The Broken Tradition
Mini Teaser: In the ongoing argument between foreign policy realists andidealists, the just-war tradition of moral reasoning about the use offorce has played a crucial mediating role for centuries.
In the ongoing argument between foreign policy realists and
idealists, the just-war tradition of moral reasoning about the use of
force has played a crucial mediating role for centuries. Rooted in
the conviction that all human action--even in the distinctive field
of international affairs, and even in the extremity of war--is
susceptible to moral scrutiny and judgment, the just-war tradition
has insisted that moralists take a realistic account of politics as
an arena of conflict in which the quest for justice and peace is
inevitably fraught with ambiguity and disagreement. Its mediation has
also enabled statesmen to maintain an accepted role for moral
judgment in the very domain--that of war--farthest from the regular
application of human compassion, law, and comity. Just-war theory
has, in short, been a civilized and civilizing agent in the darkest
corners of the human social endeavor, and it has kept the church from
straying too far from the realm of this world.
The ancient question--How can the use of force serve just ends?--that
has been the centerpiece of Christian reflection on just war from the
fifth century has lost none of its urgency today. Indeed, post-Cold
War international politics offers a fertile field for reflection by
moral philosophers and statesmen alike, as the world stands on the
edge of the third millennium of the common era. With the fear of and
focus on superpower nuclear tensions now subsided, world politics
offers situation after situation in which one can imagine the use of
proportionate and discriminate force serving just and prudential ends.
Yet, as in other disciplines and sub-disciplines that treat such
matters, just-war theorists often find themselves at sea today. The
reason, however, has less to do with the confusions of the post-Cold
War world or the classic canons of just-war thinking than with the
intellectual deterioration of that theory itself in influential
quarters. Precisely when statesmen might well look to just-war theory
for guidance on the always-tangled questions of relating appropriate
means to desirable ends, many contemporary just-war theorists are
engaged in a process of self-marginalization. Pressed by the
experience of two world wars and the special circumstances of the
nuclear age, and tempted by secular ideological notions, these
theorists have altered the very ground on which the theory itself has
stood for more than a thousand years. While the core of just-war
tradition is based on opposition to injustice, the recent metathesis
is based instead on a "presumption against war"--a very different
matter indeed.
The burden of this essay is to trace briefly the essential elements
and philosophical bedrock of just-war theory, and to show how it has
changed over the last century--and especially over the past three
decades. I argue that recent changes reflect contingent judgments on
the nature of modern war that do not match the character of
contemporary armed conflicts. I conclude by suggesting that, in its
original form, just-war theory remains relevant to the challenges
faced by statesmen today. I illustrate this relevance by identifying
several contemporary policy implications that follow from
understanding the just-war idea as aimed against injustice rather
than against the use of force itself.
The Classic Just-War Idea
The just-war tradition addresses two issues regarding the morality of
the use of force: when it is right to resort to armed force, and what
it is right to do when using force--jus ad bellum and jus in bello,
respectively. While these two issues are related, the question of
permissibility has priority, for absent the determination that a use
of force is morally justified, even the most strictly delimited means
are, in terms of the just-war tradition, unjust.
The requirements of jus ad bellum are clear in the theory, especially
as developed by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Above all,
the resort to force must have a just cause. It must also be
authorized by a competent authority, and it must be motivated by the
right intention. And it must pass four prudential tests: that it be
expected to produce a preponderance of good over evil; that it have a
reasonable chance of success; that it be a last resort; and that its
expected outcome establish peace. Some commentators add that a just
war must also be formally declared, but most agree that the first
three requirements subsume this one as well.
The requirements of jus in bello are also clear. The use of force
must be discriminate (it must distinguish the guilty from the
innocent), and it must be proportional (it must distinguish necessary
force from gratuitous force).
A study of the just-war tradition suggests that, above all, the first
requirement of jus ad bellum--that it have a just cause as a response
to injustice--is the font of the entire tradition. This becomes
obvious if we examine several benchmark figures in the evolution of
just-war theory.
