  Another consequentialist argument can be located in the idea of the sort of “just war pacifism” that developed during the late 20th Century (see Sterba 1998 and Neu 2011). One significant worry of just war pacifism is that modern wars fought with weapons of mass destruction can never be justified. There are deontological concerns behind this sort of pacifism—with regard to concern for noncombatants. But there are also consequentialist reasons to be skeptical of wars fought with weapons of mass destruction, most notably the problem of escalation. Nuclear deterrent strategy relies upon the threat of escalation to keep antagonists in check. The idea of deterrent strategy is to make the negative consequences of war for the enemy so horrifying that war will not occur. But if the threat of escalation is real and the results of war are really so atrocious, then there are good consequentialist reasons to be opposed to war: wars fought with weapons of mass destruction will tend to produce horrifying consequences including the potentially total devastation of what was called during the Cold War, “mutually assured destruction.” During the Cold War, this concern was located in the worry about “nuclear winter,” which was the catastrophic destruction of the earth’s climate and biosphere that would occur if an all out nuclear war had erupted. Even more limited conflicts that occur among states that possess weapons of mass destruction could produce horrible consequences. Nuclear proliferation remains a concern along with the general threat of terrorists in possession of weapons of mass destruction.