Is it wrong to threaten what it would be wrong to do?

Assumption: that everyone reading this has a personal morality that makes certain actions “wrong”.

In philosophy, a distinction is made between the justice of war (jus ad bellum) and justice in the way a war is fought (jus in bello). Under the latter category, philosophers have included two broad principles, proportionality and discrimination. Proportionality states that you should only fight with the means necessary to achieve your objective – e.g. destroying (for example) Sarajevo with a nuclear warhead would have been disproportionate for the aim of securing peace in the former Yugoslavia. Discrimination states that you should only target those “involved” in the war, not innocent civilians. A more detailed view of this whole area is available at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

There are obvious problems with both principles. How do you define a civilian? What about a munitions worker? Or a freight train driver? How do you define “disproportionate”? Did the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima save the lives of many more Japanese and Americans than they killed?

If you assume that these principles are defensible, and that there are certain ways of fighting a war that are “wrong”, would you still support using them as a deterrent? I’m thinking mainly of the ethics of threatening nuclear war; the threat of dropping warheads on your enemy’s towns and cities.

The question: is a deterrent based on a “wrong” action morally acceptable? Or, do you reject the whole concept of a war being fought by “just” means? Feel free to use any other examples you can think of – I don’t mean this to be restricted to nuclear weapons, or even to war (could capital punishment come in here?).

My hesitation with the idea is that whether or not it is moral to do so, using an immoral alternative as a deterrent only won’t work without following through at least once. Otherwise in practical terms it will be considered a bluff.

Luke 9:

Good point, gigi. Does threatening something as a deterrent mean that you would go through with it, or can a deterrent be pure bluff? If you are prepared to carry out the threat, knowing it’s “wrong”, then I guess whether deterrence is right or wrong doesn’t enter into it.

Wow, good question.

For a deterrent to work, it has to have a negative effect for the one it’s directed against, in effect forcing what you want to happen against his wishes. So most deterrents have to be based on something that’s basically wrong - but is, in the hypothetical case where the event you’re trying to deter actually occurs, the preferrable of two bad alternatives.

That probably didn’t make sense, an example:

Back in the Cold War, we tried to deter the Warsaw Pact countries from expanding by military conquest. We did this by threatening them with military force. Had the Warsaw Pact attacked, we would’ve been faced with two rotten alternatives: Letting them succeed or try to kill as many of their soldiers as possible, probably with nukes. The latter - killing people with nukes - is obviously wrong on the face of it. But the first - shrugging and letting millions of people face a future under communism rule - is probably worse. (I know, I know, grossly oversimplified). So this, IMHO, was a morally defensible deterrent. But please not that NATO had a bunch of different deterrents to pick from - so that a military reply could be in proportion to the threat.

Using as a deterrent that “Any attack on our country or citizens will lead to immediate nuclear annihilation” is completely out of proportion. And if a clutzy Soviet soldier accidentally were to fire a rifle round over the Berlin Wall, the bluff would be called, to steal gigi’s term.

So, to get to the OP: Threatening what is wrong to do isn’t necessarily wrong. But to justify doing wrong, you must be able to argue that you’d achieve the best possible end result by doing this particular wrong thing. And since we’re talking deterrence here, the entire exercise is probably hypothetical, making mistakes highly probable.

Which brings us back to proportions, as you have to be sure that even if the deterrent doesn’t deter and have to be carried out and then shows itself to be a complete mistake, you’ll at least be able to say that it “seemed like a good idea at the time”.

Sheesh, did anybody read that ?

Once you decide the ends justify the means, you can justify anything. Thus, all is fair in war as you have already agreed to murder for some possible end result.

Ehm - that’s not what I meant to say. I shoved in the words “best possible end results” for that exact reason. While it might be necessary to go to war, “the best possible result” would be one that gives my (for this discussion, deemed morally superior) side the victory at the lowest possible cost of lives and suffering.

Going to war as opposed to surrendering on the spot, I’ve obviously accepted that lives will be lost. Still, responding to a conventional attack with conventional means or even, if push comes to shove, with tactical nukes, is IMHO, morally superior to razing my enemy’s cities with hydrogen bombs. And, to return to the OP, it makes an acceptable deterrent - fighting back is the lesser of two evils, and fighting back with means in proportion to the threat makes the evil even less.

Sorry if I’m not communicating clearly here, these are tricky points.

S. Norman

I have yet to truly note that morality is philisophically defensable, but nonetheless…

I gotta agree with spiny norman here, the ends aren’t what justify the means at all. It is that when one must choose between two evils, the lesser evil is preferable.

This of course brings in what is actually evil, but like the OP said I would imagine we all agree that the number of deaths is proportional to the amount of evil.

I find the topic of “innocent civilians” to be amusing. Just along for the ride, were they? While I concede that it is very likely that many or most civilians are not direct supporters of most war efforts, that would also not stop them from enjoying any potential benifits said war might bring (more jobs, more land, etc). So my jury is out on whether it is ok to indescriminately bomb China just because we are at war with communism (well, I am anyway :smiley: ). It seems terribly innefficient, tho, to attack an unarmed populous as a rule.

Thus, I think any threat not acted upon in response to an action or threat of action that is evil, is good. Hmmm. I don’t like the way that sounded…

[ponders]

[/ponders]
Yeah, any threat in response to an evil action or threat is good. However, carrying through with the threat, even if it is for a good cause, does not make the action good. Murder is murder, even if it is justifiable.

I believe that it is wrong to threaten something that is wrong to do, but I would phrase this principle differently: anything which it is right to threaten to do, it is right to do. If it is right to threaten to nuke a country, then it is right, once having threatened to nuke it, to nuke it.

So? I have benefited from past racism. Does this make me culpable for this racism?

James 4:

Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no.

From an ethical point of view, I’ve never been terribly enamored of the principle of total non-resistance to evil.

jmullaney, I assure you that if I wished to read the Bible, I would be quite capable of doing so without your help. Are you uncapable of speaking for yourself?

As the OP began:

Pardon me for saving on the typing. A threat is a boast. A boast is a brag. Bragging is bad.

Is it wrong to lie?

Hardly. You were not part of that particular process.

Civilians living during war time, though they did not actively have anything to do with the war directly, found the machinations of war to be in their favor. This would be guilt by association of sorts. They were quick to reap the benifits of something they might personally find despicable.

The issue, I’ll concede, is murky, because it is not like they had much of a choice in the matter to leave a country during wartime.

I find this topic difficult to discuss without creating a paradox. The alternative to paradox is to never threaten anything, to merely say what you are about to do then just do it. I find that would create more violence than threats, which may have a deterrent effect.

Toughie, IMHO. Good topic.

Truth-telling is certainly a virtue in general, but I don’t think an absolute ban on lying is ethically justifiable. Consider the people who sheltered Jews from the Nazis, for example. There are times when lying is a virtuous and heroic act, or even a moral imperative.