David Taggart
One must draw the distinction between jus ad bellum, the justice of the cause, and jus in bello, the justice of the means used. A clear example of the divergence between the two can be seen in the Vietnam war, where the acceptance of a containment jus ad bellum was never challenged outside of high academic and government circles. The anti-war movement focused on how the US intervention no longer maintained jus in bello. It is thus possible to identify just causes in which it would be considered immoral to intervene to the extent of producing a war.
Therefore it also follows that there can be no absolute standards whose violation will produce a reaction of war, in spite of professions to the contrary from leaders of movements of all persuasions. There must always be an element of balancing against other hypothetical consequences. Few would deny that a moral mandate, even obligation, to intervene in the ethnic conflicts of Rwanda and Burundi existed during the periods of gravest massacres. The question was not, however, whether the situation warranted intervention, but what could be achieved to remedy it and with what costs to other values. The decision not to intervene was largely informed by the inefficacy of the peacekeeping mission in Somalia earlier in the decade.
As war has become a threat to our values in itself, there has emerged the paradoxical phenomenon of preventive wars; where the expressed goal is to prevent a greater conflagration. Motivating this is what might be described as the “Munich hangover”; aggression must be stopped and punished because if it is allowed to continue unchecked the lesson for the actual and potential aggressors is that war is a viable foreign policy tool. American thinking during the cold war focused on global containment: neither Korea nor Vietnam were considered vital theatres on their own merits but as precedents for aggression against Germany and Japan and as tests of the credibility of US resolve. The campaigns against Iraq and Serbia were also motivated as much by the desire to demonstrate the precedent that certain standards of behaviour would result in swift and violent retribution.
Even to prove the power of information and technology in warfare systems can be a moral goal if it serves to warn other potential aggressors off violent conduct. There is substantial evidence that the People’s Republic of China radically re-evaluated its defence strategy in the light of the overwhelming allied projection of force in the Gulf war in 1991.
The difficulty produced by this logic is that morality must be judged as much by a danger averted as by an unpleasant consequence produced; equally by what happens and by what does not happen. This is the “counterfactual justification”, used as a universal defence by Henry Kissinger in his memoirs. Yes, policy towards the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971 and the escalation of the Vietnam war into Cambodia and North Vietnam do appear to be against the morals that America professes, but at least there was no world war with the Soviet Union.
Counterfactual hypotheses are the bane of establishing morality in history, and thus also in foreign policy decision-making. The great problem is that they are impossible to prove or disprove; the counterfactual, by definition, never actually happens. Thus, it might well be that, by its intervention in Korea in June 1950, the US government did indeed demonstrate such a lesson that an invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany was halted. But it might also have ossified tensions between east and west which would otherwise have dissipated to a happy co-existence in the mid-fifties.
The example of the Korean war also demonstrates the extraordinary “half-life” of ethical consequences of a decision to go to war: the divided Korean peninsular (resulting directly from the US intervention) is a live moral issue today. History demonstrates that decisions made at one time can have consequences that rebound indefinitely: like the famous flapping butterfly wings, big changes can result from simple human decisions in the realm of international politics. Thus, while the intervention in former Yugoslavia may have seemed a wise and ethical decision at the time, it may yet prove exactly the opposite if hypothetically feasible future consequences result, such as a civil war in Serbia that spills into Bulgaria or Hungary.
Furthermore, if leaders can be excused on the grounds of avoiding bad counterfactuals they can also be indicted on the grounds of not producing better ones. The resulting conclusion must be that there is no absolute justice or morality in international politics.
All of which leads to a very pessimistic view on the chances of identifying “a just war in the 21st century”.
What, then, should policy-makers be expected to do? Give up on morality? Try to avoid taking any unpleasant decisions or risks? We must be aware that grave decisions being taken are far from perfect. We must strive to make them minimally imperfect, by accumulating the maximum intelligence and evaluating the greatest number of potential results over the short, medium and long terms in the future. Decisions should be taken on the basis of the lesser of evils.
When the least evil course would appear to be war, then one has something approximating to “a just war”. However, it must always be remembered that the assessment of the lesser evil may be incorrect, certainly in the murkier long term: thus great evils, such as major international wars, must be (and generally are) avoided until the clarity of the alternative evil is absolute.
Duncan Bell
Just war doctrine can be traced back to Augustine’s theological masterpiece The City of God, in which he argued that justice, not peace, was the most important of all virtues; that force could, after all, be reconciled with God. This intellectual stance was adapted by Aquinas, and by the end of the 13th century the outlines of the doctrine had been roughly sketched. According to Aquinas there are three conditions necessary for a war to be just: war should be waged for a just cause; the decision to resort to war must be made by a legitimate authority; and war should be embarked upon only with right intention.
