Is Unilateral Disarmament a Moral Choice?

In 1959, after his early victories in the African-American freedom struggle, Martin Luther King Jr. visited India to learn more about Gandhian non-violence in its country of origin. At the end of that visit he made “an appeal to the people and government of India…to call for universal disarmament, and…declare itself for disarmament unilaterally”[1]. Unsurprisingly, his suggestion was not taken up, although India did take a leading role in the non-aligned movement. Notwithstanding an early stand against nuclear weapons, India was to test its own just fifteen years later. The nation that gained independence from its colonial masters through peaceful non-violent means was determined to preserve its freedom by building up a modern military that included nuclear weapons. Examining the moral choices that confront a modern state that wants to live in peace, both inside and outside its borders, as well as meet the economic aspirations of its citizens, we find that India partially made the correct choice when it failed to heed King’s advice. Developing nuclear weapons was correct, but building up a modern army, navy and air force with heavy weapons and almost a million personnel was a waste of valuable resources.

Disarmament Defined

As the word can have a wide range of meanings, first of all I need to define what I mean by disarmament. I do not intend it to mean that all offensive weapons of any kind are to be outlawed, and that even the police forces are not allowed to carry guns. That would open the state to being ruled by criminal gangs and thugs. Most reasonable persons will accept that small arms which allow the individual to defend herself, lawfully regulated and registered, would not be a violation of disarmament. As Teichman notes, Quakers who are otherwise against the violence of war are not against the need for armed police and the “violence of the magistrate”[2]. Small sea and aircraft such as coast guard cutters and helicopters needed to defend the state against pirates, smugglers and terrorists could also be used. Armored personnel carriers, protected bunkers at the borders and reinforced concrete shelters for essential services and civil servants would also be allowed. Heavy weapons, missiles, fighters, long-range bombers, artillery, battleships and frigates would be banned, as well as weapons of mass destruction of any kind. Thus the state would have a self-defense capability to a certain extent, but would be unable to take offensive action against other states. This is similar to the conditions imposed on Japan and Germany after World War II. In the Indian context, this would mean that while the army, navy and air force would need to be disbanded and its equipment disposed off, the paramilitary forces such as the Border Security Force, the Coast Guard, Central Reserve Police Force, and the state police and civil defense forces would be retained.

