https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9755-8144
-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Jodok Troy, Review of The War That Must Not Occur, International Studies Review, Volume 27, Issue 1, March 2025, viaf005, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaf005
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
This book sets out with a seemingly impossible task: to trace the various rational explanations for the existence and effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. While doing so, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor Emeritus of Social and Political Philosophy at the École Polytechnique in Paris and Professor in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University, comes to a sobering conclusion: It might be theoretically “possible to regard nuclear deterrence as being both effective and rational. But this cannot hide the fact that, morally, it is an abomination” (p. 154).
The War That Must Not Occur sets out with a common claim in the research on nuclear deterrence: Nuclear deterrence works because nuclear war has been prevented. This claim, however, poses a genuine philosophical two-part puzzle relevant to international relations: First, there is the “lack of empirical evidence.” Second, and related, it lacks the “corresponding need to resort to a priori reasoning” (p. 5). Nuclear war is a war that must not occur, but for that, it is necessary to acknowledge that it can occur. It can occur, perhaps most importantly and overlooked by international relations theories, because of peoples’ mistaken view that they are in control and that violence obeys their will. Dupuy, however, sets out to prove the very opposite of assumptions that nuclear strategy works in an environment that assumes at least two agents freely interacting. The violence that nuclear war has the power to unleash is neither controllable nor neutral, no matter the intentions of those who seek to control it by way of nuclear deterrence.