These early parameters were expanded by the theologian-philosophers Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco de Suarez, who added a further three conditions: that the undoubted evils of war must be outweighed by the evil being righted; that war should be a last resort, after all other means of arbitration have been exhausted; and that the war should have a reasonable chance of success.
Although political realism remains the dominant tradition in international relations theory and practice, the doctrine of just war dominates debate in moral philosophy, and it is here that we should look for a compass to guide future action.
Right intention and just cause are closely linked. Traditionally the intention behind military action has centred on notions of “national interest”, such as territorial or economic gain, or avenging past, or imagined, injustices. At the dawn of the 21st century a different focus is required, with intention being understood primarily as the strengthening and protection of the fragile norm of human rights, and in upholding the ideal of a cosmopolitan global community. This, in turn, should help foster international peace and security. In an increasingly turbulent world, action should be guided by ethical concern, rather than narrow self-interest.
Just cause should therefore be expanded beyond traditional categories, such as self-defence, to include instances where cosmopolitan values are seriously threatened by violent persecution. The twin dangers of cultural relativism and political isolationism must be avoided, for they represent moral abdication in the face of common responsibility. Thus, any state that seeks to victimise particular segments of its own population, to commit crimes against humanity, should understand that it has surrendered the shield of sovereign protection. Furthermore, peace enforcement operations that aim to separate warring factions and efforts to halt the collapse of states both play vital roles in the maintenance of social stability, and should fall under this expanded definition.
In order to escape accusations of western imperialism, legitimate authority should rest with a multinational organisation, and the UN remains the most suitable candidate. However, as demonstrated in Kosovo, the institutional structure is far from satisfactory; the Security Council in particular needs radical reform. Governments remain unwilling to act in defence of human rights while many states deny the very existence of universal rights – among them China and Russia, both veto-wielding permanent Security Council members. This makes the projection of humanitarian values extremely difficult, for, as Adam Roberts has argued, “. . . to sanctify a doctrine of humanitarian intervention would be to store up trouble for themselves or their friends”. Perhaps, as an interim measure, more authority should be passed to the UN Secretary-General, or, as is more likely, assumed by regional security organisations.
Last resort is a more problematic concept. First, intervention may be required at very short notice, such as in Rwanda, and it seems almost a truism that the longer a problem is left to develop, the harder it is to contain. Second, and of even greater moral concern, is the nature of the prior means of coercion, for once diplomatic channels have been exhausted the usual response is the imposition of sanctions. However, there is a persuasive case that sanctions are ineffective and cause great suffering to the populations they are supposed to aid. Therefore, although governments should be extremely wary of employing force prematurely, it would appear that sometimes swift action is necessary, and that this pillar of just war doctrine needs reconsidering.
The idea of a reasonable chance of success, and indeed of the proportionality of the response, is where pragmatism imposes a degree of sacrifice on universalism, for it seems unlikely that they would accommodate, for example, a war with China over its persecution of Tibetan people. Again this is a difficult area, for how does one predict the likely course of an action, or quantify injustice? Nevertheless, as most of the potential trouble spots fall in regions without significant military capability, such as central Africa, it seems unlikely that many intervention operations will be blocked by this criterion. In addition, as militaries become skilled in peacekeeping operations, the amount of force needed can be minimised.
The adoption of such an interventionist just war stance would serve to act as a deterrent to political and military leaders in conflicts that would otherwise remain ignored, and hence be allowed to take their course. Furthermore, it would lead to the strengthening of international behavioural norms. Once state leaders, warlords or criminal regimes see that they are likely to be punished for infringing the values of a global community, it will make them think twice before acting and, in time, the need for intervention should decrease significantly.
Nevertheless, the adoption of such a doctrine is no panacea: war and violence will not cease, and action will have to be taken in difficult and complex situations; there are no easy choices, no risk-free policy routes. Furthermore, the adoption of such a revised just war programme would require a major realignment of political mentalities and an unpopular expansion in defence spending and military commitments.
However, in an increasingly interconnected world where, in the words of Tony Blair, “We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not”, we must ask ourselves how far our obligations to other human beings extend. The boundaries of moral conscience do not end at the boundaries of the state, or even the continent, and for that simple reason states should be prepared to embark upon a wide variety of operations for the benefit of humanity. The just wars of the 21st century will be fought for ethical reasons, rather than in the name of national self-interest.
The judges for the Webb Essay Prize were Neil Kinnock; Mark Leonard, director of the Foreign Policy Centre; Richard Rawes of the Webb Memorial Trust; Pauline Neville-Jones, former political director, Foreign Office; and Peter Wilby, editor of the “New Statesman”
Content from our partners
Related
