The Just War Tradition: An Introduction

The Just War Tradition

An Introduction

David D. Corey and J. Daryl Charles

To our children

Anna and John

Melody, Jesse, and Ian

1

Tradition and the Just War

On March 9, 2003—just ten days before American and coalition forces began operations in Iraq—former president Jimmy Carter wrote an impassioned editorial in the New York Times.¹

To Carter, it seemed that the Bush administration’s plan to wage war in Iraq was a repudiation of the time-honored just war tradition. Carter explained: A just war should always be a last resort, but other options still existed in Iraq. A war’s weapons should discriminate between combatants and noncombatants, but American bombs do not adequately discriminate. A war’s violence should be proportional to the injury suffered, but Iraq never directly injured the United States. War should be authorized by a legitimate authority, but the UN Security Council (the relevant authority, according to Carter) did not approve the war. And finally, the war’s results must be a clear improvement upon what exists, but we had no reason for such hope in 2003. The conclusion for Carter was simple: war in Iraq would be unjust according to the just war tradition.

Less than a month earlier, Jean Bethke Elshtain, a distinguished professor at the University of Chicago, wrote an editorial for the Los Angeles Times, in which she too considered Iraq in light of the just war tradition.²

But she reached a different conclusion: she saw a strong case for the use of force against the Hussein regime. Her argument was buttressed by a number of factors, including the seventeen UN sanctions that Iraq had ignored and that the UN had failed to enforce, egregious human rights violations perpetrated by Iraq against its own people since the late 1970s, genocidal practices against the Kurds, Hussein’s repeated threats of terrorism against American and European interests, and the destabilizing effect of his policies on the region. Elshtain ended by pointing out that the mere fact that America’s political and military leaders take seriously the question of just cause, and restrain themselves in their use of force, is a credit to the continuing relevance of the just war tradition in our violent world.

We juxtapose these clashing commentaries not to defend a particular view of American involvement in Iraq but rather to raise the more fundamental question of how to understand the just war tradition. Carter and Elshtain both regard this tradition as essential for American deliberation about war, and yet they employ it to arrive at starkly different conclusions about the justness of war in Iraq. How can this be? Has Carter or Elshtain (or have both) simply misunderstood or misapplied the tradition? Or is the tradition itself somehow incoherent? And if so, what is the point of invoking it? These are serious questions, and we return to them below. But there is something else to notice about the commentaries by Carter and Elshtain, which is their underlying, albeit submerged, agreement. Both maintain that the just war tradition is a venerable tradition, an expression of our ethical ideals and a measure of American greatness. Both suggest that American policies need to be justified in terms of this tradition; and both give the impression that if we forsake it, we shall forfeit our credibility in the world, no longer being the people we once were. The tradition is thus for both authors the framework in which American statesmen and citizens should be deliberating collectively about war.

But are Americans in general prepared to engage in such deliberation? The answer is undoubtedly no. According to a recent survey, only 19.3 percent of college seniors today (some of our most highly educated citizens) can distinguish a valid and long-standing criterion of a just war (legitimate authority) from a list of bogus criteria presented in a multiple-choice format. The seniors who were surveyed (more than seven thousand in all) included students from some of our nation’s leading institutions—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, among them.³

This suggests that we are failing to impart to our own the most basic understanding of a just war. Accordingly, we are in real danger of losing our grip on a tradition that commentators as diverse as Carter and Elshtain regard as simply indispensable—indispensable if we wish to act ethically in a violent world, and also (we would add) for our practice of democratic citizenship. It is the job, no doubt, of military and political leaders to protect us. But it is the job of citizens to ensure they do so in a way that both represents who we are and embodies our ideals. If we lose sight of those ideals, we lose our ability to determine our own character. We become subjects rather than citizens. A reengagement of the just war tradition seems therefore vitally important.

