought that America will rise like
a phoenix from the radioactive ashes.
There is moreover a simple solution to Schell’s problem of the ""missing
motive"" for
retaliating to a large strike (p.204), namely, not a
retributive one, but an ideological one: eliminate the prospect of the
future dominance of the rival ideology.
Such a motive has been offered
for the conjectured targeting of Latin America.
19. An analogous confusion of negation with cancellation or obliteration
appears in recent US ""star-war"" thinking, where US missiles are supposed
to ""negate"" incoming USSR missiles.
Moral
paradoxes of deterrence
take a different direction.
For although
involving negation, they depend upon perhaps questionable interconnexions
of intensional functors.
One type of paradox (considered in WP §5, where
the immorality of deterrence is argued) derives from a policy of credibly
threatening war without however intending to proceed to war, though
credible threats [appear to] imply an intention to proceed. Another style
derives from acclaimed intention to reduce the number of nuclear missiles
when the persistent practice, which implies an intention, is to increase
the number.
This paradox is technically removed - how satisfactorily is
another matter - by a distinction between longer-term aims and immediate
practice,
a
time-honoured
method
of
removing
contradictions
by
conveniently discerned temporal distinctions.
REFERENCES
G. Anders,
AA.
Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen, C.H.
G. z\nders, Endzeitand Zeitenende: Gedanken
Munchen, 1972; referred to as AE.
zur
Beck, Munchen, 1956; referred to as
atomaren
F. Barnaby, ’Will there be a Nuclear War’, in Australia
M. Denborough), Croom Helm, Australia, 1983, 2-37.
I.J.
Benton
49-51.
and G.W.
Partridge,
’""Twilight
at Noon""
Situation,
and
Beck,
C.H.
War,
Nuclear
overstated', Ambio
(ed.
(1984)
13
B. Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology, Knopf, New York, 1972.
P.J. Crutzen, ’Darkness after a nuclear war', Ambio 13 (1984) 52-4.
M. Denborough (ed.), Australian & Nuclear War, Croom Helm, Australia, 1983.
P.R. Erlich and others, ’Long-term biological consequences of nuclear war’,
222 (1983) 1293-1300.
G. Foley,
'Jonathan Schell: Genius Brisbane, 1982; referred to as JS.
Philosopher
-
Rewrite
Man',
Science
typescript,
G. Foley, Nuclear Prophets. The True and the False, typescript, Brisbane, 1983.
D. Hackworth, 'A Soldier's Report’, Australia and Nuclear War,
Croom Helm, Australia, 1983, 209-12.
(ed. M. Denborough),
K. Jaspers, The Future of Mankind, (trans. E.B. Ashton), University of Chicago Press,
16
1961.
B. Martin, Grass Roots Strategy Against War, Freedom Press, Nottingham, 1984.
L. Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, 2 vols., Harcourt Brace, New York, 1970.
G.F. Preddey and others, Future Contingencies 4. Nuclear Disasters, A Report to the
Commission for the Future, Government Printer, Wellington, New Zealand, 1982.
R. Routley and N. Griffin, ’Unravelling the meanings of life’, Discussion Papers in
Environmental Philosophy #3, Australian National University, Canberra, 1982.
R. Routley, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond, Research School
Sciences, Australian National University, 1980; referred to as JB.
of
Social
R. Routley, War and Peace I. On the Ethics of Large-Scale Nuclear War and Nuclear
deterrence and the Political Fall-Out, Discussion Papers in Environmental
Philosophy #5, Australian National University, 1984; referred to as WP.
R. and V. Routley, ’Human chauvinism and Environmental ethics’, in Environmental
Philosophy (ed. D. Mannison and others), Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University, 1980; referred to as HC.
J. Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Knopf, New York, 1982; referred to as S./F.
R.P.
Turco and others, ’Nuclear winter: global
explosions’, Science 222 (1983) 1283-92.
consequences
M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Basic Books, New York, 1977.
of
multiple
nuclear
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 71: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/4a68c59658b0327290244eaa123b1a1c.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0
103,https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/103,"Box 71, Item 2: Working draft of Culture, philosophy, and approaches to the natural environment","Typescript draft, with handwritten emendations.
