Just War Theory
There are three parts to just war theory. Jus ad Bellum deals with the conditions that must be met before an actor may permissibly go to war. Jus in Bello refers to the principles that soldiers and states ought to observe as they fight their wars. Jus post bellum refers to the obligations the belligerents owe to each other once hostilities have ceased. This guide refers only to the jus ad bellum, as it’s of the greatest general application for debates.
Just War Theory
Though there are disputes between theorists, there are five generally accepted conditions that must be satisfied for a war to be considered morally permissible. Most theorists agree that all principles must be satisfied, not merely some. However, it is not necessary to refer to all of these principles in every debate (i.e. there are some that are intuitively less relevant than others, depending on the debate). A working knowledge of them, however, is a terrific way to generate material and offers a concrete schematic around which a case can be structured. Lastly, a word of caution: if you use these principles, don’t explicitly refer to them as “Just War Theory”. These principles are relevant because they each have an independent moral significance, not because they’re just a part of a particular philosophical discussion. As such, move through them as distinct arguments.
First Principle: The war must be declared and waged by a legitimate authority.
This sounds reasonable, but what is a legitimate authority? It’s generally accepted that states with normatively legitimate governments have the right to wage war. Limiting it to states is desirable on a number of grounds. If the group waging the war is not itself legitimate they cannot reasonably be said to be acting on behalf of the people of the state they’re supposed to represent internationally. Moreover, we generally disapprove of illegitimate actors engaging in war because they cannot be held to account, either in the international arena or by their populations. Most legitimate governments are ultimately subject to democratic safeguards, and can be pressured internationally through international institutions (e.g. the UN) or by other means (e.g. trade sanctions). It is therefore much easier to hold governments to account than it is to hold private actors. This matters because wars frequently move in unexpected directions and it’s critical that we can put a brake on the belligerents when they do. You might also want to say here that war is primarily a matter of defending state sovereignty and territorial integrity. Someone has to make a judgement about whether those interests have actually been abridged and then go to war on behalf of them. We also want to minimise war as much as possible. As such, the state is the actor both best placed to judge whether its own sovereignty has been violated or if its territorial integrity is under threat and, for strategic reasons, is best placed to engage in that conflict.
The 20th Century, however, saw this category expanded to national liberation movements fighting against an illegitimate government (e.g. the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in the 1990s and the early 2000s, or Fretlin and the various other East Timorese liberation groups). Intuitively, it also seems as though a group subject to government violence also probably has the right to wage war to defend itself.
Private actors without a just cause (e.g. Al Qaeda) are obviously not legitimate authorities on this score and so lack the moral right to wage war.
Second Principle: Just Cause
This is the most intuitively obvious of all these requirements. The only morally acceptable wars are those for which there is a just cause. There are two generally accepted species of just cause – self defence, and humanitarian intervention.
On the matter of self-defence, individuals have the right to defend themselves from violence. States, by analogy, must also therefore have the right to defend themselves with violence. It’s important to be careful in applying this reasoning, however. We might want to say that Western Europe was largely justified in defending itself in the first and second world wars. That seems true, but to apply that standard uncritically is to neglect, for instance, the culpability of various Western European nations in creating the background conditions against which the Second World War occurred (the treaty of Versailles, for instance).
Humanitarian intervention. Just as we recognise the moral good of aiding others (especially when those individuals cannot defend themselves), we recognise the moral good of aiding other collectives when they are under attack. This extends only to helping to repel the attack. Anything further is illegitimate. The paradigm instances of this are obviously where basic rights are being greatly infringed in a systematic, and intentional way. For instance, in the 1970s Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust Pol Pott and end the horror of the killing fields. Some more contentious instances are outlined below.
It’s important to note that just cause does not mean that a duty to go to war arises. Only, that we have satisfied one of the conditions necessary for going to war. Wars should be waged only if the reasonably foreseeable harms of going to war will be less than the reasonably foreseeable evil we’re trying to prevent. There might be a good humanitarian intervention case to be made for invading Syria at the moment (12/05/2012). However, given that the potential consequences of invading them might be worse than the current strife (e.g. the risk of being tangled in a protracted civil war, the ris of escalation, the likely response from Iran and their proxies in Gaza, Iraq and Lebanon, together with the likely increase in Israeli aggression that would accompany these developments). A just cause for intervention probably arises, but pragmatic concerns mean that we ought not go to war.
