When to War?
"The proper object of practicing military training is not in order that men may enslave those who do not deserve slavery, but in order that first they may themselves avoid becoming enslaved to others" -Aristotle, Politics
“Since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel, and that in fact the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.” -Thucydides, recounting the Melian Dialogue
“But, say they, the wise man will wage Just Wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars.” -St. Augustine, City of God
Few subjects excite the political passions of men more than war. From the beginning of civilization, and well before, humans have engaged in organized violence against one another. Archeological studies have found that perhaps a quarter of men in the Stone Age died by violence.
The creation of agriculture did not moderate the passions of man. Some of the earliest writing we have speaks of wars waged by kings against neighboring states. The most common word recorded in the oldest records of Uruk, dated to approximately 3000 BC, is “geme-mary”, a term for a female slave captured in war.
Soon, great battles began to be documented, such as the Battle of Kadesh in 1247 BC, where the pharaoh Ramses clashed with the Hittites. Kings, pharaohs and emperors gained legitimacy by victory in battles and wars; carvings invariably show political leaders holding weapons, leading captives into slavery, or accepting the submission of different peoples.
As old as war is, just as ancient is the moral ambiguity around armed conflict. "Do not destroy the walls of the land. Do not slaughter the people of the land." Says the Instructions of Shupprak, dated to the late 3rd millennium BC. The Tao De Ching (6th century BC) says “Weapons are the tools of violence; all decent men detest them”. The Buddha (5th century BC) condemned violence of all kinds. Sri Krishna in the Bhagvad Gita must reassure the doubting Arjuna that war can itself be moral; the existence of this doubt speaks to an already widespread tradition that regarded war as evil.
Western culture famously begins with an epic about the Trojan War, fought for honor and the possession of one woman. The human loss is explicit in the Iliad, however, and soon the Greeks developed their own theories of the moral war. Aristotle wrote that war could be just if fought for self-defense, but also for honor, reputation, or to uphold alliances, and he emphasized that harm to noncombatants should be minimized. Yet Aristotle was quite comfortable with enslaving the losers of conflict, nor did he seem to care about wars waged against “barbarians”.
It is not until the Christian era that comprehensive theories of just and unjust war begin to be developed. Origen and Tertullian both wrote that Christians should not serve in the military or fight wars, and Basil the Great strongly advocated living in peace with all, even one’s enemies. However, it was St. Augustine who explicitly laid out what would become the broadly Western theory of the just war. A just war:
1) must be waged by a legitimate authority. A war must be authorized by a legitimate authority, such as a king, ruler, or government. Individuals or groups cannot simply declare war on their own.
2) It must be motivated by a just cause. A war must have a just cause, such as self-defense or the defense of innocent people. Augustine believed that wars fought for the sake of greed, power, or conquest were unjust.
3) It must be conducted with the right intention and in a proportionate manner. A war must be conducted with the right intention, meaning that it must be fought for the purpose of restoring peace and justice. The use of force must be proportional to the harm being inflicted, and combatants must avoid targeting non-combatants and causing unnecessary harm.
Hugo Grotius, the Dutch Protestant philosopher partly repudiated St. Augustine’s thoughts in the aggressive fashion that would characterize early modern Europe. Wars could certainly be just, and justifiable by the three types of relevant law: Natural Law (that is, universal rules common to all human organizations), the Law of Nations (what we might call ‘international law’ today), and Divine Law, or pursuant to God’s direct commandments. Grotius viewed war as simply another tool for the aggrieved party in a dispute to resolve a problem, if they had the right of it. Wars could be undertaken for any sort of reason that might compel parties to go to court; property, chastity, to punish the wicked, to collect a debt, etc. Grotius famously concluded “where judicial settlement fails, war begins”. War became, at least in Europe, a kind of international litigation, or as Louis VIX famously remarked “the final argument of kings.”
Emmerich de Vattel, writing in the mid-18th century, epitomized the trend of war being reduced to legalism. Not only could a war rightly be fought for wrongs, but for such neutral causes as the disruption of trade. Furthermore, Vattel stated directly, each citizen had an obligation to take part in military action on behalf of the state, and the state had the legal authority to compel military service. No longer did legal scholars take heed to the early Christian arguments about conscientious objections to making war.
The horrific bloodbaths of the first and second World Wars marked a dramatic change in the our philosophical-legal understanding of war. The League of Nations, and later, the United Nations, were established to attempt international arbitrations between nations as a substitute for armed struggle. The defeated Japanese and German leadership faced trials on new criminal charges that had never been seen before; the crime of waging aggressive war; crimes against humanity and war crimes.