","Unnumbered paper from collection, item number assigned by library staff.
","Richard Sylvan","The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 71, Item 2","Antipodean Antinuclearism: (Re)constructing Richard Routley/Sylvan's Nuclear Philosophy",,"This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.","For all enquiries about this work, please contact the Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.",,"[19] leaves. 12.25 MB. ",,Manuscript,"https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:32ab889",,"WORKING DRAFT
CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND APPROACHES TO THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
Many of you know that Canberra was originally
Griffin.
This
talk
is
dedicated
by
designed
simply
not
an
key elements of the Western industrial paradigm, especially
making
Servant
the
Nature
of
Man,
'land
to
...
be
the
accorded
He rejected
'concentration
discerned instead elements of a
and
His approach was holistic, and
different 'consciousness' (the word is his).
took
the
and
architect
designer but one of Australia’s early deeper ecologists.
landscape
Burley
You may not know that Griffin, an
to him.
American who migrated to Australia in 1913, was
on
Walter
respect
he
due to a highly developed and
perfected living organism not to be exterminated or treated as dead material, or
as
mere section of a map’.
a
Canberra, now no mere section of map, is perhaps
the best approximation anywhere to a deeper ecological city;
but it is not only
removed from Griffin’s original conception but far from deep ecological ideals.
*
*
*
*
*
The objective of the larger investigation, of which this
is
part,
to
gauge
the
extent
to
Australian
which
contrasted with American culture, contains developable
will
underpin
under which many
a
sketches
a
culture, especially as
elements
(seeds)
which
different political framework from the bastardised capitalism
people
presently
labour
and
local
environment
frequently
It is not necessary to see the present political arrangements and the
suffers.
political course
interested
in
charted
as
environmentally
alternative structures:
or
socially
disastrous
to
be
it is enough, for example, to view them
as far from satisfactory, or very far from
worlds,
talk
those
of
the
best
of
attainable
to be interested in the prospects of turning things around somewhat, to
increasing ecological resistance [negative action j against environment
like^and ecological construction [direct positive action].
the
and
vandalism^/
There are several distinctive features of Australian culture that
for
the
especially
hope,
damage^?,
grounds
give
remarkable level of environmental activism that has
It is worth trying to pull together
somehow emerged among the people.
some
of
these features of the culture, to look at ways of furthering the valuable parts,
and increasing the level of concern and activism.
Without doubt
attitudes
different
towards
practices,
and
cultures
have
the
approaches,
different
different
Indeed appreciation of,
environment.
practices towards, and respect for the natural environment are highly culturally
dependent:
for
compare,
American Jews and American Indians.
instance,
Most
nonimperial cultures had ~ and where they still survive uncorrupted still havi.
less
much
exploitative
industrial
and
to
not
practices
whose
North,
exploitation
approaches
the
merely
environmental
control
lost
their
of
local
typically under the missionary, colonial or imperial domination.
in
But occasionally, notably
retained
gross
permit
the
of
those
than
but to a marked extent depend upon such practices.
vandalism
Mostly these more benign cultures have however
environments,
environment
sufficient
autonomy
the
to
adjacent
Pacific,
regional
cultures
have
slow or even halt environmental destruction.
Thus, for example, rainforest damaging projects have been delayed or blocked
in
Melanesia largely through Melanesian attitudes to the land.
One important way then to try to slow environmental degradation, especially
in
the
South,
is
to
foster
both
sweepingly, regional cultural autonomy;
socialism
and
indigenous
certain
for
cultural
instance
land rights movements.
differences
to
support
way
of
Melanesian
For, where the cultures have
not been excessively corrupted by Northern influences, this is
rapid
and, more
a
comparatively
activating alternative paradigms to the dominant Northern social
The question arises whether
paradigms.
elsewhere
the
in
also
can
differences
serve
Antipodes, in particular in Australia, to at least assist in
transition to different
less
environmentally
social
exploitative
paradigms.
transition is unlikely to occur unless it is based on the culture.
a
Such
cultural
Can
features of the culture and the social life be used to foster and make requisite
differences?
