ARTICLES

Bombs Away

Lawrence Livermore's Nuclear Program and the Catholic Response

BY CHRISTOPHER ZEHNDER

Anti-nuclear weapons activists declared a victory of sorts when Congress in December took the axe to funding for important nuclear weapons programs. In the final budget for fiscal year 2005, Congress gave no funding to two programs promoted by the Bush administration. One, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, modifies existing nuclear weapons for use in bunker-busting missions. The other, the Advanced Concepts Initiative, promotes research into low-yield nuclear weapons, including "mini-nukes." The U.S. Department of Energy currently carries on both programs at design laboratories in Los Alamos, New Mexico and, more close to home, at Lawrence Livermore in the Bay Area.

But this may be only a Pyrrhic victory for the anti-nuke folks. The February 7 New York Times reported that in late November Congress approved "a small, largely unnoticed budget item" to initiate something called the Reliable Replacement Warhead program. Essentially, the program will study how to make nuclear bombs that are more "robust." Currently, according to the Times, the U.S. arsenal contains about 10,000 nuclear warheads tha t are about 20 years old — and the expected lifetime of a warhead is only 15 years. There is no effective legal way to test these warheads since, in 1992, the U.S. signed onto a global moratorium on underground nuclear testing. This means that the existing bombs may not have the destructive power, say, to destroy whole cities and regions — an unfortunate result (to some, at least) that would be obviated by more "robust," larger bombs that would not only be easier to make, but would also be easier to certify. They would also, according to the National Security Administration's John Harvey, be "inherently reliable." Again, California's own Lawrence Livermore is one of the centers for this program.

The $9 million allocated by the budget for this program is miniscule (at least in terms of government spending) and will only fund designs for bombs that will still need congressional approval when completed. But this seed money could grow into larger allocations in the future; and what's more, the new research is aimed at perpetuating the nuclear arsenal of the United States. What's a Catholic to think about this?

The funding for the design of a new generation of nuclear weapons "is of central concern to Roman Catholics," said James Hanink, professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "The use of nuclear weapons, apart from space station scenarios, cannot possibly be justified. Nor, it seems to me, can the maintaining of nuclear arsenals. To maintain such arsenals is in effect to continue to have the intention of using them if political concerns so mandate. But whatever political concerns may emerge, none can override the sanctity of human life. The sanctity is such that it is always and everywhere wrong intentionally to attack it [human life]. Those Catholics who supported President Bush in the last election — understandably and with a certain good reason — ought to make clear the consistency of their own faith by sharply opposing any effort to restore military expenses — already inexcusable — for the maintenance of such weapons of mass destruction."

But is it "inexcusable" to maintain nuclear weapons, just in case.... After all, if the enemy, whoever that may be at the time, fires at us, may we not fire back? Aren't we just talking about self-defense? "No," Hanink said. Nuclear warfare is "by its very nature indiscriminate" — it of necessity destroys more than its intended target. Hanink said we often "misread" self-defense. "We have to understand that legitimate self-defense is defense against a legitimate aggressor; but it is simply not the case that whole populations are involved in acts of illegitimate aggression. So it's not the case that the use of such weapons falls under the category of legitimate self-defense. It's like saying, 'all I want to do is hit that fly on your head, and here is a sledge hammer — what could I do? I didn't want to kill you; I just hate flies. Hate them!"

However, nuclear weapons, it is said, are maintained as a deterrent — to dissuade any would-be nuclear aggressor from bombing us or blackmailing the country into submission. Is it wrong to keep them as a bluff? "Well, when one speaks of a bluff, one has to speak of an individual who is bluffing," said Hanink. "And even though it might be the case that the head of state is bluffing, it is certainly not the case that all of the people who are engaged in the maintenance of such weapons and who have committed themselves to their use if so ordered — it cannot be the case that they are bluffing. It is manifestly the case that they are not bluffing. You could bluff if you 're Matt Dillon playing poker, because it's just you; but you can't say that the United States policy in respect to nuclear weapons is a bluff. The overwhelming number of people who work to make this policy to be effective are not bluffing."

Hanink noted the connection between the willingness to use nuclear weapons ("if necessary") and the "culture of death." "That willingness," he said, "sets the stage for things like abortion on an incredibly, unanticipatedly huge scale. You've already said, 'I'll tolerate attacks on the innocent.' It's already been perfectly accepted, assimilated, adjusted to. Careers built upon it."

So, I asked Hanink, "you are suggesting unilateral disarmament?

"Yeah," he replied.

"You realize that that opens us up for conquest?"

"Yes."

"And it doesn't bother you?"

"Yes! Of course it bothers me. It bothers me a lot," Hanink replied. "But Scripture enjoins us not to fear those who kill the body but to fear those who can lead our souls to hell."

In their controversial 1983 pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace, the bishops of the United States addressed the problems associated with the possession of nuclear weapons. Drawing on the teaching of Popes Pius XII and John Paul II and the Second Vatican Council, the bishops called unjustifiable the use of nuclear weaponry even in retaliation to a nuclear attack from another country since, by necessity, it would entail the indiscriminate killing of the innocent — even if, as the U.S. government claimed, it only targeted military sites.

