The testimony of the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had an enormous impact, including on the judges. And they were even embodied in one person, said to be a genius, John von Neumann, who directed the building of a computer at Princeton, who was a principal founder of game theory, and who was one of the Manhattan Project physicists. Now some fifty-five years later, there has been a resurgence of normative thinking and an understanding that a normative framework must replace the game theory, the instrumental thinking, the deterrence theory that have dominated thinking about nuclear weapons. By a normative framework I mean simply moral and legal rules and principles. We have stared too long into the abyss, the utter nihilism, of entrusting security and our souls to stark calculations of power, of interest.
Morality means, among other things, accepting that there are categorical, absolute norms.
It is not acceptable to use gas ovens to annihilate a people. It is not acceptable to threaten or carry out mass destruction of civilian populations. And the moral and legal norms are interrelated, self-reinforcing. The resurgence of normative thinking is generally evident in the establishment of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and in the negotiation of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. In the nuclear field, of course, the resurgence of normative thinking is exemplified by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of threat or use of nuclear weapons.