This book is designed to respond to this problem by studying the just war tradition from its inception, observing its development over time, and reflecting on how the various voices within the tradition relate to each other and to different, rival ways of understanding war.⁴

Yet the account that unfolds in the chapters ahead is complex, and for this reason some introductory remarks will be helpful. Here we begin by contrasting the just war tradition with three more or less closely related perspectives: realism, pacifism, and what is today called just war theory (as distinct from the just war tradition). Next, we offer a broad overview of the tradition itself—first in terms of seminal thinkers who represent in their respective era the heart of just war moral reasoning, then in terms of the philosophical terrain the tradition covers. Finally, we reflect on the value of the tradition for our time.

REALISM AND PACIFISM

The most common way of misunderstanding the just war tradition is to suppose that its goals are identical to those of realism or pacifism and then to blame it for failing to achieve those goals as effectively as it could. Let us therefore distinguish it from realism and pacifism.

As an approach to international relations, realism stands out for what it deemphasizes as much as for what it emphasizes. It deemphasizes the expectation that the relationship among states is, or will be, determined to any significant degree by the moral constraints found in domestic affairs. What it emphasizes instead is a sober analysis of states’ interests and how these can be secured and advanced vis-à-vis other states. As such, realism is as old as Greek antiquity, if not older. We find it expressed in the Melian Dialogue of Thucydides, in the early-modern political works of Machiavelli and Hobbes, and in a host of contemporary writers ranging from military strategists and statesmen to political theorists and theologians.⁵

For most realists, the relationship among states appears as a perpetual state of war, whether this takes the form of actual battle or of more subtle peacetime posturing. For this reason, statesmen must learn to use force as well as the threat of force without moral scruples, lest one’s nation suffer in the balance.

Pacifism, by contrast, is the doctrine that war, in the words of the popular bumper sticker, is not the answer. (One might suppose this depends on the question.) Pacifism, of course, comes in a number of varieties, religious and secular; and it can stem from pragmatic or deontological considerations. Pragmatic pacifists argue that war is wrong because its costs always outweigh its gains or because less-destructive options are always available. Deontological pacifists argue that war is wrong because it violates universal principles of right that define what is moral for individuals in any context. But however pacifism is construed, its position diverges from the just war position in its total or near-total rejection of war as a possible response to injustice and violence in the world. The just war tradition does not reject war as a possibility, although it does not relish it either.⁶

The temptation to adopt a realist or pacifist perspective is evidently very great. But whatever their merits, they leave something significant to be desired that the just war tradition supplies in abundance. They leave their adherents with virtually no language, no conceptual tools, no guiding principles, for evaluating the justice or injustice of particular wars or particular practices of war. The pacifist approach does not offer this, of course, because it rejects war in toto. What is the point of parsing details when war per se is unjust? And the realist paradigm does not offer this because its emphasis on strategic over moral considerations tends to make talk of morality seem naive. The just war tradition is the only framework that offers a rich, highly inflected language, a storehouse of categories, concepts, and commonplaces developed over centuries of reflection, in which the moral particulars of war can be examined. One thus observes that when pacifists or realists must address specific ethical questions of war, they necessarily fall back on the language of the just war tradition, whether they like it or not.

Beyond this, the relationship of the just war tradition to realism and pacifism is complex due to considerable areas of overlap. The just war tradition shares with realism a keen awareness that man is often incorrigibly violent and unjust and that war is sometimes necessary to secure peace and to promote justice. It shares with pacifism a profound sadness about war as well as an indefatigable love of peace as an animating motive. One is thus tempted to view the just war tradition as a blend or compromise. On a continuum running from morally unencumbered action at one end (extreme realism) to practical paralysis at the other (extreme pacifism), the tradition appears somewhere in between. But this is not, in fact, the best way to think of it. For the difference among approaches is not really one of degree but of kind—it is a principled difference about what justice requires, not a difference of how much justice to practice.

This can be clarified if we consider the basic premises underlying the just war approach in terms resembling a practical syllogism.

In order to maintain justice and peace among nations, wars are sometimes (tragically) necessary.

Humans are by definition moral creatures who wish (anomalies aside) to act in ways that are good. And therefore,

Wars should be fought—to the extent that they must be fought at all—in ways that are compatible with our moral sensibilities.

