Just war

The Just War principles point nations to the circumstances in which armed conflict can be morally justifiable.

At one extreme of any debate on war are pacifists. Pacifists could not even support the war against Nazi Germany. At the other extreme are people willing to fight war without moral limits. Today’s terrorists, like Hitler before them, are dedicated to ‘total war’ and will kill unlimited numbers of people – civilians as well as soldiers – in the pursuit of their aims.

The western democracies cannot choose either extreme. They have a duty to protect their citizens but not at any cost. The ‘Just War’ theory provides a way of judging the morality of military action.

Six principles of ’Just War’ theory

‘Just War’ theory is best known for Augustine of Hippo’s six principles. To be just, a war must be:

1. motivated by a just cause,
2. waged by a legitimate authority that commands popular respect,
3. motivated by a right intention,
4. likely to be successful (futile wars are said to be unacceptable),
5. proportionate to the injustice to be addressed, and
6. a last resort after all non-violent options have been exhausted.

The six principles – and how they apply to today – are the subject of some controversy.

Responsibility for faithful interpretation of just war principles is given to governments because of their duty to protect a nation and because, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, they are closest to the facts of the war situation.

Nonethless all citizens should debate just war theory – not least religious leaders and the military.

A presumption against force?

Does just war theory begin with a presumption against the use of force? Most religious leaders would answer that question with a ‘yes’ but George Weigel, the esteemed biographer of Pope John Paul II, disagrees.

Weigel has written:

“Just war thinking “begins” not with presumptions for or against war but with a context-setting moral judgment about the obligation of public authority to pursue the peace of right order — which includes the obligation of providing for the security of one’s people against aggression.”

Weigel believes this false presumption has aided pacifist thinking and led some churchleaders to view the world through “a badly manufactured pair of eyeglasses”. Weigel points to the US Catholic Bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter, ‘The Challenge of Peace’ in which they insisted that nuclear arms control was the key to peace, not regime change in the Soviet Union.

Weigel’s views appear in a dialogue with Rowan Williams, published in First Things.

In ‘Moral Clarity In A Time Of War’ George Weigel concludes that any presumption against military action is “theologically dubious”. He writes:

“Its effect in moral analysis is to turn the tradition inside–out, such that war–conduct (in bello) questions of proportionality and discrimination take theological precedence over what were traditionally assumed to be the prior war–decision (ad bellum) questions: just cause, right intention, competent authority, reasonable chance of success, proportionality of ends, and last resort. This inversion explains why, in much of the religious commentary after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, considerable attention was paid to the necessity of avoiding indiscriminate noncombatant casualties in the war against terrorism, while little attention was paid to the prior question of the moral obligation of government to pursue national security and world order, both of which were directly threatened by the terrorist networks.”

Weigel:

“Can we not say that, in the hands of certain kinds of states, the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction constitutes an aggression–or, at the very least, an aggression waiting to happen?”