In the case of Australia, a basis
is
there
both
the / land
in
* U
culture,
and things
and
the
SCALE OF INCREASE
individualistic ethos
inacceptability of socialist institutions
inegalitarian attitudes
POSITIVE
inegalitarian practices
ITEMS (PER
level of consumerism
CAPITA
maximization quest
WHERE
imperialist drive
relevant)
extent of violence
police and military commitment
high technology involvement
functional rationality
environmental inactivism
USA
AUSTRALIA
SCALE OF
INCREASE
level of urbanisation
legal obstacles to environmental action
NEGATIVE
{practices, such as dedication of
wilderness
ITEMS
administrative delays in implementing
environmental practices, such as
pollution requirements, recycling, etc.
Thus there are some offsetting negative items as well as positive items
13
in
the
contrast.
themes
Since, however, most of these contrasting elements bear on
first
for
opposed to American, it appears that prospects
indeed
This
better.
important
environmental
spectators
the
applying
culture
are
theme requires ela^boration and confirmation.
The task can profitably be combined with others:
for
the
rival paradigms in a way favourable to Australian culture as
of
diagram
in
an
with
there is much work
empirical
here
both
and for environmental
bent
activists.
A first task is to separate out what is known, what requires
and their eommund'B, distinguishing
theses:
/
Let us focus on transition theses,
ought to be done (ideologically)
what
and
normative
and
factual
transition
factual transition thesis, that Western (European) culture is
weak
A
firstly
confirmation,
^/undergoing a transition away
from
the
dominant
confirmed by several Northern sociologists (e.g.
better results could be obtained in Australia;
paradigm,
social
has
been
Presumably similar or
Marsh).
but appropriate samplings of the
community have not been done, analysed and so on - environmental sociology being
a
neglected
undoubtedly
field
in
Another
Australia.
weak
transition
factual
thesis
holds, namely that since 1960 a significant percentage of the
also
ertreii human community in specifiable advanced Western countries such as Australia
have
to adopt main assumptions of the alternative environmental paradigm,
come
but again comparative—figures
sociological
work
are
entirely
of
data
to
Though
impressionistic
tells us that environmental activism is greater in Australia
than OSA - indeed more intensive than
piece
lacking.
anywhere
else,
an
immensely
build upon - we lack solid confirmation.
sociogeographers to do.
14
important
There is much for
Throughout, as you may have noticed, a normative transition thesis has been
largely
taken
granted,
for
that
generally, l&ght to^undergoing
Western
and
paradigms
an
towards
and
to
rguments.
the
repeat
furthermore
alternative.
environmental
thesis is argued for in environmental philosophy, and
time
dominant
from
away
variations (such as those of advocated corporate
their
capitalism an.d of the post-industrial society) ,
transitivity*
shift,
paradigm
major
a
culture, indeed Western culture
Australian
to
ought
be
complex normative
That
isn’t
there
fortunately
It is also argued against there, but> to sum up
the opposition case, unconvincingly.
Given then that the transition is going on,
and
to
ought
going
be
on,
ought then to be going on with greater rapidity, how is it hastened, how
indeed
do environmental activists
emerging
are
enough.
clear
it
encourage
in
Australia.
Preliminary
answers
Not only should activists be continuing with what
I
they
are
directing
doing
organisations
the
and
environmental
and
those
like,
to
supposed
action
(public)
further
them,
of
industrial
prluwryprimarily,
regulate
not merely by membership drives and environmental
influence
to
and
swing
the
should
education.
be
dominant^ regional culture , for the
w
potential appears to be there for a considerably greater change
been achieved.
sources
They should also be aiming to increase their support bases , but
organisations.
endeavouring
the
against
than
has
thus/
There are two major parts to this further practice which can run
in tandem, a more negative and a more positive part:
0
More negatively.it
z
involves
curring
down
and
countering
the
flow
propaganda
in favour of the dominant paradigms both locally but especiall
the North.
