was necessary, and why private enterprise policing was not enough, in a society
of free individuals. The third main strand was that Nozick’s prime human right
was the right to property; not only did he take an absolute line on the
inviolability of property rights, but his actual theory of how they arose was a
strict and limited one. Nozick’s theory of property is often taken to be a
reworking of JohnLocke’stheory, without, as it were, God, because Locke
used a theological justification in part. For Nozick, if somebody has a right to
property, this can have come about in two ways: the property may have been
acquired legitimately as an original act, or it may have been transferred by a
legitimate process from someone else who had a legitimate entitlement. As
long as any distribution of property is entirely covered by such rules, then the
distribution is just, however inegalitarian it may be. Nozick stressed that the
justice in a particular distribution of property rights arises from the historical
processes that have given people entitlements, not from the consequences of
monetary distribution.
One of the principal features of Nozick’s theories was their rejection of most
elements of the modernwelfare state, on the basis that they contravened his
belief in the absolute nature of property rights, no matter how inegalitarian.
Nozick regarded the taxation inherent in redistributive societies, that is, any
taxation above that needed to pay for the minimal state, as a form of forced
labour. Perhaps few people outside of radicallibertariansactually agreed with
Nozick, but his arguments were mounted with such massive skill, and his
analyses are so penetrating, that he commanded enormous influence and
respect in the development of modern political theory, and he was certainly
the foremost modern exponent of the libertarian position.
Nuclear Parity
Negotiations and treaties associated with processes such asSALTand Strategic
Arms Reduction Talks (START) made necessary means of assessing the
relative strengths of the strategic nuclear forces of the USA and the Soviet
Union. No one measure can be very satisfactory, but taking the various
measures together, it was clear by the early 1980s that the Soviet Union had
redressed America’s historic advantage, and achieved, at least, a state of parity.
In terms of launchers, missiles, total equivalent megatonnage and throw-
weight, the Soviet Union was probably ahead, though the USA retained a
lead in actual number of warheads, and probably in the technology of targeting.
The main fear of the USA was that the combination of accuracy and explosive
power achieved by the Soviet Union might have given it the ability to destroy
90% of the land-based USICBMs, while the USA could not do the same to
the Soviet forces. The concern that nuclear forces were moving out of parity,
exposing the USA to a ‘window of vulnerability’, threw doubt on much
Nuclear Parity