In the same year that the Nuremberg tribunals were established, a new force in war had also been unleashed: the atomic bomb. The destruction of two Japanese cities raised moral concerns about the use of bombs that were so powerful that they could not be targeted at military units exclusively. The quick invention of the hydrogen bomb as well as intercontinental ballistic missiles raised the prospect of mutually assured destruction between any two states that fought a nuclear war. The immorality of fighting such a war, where tens or hundreds of millions of civilians were sure to perish, was obvious to all but the most unhinged hawks. Public opinion began to regard war itself as fundamentally evil; strong peace protests accompanied late 20th century wars, along with a commitment by both the United States and Russia to reduce, if not eliminate their nuclear arsenals and restrict the development and deployment of certain types of missiles.
Further experience with limited wars in the last sixty years proved the futility of nation building. The American experience in Vietnam, the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, US occupations in the Middle East and most recently, the Saudi experience in Yemen have proven that using military force to prop up favored governments in foreign countries is rarely successful. Nation building seems to have only built the resolve of the forces opposing occupation of their lands. Attempting to force concepts like “democracy”, human rights, equality of the sexes, freedom of religion, and so forth onto societies that have not organically produced those same ideologies has failed. Limited campaigns to remove dictators seem to also simply result in chaos, as we saw after the removal of Saddam Hussein threw Iraq into a sectarian civil war, and the killing of Muammar Qaddafi brought the once stable and semi-prosperous Libya into a charnel house with no economy to speak of. A more recent attempt to remove Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad resulted in Syria losing 90% of its GDP, making 7 million of its citizens refugees and killing hundreds of thousands. American support for the overthrow of the Ukrainian government led to a civil war in that country, the seizure of Crimea and the full-blown Russian invasion of 2022.
These are the political lessons of the last century of war- that full-scale war between nuclear powers is unwinnable and must never be fought, that nation building does not work, and that simply removing a government or dictator is almost certain to result in widespread violence, political chaos and a destroyed economy. The moral lessons have been- aggressive war to seize territory or enslave other people is immoral, deliberate targeting and murder of noncombatants is a crime and that extended guerilla wars immiserate and impoverish the very people they are intended to help.
We do not say that these rules are natural laws of the universe- only that they are generally accepted in our day and age, and should be adhered to because the majority of our citizens accept them as valid.
With these generally accepted laws in mind, how should a properly integrated State, that is to say, a cooperative national State, conduct war and peace?
1. No Entangling Alliances. As George Washington sagely advised the young nation, a proper State should not seek entangling alliances with foreign powers. Both world wars were the result of security guarantees and webs of alliances which ensnared the great powers into a path that could only result in general war. Since 1945, all of America’s unsuccessful foreign wars have been the result of a perceived need to uphold its international alliance system and regional allies. These wars have damaged the nation, not only financially, but in terms of cynicism, lives lost, and have allowed corruption to flourish, as foreign and weapons lobbies quickly become motivated to ensure US involvement in their latest brushfire.
The United States should not wage war on behalf of foreign security concerns. Currently, the US is the guarantor of NATO, the largest military alliance in the world, and has direct and indirect security guarantees on every continent. This situation guarantees the continuation of the evils of war. It is unjust to America’s taxpayers and soldiers to commit them to wars which only serve foreign ends or to extend the “influence” of the US State Department.
2. Direct Engagement with Nuclear Powers. The United States cannot afford to fight a nuclear war, and neither can anyone else. Nuclear powers must be directly, and without arrogance, engaged with diplomatically, and 19th century style agreements must be reached whereby our and their spheres of influence are respected. Our current ruling ideologues do not respect the regional hegemony of any other nation; this is a denial of reality. Hard boundaries must be negotiated and adhered to. This strategy prevented a nuclear war even during the worst periods of the Cold War; there is no reason it should not be taken up again.
By respectful yet firm diplomacy, we can carve out space for each existing nuclear power to feel safe in its own development.
