just war: IS THERE SUCH A THING?

“Taking preparatory steps to enable placing our societies on a war footing when needed are now not merely desirable but essential”.  That was General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of General Staff since 2022, speaking at a military conference just a month ago.  The British government hastened to deny any intention of introducing conscription.  A week before, and only a little less disturbing, the Secretary of State for Defense, Grant Shapps, declared that we had moved “from a post-war world to a pre-war world”.  
Societies preparing to put themselves on a war footing need to consider carefully what justifies both going to war (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of war (jus in bello) to limit war’s barbarity, questions addressed for over five millennia, a quest first found in the ancient Sanskrit Mahabharata. 

General Sanders was educated at the Benedictine school attached to Worth Abbey and is certainly familiar with the evolving Catholic just war tradition dating from St. Augustine of Hippo in the 4th century.   Here is the relevant text from the 1992 Catholic catechism: “The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force (sic) require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy.   At one and the same time: the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; there must be serious prospects of success; the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition”.  Heavily enough for Pope Francis to abandon the possibility of a just war in favour of Christian non-violence.

Within the just war tradition self-defense, restoration of justice and resistance to an invader, are considered legitimate reasons to fight.  In addition, war must be declared by a legitimate ruler.  And during war, proportionality – the relative degree of harm caused by military intervention particularly, but not exclusively, to innocent civilians being a primary consideration.  Correspondingly, without reasonable chance of success, a futile defense, while honourable ,would not traditionally be considered just.

Today the principles of jus in bello are expressed within the tradition of humanitarian law and in terms derived from the concept of human rights.  The crime of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, the fate of innocent civilian casualties (the notorious ‘collateral damage’ which has immediate consequences for military targeting) all have their origins in the idea of inviolable human rights.

Modern warfare has not precluded consideration of just war criteria. If anything, the wars in the 20th century stimulated their development, if not their application.   After the Hamas attack of 7 October, the Israeli government appealed - plausibly - to its right to self-defense. (Mention of the longstanding conflictive quest for land, peace and freedom, out of which the atrocities committed against Israeli communities and the Nova music festival, became anathema.)  Ukrainians sheltering from drones launched by the Russian invader, or investigating the murder of civilians in Bucha, or watching the destruction of Mariupol with all its people, didn’t feel any need to debate just cause.
 
The legal category of war crimes, endorsed by the Catholic Church, has become highly relevant to the war in Ukraine and to the asymmetric Hamas-Israel war.   For example, the starvation and killing of thousands of children in Gaza, the capture and killing of all ages in the Be’eri kibbutz and the youth at the Nova music festival, with civilians over 2/3rds of the total 1,169 killed, brings the wider question of proportionality into sharp focus and raises the question of war crimes.  And popular perception of just cause (jus ad bellum) instinctively changes in the face of destruction of whole areas of human occupation and intolerably high numbers of civilian casualties (jus in bello).

The problem in applying just war principles, with or without today’s weapons of mass destruction and reliance on air power, is that war of its very nature generates fear, anger and hatred which sweep away all considerations of proportionality.  As Pope Benedict XV said presciently in 1915 “Nations do not die; humbled and oppressed, they chafe under the yoke imposed upon them, preparing a renewal of the combat, and passing down from generation to generation a mournful heritage of hatred and revenge.”  Nor has the development of ‘precision guided’ weapons meant that, in densely populated areas, civilian lives are spared, least of all when drones hover, missiles rain down and bombs drop day and night for months.  The development of advanced technology for killing the enemy and destroying their wherewithal to wage war has not made ‘collateral damage’ a thing of the past.

Events in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza call into question whether the application of the principles of the just war has made any major advance since the Second World War.  In its culmination, blanket bombing of German and Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Allied air power was deployed with no distinction between critical infrastructure, civilians and soldiers.  Today, more than ever, distance protects bomber pilots and those who fire missiles remotely from seeing their victims’ pain and grief.  We watch it in our living rooms.

In recent conflicts civilians have been the actual targets.  I remember in 2017 walking into central Sarajevo long after the war in Bosnia (1992-1995) had ended.  I saw the bullet holes made by Serbian snipers shooting from the hills above the Miljacka river, picking off Bosnian women as they went out to buy bread.  In July 1995 Serbian troops in Srebrenica massacred non-combatant Bosnian men and boys.  In 1994 genocide was repeated in Rwanda.  Between 1998-2003 in the eastern Congo millions of civilians were killed and raped.  And the continuing slaughter of innocents in war in Syria and Sudan must be added.
In a democratic society peaceful protest against war crimes should not be treated as a threat.  Years of research into conflict resolution such as that at Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies, led by Professor Paul Rogers, should not be treated as an ivory-tower academic pastime.
 
International efforts to contain the cruelty of war have met opposition. In 1998, I overheard inside the Foreign Office a conversation between a frantic official and his Head of Department.  President Bill Clinton had just phoned Prime Minister Tony Blair to press him not to sign the Rome Stature, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC).  Blair signed and ratified.  America and Israel (along with China, Iraq, Yemen and Qatar) were amongst seven countries unwilling to submit their forces to its jurisdiction and to the international legal constraints it sought to impose.  If there are to be any constraints on the waging and conduct of war, whatever the weakness of the ICC in practice, legal redress must be tried.  Impartial prosecution of war crimes is one answer to the impasse of contending claims to just cause, for example, self-determination and self-defense, the clashing claims in the “two righteous victims” syndrome.  The ICC is necessary but seems only able to enforce selective - victors’ - justice.  A limited track record but better than nothing.

General Sanders may not have just war theory on his mind, but he has much to think about not least national security.  Given future threats, he clearly considers our national contribution of $67 billion on military spending as inadequate – against the staggering global expenditure of $2.25 trillion (2022-2023).  Our politicians consider £28 billion each year for climate-friendly renewable energy as exorbitant, an economic and electoral hazard.  This is frankly a recipe for national insecurity.   Climate change is a profound national security threat.  Following Biden,  it is government investment in renewables as a priority that is “now not merely desirable but essential”.

See TheArticle 05/03/2024