But the bishops did not categorically condemn nuclear deterrence. The bishops, however, said that deterrence could go only so far as to keep others from using nuclear weapons, and "proposals to go beyond this to planning for prolonged periods of repeated nuclear strikes and counterstrikes, or 'prevailing' in nuclear war, are not acceptable." Citing Pope John Paul II, who said deterrence is justifiable "certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament," the bishops asserted that "each proposed addition to our strategic system or change in strategic doctrine must be assessed precisely in light of whether it will render steps toward 'progressive disarmament' more or less likely."

"I had this out in 1981 with the five-bishop committee that wrote the pastoral on peace that was issued in 1983," Tom Cornell, a long-time figure in the Catholic peace movement, told me in February. Cornell, who lives at the Peter Maurin Catholic Worker farm in New York, was a close associate of Dorothy Day and an advisor to the bishops on the peace pastoral. Cornell said the bishops "bought my line of reasoning" on the immorality of using weapons of mass destruction — in particular, nuclear weapons — "but they couldn't come to the explicit conclusion that logic would indicate [about stockpiling weapons and deterrence] because nobody would believe it."

That was obvious, said Cornell.

"I told them starting off, 'I'm glad that I ain't you guys, bishops! I don't know how you are going to be able to tell the truth and tell it in a way that's going to be believable. But we've got to get to people to change their attitudes, basically, fundamentally, about this issue.' John O'Connor was one of the bishops there. He had a 27-year military history, and he radically changed his attitude by taking a look at what's very basic to us. The most definitive teachings of the Catholic Church are those that are put forth by an ecumenical council and ratified by the pope. Not everything that Sister Mary Rose of the Open Tabernacle says is infallible, and not everything the pope says is infallible. But there is absolutely no question that the use of weapons of mass destruction is absolutely, unequivocally prohibited — in paragraph 80 of Gaudium et Spes, ratified by the [Second Vatican] Council in 1965."

That paragraph reads: "any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation."

Cornell said he then asked the bishops, "if you are forbidden to use these weapons, what does that say about producing and stockpiling them — does this present a moral problem, bishops? And they said, 'yeah it does; it sure enough does.' How can we justify the production and the maintenance of these weapons? Well, we can't, except if they buy us time to make positive steps toward general, multilateral disarmament.

"So," Cornell continued, "the acceptance of nuclear weapons is conditional and temporary. Now you have to ask, all right, what are the conditions, are they being met, and what does 'temporary' mean? 1983 to 2005 — count the years. How much progress have we made using the deterrent, if the deterrent is a deterrent (granting the government some degree of sincerity here)? All this time the nuclear threat has not diminished in the slightest; it is still there, and it is actually worse because we're going from one to another kind of scenario and people aren't paying very much attention."

Cornell said it is time for Catholics again to pay attention to the issue of nuclear armament. "Catholics," he said, "have to call their bishops to be honest to their own words — 'OK, bishops, in 1983 you said, "temporary and conditional" — how long, how about the conditions? Are they being met?' Of course, we've had some problems with credibility in the recent past, as you doubtless know. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't go back and build up that credibility."

But Cornell does not think Catholics should call for unilateral disarmament; he said he would favor "unilateral initiatives, and see what happens. We haven't even done that." He continued, "clinically, it's absurd to propose outright, total nuclear disarmament, because no politician is going to buy it. And it's not credible to the larger public. The only people who could buy that are ideological pacifists, like me! So forget people like me; you' ve got to go out and make a credible argument. Let's take some real unilateral initiatives and follow through on them."

And what unilateral initiative would Cornell favor, among others? The "redesign of nuclear weaponry," he said. "Scrap it. Totally scrap it."

And beyond such unilateral initiatives, Cornell favors strengthening international law. "We should be thinking in terms of the framework of international law and dependencies, because that's when wars will stop," he said. "Wars will stop when they don't serve any purpose and people see that they don't serve any purpose, that they are counterproductive to any rational goal. We used to say, 'wars will stop when men refuse to fight,' but that's not going to happen. People will always be hoodwinked, cajoled, threatened into taking up arms. No, wars will cease when wars are no longer possible because of a framework of international law. That's what the Catholic Church has against the Iraq unilateral thing from Washington. The basic beef from the Vatican is that 'you are undermining the fabric of international law, which is the only realistic hope for a future peace.'"

But, finally, how realistic is a hope based on international law? Cornell said the United Nations, the body that would adjudicate international law, needs to be reformed, but how realistic is that? And when reformed, how effective can the United Nations be? Cornell did not seem overly optimistic. International law, he said, is "something I think people can understand — I hope people can understand, though one becomes very pessimistic."

But one cannot despair. "I don't know how people do it without religious faith," mused Cornell. "But for us Christians, hope is an absolute duty. It's not a luxury. So you cannot give up. You must keep on going."

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