In this light, the just war tradition arises, again, as the attempt to respond to the challenges implied by man’s desire for the good by articulating moral guidelines for war. It differs from pacifism in that pacifism rejects (or questions to the point of paralysis) the claim that war is sometimes necessary. Because pacifists reject this claim, they fail to face the challenge of setting out moral guidelines for war. Realism, for its part, rejects (or severely curtails) the claim that humans are basically moral. Because they reject this or, what amounts to the same thing, believe that moral aspirations have no hope of success in an anarchic international environment, realists likewise fail to face the challenge of setting out adequate moral guidelines. That the three approaches thus differ in kind, not merely in degree, is revealed by how they categorically differ on the basic parameters of the problem. Only the just war tradition focuses first and foremost on the problem of reconciling the desire to act morally with the necessity of war.

At this juncture, two ways of wrongly dismissing the just war tradition can be addressed. First, the purpose of the tradition is not—not essentially, at least—to prevent war. This is an important point to stress, since it has often been argued that the failure of the tradition to stop specific wars from occurring is a telltale sign of its irrelevance.⁷

Against this claim one may remark that it is difficult, in fact, to determine how many wars of the past may have been abandoned in light of just war considerations. Wars that were not fought are difficult to count. However, the objection itself reflects a skewed view of the purpose of the tradition. The essential purpose of the just war tradition is not to prevent or abolish war (desirable as this may be) but to consider how wars might be waged justly. It does not attempt, first and foremost, to prevent wars, because it is committed not only to peace but also to justice, which sometimes requires force.

Nor, second, can the just war tradition be dismissed on the grounds that wars continue to be fought for unjust causes and by unjust means. Here it is not the bare fact of war that animates the criticism but rather its ethical character today. As the charge runs: if the just war tradition were credible, it would generate just wars; but if wars continue to be fought for unjust reasons or by unjust means, then the tradition is obviously ineffective.⁸

The problem with this charge is twofold. In the first place, wars are too massively complex to be described simply as just or unjust in a single breath. As justice is pursued at one level, injustices occur at another: soldiers rarely deserve the hardship of war, nor do innocents deserve to have their lives turned upside down or to become the victims of violence. Thus, the tradition does not stand or fall by the mere presence of injustice. Moreover, the charge involves a basic confusion about the relationship of moral reflection to practice. Moral reflection may shed light on why certain actions are right or wrong in relation to more basic conceptions of the good. But the mere existence of a tradition of moral reflection does not guarantee that leaders will act consistently by its lights. Over this, the tradition has no control.⁹

JUST WAR THEORY

The just war tradition comes to light, then, as a collaborative meditation stretching back in time and continuing even today on questions at the intersection of ethics and war. The results of this meditation, outlined below in an introductory way, can be understood as something like a framework—a permanent structure in which various questions have been differentiated from one another, various ways of answering those questions explored, and various terms and concepts developed to facilitate analysis. What we want to stress in the following is that this framework is significantly larger and richer than is often assumed and that it is, contrary to popular belief, not a fixed theory or doctrine. Why have people become confused about this? Part of the reason relates to the substitution of the phrase just war theory for just war tradition—a semantic point, perhaps, but one with profound implications. The problem is that many just war writers today actually believe that the tradition can and should be abridged into a single (if complex) doctrine and, in extreme cases, that it should be presented in the form of a checklist of just war criteria that captures once and for all what is just and unjust in war.¹⁰

Of course, the desire to reduce the complexity of the moral life to a bare list of rules is understandable to an extent. Soldiers need clear guidelines, as do leaders and citizens in times of war. The pressure of events may deny us time to ponder the competing impulses of a whole tradition before deciding upon a course of action. Rules and checklists are therefore useful. But we are faced here with a pedagogical problem. Are citizens better served in the long run by reflecting on war through the lens of an entire tradition or by consulting the latest text of just war theory? Let us point out some advantages to approaching the just war tradition not as a theoretical argument or list of rules.

