High Standards
Posted on January 5th, 2009
by Daniel Larison |
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Can the standards of just war theory be applied so stringently that they become irrelevant to modern warfare? This is what concerns Ross about Peter Hitchens’ position on Gaza. As Hitchens’ position is more or less my position as well, I have a few thoughts about this. First, here is Ross:
Who gets to define what sort of harm is “lasting, grave, and certain” enough to justify going to war? Who decides when all means of preventing conflict “have been shown to be impractical or ineffective”? Doesn’t almost everybody enter a war convinced they have “serious prospects of success”? Isn’t every party to a war convinced that their actions won’t “produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated”? I’m being a bit glib, obviously, since serious thinkers have drilled down on all of these questions – but the fact remains that on a case by case basis, a shared commitment to just war theory doesn’t guarantee anything like a consensus on the justice of a given war or operation.
Well, that’s putting it mildly. George Weigel could claim, presumably with a straight face, that preventive war against Iraq is perfectly in line with the standards of a just war, and then-Cardinal Ratzinger could say that the “concept of a ‘preventive war’ does not appear in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.” Obviously, I think the current Pope has a better understanding of the matter than the administration’s court theologian, which ought to bolster the claims of those who interpret just war requirements more narrowly, but this rather dramatically illustrates Ross’ last point.
There are, broadly speaking, two camps who appeal to the just war tradition: those looking for loopholes that permit the use of force as often as possible, and those looking for barriers to prevent the use of force as often as practicable. The loophole crowd seems to start from the assumption that every use of force, particularly when employed by governments with whom they sympathize, is licit and just and that just war tradition exists to provide the language and borrowed authority for the arguments to support this view. The barrier crowd starts from the assumption that there has to be an extraordinarily high standard met before force can be used. Naturally, as someone in the latter crowd, I think that the purpose of the standards set forth in just war theory is to make it as difficult as possible to meet them, because war, while sometimes necessary, is a great evil. It should not be easy to go to war even in self-defense, much less should it be easy to escalate or start wars. For the loophole crowd, the reason for invoking just war theory seems to be mainly to gain the political benefits of being able to claim to being on the right side, and preferably without having to meet most of the obligations that just war theory requires (or to lower the standards for meeting those obligations such that virtually every operation will meet them no matter what happens).
Of course, it is possible that applying high standards will simply cause those who wish to wage war for whatever reason to ignore the restraints of the tradition entirely, but then I thought that one of the purposes of establishing moral standards was not to accommodate the unjust in their desires. After the last six years, I would have thought that the tendency to water down these standards and thus make escalating and starting wars more morally and politically acceptable was the far greater problem that we face. We are not in danger, it seems to me, of “giving ammunition to the side of the debate that wants to do away with moral restraint in the struggle against terrorism entirely,” as these are the people who are perfectly happy to warp and distort the just war tradition (and the Constitution, international law and the basic meaning of words, among other things) to accommodate the virtual abandonment of that restraint. One could make a similar argument that opponents of the torture regime, by taking an absolute stance against torture as wrong in all cases, are giving ammunition to those who have defended and justified it as necessary, but I think Ross and I would agree that there is an obligation to oppose injustices that are carried out by the state, whether in isolated incidents or as a matter of systematic policy, that needs to be fulfilled whether or not apologists for those injustices can demagogue that opposition to their temporary advantage.
Filed under: Christianity, foreign policy, politics
On my understanding, within the Christian tradition, the “just war” tradition is intended as a repudiation of a pure pacifist tradition. “Just war” adherents are effectively saying to pacifists, “Yes, we agree with you that war is a great evil, but on rare occasions it can be justified.” [There is no (mainstream theological) tradition within the historic Christian tradition that takes war to be fundamentally an OK thing.] The proclamation of criteria for “just wars” thus represents the Church’s attempt to remain relevant to the discussion.
The pacifists’ rejoinder has always been that use of “just war” language tends to lead down a very slippery slope to just the sort of “loophole” thinking that you very accurately portray in this post. Relevance, or a seat at the table, isn’t worth much if your arguments are going to be misunderstood so thoroughly.
But the broader point is that it’s just exceedingly difficult for the church’s language to actually provide any restraint on those who love war. If you go pacifist, you get ridiculed and ignored. If you go “just war,” your principles get abused or misinterpreted, and your fundamental concerns are not addressed.
So you’re right, Daniel. Absolutely right on all points. You’re especially correct to insist that “one of the purposes of establishing moral standards was not to accommodate the unjust in their desires.” But given that, the question, from an internal Church standpoint, ought to be whether the turn from pacifism to just war arguments really does a better job of restraining the unjust. Nobody listens to the Amish or the Quakers, but they’re not really *listening* to the just-war Catholics either. And arguably, nobody outside the faith has really been listening to the just war position with any seriousness since the day Augustine first formulated it.
