Many Argue That the Existence of Nuclear Weapons Makes Just

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The Answer is It seems that the argument for why nuclear weapons goes something like this: Nuclear arms are so many and so destructive, and so easy to use, that it is reasonable to think that at some point during a future conventional conflict a nuclear arm will be used by some state. The likely response to a nuclear attack is a proportional nuclear retaliation. And thus, very quickly, countries are destroyed, and massive human and environmental damage with lasting effects occurs. This is just as possible in a just war as in an unjust war. The damage by a nuclear conflict is so bad that the results are unjust for any reason.
Johnson argues against this by claiming that this threat of escalation from conventional to nuclear war is used to equate conventional and nuclear war by the adherents of the above argument. Thus anyone arguing for any type of war ends up arguing for nuclear holocaust. This, he claims is simply not so. Arguing for a just war is arguing for only a just conventional war and nothing more. And just war theory applies only to conventional wars. Second, he goes on to make the empirical claim that there have been many wars in the nuclear age and no one of them have been nuclear. Thus the nuclear claim against just war theory becomes moot because escalation does not occur. Then, just war theory is perfectly useful in the current environment because a war never starts out nuclear, it starts out conventional, and therefore just war theory applies to it.
A response to this may be that escalation has not occurred yet. The problem with nuclear capability is that it only takes one small nuclear war to do permanent and horrendously devastating damage. A holocaust only takes one escalation to occur. And since a just war is only just on one side, it seems that it is still just as likely as any other type of war to escalate to a nuclear level. Being just is itself no protection from this. Therefore, it is in the best interest of everyone involved to simply not wage war.

Many Argue That the Existence of Nuclear Weapons Makes Just

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