Threats to a Nation

We next need to examine the threats that a modern state such as India faces. These could be internal, such as armed insurrection or terrorism by a group that does not feel that the participative democratic processes have worked for them. Assuming that heavy weaponry could not have been brought into the country or seized by such a group, this threat could be dealt with by the police forces. For example, the past troubles in Punjab or the current problems with the Maoists need to be tackled with a combination of political and police action. Disarmament does not affect the outcome in these cases as bombing, strafing or use of heavy weapons would not be appropriate.
In the case of external threats, there are four possibilities. Firstly, countries that share a border with India, possibly along with their allies, could attempt to take control of border areas because they covet the resources available there. The best defense against an enemy being able to hold onto such an acquisition for too long would be the creation of participative democratic institutions and polity throughout the state. As Machiavelli notes, an invader would “always need the backing of the local people to take over a province”[3]. Holding on to the new acquisition, even if it was acquired through treachery, is difficult: “anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to its freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it”[4]. In any case, the persons who helped the invader “in the hope of bettering themselves…find themselves deceived…when they discover that things have got worse…(as) a new prince must always harm those over whom he assumes authority, both with his soldiers and with a thousand other hardships that are entailed in a new conquest”[5]. Thus the best defense against acquisition is freedom, the rule of law and participative democracy.
This threat can be mounted in more subtle forms: aggressors could “under the cloak of economic, military and technical aid…dominate the economic and military structures of…nations”, or take over “by raising and manipulating puppet governments”[6]. In addition, corporations or criminal gangs could gain control of a state. These are once again threats that would not be fought using a modern army, but rather with participative democracy and the rule of law.
The second threat is blocking access to trade, especially essential resources from other countries. This could take several forms ranging from blocking participation in banking, transportation, or commercial transactions, and export controls etc. For example, it is illegal for persons and corporations in the US to trade with Cuba. Even travel is restricted, in spite of the presence of large numbers of Cuban immigrants in the US. While a blockade of this kind cannot be overcome by armed forces, a strong navy can prevent the blockade of ports and protect cargoes. India, Malaysia and Singapore cooperate to keep the Straits of Malacca safe for ships by combating piracy. However, as pirates seldom have access to large vessels, the navies of these countries don’t need battleships to fight them.
The third form of aggression is from terrorists who have an agenda to destroy the way of life or are against the ideology or theology of the state. Al Qaeda does not plan to invade and take over the US, but objects to its ideological positions and actions taken by the US to promote its interests in the world. However, as Al Qaeda has no large economic or physical structures that can be targeted and destroyed, but rather operates under cover within otherwise peaceful societies, the use of modern weaponry to target it is limited. On the contrary, in Afghanistan the civilian deaths that accompany NATO airstrikes blur the moral difference between the terrorists and the forces that fight them in the eyes of the populace.
Finally we have the case when a powerful nation wages war in support of its ideological stance, for access to resources, or to support an ally. The United States waged a war in Vietnam in order to prevent the free communist northern part of the country from freeing the southern part from French colonial rule, as it was afraid that this would trigger a series of communist takeovers of newly emerging nations all over the world; the so-called domino effect. Escalating from advisory and training missions established in 1954, the US was to participate in a rapidly escalating ground war, as well as use napalm, defoliants, high explosives and cluster bombs not only in the conflict, but also on the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. The proceedings edited by Duffet catalog the illegal and immoral acts perpetrated by the US government on a people half-way around the world. The United States Air Force considers all military, economic, political and psychosocial components of a state as legitimate targets. The last includes “the moral strength of the people as manifested in their internal stability, unity, national will…this is often reduced in terms of morale”[7]. This is the justification for cluster bombing of civilian targets that include schools, hospitals, factories and farms, where defoliants were also used to destroy crops.
In three of the four possible threats that are sketched above, invasion, blockade and terrorism, a modern military with heavy weapons cannot be used as a defense. To defend itself from being divided up amongst its neighbors, a state could use such an army to guard its frontiers, but the best strategy is to ensure that its citizens could keep up a prolonged insurgency against the occupiers, and make it too expensive to hold onto. The most powerful military force in the world is finding that it needs political solutions in Iraq, rather than just more troops. However when subjected to an overwhelming force that seeks to destroy rather than acquire, there is only one defense: offense. If North Vietnam had nuclear weapons and long range missiles capable of reaching US population centers, the extensive bombing of its cities could never have been considered by the US.
So far we have discovered that most external and internal threats can be overcome without a large modern military force, except that the ability to strike a decisive blow against an enemy can act as a strategic deterrent. Thus we see that disarmament in terms of dismantling the modern heavy military forces is a moral choice as long as the following three specific measures are taken.

Three-step Disarmament Program

The first step is the creation of a free participative democracy with the rule of law and ensuring that the minimum social needs of food, shelter, health care and education are met. This provides channels for internal dissension to be resolved peacefully, and external parties have few wedge issues to use to divide the populace. The ultimate goal is a civilian populace involved in their government at local, state and federal levels, and united in their determination to preserve it. Even if external aggressors manage to take parts of the state for themselves, the next step that needs to be taken will help ensure that they fail.
The second measure that has to be taken is the development of police and paramilitary forces with light weaponry and armor well integrated with the populace. These forces can be used to patrol the border, against terrorists and criminals and also in case of natural disasters. By having short service commissions in these forces and creating a reserve force in the population, it provides a pool for a quick call-up in case of threat, or trained insurgents in case a resistance movement is needed against an occupier. This is the model followed by the Swiss and copied successfully by Israel. By focusing on self-defense by a trained citizenry, rather than creating a force capable of external aggression, the state has a mobile and flexible force that is useful in peacetime as well as during war.
The third and final measure is the development of long-range strategic weapons including nuclear weapons that can deter a potential aggressor. The stalemate of mutually assured destruction, and the negative moral consequences of threatening to use weapons of mass destruction against civilian targets notwithstanding, this is the most efficient way of assuring the safety of its populace. Is it really such a bad moral choice after all? Teichman[8] argues that a weak populace facing genocide can, if embarked in a just war, “do whatever is judged essential to win”.
One fundamental moral concern for a state is the safety and security of its citizens. Assuming that a state treats its citizens well, provides equal political and social opportunities for their advancement and does not provoke its neighbors, it should be able to live peacefully without external aggression. In the aftermath of the Japanese defeat in World War II, Ho Chi Minh was able to free Vietnam from centuries of foreign rule, first by the Chinese and then by the French and Japanese. But the country was divided and it took almost twenty years of fighting till it was reunited in 1975. During this time the government of the northern part was unable to fulfill its moral obligation to protect its citizenry from the attacks by the US, and in fact these attacks spread to Laos and Cambodia. The only defense against these attacks by a super-power would have been a strategic long-range weapon system capable of hitting targets in the US. This is the reason why the war was in Vietnam and not in China or the Soviet Union.

