The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

On 6 and 9 August 1945 (80 years ago), the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively, ultimately ending World War II.  These bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people.  This has been the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict.  This event, George Will observes, “transported humanity from one geopolitical era to another.”

Was the use of atomic weapons justified?  Will puts this question in historical perspective:

• Historian Antony Beevor, writing in Foreign Affairs, noted that Hiroshima and Nagasaki effectively ended “the first modern conflict in which far more civilians were killed than combatants.” Which suggests that technological virtuosity advanced as morality regressed. But, Beevor wrote, Japan’s military government was “prepared to sacrifice millions of Japanese civilians by forcing them to resist an Allied invasion with only bamboo spears and explosives strapped to their bodies. By 1944, some 400,000 civilians a month were dying from famine in areas of East Asia, the Pacific, and Southeast Asia that were occupied by Japanese forces. The Allies also wanted to save the American, Australian, and British prisoners of war who were starving to death in Japanese camps — or being slaughtered by their captors on Tokyo’s orders.”
• Five months before Hiroshima, a single night of incendiary U.S. bombing killed 100,000 in Tokyo. Two atomic bombs probably reduced the war’s quantity of violence and death. Consider this when reading M.G. Sheftall’s “Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses,” which chronicles the end of what he calls civilization’s “prenuclear innocence.”

After World War II, the Soviet Union became a nuclear power, as did Britain, France and China.  India and Pakistan are today nuclear powers.  North Korea has conducted nuclear tests and is developing its nuclear weapons program.  There is little doubt that Israel has nuclear weapons, although Israel has never publically admitted it.

The world community began to seek the limitation of nuclear weapons through a series of treaties.  These are a few representative agreements:

• Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, 1963.
• The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was an agreement signed in 1968 by several of the major nuclear and non-nuclear powers that pledged their cooperation in stemming the spread of nuclear technology.
• In the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War(1973), the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to make the removal of the danger of nuclear war and the use of nuclear weapons an “objective of their policies,” to practice restraint in their relations toward each other.
• Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or INF Treaty), 1987; the U.S. withdrew in 2019.
• Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) Treaty), 1991.

But today, the spread of nuclear weapons is a given.  Russia and the US have basically ended all cooperation in the limitation and spread of nuclear weapons and technology.  South Korea, Japan and Poland no longer feel protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and are potentially seeking their own nuclear weapons.  Vice President Vance recently declared that the eruption of military violence between two implacably hostile nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, was “fundamentally none of our business,” which seems to me to be a bizarre and thoughtless observation.  Iran has been seriously determined for decades to become a nuclear power. And, as Will argues, “Various potential nuclear powers have recently seen Vladimir Putin demonstrate the utility of possessing nuclear weapons: The Russian president has inhibited some forms of assistance to Ukraine by intimating the possible use of such weapons (e.g., moving some into Belarus).”

Johns Hopkins University’s H.W. Brands declares that “China’s nuclear force doubled between 2020 and 2023.” He says there is “an autocratic bloc more cohesive than anything the United States has faced in generations.” Three members (Russia, China, North Korea) are nuclear powers. Iran might become a fourth.

A recent article in The Economist highlights the nature of America’s nuclear weapons:  “The mind-bending logic of mutually assured destruction, which holds that being ready to unleash a nuclear apocalypse serves to prevent it, faded from public attention after the cold war. Yet the terrifying questions of nuclear war are returning in a new age of big-power rivalry. The last treaty limiting American and Russian nuclear weapons, New START, will expire in February, with no replacement in sight. Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons. China is fast building up its arsenal. It will have perhaps 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade, according to the Pentagon (fewer than the 5,000-odd that America and Russia each possesses).”

America is modernizing all parts of its “triad” of land-, sea- and air-launched nuclear weapons, parts of which are half a century old. Minuteman III ICBMs will be replaced with Sentinel ones; B-2 bombers with the B-21s; and the Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) with the Columbia-class subs. The government is also debating whether it needs more nuclear warheads. The most contentious element is the Sentinel program, whose cost has exceeded its budget, raising questions.

America’s ICBM infrastructure is vast, with 400 missiles deployed in 450 silos across the great plains. A spider’s web of cables connects them to 45 “missile-alert facilities” (MAFs), each consisting of a peanut-shaped capsule below and a support-building “topside” above.

In 2024 the estimated costs of Sentinel jumped to $141bn, more than 80% higher than the previous projection. Having originally ruled out extending the life of the Minuteman III as uneconomical, the air force is having to do just that because of the delays to Sentinel, which was supposed to begin entering service in 2030 but may not do so until 2038.  Additionally, the infrastructure to support the Sentinel dates to the 1960s and 1970s, and is in worse shape than expected. The original plan had envisioned reusing existing facilities after a light refurbishing, but such are the problems with weakening cement and water infiltration that it would be “cheaper and faster to just dig a new silo.”  Similarly, replacing old copper cables with fiber-optic ones would allow more data to flow and reduce the number of missile-alert facilities (from 45 to 24).

Beyond the cost and mix of nuclear weapons, a broader question looms. With the expiration of New START, America and Russia will no longer be bound by the ceiling of 1,550 “strategic“ (or long-range) warheads. Some experts say the two sides should continue to abide by the limit informally, pending new arms-control negotiations. Others advocate expanding the deployed arsenal by “uploading” stored warheads onto existing bombers, ICBMs and submarines, which would breach the current treaty but would be permitted once it expires. Congress has earmarked money to do this. It is the likely next step in the arms race.

How should we think biblically about nuclear weapons?  It is the responsibility of government to protect its people over whom God has placed them in authority (see Romans 13:1-7).  However, since 1945, Christian ethicists have developed four basic approaches to the use of nuclear weapons as they factor the use of nuclear weapons into the just war tradition:

1. Nuclear pacifism.  This position argues that it is always immoral to use nuclear weapons.  For some who hold this position, nations may have nuclear weapons as a deterrent, but must never use them.  Given the fallen nature of humanity, it is doubtful that this is a viable option.
2. Finite deterrence.  This nuclear strategy permits the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort after a nation has sustained a nuclear attack from another.  This positon attempts to meet the criteria for the just war.
3. Strategic defense.  This position allows for the general use of nuclear weapons with the nation being protected by antiballistic missiles.  This was the core proposal of President Reagan in the 1980s.
4. Countervailing or Mutual Assured Destruction.  This has been the basic nuclear policy of the US.  Its primary aim is to deter another nation from a nuclear attack.  Even if a nation attacks first, the retaliation would mean mutual destruction for both nations.

If one is intellectually honest, the use of nuclear weapons violates the basic tents of the just war tradition.  But, in a world with nuclear weapons, nations must defend themselves.  Deterrence is a critical piece of defending the nation and therefore it is incumbent upon the US to maintain a superior nuclear force.  To fail to do so would fail to protect the citizens of the nation effectively.  In addition, effective antimissile defense systems are also a part of deterrence.  Keeping these systems up-to-date and effective is the costly challenge.

A final comment:  Ethicist Wayne Grudem argues that over 30 nations depend on the US for their protection from nuclear attack.  If the US were to fail to maintain a sufficiently strong nuclear capability, it would be failing these allies that depend on our protection—“and that might prompt them to decide they have to develop their own nuclear arsenals.”  This is why Japan, South Korea and Poland are advancing their own discussions and considerations of acquiring nuclear weapons.

See George F. Will, “80 years since Hiroshima. How much longer can the world’s luck hold?” in the Washington Post (1 August 2025); The Economist (26 July 2025), pp. 21-22; John and Paul Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World, pp. 678-694; and Wayne Grudem, Christian Ethics, pp. 538-543.