September 26th was International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a natural time to think about our own arsenal of nuclear weapons. In spite of the goals expressed in 2010's Nuclear Reduction Pact and the Obama administration's genuine early efforts to curb the production and maintenance of nukes in this country and abroad, the US is once again increasing its spending on Nuclear Security, citing Putin's invasion of the Ukraine and China and Pakistan's growing arsenals as motivating factors.
Professor Elaine Scarry, author of Thermonuclear Monarchy, challenges us to think about Nuclear Weapons in a new way: as the enemy of the democratic process.
In an interview at the Boston Review, Scarry argues that nuclear weapons, which allow a small number of people to inflict pain and destruction on a very large number, take the power to make war out of the hands of both Congress and citizens and place it in the hands of the few. In a world with only "conventional arms" such as knives and guns, Congress has the right to declare war, but its the citizens who ultimately decide to make, or not make, war:
I think it’s important that the Constitution says the Congress declares war because the word “make” is being reserved for the people of the United States, who are going to fight or not fight. That—the inclusion of the idea of declining to fight—may seem strange, but that’s in part because we don’t talk about the number of soldiers in every war who actually exercise the power of dissent. And their dissent makes clear that when we do go to war, in a period when we have conventional arms, it’s only done with the authorization of the population.
In the Nuclear era, however, the power to make war resides in the hands of a small few, Scarry says.
If the government has a way of fighting the war without the citizenry, then the citizenry has lost its voice completely.
As a result, the citizenry loses its oversight of arguably the most important decision a country can make, and the whole democratic process is undermined. Not that this would be the first time.
But do Harvard professor Scarry's philosophical qualms with Nuclear Weapons really make a difference at all in the actual fight for Nuclear disarmament? Maybe not. The question of disarmament, with ISIS rising and China's arsenal growing, goes way beyond the realm of ideas and ideals. However, as Scarry points out, the American people haven't been doing much in recent years to demand a reduction of our spending, and activism could be a powerful engine for change.