War is never simple but it must at least be just
Thursday, 25 October 2007
Philip Stephens
SO when should we go to war? In the shadow of Iraq it is surely a question we need no longer ask. We can wring our hands over Darfur, pass brave resolutions about repression in Burma, roundly deplore the depredations of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. But deploy might in the cause of right? Forget it.
There has been good and bad in the angry response to the war in Iraq. The good has come in a broad realisation that military force is only one dimension of power. Of itself, it is wholly inadequate to the ambition of reshaping the world in America's image. As one of my friends in Washington puts it, the US has seen the "con" in neocon.
The awakening has not been universal. Dick Cheney listens only to the fellow ideologue he encounters each morning in the shaving mirror. Borrowing from George Kennan, who along with Harry Truman is an icon these days for every prospective president, US administration officials are relying on a strategy of vice-presidential containment to get them through to January 2009.
Of greater concern is the extent to which fear has replaced confidence among Washington's political elite. Thus George W Bush's would-be successors in the White House, on the Democratic as much as on the Republican side, insist that "all options" remain on the table in the effort to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. It is a dangerous mantra. The big worry is that if a strike against Iran is not Mr Bush's last mistake, it might yet turn out to be Hillary Clinton's first.
All that said, the popular revolt against the Iraq war has been a powerful warning that voters will not consent lightly to future military entanglements. The toppling of Saddam Hussein was planned as a demonstration of American power. Instead shock and awe has become an exposition of weakness. The military zeal of the neocons has made way for a more balanced assessment of the broad range of foreign policy instruments available to the sole superpower.
The less good part of the response comes in the confusion between the liberal internationalism that says states should uphold basic human rights beyond their borders, and the neoconservatism that ignores the distinction between the projection of US power and universal values. Iraq has thrown up a dispiriting coalition of "stop-the-war" anti-imperialists on the left and realist isolationists on the right. The west can propose sanctions; it can encourage the deployment of (African or Asian) peacekeeping forces to guard against genocide. But always in the knowledge, shared by despots everywhere, that push will never come to shove.
Many will think that is as it should be - even some of those who thought there was a case to be made from ridding Iraq of its Ba'athist tyranny. If nothing else, the casualties of that war speak to the need for a mindset that returns military action to last rather than first resort.
Yet in a world scarred by broken states, Islamist terrorism, weapons proliferation and genocide, the moment of choice will come again. Perhaps it will be in Darfur - can the world stand by indefinitely? Or perhaps, and we must earnestly hope otherwise, it will come in response to another terrorist atrocity. Maybe, as Donald Rumsfeld used to have it, we are talking of unknown unknowns. But, as the authors of a new book put it, we have left behind the era when we were largely insulated from the bitter experience of war by the "paradoxically benign stalemate of the cold war". Violent disorder is woven in to the fabric of our times.
What is missing is an ethical compass - the parameters that might tell us when and how an event might require a military response.
Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan, the first a retired general and former chief of Britain's defence staff, the second a brilliant civil servant and former head of the ministry of defence, provide some answers. In a short book--just war. The just war tradition : Ethics in modern wavefare (Blooms bury, London), they do so through the prism of a Christian Just War tradition dating back to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. A caution about the word Christian. There is nothing in the book inimical to Islam or Judaism. The thrust, as the authors put it, is "to control and limit war, sometimes even to forbid it, and always to remember the adversary's humanity".
Some might query the need for a return to first principles. The United Nations charter provides the answer. States are free to do as they please within their own borders unless and until the Security Council agrees they pose a threat to international security. Straightforward as that may sound, it is not a useful template. The UN also imposes on states a duty to protect their citizens. When does a breach of this provision override the obligation of non-interference? Nor does UN consent answer the ethical question. Would the Iraq war be deemed just had Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin made different calculations of their national interests?
The authors' starting point is that "while war can never be positively good, it is not always the worst thing". The tradition's central elements - Just Cause, Proportionate Cause, Right Intention, Right Authority, Reasonable Prospect of Success and Last Resort - are well known, but neglected nonetheless. To these six criteria of jus ad bellum , and to the responsibility to fight by the rules ( jus in bello ), Messrs Guthrie and Quinlan add jus post bellum - the responsibility to properly plan for war's aftermath.
These criteria, even as carefully explored in this book, do not offer an escape from difficult questions. The complexities of wars fought in anything but immediate self-defence cannot be wished away. To take one example, the line between pre-emptive (self-defence against an imminent attack) and preventative (anticipating a more distant threat) war will never be entirely straight. Equally, in so far that it is a product of self-interested calculations among states, the legitimacy conferred by UN approval can never be absolute; and vice versa.
The authors acknowledge this as they seek to apply the Just War framework to recent conflicts. The first Gulf war and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo passed the tests. Iraq does not. The purpose, though, is not to look backwards but to enunciate a set of principles that encourages politicians, generals and voters to think hard not just about when not to go to war but also when humanity might demand such an intervention. The future will not allow us to escape such judgments.