That is important in reversing the extent
It
includes
Northern
from
co-^option
a range of activities some with solid bases in local culture, such
as gently lopping
anti-American
of
of
off
the
tall
poppies
and anti-Nor them activities.
15
pedalling
the
stuff,
and
careful
The latter practices (which should
not of course reduce merely to personally directed antagonism) fit in well
aims, such as independent and nonaligned defence
environmental
regional
other
with
policies
•
More positively, it consists in promoting and adapting other
despised
features
It
alternative paradigms
commonly
is
intellectuals
Northern
are,
of
course,
like
those
nonmaximizing making-do socialistic ones,
of
appreciation
natural
local
The features to tye
Lawrence).
cultural characters are held (e.g
I
the
egalitarian,
along
environments.
with
the
consider the effects of these, decently applied, in
or
antiauthoritarian,
A
rapidly increasing
taken
to
things,
conomics, in local
As for mateship, sure it could use widening, a pain problem being its I hra/sv
restriction in
communities
promoted
in Fair go and Enough* s
with egalitarian methods as
combines
markets.
cultural
Nonmaximizing, for example, is
reflected in the She’ll be right and It'11 do approach dften
enough:
and
note, that are responsible for the low repute in which some of the
ambassadors,
and
commonly
culture that work directly towards themes of
Australian
of
also
to male relationships:
(including
cultural transformation:
nonhumans).
but encourage
its
extension
So, to conclude, the potential is^for
we must help to realise it
FOOTNOTES
1.
The term ’approaches’ is intended to include both theory and practice,
espoused ideology and behaviour.
2.
They did not go under because of the weakness of their intellectual
positions.
At bottom their religious beliefs, for example, were no more
ridiculous than those of Christianity. Typically they were much weakened by
new diseases, and overwhelmed by new technology often applied in violent
fashion.
3.
Another past philosophical basis for environmental philosophy, American
naturalism, seems to have been little developed, despite the promise some
have seen in it.
16
both
4.
By integrity is meant much more than retaining representative samples of
this and that system or species; not representative southern sassafras,
parma wallabies and Torres Strait Islanders, but sufficiently many.
17
P
X
c
3
&
X
O
P
P
x
X
3
C
P
HX
X
5
O
3
P4
Hrt
CD P
P4
H*
CD
X
P
H
CD
X
p.
P
X
O
SS
CD
X
CD
X
H>
CJ4
F—1
CD
Hi
CD
Qu
Hp
CD
CD
p
X
H
P
P
H«
P
CD
3
nJ
P4
P
X
C
H
CD
.
CD
3
CD
P
rt
H
CD
Hi
c
cd
I
cd
p
u
CD
on
3
tO
X
o
p
CD
CD c
o 3
I P
Hi
o
X
X
CD
5!
P
X
Qu
P
F—1
Hrt
HP
rt
tn
CD
—
O
S
P
t—
H3
H>
X
CD
Qu
o
X
3 CD
CD
P P
P P4
P HnJ
X
H
O
Qu
c
CD
rt
H<
CD
x
—
X
—
X '
P
H.
r+
P
CD
p
p
o
IE
p
CD
H
i
H- P
X O
p
CD
X
P4
O
P
<
h
O
<
p.