The origins of a specifically Christian tradition on just war are to
be found in the thought of Augustine and his mentor, Ambrose of
Milan, in the fourth and fifth centuries. They inherited--and did not
challenge--a Christian consensus that the example and teaching of
Jesus required that Christians not defend themselves when attacked
but should instead turn the other cheek when confronted with
violence. But first Ambrose and then Augustine reasoned that the
prohibition of self-defense did not imply that a Christian might not
defend his neighbor when attacked. On the contrary, they argued, it
is a duty of Christian love to defend the innocent in such
circumstances. Not providing such defense is itself morally wrong: as
Ambrose wrote in first advancing his insight, "He who does not keep
harm off a friend, if he can, is as much in fault as he who causes
it." Augustine concurred and expanded the point.
Clearly, Ambrose and Augustine began with the duty of love to protect
the innocent, not with a presumption against doing harm, even to an
enemy. They reasoned that the duty to protect the innocent permitted
use of force against the wrongful attacker up to the level needed to
prevent the attack from succeeding, though it must not exceed this
level, since the evildoer is himself considered to be someone for
whom Christ died. Thus the consideration of restraint in the use of
force arises only after the duty to use force is recognized, and
restraint follows not from a presumption against harm but from the
same duty of love directed toward the evildoer.
The logic of this position was in turn developed by the medieval
heirs of these early figures, beginning with Gratian and other
canonists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But in retrospect,
the position of Thomas Aquinas looms as especially important, both
because of his general influence on later Catholic thought and
because of his dependence on Augustine himself in the matter of
just-war theory.
In order for a war to be just, Thomas Aquinas wrote, three things are
necessary, namely: sovereign authority, just cause, and right
intention. Since we are particularly interested in the conditions
that justify resort to force, it is useful to look first at how
Thomas (citing Augustine) defined just cause:
"[J]ust cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should
be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.
Wherefore Augustine says: A just war is wont to be described as one
that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished for
refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or
to restore what has been seized unjustly."
This focus is also clear in Thomas' discussion of the requirement of
sovereign authority for a just war. Defining this requirement he
cites a text frequently quoted in medieval writing on the ethics of
war, Romans 13:4: "The sovereign beareth not the sword in vain: for
he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth
evil." Thomas continues, "so too, it is [a sovereign's] business to
have recourse to the sword in defending the common weal against
external enemies."
That the resort to force in itself is not the moral problem here is
all the more clear when Thomas turns to the requirement of right
intention for a just war, again quoting Augustine:
"True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not
for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of
securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good."
What is morally condemnable in war, Thomas continues, is not force
itself but the use of force with the wrong intention, namely "[t]he
passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an
unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of
power, and such like things." As for the argument that prudential
considerations may overrule the presence of just cause, Thomas leaves
judgment to the sovereign; it is not a matter for the Church to
determine, and certainly not to determine in advance for all war.
Moving forward from the medieval base into the modern period, two
other benchmark figures, Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) and Hugo
Grotius (1583-1645), illustrate the essential continuity of this
conception of just war. They did, however, introduce two changes made
necessary by the modern period. In medieval times, the just-war
tradition applied only to wars between Christians, not between
Christians and non-Christians (notably Muslims), and, theologically
speaking, Western Christianity was still monolithic. With the Spanish
expansion into the new world there arose the question of the
propriety of colonial wars against non-Christian peoples, and then
came the dilemmas occasioned by the Protestant Reformation. The first
change introduced by Vitoria and solidified by Grotius was to locate
the justifying causes for war squarely within natural law and the law
of nations, thereby ruling out appeals to religion (or other
ideological causes) as justifying resort to war. The second was the
recognition that in a given conflict both sides might appear to have
just cause.
