This is the statement that ended my career as a Strategic Weapons Officer aboard the USS Florida (SSBN-728)
5 January 1987
Minor corrections Jan 2016
Statement of Beliefs
Over the last six months I have become increasing uneasy with respect to my role in the execution of the strategic nuclear policy of the United States. This has been the subject of a great deal of internal reflection and thought, especially during last patrol. This discontent crystallized during church services on Christmas Eve as I sat with my son on my lap. I realized at that point that I could not and would not participate in the strategic launch of the missiles carried aboard the USS FLORIDA.
I believe that employment of the missiles carried would be counterproductive since using them would almost invariably make any situation worse that it is already. More importantly I have come to the conclusion that employment of those weapons would be immoral, dwarfing our previous definitions of what constitutes a crime against humanity.
I am neither a conscientious objector nor a pacifist. I have no great moral abhorrence for war and I recognize its use as an instrument of foreign policy throughout the world today. It would not bother me to put a torpedo into a Victor III or, a brace of Tomahawks into the Kirov. I do not have any great objections to dropping a SUBROC on a hot datum, or other use of tactical nuclear weapons at
sea. I cannot however, participate in the employment of a weapon system that will lay waste to half of the world, and will in all probability result in the collapse of Western Civilization.
sea. I cannot however, participate in the employment of a weapon system that will lay waste to half of the world, and will in all probability result in the collapse of Western Civilization.
What I believe makes strategic nuclear weapons inherently immoral is that they cannot be employed as a means of imposing national will, but only as the means to ensure destruction of a significant portion of the globe.
If the United States has become the subject of a large scale nuclear attack, with all the death and destruction that such an attack implies, I feel that it would still be morally indefensible to lash out with a counter-attack that would have the sole purpose of dragging the rest of civilization down with us. I have no desire to see the Soviet Union presiding over the radioactive ruins of the United States (assuming that the Soviet Government could survive the world-wide trauma that would result), but I think the prospect of a few starving bands of survivors dwindling away in the nuclear winter is infinitely worse.
The alternative scenario, where the United States has devastated the Eurasian continent and killed millions of people who did not have the foresight to be born in the correct hemisphere, in order to perpetuate a political and economic system, however beneficial, is almost as repugnant. Although I would fight and die to preserve the United States and our way of life, I do not believe that preservation of our nation takes precedence over the survival of the rest of humanity, or over the survival of Western Civilization as a whole.
A first-strike, all-out nuclear attack on a potential enemy, in response to some real or perceived threat, is so evil as to not warrant serious discussion, since it would elicit a counter-strike that would result in the destruction of the United States, or at least our constitutional form of government. Participation in such an attack would also violate the oath I took on commissioning in which I swore to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”.
I realize that given the current state of world affairs, continued deterrent patrols are necessary, to deter the use of strategic weapons by both sides. I recognize that some strategic nuclear weapons will always be necessary, if only as a deterrent to nuclear blackmail. I do not object to the existence of strategic nuclear forces in general or to Trident submarines in particular. I have
no objection to making deterrent patrols, conducting WSRT’s (Weapons System Readiness Test) or FOT’s (Follow-on Operational Test); I am not attempting to avoid my last two patrols and would like to complete my department head tour prior to my retirement. However I will not participate in the strategic launch of nuclear weapons, given the current force structure in which the launch of nuclear missiles will result in the mass destruction of a goodly part of the world.
no objection to making deterrent patrols, conducting WSRT’s (Weapons System Readiness Test) or FOT’s (Follow-on Operational Test); I am not attempting to avoid my last two patrols and would like to complete my department head tour prior to my retirement. However I will not participate in the strategic launch of nuclear weapons, given the current force structure in which the launch of nuclear missiles will result in the mass destruction of a goodly part of the world.
I recognize that this decision places me in a difficult position with respect to the Personnel Reliability Program and with my current duties as Strategic Weapons Officer. I feel that a moral decision in this situation is required by the precedents that were set in Nuremberg in 1946 where the following of orders was disallowed as a defense. Officers are required to make moral judgements with respect to their duties, and I have made a difficult decision with respect to mine.
The traditional Christian approach to warfare is to invoke the principal of the greater good. Obviously war is a contradiction of almost every Christian ethical teaching, however where a greater good will result, then, in theory, a resort to warfare can be morally
acceptable. World War II comes to mind where the crushing of a particularly evil and abhorrent fascist dictatorship justified resorting to warfare. Even so, great destruction was inflicted on the civilian population by both sides. Nuclear weaponry has raised the stakes to the extent that war no longer entails the destruction of opposing armies and national governments, but the wholesale destruction of continents and their populations. There is no moral way to fight a nuclear war.
acceptable. World War II comes to mind where the crushing of a particularly evil and abhorrent fascist dictatorship justified resorting to warfare. Even so, great destruction was inflicted on the civilian population by both sides. Nuclear weaponry has raised the stakes to the extent that war no longer entails the destruction of opposing armies and national governments, but the wholesale destruction of continents and their populations. There is no moral way to fight a nuclear war.
I can see no threat form the Soviet Union that would justify a large scale nuclear strike. The great fear that monolithic Soviet communism would impose a godless atheistic dictatorship over
the Unites States is a groundless bugaboo of a few right-wing paranoids. As a point of fact, while the U.S. Supreme Court was striking down a moment of silence in public schools as a covert
attempt to introduce school prayer, Poland, dominated for 40 years by godless atheism, had near riots over an attempt to remove crucifixes from public school classrooms. The most Catholic
country in Europe is and has been a Soviet client state for over a generation.
the Unites States is a groundless bugaboo of a few right-wing paranoids. As a point of fact, while the U.S. Supreme Court was striking down a moment of silence in public schools as a covert
attempt to introduce school prayer, Poland, dominated for 40 years by godless atheism, had near riots over an attempt to remove crucifixes from public school classrooms. The most Catholic
country in Europe is and has been a Soviet client state for over a generation.
The United States is not more likely to be subject to a conventional
invasion by communist hordes, than the Soviet Union is likely to be overrun by imperialist armies. Both countries are too large, and too heavily armed to be a threat to each other. If the U.S. declines as a world power, it will not be by outside invasion, but like all great empires of the past, it will be by internal collapse. The greatest threat to the United States is that of a war that escalates from a regional conflict into an inadvertent thermonuclear exchange.