There are a whole lot of decisions that need to be made to get from "strict pacifism" to total war, so I don't know why we need to flatten this into a binary.
Nobody reasonable would. Russia started a war of choice. That's the opposite of pacifism.
Strict pacifism would be Ukraine refusing to fight after being invaded. Someone saying all war in all circumtances is evil and should not be contributed to, directly or indirectly, is sort of endorsing that view. The folks calling for nuclear disarmament, or no first use policy, are pretty far away from that.
Yes, that was my point. The person I replied to stated a nation taking actions off the table "will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime". As a response, I pointed to a country that many would call "a despotic regime" who seems to operate with at least some consideration towards the ethics of war even if that is due to external pressure.
You might put your life savings on the street in front of your house for a day or two without someone stealing it, but sooner or later someone unscrupulous is likely to come along based on the evidence we have
Weapons can only act as a deterrent if your opponent believes you're willing to use them and there are some weapons that no one is willing to use. And if no one is willing to use them, it's probably a waste to develop them in the first place.
I never made that argument. My original comment was refuting the idea that taking a singular option off the table is equivalent to pacifism. Ukraine didn't feel the need to develop a nuclear program, that doesn't make them pacifists.
> It's more like "if I don't do it then I better hope somebody else will, otherwise my whole country will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime". Basically, the question is whether strict pacifism is a tenable national policy in the real world.
This person equates not "do[ing] it" with "strict pacifism".
beloch and jump- advocated for some level of national defense as a practical necessity
sophacles- stupidly thought this was an "If I dont, someone will" argument
Ajedi32- clarifies "the question is whether strict pacifism is a tenable national policy in the real world"
The point is some level of defense is required. This point is completely compatible with not taking a maximalist approach to military. It is also compatible with the fact that even Russia doesn't take a maximalist approach to military.
The whole point of the chain is that citizens should not fixate on if companies or people participate in the military-industrial complex because it is good an necessary, but rather what those actors actually doing.
>beloch and jump- advocated for some level of national defense as a practical necessity
I don't think this an accurate summary of the nuance contained in beloch's comment. I'll specifically highlight what I think was lost by the people who replied:
> People working for companies that do defence work have a moral obligation to observe how their labour is used and refuse to give it if the results are unethical. It's no different from soldiers having a moral duty to refuse illegal orders.
>To answer your question, I'd say that participating in the defence industry can be justifiable if you remain guided by ethics, and unjustifiable if you abandon them for money.
Once the choice is either a yes or no, this nuance is lost. If you set up the choice as between pacifism and military capability, you're tacitly endorsing any form of military capability including nuclear weapons.
It seems obviously possible, and your arguments support it.
Where is this tacit endorsement you see coming from? It seems like nobody thinks that way with respect to their employment or support.
Anyways, this seems to be more about semantics than substance at this point, if you are arguing it is not binary, and I'm arguing that nobody said it was
Ukraine giving up its Soviet nukes in the 1990s was, with the benefit of hindsight, a mistake that has cost over a hundred thousand Ukrainians their lives. Even if Ukraine just had the missiles in a basement, the possibility that it had cracked the control system–or shortened the runway to reprocessing the warheads for a domestic platform–would have likely deterred war.
Once again, nuclear weapons can only be a deterrent if your enemy believe you will use them and everyone knows that no nation state has the stomach to use them. Russia doesn't have to fear MAD and yet it is still deterred from using nuclear weapons. What makes you think that Ukraine would choose MAD over their current predicament? Because if Russia doesn't believe Ukraine is willing to commit to MAD, Russia can still invade. It certainly changes strategy, but over the years many nuclear powers have been involved in arm conflicts without using nuclear weapons, including in conflicts against other nuclear powers.
> Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department?
I contend that unless you want your government to be toppled by a foreign invader, companies contributing to your nation's military capabilities is something you should generally be in favor of.
>As for "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument). That's true of a lot of things, and I sleep great at night choosing not to steal from people even though I know others will choose to steal. It turns out I don't have the ability to choose their actions for them, only my own.
This is from your response:
>It's more like "if I don't do it then I better hope somebody else will, otherwise my whole country will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime".
Are you now claiming that all those "I"s are really "companies"? You think you were having a conversation about how "[companies] sleep great at night"?
Just to be clear, the conversation so far:
> beloch: It's also completely fine to say, "I don't want to deal with moral grey zones" and refuse to work for companies that do military work.
> JumpCrisscross: Idk, there's something unethical in outsourcing ethical grey areas [working for defense contractors] to other people while reaping the benefits of the peace (or war far from your home) it brings.
> sophacles: "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument)
> me: That's not the argument. It's more like "if I don't [work for defense contractors] then I better hope somebody else will. [Because strict pacifism isn't tenable.]
You then somehow interpreted this comment as me saying "a nation taking actions off the table "will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime"", which wasn't at all what I said, so I jumped back in correct that. Then the whole conversation went off the rails.
Yet by the time you replied, those three paragraphs of nuance were flattened. It was no longer a question of which military programs and actions can be morally and ethical justified, it is now simply a question of whether they are done or not. And once it is flattened into a binary yes or no, all that nuance of potentially unjustifiable uses of the military in beloch's comment fall into the "yes" category. Making it into a binary reduces the issue to pacifism versus total war.
Also, it's questionable whether Russia's nuclear arsenal would even work reliably. The USA and other nuclear powers spend enormous amounts every year just on nuclear weapons maintenance and testing. Those munitions can't just be stored in a warehouse indefinitely like rifle cartridges and pulled out when needed; they require periodic remanufacturing in order to remain operational at all. Russia is a relatively poor and highly corrupt country so I suspect many of their nukes wouldn't deliver the rated yield if used today. From their perspective an attempted strike resulting in a fizzle would be even worse: all of the diplomatic disadvantages for no military gain.
Nuking Kyiv, Odessa and Lviv would probably force Ukraine to surrender.
> use of WMDs would invite economic sanctions from key neutral trading partners such as India
This is the real constraint. There is still the credible threat of being economically isolated by America, Europe, China and India. (Neither China nor India wants the normalisation of nuclear bombardment normalised. They both have border disputes with nuclear-armed neighbours.)
Or if we want to take nuclear options off the table because Russia values infrastructure, they aren't attacking population centers with bioweapons.
>This is the real constraint. There is still the credible threat of being economically isolated by America, Europe, China and India. (Neither China nor India wants the normalisation of nuclear bombardment normalised. They both have border disputes with nuclear-armed neighbours.)
Ethics enforced by external pressure are still ethics in action. The comment I replied to was basically arguing that we have to do this unethical thing because if we don't our enemies will. Well here is an example of our ostensibly unethical enemy not doing something because of ethical pressure. So why would this pressure work for nuclear weapons and not this new military tech?
Putin doesn't care about infrastructure in Kyiv. He wants the natural gas and resources in the east. A nuked rump Ukraine isn't a threat to his power.
> why would this pressure work for nuclear weapons and not this new military tech?
Because the normalisation of nuclear weapons has global consequences in a way conventional warfare does not. The most problematic aspects of Trump's Iran war for India and China are that it raises oil prices.
And you don't think that has any chance of applying to some hypothetical yet to be developed future military tech?
More than likely Russia is ostracized to the point that other countries will treat it with active hostility.
And the most likely possibility is Putin is assassinated and the government overthrown due to internal opposition.
The same thing that would happen to America if Trump acts on his musings about tactically nuking Iran.