In the context of the first development, these theorists regarded war
as provided for by both nature and the law of nations as a means of
settling otherwise intractable disputes. As to the second issue, one
might guess, on the face of it, that if both sides in a conflict
appear to have just cause, then the tradition would enjoin them not
to fight; that is, it would see ambiguity itself as a restriction on
jus ad bellum, the very right to go to war. Certainly, if there were
a presumption against war within the core of the tradition, it would
have been most likely to present itself here. But neither Vitoria nor
Grotius reasoned this way. Rather, accepting war as a last-resort
means of settling disputes, they focused instead on the idea of
simultaneous ostensible justice--the perception of justice on both
sides at once--as the base for more attention to restraint in war,
thus feeding the development of the jus in bello, the rules limiting
the conduct of war. Also, both of these early modern just-war
theorists give explicit attention to the purpose of just use of force
to right injustices, as for example Vitoria's contemporary-sounding
argument for the use of force to oppose pillage, rape, and
indiscriminate killing.
Clearly, the development of Christian just-war tradition follows a
line of reasoning focused on the rightness of the resort to force to
combat the evil of injustice, and that development did not construe
at any point the use of force to be a moral problem in itself. In
classic just-war theory the use of force is morally problematical
only when it is the source of injustice. But even then, wrong uses of
force do not call force itself into question, but instead justify the
resort to force to set matters right. What Christian just-war
doctrine is about, as classically defined, is the use of the
authority and force of the rightly ordered political community (and
its sovereign authority as minister of God) to prevent, punish, and
rectify injustice. There is, simply put, no presumption against war
in it at all.
The Evolution of an Idea
If the idea of a "presumption against war" cannot be traced to the
theorists who gave Christian just-war theory its classical form, then
where does it come from? The answer, I suggest, is that it has
developed out of a particular response to the phenomenon of modern
war, a response that understands the nature of war today necessarily
to threaten human values, not to provide a means of protecting them.
This understanding depicts war in its contemporary form as inherently
suspect. A widely known rendering of this view is in Paul Fussell's
The Great War and Modern Memory: Modern war is senseless, out of
control, massively destructive of human values and life values,
leaving behind harmful consequences that linger long after the
shooting is done.
Since the idea of a "presumption against war" as informing just-war
theory has been explicitly adopted by the American Catholic bishops
in their 1983 pastoral, The Challenge of Peace, it is instructive to
follow the evolution in Catholic thought of the perception of modern
war as inherently destructive of value. Here, as in other religious
criticism of modern war, we encounter additional themes: negative
judgments on the purposes of modern secular states, references to the
growth of "militarism", and a conception of modern weapons as
inherently too destructive to serve value. It is important to note
that this negative perception of war is not simply a reaction to the
age of nuclear weapons. It was well established long before the
nuclear age. Fussell traces this conception of war to the terrible
experience in the trenches of 1914-18, but for Catholic thought it
begins at least as early as 1870, when a formal position paper, or
Postulatum, was presented to Vatican Council I, challenging the
justice of the form of war practiced by modern states.
Reflecting the experience of the Franco-Prussian War of that same
year, and perhaps also the American Civil War that had ended five
years earlier, this Postulatum explicitly cited the venal motivations
of states and the danger of large standing national armies as a
special evil. It argued that such armies fostered a spirit of
militarism, tended to foment wars in order to finance themselves
through conquest, and led to conflicts so destructive as to be
"hideous massacres" that the church could not regard as just. So far
as the jus ad bellum was concerned, the argument of the Postulatum
precluded the possibility of a first use of force being just, no
matter what its aim--and after the grotesque slaughter of the First
World War some forty-five years later, the argument could only have
seemed more self-evident than ever. The document did, however, admit
the right of second use of force in defense against attack. Together,
this undercutting of the first use of force along with the acceptance
of second use (defined as defense) was to become an element not only
for later Catholic thought but also for twentieth-century
international law.