P
HO
P
x h-
o
cd
X
4
X
X
—
P H
P CD
Qu on
C
■d F_u
X P
o rt
Hl CD
H* QX
X
H
P
3
CD
as
O
H
X
X
h
3
X
P
3
P
H
X
CD
H
O
P
P
X
H- H
rt P
P4 Qu
X
X
X
Qu
3 P
p CD
X O
p 3
rt 3
CD P
X
—
p
X
C
H
P
&
Hi
O CD
H P
<
H* H*
rt H
P O
CD P
3
X CD
P
rt
—
n>
nJ
r~-x
X
CD
c
X
O <
P P
Qu X
H
CD
P
X
CD
H
P
P
X
C
H
CD
P4
Hrt
P
X
O
3
P
H
X
4
X
nJ
v.---- z
dp
z—X
—
X
X
—
X
—
P
P
rt
C
H
CD
O
<
CD
H
tJ
O
3
Hp
p
p
CD
CD
'•—Z
—
CD P
<—i. p
CD C
CD 3
XX
CD X
—
X
X
X
z—X
—
——
——
P
<
Hp
o
p
3
CD
P
rt
P
H P
CD F-*
CD
CD
c
H
CD P
P rt
O C
H P CD
—
—
—
2
P
d
X4
CD
rt
b-t>
o
H
CD
3 nj CD
p H P
X o
H- Qu. z—
3 C 5
H- CD HN rt P
p. H- H«
3
P
on H- P
rt F-u
—
CD
P
CD
CD
Qu
o
5
CD
cd
Hn
—
—
X
z—X
zO
V_ z
—
—
£ rt
o C/D
ns &
H rt
O t—1
QuX
C
cd nJ
rt X
p. p.
< <
CD p
rt
3 CD
CD
p o
£
P P
fr----
£Lp
CD H‘
nJ g
H- O
X X
P CD
PQu
cd nj
p P
CD rt
s-- z H CD
P
P4
H«
nj
X
3
—
I
HI
d
Qu
H<
p.
CD Qu
rt Q
P4 P
O F-*
P HP
rt
HCD
\
CD
O
3
nJ
CD
rt
Hrt
H<
CD
X
p
X
CD
Qu
—
X
4
X
Pm
X
___
,-- s
zO
_ Z
—
X
X
—---
P
CD
P4
p.
CD
<
CD
3
CD
P
rt
p
nJ
nJ
X
o
<
CD
Qu
p X
H
P
on
—
/—s
zO
V-- /
—
X
p
H- -2
3 P
P 3
H
X H
CD
zO
V-- /
—
X
f-- V
3
V_ /
X
—
X
/-- X
/O
/
—-
CD
P
CD
O
C
X
P
on
CD
Qu
*■<
ZD
X
X
X
p
rt
X
HP
F—1
CD
O
P
P
c
3
CD
X
HP
3
x
cd
CD
c
F—1
X
C
X
P
F-~*
P rt P
on X Q.
X. C
On Q> 1
p. p. H-
p
p
X
c
o
3
3
o
P
CD
X
P
nj cd
X
HO
P
P
X
X
X
C
X
CT4
P
P
CD
P
rt
x
P
F—1
HP
CD
Qu
n
>-<
CD
CD
P
rt
X
CD
Q->
4
X
X
X
O
X
Qu
CD
X
CD
Qu
CD
i
P
CD
P
F—1
CD
oq
X
p
4
X
X
X
X
i
x
o
=£
CD
H
>0
’■P X
H C
X
Qu
p
H
P P
P
CD
CD
O
___________________
—
On
CD
tn
o on
P o
rt
CD
H
HP
p
3
t-4
CD
P
P
X
CD
a
H
X
X
X
O
HH
O
HI
on
X
—
X
CD
o
X
o
CD
X
X
X
X
X
nJ
i
tn
X
CD
o
a
—
r4
tn tn
n
H
—
n
G
tn
X
H
C
n
tn
nJ
n>
'■—Z
z—>
X
X
^x
—
—
X
UD UD u
o X o
CD >
i—■i H i—i
> tn
t>
F—1
z
cn
X
H
u
F—1
CD
2
n x
nj
>
X x
H
tn z
H i—!
