This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC wreath lectures. This lecture in the series

The Two-Edged Sword, given by Lawrence Martin, was originally broadcast in 1981.

Armed force is the ultimate tool of political conflict. It's therefore not surprising that

military affairs often arouse bitter controversy. Perhaps the only uncontroversial

observation I shall manage to make during this series of lectures, which by no means my aim to

raise the temperature of debate, is to assert the supreme importance of averting all-out nuclear war.

The problem is how to do it. Wars kill people and ruin countries. Nuclear wars could kill unprecedented

numbers of people. Some nuclear strategies, the one called assured destruction, for example,

which is enshrined in the Strategic Arms Limitation Agreements, and ironically much favored by

some of the keener advocates of arms control, such strategies are

actually designed to produce casualties of some 75 to 100 million on each side. Lesser nuclear

wars are envisaged that might kill no more than a few million, even perhaps only a few

hundred thousand. Some point out that this would be no more than was suffered in many wars of the past, but

these nuclear casualties would be incurred in a flash, with vast reserves of destructive power

looming, unused over the battlefield, under circumstances scarcely calculated to encourage confidence

in control and moderation.

Nuclear war would thus, I believe, be a truly new phenomenon, and those who write articles on

the subject under such titles as victory as possible, as some have recently, should, I think,

find a different vocabulary to discuss such an unprecedented and ill-understood prospect.

I don't believe, however, that it's enough to make a simple renunciation of nuclear weapons,

and that for two reasons.

In the first place, important though it is to avoid nuclear war,

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