The first relates to the foundations of moral beliefs. Taken as a whole, early just war writers were frankly more thoughtful about the grounds they assumed for their reflections than just war theorists are today. Ethical theories do not exist in a vacuum. They emerge out of networks of assumptions about more basic questions of life: What are the possibilities and limits of human perfection? Is there a divine hand in human affairs? How should humans rank the various goods to which we are drawn? The classic writers of the tradition engaged these questions comprehensively as a backdrop to their reflections on war, and they unabashedly took stands. Thus, Augustine, for example, offers an account of the Fall and of human sin to explain why wars are necessary. But today, theorists are reluctant to disclose the grounds of their arguments. Because grounds can be contested and appear to evolve over time, they seem parochial, whereas theory ought to be universal. Today’s theorists thus attempt to theorize without recourse to grounds.¹¹

But this is neither possible nor desirable. It is not possible because every claim about what is right or wrong in war reaches back ultimately to some assumption about what is good and bad in general. The assumptions may be unspoken or undetected, but they cannot be willed away. Nor is it desirable, since theories whose grounds are obscured from view are ultimately unpersuasive.

Another advantage to studying the entire tradition is that one is unavoidably confronted by its striking diversity. Precisely because the ethical questions of war can be approached from markedly different operating assumptions, we find not a single theory but rather a host of theories within the tradition, each emerging from its own set of theological and metaphysical starting points. So, for example, the theologically oriented just war approach of Augustine is quite distinct from the more secularized approach of Locke. Such diversity cannot and should not be eschewed. It is a legitimate pluralism that results from the different ways we humans can account for the conditions in which we find ourselves. Moreover, pluralism within the tradition gives rise to a number of important questions that need to be explored if our understanding of justice in war is to be even remotely complete: What is the relationship among these various just war approaches—why and in what ways do they differ? To what extent are they potentially reconcilable? Or to what extent are they irreconcilable? And what are the possible ways of coping with diversity in cases where profound differences seem intractable? These are urgent questions and should be explored further, but the basic point is that such questions do not even arise unless and until the just war tradition is approached as a tradition rather than as a theory. Because theories, no matter how complex, are at bottom univocal claims, the effort to present the just war tradition as a theory necessarily obscures its diversity, along with the questions to which its diversity gives rise.

A final advantage to approaching the tradition in all its richness and diversity is that this facilitates better comprehension of the terms and arguments put forth in the tradition itself, avoiding what we might call degeneration of meaning. The danger here is a serious one that philosophers have long noted in other contexts: naked argument, it turns out, is never quite up to the task of expressing completely what is meant. A host of background material is always assumed and needs to be present in a listener’s mind if arguments are to be understood and applied correctly.¹²

But what happens when a novice approaches arguments of old lacking the experiences and the assumed background that went into them? The potential result, of course, is that literalism will supplant real meaning as essential qualifications and conditions are obscured.

This problem can be illustrated with the idea of last resort, a widely acknowledged criterion of just war theory today. Former president Carter invoked this in his editorial mentioned above: In order for war to be just, it must be a last resort. But what does this mean? Does it mean that as long as something remains to be tried, or tried once again—one more diplomatic exchange, one more set of sanctions, one more forbearance, ad infinitum—war is unjust? This is regrettably how the criterion has come to be understood, even by Carter. But this is a simple misunderstanding that stems from the overly parsimonious way in which the criterion has been expressed in our contemporary checklists. The fuller thought expressed by those who first articulated this stipulation was that wars are unjust as long as some solution short of war, a solution with reasonable likelihood of success, remains to be tried. Reasonable likelihood of success was the essential qualification; without it, the thought becomes absurd. All wars, after all, can be postponed indefinitely, and villains can be allowed to harm innocent people unopposed. But at a certain point, when all reasonable alternatives have been tried, the failure to respond becomes itself incompatible with the just war tradition properly understood, a tradition which maintains that acts of aggression can and sometimes should be resisted by a judicious use of force.¹³

The problem with just war theory is that its attempt to speak in the starkest possible terms—rules, checklists, and so on—often leads to confusion rather than clarity. The remedy for the problems just noted is as straightforward as it is daunting: it is to study the tradition in its more expansive expression as it emerges over time in the works and words of those who advanced it. Ad fontes, as the Renaissance humanists used to say—to the sources! Only by engaging the seminal texts of the tradition and endeavoring to understand them sympathetically shall we reap the rich harvests of insight that are available. But since our purpose in this chapter is merely to introduce the tradition, let us turn next to consider the broad contours of its historical development before asking how to make sense of its progress over time.

