Deterrence and its discontents
By David Barash
In one of his most famous lines, Captain Ahab urged: “Strike, strike through the mask!” Admittedly, said captain isn’t the finest role model one can imagine, but I’ve long thought that his demand is precisely what good skeptics are called to do: to strike through the mask of bullshit, false logic, and appeals to misleading passions so as to reach the substance underneath—if there is any—and to reveal its absence if such is the case. When it comes to skeptical unmasking, nuclear deterrence is long overdue. Just ask the citizens of Hawaii the second week of January 2018 when they were alerted by the government to run for cover with an ICBM incoming, possibly containing a nuclear warhead. It was a false alarm, but a stark reminder—with video footage filling the evening news of masses of peoples scrambling to find cover—that this is no theoretical game for intellectuals to play.