3. Respect the Sovereignty of Other Peoples. Leaders and governments that are perceived as proxies or puppets of foreign states will not be accepted as legitimate by their people. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Cuba demonstrated this amply. This also holds for institutions, media or educational, that subsist off of foreign money and have political agendas. As nation building has been proven to fail, we must commit to not attempting to build other people’s states for them. That means, we do not use military force to attempt to impose “democracy” on foreigners, nor do we strongly favor one political candidate over the other, with money, sanctions, or any other kind of coercion. Our relations with other states must be with them as states, not based on the perceived malleability or usefulness of their leaders towards American ends. Relating to other countries in this fashion opens the door for endless intrigues as bad actors in our government plot “color revolutions”; it encourages paranoia and hostility in the target countries; and it casts all of our relations in doubt. Just ask Juan Guiado how popular he is in his home country.
This sort of activity also incentivizes other nations to lobby our politicians very vigorously, opening the door to more corruption. If a positive relationship with an American senator could mean the difference between power and exile, you might spend some money as well.
4. No Destabilization. Killing or removing a foreign despot without a credible plan to replace him is unjust war. Plunging a foreign people into the horrors of a civil war may seem like a clever plan, especially if their leader is hostile to the US, but there is often blowback, and history has shown that our ability to anticipate the long-term consequences of such actions is limited indeed. Further, no matter how expedient it might seem to kill a dictator, or fund rebels in some faraway country, chaos is far worse than mere tyranny. The blood of millions has been spilled over such “clever” plans, and they are immoral and wrong. Worse, they often create far worse monsters than they intend to slay.
The United States must not attempt to start a civil war in any nation, nor is it permissible to engage in political assassinations or coups. Countries that wish to develop friendly relations with us must do so based on the natural development of such sentiments, geography or trade, not though skullduggery. Such friendships are longer lasting and more sure than those obtained by tricks.
5. No targeting of civilians or civilian infrastructure. Destroying power grids, water purification plants, road and rail networks, even if they are potentially dual-use, must not be done unless the United States is actually committed to a full-scale invasion. Just destroying infrastructure- as was done in Serbia- causes unnecessary suffering, and as it does not lead to victory without other military action, is just cruelty with no purpose. Our bombings of Laos, Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia did not cause the citizens of those places to blame their governments for the destruction. Instead, we only made enemies.
The deliberate targeting of civilians themselves is obviously wrong; the firebombing of Dresden is remembered to this day as a war crime of terrible proportions, even though most considered that war fought for just purposes. Even outside the moral stain of murder, the killing of civilians only hardens enemy resolve, and allows the enemy easy propaganda victories.
The destruction of civilian infrastructure without any further action is unjust, and must not be done.
6. No protracted guerilla wars. Guerilla wars, where the partisans hide among the civilian population, are very difficult to fight, and invariably take many years and devastated the nations where they are fought. Frustrated troops invariably retaliate to the partisans’ atrocities by attacking the civilians that shelter them. One need only to look at the civilian body count of the Vietnam war to see how horrific long guerilla campaigns can be- or the Japanese occupation of China.
If war is necessary, it is best to simply destroy the enemy’s ability to make war and leave than to attempt to subdue partisans who have the support of the masses.
We’ve covered what wars are unjust. What about the just war, you say? In a properly ordered State- as distinguished from the current liberal states which inhabit the world- war would be appropriate in only two circumstances. As the State will be a cooperative State of the citizens, in no case could it war for private interest, personal vendetta, or any other venal reason, but only for the direct benefit of the people and the nation. I can think of two situations where such conflict would be permissible.
A) Direct Military Threat. The enemy has invaded the State, or is preparing to invade the State, and has or is imminently preparing to kill or damage the citizens of the State. Hypothetical future attacks are not good enough- the preparations must be immediate, obvious, and undeniable.
B) Direct Nonmilitary Threat. The enemy has cut off, or otherwise made unavailable to the State, resources, trade, or access which was customarily extended to the State, without which the State and its citizens would be immediately and severely damaged. Refusing to open markets is not good enough; here we are talking about revoking trade access, for example, for a vital mineral that the State has customarily purchased for many years, without which its economy would fail; or, in terms of access, cutting off passing of the State’s vessels through a vital canal or waterway, passage through which has customarily been extended to the State, and without which the citizens and State will be immediately and severely damaged.
C) Just Conduct. In both cases, armed conflict must be conducted by the highest standards. The targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure must be categorically forbidden, and no occupations, regime changes, or guerilla wars conducted. Once the ability to generate military force has been destroyed, the State would be obligated to extend fair treaty terms to the defeated nation or group to terminate the conflict. The use of nuclear weapons must be avoided at all costs.
With such guidance, a future State could trust that fortune would favor its arms, as they would never be deployed in service of evil; it would only lament that, from time to time, just war becomes necessary in our fallen world.