Though the question of what constitutes just cause is obviously contentious, types of wars generally considered unjust are: wars of aggression (or perhaps acts of aggression, which can be interpreted narrowly [war] or capaciously [sanctions that impoverish many people]), preventative war (e.g. Iraq 2003), wars justifiable only on national interest grounds (i.e. our right to pursue our interests internationally is curtailed by the harm we might do to others; an obvious concern in the context of war)
Coady also observes (see references below) that the non-military measures we employ pre-emptively can have drastically harmful consequences. For instance, the Treaty of Versailles Post WWI was an attempt to make Germany (1) pay back Europe for the damage of the war and (2) cripple them so that they couldn’t fight another war. The Second World War occurred largely because Hitler was able to come to power on a platform that involved the rejection of all guilt from WWI; still prescient because of the ongoing hardships from the treaty.
It’s also important to situate this requirement in the context of the broader discourse about cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans argue that the individual, not the state or community, is the fundamental unit of moral concern. Individuals ought to be in at least some sense regarded as moral equals. It seems unjust that some suffer as a result of being born into states that abuse their rights and deny them their basic entitlements. As such, many cosmopolitans see humanitarian intervention as implying a new view of sovereignty. Governments’ rights to represent their populations are conditional upon them respecting (or possibly advancing) the interests of their populations. Where they fail to do so, those governments are exceeding their right to rule those nations, and it might be just to intervene, subject to a number of other requirements (amongst which would be the other factors outlined in this article). The modern doctrine of responsibility to protect can be seen as an attempt to institutionalise and a more cosmopolitan view of sovereignty as a responsibility, rather than a right. This new conception of when conflict might be permissible, might justify some of the other grounds upon which we’ve conducted interventions. For instance, in the early 1990s the USA intervened in Somalia to alleviate acute material distress (famine). In 2011, France and the UN intervened in support of the democracy in Cote Ivoire. It might also be permissible to aid an insurgency committed to toppling an illegitimate and abusive regime (perhaps a justification [though not the only justification] for the 2001 action in Afghanistan in support of the Northern Alliance against the Taliban).
This new cosmopolitan view, however, certainly does not imply that any rights abuses give rise to a right to go to war. Other questions such as proportionality also play a key role.
Third Principle: War must be the last reasonable resort
War is hell, it’s often said. It’s very difficult to predict the outcome of a a war, though it is certain that harm will occur. The phenomenon of mission creep means that a war that begins as just and is initially fought morally may end up consisting of a series of unjust objectives pursued in an immoral fashion. We ought, therefore, only go to war if we have no other choice.
Of course, nothing is ever the “last resort” in totality (i.e. there’s always probably something else we could try). However, if all other solutions are not reasonably likely to be successful, or if the costs of trying those solutions were reasonably sure to be higher than the costs of invasion, then war is justifiable. It’s also important to recognise this this notion has been built into modern notions of Responsibility to Protect (see below).
Fourth Principle: There must be a reasonable prospect of success
Wars that one side cannot hope to win cause needless suffering and therefore ought not be engaged in. Success, however, is a slippery term. Might success in Afghanistan mean advancement in the rights of some sectors of the population, deterring terrorists, defeating the Taliban, or installing a western-style democracy? I raise the issue only to highlight that when you’re using these arguments in debates, it’s important to be clear about the object you’re pursuing through intervention.
Fifth Principle: The violence used must be proportional to the wrong being resisted.
This is common sense – it is obviously unjust to invade a country and permanently occupy it in response to a low-level provocation. In the case of defensive wars, it’s clear that proportionality might mean force sufficient to repel the attack in question. It might, more contentiously, also cover a limited amount of force sufficient to deter future attacks.
In the case of humanitarian intervention, however, this calculus will be more complex as the interventions in question are, often, not simply about repelling an attack. They might also be about advancing other causes (e.g. for instance, we might intervene to alleviate material distress in a particular nation which, if we’re serious, might require us to not only deliver food aid but also perhaps engage in open hostilities with a variety of actors). I’m unsure exactly what I think the right way to make this calculus is. Intuitively, however, I feel as though given the other requirements that the doctrine of just war requires (especially that of a reasonable prospect of success and last resort), suggest that provided the objectives that the intervention seeks are just, proportionality would probably require that states use the minimal amount of force sufficient to meet those objectives. This again highlights the importance of clear objectives in these discussions. If the objective of a humanitarian intervention is to feed, then perhaps a small force might be sufficient, if its object is simply to deliver food. If the objective is to both feed and prevent future famines, presumably that will require a more extensive intervention which might justify a larger military force.
Discussion
Underwriting this discussion are a couple of issues.
Firstly, there are severe epistemological problems with some of these requirements. For instance, it’s almost impossible to know if something is or is not the last reasonable resort (though we may be able to make a reasonable judgement on that score), or whether or not there is a reasonable prospect of success (the opposing force might down guns at the first sign of intervention, or dig in and fight ever harder.