Following the Great War and reflecting the experience of that
conflict, a gathering of prominent theologians at the 1931 Conventus
of Fribourg thus distinguished between defense, which they regarded
as lawful, and the argument for war from national "necessity", which
they declared not lawful. In the context of the provisions for
arbitration of disputes established by the League of Nations, and the
renunciation of first use of force established for the signatories to
the Pact of Paris, the Conventus took the position that it was wrong
to initiate any resort to arms to settle a dispute without first
recourse to arbitration.
These two documents set the terms for a critique of war that ends as
a "presumption against war." Since the Second World War various
official and nonofficial statements have called into question
whether, given the nature of modern war, even the just cause of
defense can legitimize resort to armed force. Statements of the
various popes to this effect are especially interesting because of
their authoritative force, even though they represent only a fraction
of the full range of recent Catholic thought on war.
Pope Pius XII, whose papacy (1939-58) extended through the Second
World War and the beginning of the nuclear age, in effect forbade
"all wars of aggression, whether just or unjust", as John Courtney
Murray put it. For this pope a "war of aggression", Murray notes, was
identified with any offensive use of force, whatever the justifying
reason. Defensive war, on the other hand, was acceptable--though Pius
hedged this allowance more tightly than earlier just-war writers. His
reasoning on first and second resort to force came together in his
1956 Christmas message, which reflected the context of the Hungarian
revolution and its repression by Soviet military power. This
statement is interesting as an example of the refashioning of
traditional just-war concepts into a somewhat different doctrine from
that defined by the classic theorists. In a particularly vivid
passage Pius wrote:
"There is no further room for doubt about the purposes and methods
that lie behind tanks when they crash resoundingly across frontiers.
. . . When all the possible stages of negotiation and mediation are
by-passed, and when the threat is made to use atomic arms to obtain
concrete demands, whether these are justified or not, it becomes
clear that . . . there may come into existence in a nation a
situation in which all hope of averting war becomes vain. In this
situation a war of efficacious self-defense against unjust attacks,
which is undertaken with hope of success, cannot be considered
illicit." [emphasis added]
In context, this was a pointed condemnation of the Soviet invasion
alongside a somewhat lukewarm acceptance of the Hungarian resistance.
Pius used just-war language, but his priorities were importantly
different from those of classic just-war theory. There, as we have
seen, the classical focus was on three concerns: the justice of the
cause for resort to force, the existence of authority to do so, and
the intention with which it would be used. Pius, however, focused
elsewhere: on the evil of first resort to force itself (tanks
crashing "resoundingly across frontiers") and the requirement of last
resort (the threat of further force without making use of
"negotiation" and "mediation"). While he allowed defensive use of
force, he subjected it to further limits: only self-defense against
"unjust attacks" is allowed; "reasonable hope of success" (the
classic criterion) has been refashioned into "efficacious
self-defense . . . undertaken with hope of success" (emphasis added
in both cases); and the defensive resort to force is not explicitly
just, but only "cannot be considered illicit."
Pius' reasoning here expressed a "presumption against war" without
employing the term. While his reference to atomic arms introduced a
new element in the context of resort to force, Pius' focus in this
passage was clearly not that these particular weapons are especially
evil and to be avoided but that the use of force is especially evil
and to be avoided. His negative attitude toward resort to force was
thus not a particular result of the atomic age; rather it was of a
piece with the distrust of arms, armies, and the use of force
expressed earlier in Catholic thought, in the denunciation of large
standing armies and militarism in 1870, and the emphasis on
arbitration in 1931.
Giving his own weight to this new emphasis, Pope John XXIII, in the
Pacem in Terris encyclical of 1963, called for the banning of nuclear
weapons, a general reduction of other arms, and the development of an
international regime based on common consent that would resolve
disputes short of war. In a widely discussed passage he wrote:
"[I]n this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes
sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair
the violation of justice."
Catholic pacifists of our day have argued that this statement not
only condemned all war in the nuclear age, but rejected just-war
theory as well. By contrast, Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey
understood John XXIII as working within the just-war framework, but
ruling out two of the three classical just causes for resort to
force--recovery of something wrongly taken and punishment of
evil--while leaving only defense as justified. Even if Ramsey's less
radical interpretation is correct, much has been given up in this
statement for, after all, to repair the violation of justice was
precisely what classic just-war doctrine was about.