PARADIGMATIC APPROACHES

Though the just war tradition has roots reaching back to Roman and Hebrew antiquity, its origin as a tradition can be attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430).¹⁴

Augustine’s Rome was under severe military pressure from outside. In fact, Augustine was alive and writing at the time of the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 410, an event so shocking and unprecedented that it led to probing questions about Rome’s internal health. Could the rise of Christianity in the empire be somehow to blame for Rome’s weakness? Did the orientation toward another world, in combination with the Christian disregard for the traditional Roman gods, subvert the civic virtues that had undergirded Rome’s success? Responding to such fears, Augustine tried to explain to pagans and Christians alike just how vigorous Christians could be as citizens and soldiers. Yet at the same time, Augustine had to reckon with those passages of scripture that seemed to prohibit Christians from engaging in war: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Do not resist one who is evil. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Blessed be the peacemakers.

Augustine’s most important contribution to the just war tradition was to show that such Christian precepts of peace do not absolutely preclude the use of force against wrongdoers. His demonstration proceeded by taking into account the entirety of scripture, not just certain passages in isolation. His exegetical approach was also not strictly literal but allowed for the possibility of spiritual readings, much like his mentor, St. Ambrose. Augustine also had recourse to a basic philosophical distinction between external act and internal intent. In a nutshell, Augustine taught that it was possible for Christians to engage in war as long as they were acting under the authority of a legitimate ruler, their goal was peace, and their wills were animated by love for another. Like a parent who disciplines a recalcitrant child, it is possible to engage in war with the good of one’s enemy in mind, to exercise a benevolent harshness, as Augustine dubbed the loving use of force.¹⁵

Building on Augustine, Gratian and St. Thomas Aquinas stand out in the development of the just war tradition in the Middle Ages. Gratian wrote in the twelfth century and is known as the father of canon law. Recognizing that on many important ethical questions facing the church, a vexing diversity of opinion existed, Gratian attempted to organize the authoritative opinions he could find on any given subject and, when possible, to synthesize these into a coherent teaching. Where such a teaching was unattainable, Gratian simply allowed divergent opinions to stand side by side in evident disharmony. His work, entitled the Concordantia Discordantium Canonum (Concordance of Discordant Canons), treated the question of war (see Causa 23) in a way that revealed an obvious debt to Augustine. However, Gratian did not merely echo Augustine but also tackled new problems that were characteristic of his age, particularly whether church officials, like secular rulers, could declare war when the faith seemed threatened. Gratian’s answer, a qualified yes, represents the medieval (but not the modern) view on the subject, and it served to validate the Crusades as well as the violent suppression of heresy within the church.

Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) was similar to Gratian both in his debt to Augustine and in his dialogical approach of reasoning through opposing viewpoints. In Question 40 of the Summa Theologica, however, Aquinas offered a much clearer statement than any writer before him of the essential core of the just war concept. In Aquinas’s laconic yet infinitely expandable formulation, for war to be just, three things are necessary: the authority of a sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged, a just cause, and right intention. Of course, this invites as many questions as it answers (for example: Who counts as a sovereign authority? What is a just cause? What constitutes right intention?), and Aquinas went on to explore these issues to the extent that space allowed. But the Summa was also structured in a way that facilitated readers’ deep reflection. By strategically placing Question 40, On War, within his broader treatment of human virtues and vices in general, and his treatment of caritas (charity) in particular, Aquinas was able to illuminate the ethical possibilities and perils of war in a new and powerful way.