And yes it’s weird to be so clearly with you on this point and so ferociously against you on the gay marriage issue. I love what the Church teaches on some issues, and I despise it on others. Am I a schizoid at heart, or is there a rational basis for the one position of the Church that’s lacking in the other? I hope it’s the latter, but I’m not sure how to prove it.
I can tell you in one word why I’m a pacifist and will leave it to you to explain why if violence would solve these grave problems, don’t you apply the principle apply it consistently: Abortion.
If one of the tiny principalities, I’m thinking someplace like Monaco but including the Vatican itself declared war on the US over abortion, would it justify violence against abortionists? That is the only missing element in the tests given in the catechism.
Are 4000 innocent deaths of the unborn today and every day “lasting, grave, and certain?”
Have the three decades of prayer and persuasion and political attempts at stopping it been shown to be “impractical and ineffective”.
There are few easily identified targets that would have almost no collateral damage, no “evils worse than that to be eliminated”.
Both abortion and just war are covered under the 5th commandment in the Catechism:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm
If even petty vandalism like using glue in keyslots is so disproportionate and unjustified to end this 50 million and counting holocaust, would someone explain how anything being done with our bullets and other weapons can possibly be justified?
I am not asking for consensus, merely consistency.
Before worrying about random rockets over months from Hamas that only kill occasionally with a very lucky shot, ought we not worry first about the holocaust in our home town which is far more successful in murdering innocents daily?
Drop it or cast the first stone, but if you cast it please do so at the most worthy target. Not 10,000 miles away where you can safely engage in dehumanization.
Perhaps our best sidewalk counselors can end the bloodshed – send them instead of military weapons to Israel.
What makes the Israeli attack on Hamas “unjust” is purely the number of civilian casualties inflicted. But why are there civilian casualties? Because Hamas uses its own civilians as human shields, putting its miltiary infrastructure inside the civilian population, rather than on some kind of military bases. In doing so, Hamas commits a terrible war crime.
If Hamas put is military operations on military bases, as Israel does, there would be almost no civilain casualties sustained. And then no one would accuse the Israelis of launching an unjust war, because those who had launched missles into Israel would be the only causalties. So it is not really the Israeli aggressions that make this an unjust war, it is the Hamas mode of defense.
Hamas knows it cannot defend its own military against Israel, so it hides its military within its civilian population. Is Israel supposed to honor this form of defense, when the geneva conventions consider it a war crime? Is it unjust for Israel to launch its attacks against Hama’s military anyway, knowing it will cause civilian casualties, even thought this is due to Hamas’ own illegal and immoral defense posture? That’s a hard question to answer, in that it either sanctions a war crime, or the killing of innocent civlians who are being used as a war crime to defend their military, rather than the other way around.
It seems to me that Israel’s actions are just in the abstract military sense of the word, but unjust in the world of blood and human lives. Could Israel refrain from their attacks? Yes, they could. But should they? It’s hard to see how they can put up with Hamas much longer. The people of Gaza, like the people of Georgia, have to see the consequences of having vainglorious leaders who don’t really care about the human costs of their military strategies.
What Bacevich said. Even a crackpot like Nitze couldn’t justify preventive war, there seemed to be some kind of gentlemanly standard. But disciples have a way of rewriting things.
conradg makes a good case for why we had to exterminate so many natives ourselves. They gave us no choice because of their defense posture. Would that the undermenchen fight as we require them so, we would not have to be so constipated about it.
On another note, just who is David Addington’s bishop, and what is he doing?
srv: So if the laws of war are only artificial constructs invented by the West to subjugate non-whites, why should Israel be required to obey them any more than Hamas is? If Israel were to place human shields in its army bases, would that be a war crime? If so, why is not one for Hamas?
Are you stating that this was a war crime?
Daniel, though I tend toward the other side of the war debate, here you make an extraordinarily serious argument which cannot be dismissed.
srv – fundamentally, the israeli war with the palestinians is a colonial war. That is why so much of the traditional analysis fails. It is not a war between states or long standing sectarian differences. It is a war between foreign and native peoples, no different than the spanish invasion of mexico.
srv,
Cute. But Native Americans didn’t hide behind their women and children, they fought the white man in the field. When Custer went into Little Big Horn, the Indians didn’t flee to hide in their teepees, they met him and fought face to face. Sometimes they attacked and slaughtered white settlers, but when it came time to fight soldiers, they did so bravely and honorably, and they lost without losing their dignity as men. The same simply can’t be said for Hamas.