Preview: In this article, I argue that the Pakistan Army’s reluctance to use nuclear weapons in the past was neither caused by deterrence nor by a nuclear taboo. Rather, it has been a consequence of the military-utility principle that has served the Pakistan Army’s organizational interests. American scholars Daryl G. Press, Scott D. Sagan and Benjamin Valentino explain that the military-utility principle is based on the “logic of consequences”: a decision is made by considering the objectives and the immediate efficacy of the weapon, strategy or tactic.Thus, the military-utility principle adheres to a relative, rather than absolute, degree of ethics, rationality and justice. In support of the morality argument, Jeffrey Lewis and Scott Sagan write: “Strategists can imagine limited uses of nuclear weapons—a single detonation against a ship at sea or an isolated military target in the desert—that might meet stringent ethical and legal standards, but these are mostly imaginary scenarios, far removed from the real concerns of policy-makers and planners.” Based on this assertion, evaluating the use of nuclear weapons whether target selection is in cognizance with morality or ethical principles brings us closer to break the nuclear taboo.