As these examples show, twenty years into the nuclear age it was
clear that Catholic (and not only Catholic) thought on just war had
shifted focus to a concern that the first resort to force under any
circumstances held great potential for injustice and that,
accordingly, such resort must be avoided. The defensive use of arms
remained a moral possibility, although an increasingly questioned
one. In Pope Paul VI's 1965 address to the United Nations General
Assembly, this evolving line of reasoning about just war reached for
a new resolution. While issuing the ringing challenge, "[N]ever again
war, war never again!", Paul also admitted that so long as man
remains "weak, changeable, and wicked", "defensive arms will, alas!
be necessary." But he stopped short of explicitly saying that it is
morally allowable to use such arms. In the context of prevailing Cold
War strategies, this statement suggested support for deterrence but
not for active defense should deterrence fail. Hence, his point was
to draw a double distinction: between the possession of offensive
arms, which he regarded as morally evil, and defensive ones, whose
possession he permitted; and between the possession of and use of the
latter.
It was no great distance from these distinctions to what amounted to
a position of nearly unconditional pacifism--the basic rejection of
just-war logic altogether with the new understanding that, for
Catholics at least, religion mandates a "presumption against war."
The logic of the paradigm was spelled out vividly in the 1983
pastoral letter of the American Catholic bishops, The Challenge of
Peace. Its starting point is not the problem of preventing injustice,
but its insistence that:
"Catholic teaching begins in every case with a presumption against
war and for peaceful settlement of disputes. In exceptional cases,
determined by the moral principles of the just-war tradition, some
uses of force are permitted." [emphasis added]
The definition of exceptional cases is suggested by two statements
that follow the above. The first defines self-defense against
aggression as a right and duty of every nation, and the second
rejects offensive war as morally unjustifiable whatever the
circumstances. Later, in the text of the letter itself, these themes
are elaborated and linked to earlier Catholic tradition, as well as
to the effort in international law to outlaw wars of aggression and,
ultimately, to eliminate war altogether by international common
consent. The right to resort to force, however, as defined in the
bishops' letter, is more stringent than that understood in
international law because it imposes further limitations: that resort
to force must be subject to prudential tests, including the
requirements of last resort, probability of success, and overall
proportionality.
Defined thusly, the implication of the presumption against war is to
push just-war theory close to outright rejection of any resort to
force. While The Challenge of Peace focused specifically on nuclear
weapons, it clearly nurtured the more general inclination that, in
the present age, the use of any military force is morally
questionable because it could escalate into nuclear force. Hence, the
words of John XXIII--that in the present age war may no longer be
employed to remedy the violation of justice--and hence the trajectory
of recent Catholic teaching on war, which seems to leave no doubt
that the intent is to avoid all resort to force.
The idea that just-war tradition is rooted in a "presumption against
war" is clearly an innovation; the question is whether it is a
justified innovation. I think not. Indeed, this sort of thinking
should be a cause for concern not only to Catholics, but to anyone
who believes that moral reasoning has a place in the affairsof
statecraft. This is so for two reasons: first, because "presumption
against war" thinking effectively destroys the logic of just-war
theory by putting jus in bello above jus ad bellum, and by putting
lesser, prudential considerations within jus ad bellum above major
ones; and, second, because the assumptions about the nature of war on
which it is based are flawed.
The Logical Problem
From the perspective of pure moral argument, the problem with the
"presumption against war" idea is not only that it is radically at
odds with the classical idea of just war, but that the nature of the
judgment upon which the claim is made is inadequate. Rather than
flowing from a deontological moral principle (a "categorical
imperative", as Kant put it), the "presumption against war" is a
product of prudential judgments about the nature of modern war.
