Q13 - That the policy of nuclear deterrence

[Mab6q]

This was a fairly easy question, but I thought it had a strange format, probably due to the fact that's so old.

Conclusion: there's not question that the policy of nuclear deterrence has worked thus far.

I saw two main pieces of evidence here

Support 1: the fact that there were nuclear armaments has kept major powers from using nuclear weapons

Support 2: a third world war had not happened yet.

Flaw: the main issue with this problem is that the author mistakes a correlation for causation.

Just because we have a policy of deterrence and have yet to have a world war, it dosent mean that the deterrence caused the lack of war. That's why E is right - it tells us that we don't know the true cause of no new world war.

However, i have a question about the first premise. Dosen't it essentially tell us that it is nuclear armaments that have prevented the use of such weapons? And because it is a premise, we have to take it to be true?

Is it still flawed because the author uses lack of a world war to prove his conclusion, and we don't know that it's the deterrence (first premise) that has caused a lack of a new world war?

Any thoughts?

[maryadkins]

Nice breakdown of the core.

I would say the first thing that jumps out to me here is that the armaments prevented "major powers" from using nuclear weapons since WWII. But:

1. What about other, non-major powers?
2. What if these armaments were motivated by something other than a "policy of nuclear deterrence," such as, as (E) notes, economic interests?

It's a small leap, but it still is one. Also, as you suggest, we don't know if the powers not at all using the weapons is why we haven't had a third WW.

Slightly tricky.

As for the others:

(A) isn't relevant.
(B) is also irrelevant because this whole question is about what has happened so far, not what will happen.
(C) is out of scope because we don't even know if this is happening
(D) lends support to the argument, if anything.

Hope this helps a bit.

[ShuqiM728]

So, basically, "the scientific establishment" in the last sentence of question stem refers to those scientists?

Can anyone help me with understanding the last sentence? Thanks in advance!