During the Reformation period, the two most prominent reformers, Luther (1483–1546) and Calvin (1509–1564), both endorsed the just war position, though they adapted it in different ways to their own religious and political concerns. Luther’s well-known preoccupation with personal salvation and individual conscience, for example, led him to reconsider and rework the question of soldiers’ responsibility. If a soldier is commanded to fight in an unjust war, should he disobey the command? Or was Augustine’s thought correct that the command of a superior absolves soldiers from responsibility? Luther’s answer was that each soldier should endeavor to learn for himself whether the cause he is fighting for is just, and he should not participate in causes known to be wrong.¹⁶

Luther is also noteworthy for his handling of the question whether force could be justly used in the name of religion, either to stamp out heretical beliefs or to protect the church from infidels. He is indeed the first major figure in the tradition to denounce rather than endorse religiously inspired warfare. Interestingly, on this point Calvin arrived at the opposite view, in part because of his distinctive understanding of government. Calvin believed that true government is not a strictly secular government but one that is religiously infused, listing fostering worship, guarding against false doctrine, and preventing sacrilege among government’s primary tasks.¹⁷

From the Middle Ages through the Reformation, the just war tradition comes to light as a primarily Christian theological tradition.¹⁸

Arguments were grounded in scripture and intended for Christians anxious about salvation. However, this began to change gradually with the early-modern writers Francisco de Vitoria (1492–1546), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). Though all three were theologians (as well as legal scholars) and continued to cite classic Christian texts and arguments, each attempted at the same time to present just war principles as grounded in natural law. In other words, they appealed to a universal human nature, knowable by reason and regulated by a natural sense of justice. This resulted in arguments that were at once more comprehensive and compelling. The just war tradition could now be applied to an audience larger than the Christian West. Vitoria and Suárez, for example, applied it to the native inhabitants of the New World, defending their rights against Spanish conquerors, whereas Grotius applied it to all peoples, regardless of location or custom.

The work of John Locke (1632–1704) was particularly significant for the early-modern development of the just war tradition. Locke also viewed the question of war through the prism of natural law. The state of nature, wrote Locke, has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.¹⁹

Those who violated this precept of natural law were aggressors in Locke’s view and could justly be subjected to force. Locke departed from earlier writers in the tradition, however, in the degree to which he muted scriptural texts and wrote instead with an eye toward a distinctly secular set of goods: political liberty, the right to property, and the hope of material progress. Gone now was the anxiety about salvation that had animated the tradition from the start, or the requirement stressed by Augustine and those following him that for war to be just it must be motivated by love. Locke, in effect, adapted the tradition to an early-modern climate in which church and state—or as Locke would put it, care of the soul and care of the body—were viewed as necessarily distinct.

Through Vitoria, Suárez, Grotius, and Locke, the just war tradition merged with the development of international law. We do not always think of the international laws of war such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the Nuremberg Principles as concrete expressions of the just war tradition, but that is precisely what they are. Consider some of the principal stipulations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions: attempt to settle disputes peacefully; fight only enemy combatants; do not harm enemies who surrender; do not kill or torture prisoners; destroy no more than the mission requires; respect private property and possessions; treat all civilians humanely. All these stipulations derive from the just war tradition, even if they are developed in greater detail as they are written into treaties. The first Hague Convention took place in 1899. From then to the last decades of the twentieth century, it is fair to say that the primary locus of development of the just war tradition was in the law. Law had now taken the place of theology and philosophy as the idiom in which questions of justice in war were to be considered.

However, the fields of law, morality, and theology are not perfectly coterminous, and while benefits accrued from incorporating the tradition into law, certain costs soon appeared as well. Law is a blunter instrument than morality and theology. Many things may be legal that are not necessarily moral. Nor do we look to the law to save our souls. Therefore, the need for ethical and theological analysis of war did not evaporate with the codification of the tradition—or large swaths of it—into law. On the contrary, it has seemed necessary to many just war scholars from the late twentieth century to the present to rejuvenate the ethical and theological modes of reflection in order to supplement and reform international law. Writers like John Courtney Murray, Paul Ramsey, and Oliver O’Donovan have approached this task from the theological side; Michael Walzer has developed the ethical (strictly philosophical) approach; while several writers, from William V. O’Brien to James Turner Johnson and Jean Bethke Elshtain, have endeavored to blend theology and philosophy in mutually illuminating ways.²⁰

What is interesting to consider now is the degree to which this tradition has shifted in character over time and what such shifts might represent.

LINEAR MOTION OR PERMANENT POSSIBILITIES?

How should one understand the tradition’s historical