U
tn o
—
tn o
tn t-4
n>
•n td
*— '
H
—
CD
CD
O
P
O
3
HCD
2
P
rt
CD
H
HP
Hu
CD
O
n>
tn
s'
—
on
H
o
s!
rt
P4
■I
1
X
>
X
1—1
o
X
x
o
n>
i—i
X
X
o
X
F—F
X
1—1
CD
>
X
X
tn
X
X
i
nJ
F—1
CD
X
X
t
o
x
>
X
X
X
tn
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
o
1—1
o
X
1
>-z
X
>
1—u
X
X
X
■n
X
o
X
!—1
<
X
X
z—X
Ln
cd
o
X
>
X
>
to
x
tn
1
a*
ex rt
d a*
n 0
a d
a- P
O a4
d a*
a- a
d
X
CD
P
a
d
p
a
a
a
CD
a
X__ z
a
a0 0
Hi d
P
d a
P aa a
a X
0
z—X
CD 0
a a
0 CD
a X—l.
a- CD
p CD
a a
a- a«
CD 0
d
a a xr
CD a
2 d
0 a
a CD
a- 7Q
O a
d p
X.
a
aHi 0
P d
CD
a 0
Hi
<
p a
a CD
d P
CD P
O
• d
•
CD p —
ex a
a*
a
X
CD 0
a d
a d
CD p
t—1. a
CD a*
a4
X
a
p
a
CD
d
a
aa
H.
a
P
a
P
aCD p
in X
Hi
a
CD
CD
d4
d
0
a
0
Cre
x
p
CD
H.
CD
d
CD
CD
•«
a
0
a
CD
a
CD
O
a
O
OQ
a-
a
a p
CD
P P
a
p
a
a
d
P
d
X
P
a
p
O
p
d
a2
P
a
p
CD
a
a
0
a2
a*
a
p
hD
DO
a
0
hD
a
aP
a
CD
p ta
p
2
0
a
a>
0
d
a
CD
d
aQQ
d
Z
P
a
d
a
CD
d
CD
C
a
a
d*
O
P
r+
aa
CD
r+
d
H
CD
z
CD
a
CD
d
a
aHi
a-
CD
CD
CD
p
a a
CD
p p
a a
p d
d a
CD CD
CD
ex pu
CD
a
aCD
P
a
CD
a
X
a z
CD
o
a
r+
a
o
a
a
a
O
y
3
CD
a
a
hi
p
d
a
P
a
a*
a
a
a2
d
d
d
a
a«
CD
P
p
a
d
0
a
CD
OQ
a
tx
X
P CD P
cd oq s
d
CD a p
CX CO d
rt ex
aO o
d a
V» ex
CD
U a
M
O •
a
H- F—4
CD CD
CD OQ
P
F-1
er a
hi
p
X
o
a
P >
d 3
cad
p a
rt CD
art a
d CD
rt p
CD CD
P a
X._ z <
CD
P
< z""0
I—if-]
?o z
o m
z XJ
i
s hl hi
Z
>—]
>
ta
hi z c
on a tn
Odd
""d \ i—<
saw
a X H
n H tri
t- s
O '
r-x >
cd
CD
a p
a
a
d
CD
a
d
a
CD
P
—
——
—•
DO
a- O CD
O CD 0Q
a d aCD p 0
d -• d
a
p
x—z p a
O a.
ex CD d
CD a- cd
Hl p aCD aoo
d1
d
CD z-> er
CD d 0
0 d
d h
• a
0
0
ex
CD
aa
aa
c Hi
X
X
X
2
H*
F—4
a-
Hi
O
n
d
p
s. •
Z
P
rt
H«
O
d
P
F-
P
a
a
a*
CD
cd a*
d ""d
\ P
£ a
O aa <
ex
CD
Hi
CD
d
n
CD
z-> a
r—x
zO
X
kd a
o rt
£ CD
CD a
a d
i p
CT rt
d a aa o <
o
CD
3 CD
H- a P
d VJ rt
a
CD
d P c
a d CD
x—z £X rt
d
a
CD
X
""d
CD
a
rt
P
Cd a
zO tn
hl DO
H z
a cd
n n
a 0
hi a
hl U
a 0
XI
> z--- X
zO X
> X__ z
td
an
CD
2
H
z
>
z
1—1
O
s: o
hi
CCD
H
hi
Z
Z
hi
Z
H
>
H
0
Dd
1—i
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Box 71: Unlisted and Untitled Boxes",https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/files/original/67b27de117524030d45b6db0a625bad2.pdf,Text,"Draft Papers",1,0