Nuclear weapons are not evil 

 

    Weapons are tools. They are things that we use, and as such should be judged based on the actions of the people who use them, not in and of themselves. If a carpenter drives a nail crookedly we blame the carpenter. Only in very special circumstances do we blame the hammer.

    If there were a certain kind of hammer that always glanced off the nail and mangled the hand holding the nail, we would say, "Don't use that kind of hammer." We wouldn't say, "This kind of hammer is inherently evil and all of them should be destroyed." If some curious person wanted to keep one of these hammers (perhaps she collects hammers) but always kept it hanging on a wall we wouldn't think she was harboring a felon. We might question the usefulness of collecting hammers, but an angry mob would not crowd round her house demanding that she give up the hammer to be burned.

    Tools are morally neutral. For example, if nuclear weapons were wholly evil, it would be impossible to think of situations in which they could be used for good. But there are clearly many possible ways to use nuclear weapons for good.

    An asteroid is approaching the earth. It will land near and destroy New York city. Nuclear weapons are fired into space and used to break up the asteroid so that its pieces burn up harmlessly when they hit the earth's atmosphere.

    Freeman Dyson, a physicist who has written extensively on nuclear weapons, has described a project that uses nuclear weapons as the propulsion system for a space craft. Nuclear weapons are ejected out the rear of the ship, detonated, and a huge shock plate absorbs the blast and transfers the energy into forward motion for the ship. Nuclear weapons could be used for massive excavation projects in remote areas.

    If I throw a rock and it crushes the skull of your brother, you don't pick up the rock and say, "This is an evil rock." You try to catch me. Or if you do pick up the rock and curse it, people take this as a kind of projection or anthropomorphizing brought on by the extreme emotion of the moment. They do not seriously blame the rock. No court would put the rock on trial.

    In the same way we cannot put nuclear weapons on trial. They are not good or evil. To try to attach good or evil to nuclear weapons will only confuse us. We are looking in the wrong direction. It is right to be horrified by the propect of an all-out nuclear war. It is confused to try to blame the weapons.