The problem with prudential judgments such as those incorporated into
the presumption against war logic is not only that they are
prudential, but that they are contingent. In other words, they are
not based on an unchangeable moral principle, but on a condition in
the world that is not only subject to change but fated to change.
Pure moral reasoning about justice and injustice lives in the realm
of absolutes, of deontological reasoning: One obeys a moral principle
not because of the consequences of obeying it, but because it is
right. Moral judgments--applied moral reasoning--obviously must
assess contingent conditions, but such judgments must not be guided
by them. It is precisely for this reason that medieval and early
modern just-war theory placed responsibility for the four lesser
prudential concerns included in jus ad bellum--that it produce a
preponderance of good over evil, have a reasonable chance of success,
be a last resort, and that its expected outcome be peace--on the
competent authority who determines whether to resort to armed force.
In other words, these lesser but still very important concerns
pertain to the function of statecraft, not moral analysis. The role
of the moralist is to insist on the application of the three
essential, non-contingent elements of jus ad bellum--just cause,
competent authority, right intention--and to specify that the
prudential elements be taken into account. But the moralist is not to
usurp the role of statecraft by specifying how they are to apply or
what they mean for specific instances or periods of time. The
"presumption against war" view, by reversing the weight of essential
and contingent considerations, would vitiate statecraft and presume
to tell sovereigns how to conduct their affairs--a most worldly and
untraditional presumption at that. From the perspective of moral
reasoning, too, it gives pride of place to judgments about contingent
conditions over obligations inherent in moral duty.
The Practical Problem
To the extent that it is taken seriously, "presumption against war"
thinking also has clear implications for the shape of public policy
on the use of force. For if war is always presumptively wrong, the
moral frame for policy debate over the use of force is reduced to the
arena of those very limited exceptional circumstances that may
override this presumption. What the 1983 pastoral letter meant for
policy on nuclear weapons, relating both to deterrence and to
possible use, was well-examined at the time the letter appeared: It
was, politically, an attempt to advance the campaign for a nuclear
freeze, and it was justified largely on the basis of the claim that
neither the demands of discrimination nor proportionality could
possibly be met in any use of nuclear weapons.
One can still argue such matters today, for the chances of a major
nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia (or China) are
not completely nil. But in the contemporary environment, policy
questions relating to very different forms of the national use of
force and occasions for such use are at center stage. The types of
forces involved are different, the justifications entered into debate
are different, and the authority for employment of force is
different. The key issues now relate to conventional, not nuclear
arms; they involve low-intensity conflict and various forms of
interventionary uses of military force, not superpower deterrence or
war; the goals served are often defined by broadly held international
values, not national interests narrowly construed; and the question
of the rightness of the use of force encompasses not only cases in
which unilateral action by the United States is at issue, but also
cases in which the United States is a participant in groups of
nations ranging from ad hoc coalitions (such as that against Iraq in
the Gulf War), to regional alliances (like NATO or the OAS), to the
United Nations.
Restoring Justice to Just-War Reasoning
Despite the existence of such variable circumstances, some modern
just-war theorists have marginalized themselves to the point where
they can barely speak to such matters. It is hard to see how, from a
posture defined by the "presumption against war", uses of force can
be justified for reasons of national interest other than resistance
to a direct attack in progress (and perhaps not then, if the
prudential tests are not met), even in the face of serious threat to
national security or for international order purposes. Yet these
kinds of cases provide the context for debate over the use of force
today: threats to national interest take such forms as terrorist
attack and the drug trade; recent international order concerns
include rolling back aggression (the Gulf War), promoting human
rights and democracy (Haiti), and ending an indiscriminately
destructive civil war (Bosnia). Just-war theory, if brought back to
its real roots, can be relevant to all these contingencies. The way
to do this is to restore the centrality of the idea of justice to
reasoning about the use of force.
There is no question that classic just-war theorists were motivated
in their thinking about the use of force by the desire to prevent,
punish, and remedy injustice, and even to do so at risk to
oneself--as per Ambrose and Augustine. The purpose of statecraft
fo