Objections

There can be at least three objections to this position on disarmament. The first argument is that of the pacifists: you can not make peace by preparing for war. According to Teichman, while there are many forms of pacifism which hold that war is intrinsically and essentially evil, they are wrong when they say that there are absolutely no situations in which taking up arms would be the lesser evil in a forced choice. Preparation for this forced choice is morally right. But this does not mean it is right to choose war when there is no forced choice[9].
Secondly, while national defense is the justification for developing the strategic weapon systems, a change in the political climate of the country could lead to it being used for offensive actions, both militarily and morally. Alternatively the weapons may be taken over by terrorists, hence it is better not to build them in the first place. This is a difficult argument to refute, but as long as adequate safeguards are built into the triggering systems and the control of the weapons is jointly held by the three branches of government, the executive, judiciary and legislature, it is a controllable risk.
Finally, it could be argued that the country could join into a mutual defense pact with other countries that would guarantee its safety in case of aggression. There are several arguments against this suggestion. The United Nations is supposed to provide this protection, but is too unwieldy and racked by the interests of the permanent members of the Security Council to be effective. Joining military pacts such as NATO require the country to take an ideological position that in fact can have the opposite effect: instead of guaranteeing peace, it will guarantee the addition of specific enemies to the roster of potential aggressors. A good example of a coalition coming to the rescue was the 1991 expulsion of Iraq from its invasion of Kuwait. It could however be argued that if Kuwait had been considered to be a prickly acquisition rather than a rich country with a small native population outnumbered by expatriate workers who would turn tail as soon as it was attacked, the attack would never have taken place in the first place.
While we have been exploring events and threats that a country may be subjected to, we haven’t as yet explored legitimate uses of aggression. We have recently had several examples where intervention was used and was somewhat effective, and others where it should be used. Bosnia, Sudan, Cambodia are all examples where external aggression was used to control internal oppression. Darfur, Myanmar, North Korea and possibly Zimbabwe are places where we would like to see external aggressors help free an oppressed people. But the mixed results in many of these interventions, even if they were UN sponsored and used peace keeping troops from member countries, as well as the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, mean that this cannot be a good reason to involve heavy military forces. For police actions and natural disasters, the light paramilitary approach proposed will work.

Conclusion

Teddy Roosevelt is credited with saying: “Carry a big stick, but tread softly”. While we should be wary of taking support for a moral position from the adventurer who built his political career on the fictional exploits of the Rough Riders in Cuba, there is much to be said for his advice. Countries that have neglected to build strong internal defenses but have relied on heavy fortifications, like the Maginot line, have often been surprised by an enemy more flexible or amoral than themselves; the Germans were willing to wage war on neutral Belgium to go around the strong defenses of the French in World War I. Those who have relied solely on the morale and fighting power of its citizenry, like North Vietnam have suffered unnecessarily from the aggression of a super-power.
I have proposed the use of a deterrent threat that if carried out may be considered to be morally wrong. It could be argued that even if it was not actually carried out, but it averted war, from a Utilitarian point of view, this is better. For an Absolutist both the threat and the preparation that is needed in order to effectively make it are as bad a performing the deed[10]. However, until war is abolished for ever, I have no choice but to support the Utilitarian position.

Works Referenced

Duffet, John, Ed., Against the Crime of Silence: Proceedings of the Russell International War Crimes Tribunal. New York: O’Hare Books, 1968.
King, Martin Luther, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Ed. Clayborne Carson. New York: Warner Books, 1998.
Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince. Tr. and Ed. Robert M. Adams. New York: Norton, 1992.
Teichman, Jenny, Pacifism and the Just War: A Study in Applied Psychology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.
[1] King, pg. 129
[2] Teichman, pg 31 & 40
[3] Machiavelli, pg 5
[4] Machiavelli, pg 15
[5] Machiavelli, pg 5
[6] Duffet, pg 105
[7] Duffet, pg 243 quoting from ‘Fundamentals of Aerospace Weapons Systems’, USAF ROTC
[8] Teichman, pp 109-110
[9] Teichman, pg 100
[10] Teichman, pg 120

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Animesh Mukherjee
Chris Bobonich
MLA 252: Basic Issues in Philosophy
Final Paper
June 9, 2008