Secondly, there is a broad, overarching requirement that where we go to war, we can only do so if the reasonably foreseeable benefits of the intervention are greater than that of the reasonably foreseeable harms.
For instance, though the USSR’s intervention in Czechoslovakia might have given the rest of the world grounds to intervene, it would have been suicidally risky to do so, given the prospect of nuclear conflict it would have raised. There is also an interesting interplay here with the epistemological difficulties mentioned before. Broadly speaking, if it’s effectively impossible to assess the likely consequences of going to war (as it is in many if not most cases), it’s very hard to decide whether or not we ought to act upon our right to engage in war arising from these principles. These are obviously very vexed questions. This might also explain the more conservative overtones of the doctrine – the requirements as to whether or not a right to go to war arises are demanding precisely because the aim of the doctrine is to minimise conflict overall.
It is also worth observing that many neoconservatives and utilitarians don’t tend to engage much with this doctrine because it constrains the capacity of states to use massive force to deter future attacks where doing so would deter war long-term (and hopefully thereby maximise utility). Israeli foreign policy is perhaps the best example of disproportionate force (e.g. their 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and their 2009 invasion of Gaza).
I’d finally like to briefly try and relate just war theory to the modern doctrine of responsibility to protect (R2P).
Responsibility to protect is a new idea about state sovereignty. Though philosophers have interrogated the notion of sovereignty for hundreds of years, prior to WWII the international community had conceived of sovereignty as the right of a state to rule their own populations. Following the horrors of the second world war, a more cosmopolitan idea took hold. To radically oversimplify, many cosmopolitans have now come to argue that the right of the state is conditioned by a responsibility to protect the fundamental interests of their citizens. Where states fail to do so, they are failing in their duty to their citizens. This has been taken by some, in turn, as giving rise to a right to intervene in those nations. This pattern of thought underlies the modern doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 2005. The effectiveness and justifiability of the doctrine is discussed elsewhere by those significantly more qualified than myself, so I shan’t attempt the task myself. I can (copy and pasting from the Wikipedia page on responsibility to protect) however provide the three tenets of the doctrine.
“A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities,
The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to protect its population on its own.
If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.”
I’ll relate Just War Theory to this in two ways. One of the ideas underpinning R2P seems to be that we have not only a right, but also a duty to intervene in particular conflicts. This, to me, raises two questions. Firstly, why does that duty arise? Several answers are possible, and I’m certainly far from decided on this issue. However, for the purposes of demonstration, I’ll adapt a cosmopolitan argument from Thomas Pogge to argue that a duty to intervene might possibly arise. To be clear, in no work that I’m aware of does Pogge ever defend the idea that his argument gives support for military intervention.
“A moral duty arise between the West and some developing nations to intercede in cases of human rights abuses. The rules governing the relationships between states have been (1) imposed by powerful western nations and (2) foreseeably create harms to people in developing nations. They do so by, firstly, granting international legitimacy to any group that maintains a preponderance of force in a territorial area, regardless of the normative quality of the group in question. Those groups are then permitted to borrow money on behalf of populations they do not legitimately represent, and to extract and sell those states’ natural resources. This foreseeably entrenches the position of those regimes. The West is responsible for that structure and so owes a moral duty to remedy the harms that it has caused to people in developing nations. In some cases, the only possible way to make recompense is to remove the regimes in question, and so we have a duty to do so in those cases.”
Secondly, it’s important to recognise that the requirements of R2P, narrowly construed, probably justify intervention in many conflicts internationally. However, this could hardly be the end of the story. This is because even if a state was abusing its population and the international community had exhausted all other avenues, it does not automatically follow that intervention is prudent. Military intervention might inflame that conflict, or draw other players into the conflict, escalate regional tensions etc… The application of R2P, then, must necessarily take place in a broader discourse that considers the likely outcome of the war, all things considered. This, recall, is a overarching principle of just war doctrine. Similarly, questions of proportionality, the likelihood of success, the legitimacy of the actors likely to undertake the intervention etc… will all also be relevant. As such, in R2P cases, it’s critical to also consider the issues raised by just war theory.
Cheers!
Lachlan
References
Charles R. Beitz, ‘The Justifiability of Humanitarian Intervention’ (2007) in Hugh LaFollette (ed), Ethics in Practice (3rd ed, 2008) 726.
C.A.J. Coady, ‘War and Terrorism’ (2003) in Frey and Wellman (eds), A Companion to Applied Ethics (2003) 254.
C.A.J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Cecile Fabre, ‘Cosmopolitanism, Just War, and Legitimate Authority’ (2008), 84 (5) International Affairs 963.
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights (Polity, 2nd edition 2008).