................................
Under syndication
arrangement with FE
SO when should we go to war? In the shadow of Iraq it is surely a question we need no longer ask. We can wring our hands over Darfur, pass brave resolutions about repression in Burma, roundly deplore the depredations of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. But deploy might in the cause of right? Forget it.
There has been good and bad in the angry response to the war in Iraq. The good has come in a broad realisation that military force is only one dimension of power. Of itself, it is wholly inadequate to the ambition of reshaping the world in America's image. As one of my friends in Washington puts it, the US has seen the "con" in neocon.
The awakening has not been universal. Dick Cheney listens only to the fellow ideologue he encounters each morning in the shaving mirror. Borrowing from George Kennan, who along with Harry Truman is an icon these days for every prospective president, US administration officials are relying on a strategy of vice-presidential containment to get them through to January 2009.
Of greater concern is the extent to which fear has replaced confidence among Washington's political elite. Thus George W Bush's would-be successors in the White House, on the Democratic as much as on the Republican side, insist that "all options" remain on the table in the effort to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. It is a dangerous mantra. The big worry is that if a strike against Iran is not Mr Bush's last mistake, it might yet turn out to be Hillary Clinton's first.
All that said, the popular revolt against the Iraq war has been a powerful warning that voters will not consent lightly to future military entanglements. The toppling of Saddam Hussein was planned as a demonstration of American power. Instead shock and awe has become an exposition of weakness. The military zeal of the neocons has made way for a more balanced assessment of the broad range of foreign policy instruments available to the sole superpower.
The less good part of the response comes in the confusion between the liberal internationalism that says states should uphold basic human rights beyond their borders, and the neoconservatism that ignores the distinction between the projection of US power and universal values. Iraq has thrown up a dispiriting coalition of "stop-the-war" anti-imperialists on the left and realist isolationists on the right. The west can propose sanctions; it can encourage the deployment of (African or Asian) peacekeeping forces to guard against genocide. But always in the knowledge, shared by despots everywhere, that push will never come to shove.
Many will think that is as it should be - even some of those who thought there was a case to be made from ridding Iraq of its Ba'athist tyranny. If nothing else, the casualties of that war speak to the need for a mindset that returns military action to last rather than first resort.
Yet in a world scarred by broken states, Islamist terrorism, weapons proliferation and genocide, the moment of choice will come again. Perhaps it will be in Darfur - can the world stand by indefinitely? Or perhaps, and we must earnestly hope otherwise, it will come in response to another terrorist atrocity. Maybe, as Donald Rumsfeld used to have it, we are talking of unknown unknowns. But, as the authors of a new book put it, we have left behind the era when we were largely insulated from the bitter experience of war by the "paradoxically benign stalemate of the cold war". Violent disorder is woven in to the fabric of our times.
What is missing is an ethical compass - the parameters that might tell us when and how an event might require a military response.
Charles Guthrie and Michael Quinlan, the first a retired general and former chief of Britain's defence staff, the second a brilliant civil servant and former head of the ministry of defence, provide some answers. In a short book--just war. The just war tradition : Ethics in modern wavefare (Blooms bury, London), they do so through the prism of a Christian Just War tradition dating back to Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. A caution about the word Christian. There is nothing in the book inimical to Islam or Judaism. The thrust, as the authors put it, is "to control and limit war, sometimes even to forbid it, and always to remember the adversary's humanity".
Some might query the need for a return to first principles. The United Nations charter provides the answer. States are free to do as they please within their own borders unless and until the Security Council agrees they pose a threat to international security. Straightforward as that may sound, it is not a useful template. The UN also imposes on states a duty to protect their citizens. When does a breach of this provision override the obligation of non-interference? Nor does UN consent answer the ethical question. Would the Iraq war be deemed just had Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin made different calculations of their national interests?
The authors' starting point is that "while war can never be positively good, it is not always the worst thing". The tradition's central elements - Just Cause, Proportionate Cause, Right Intention, Right Authority, Reasonable Prospect of Success and Last Resort - are well known, but neglected nonetheless. To these six criteria of jus ad bellum , and to the responsibility to fight by the rules ( jus in bello ), Messrs Guthrie and Quinlan add jus post bellum - the responsibility to properly plan for war's aftermath.
These criteria, even as carefully explored in this book, do not offer an escape from difficult questions. The complexities of wars fought in anything but immediate self-defence cannot be wished away. To take one example, the line between pre-emptive (self-defence against an imminent attack) and preventative (anticipating a more distant threat) war will never be entirely straight. Equally, in so far that it is a product of self-interested calculations among states, the legitimacy conferred by UN approval can never be absolute; and vice versa.
The authors acknowledge this as they seek to apply the Just War framework to recent conflicts. The first Gulf war and the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo passed the tests. Iraq does not. The purpose, though, is not to look backwards but to enunciate a set of principles that encourages politicians, generals and voters to think hard not just about when not to go to war but also when humanity might demand such an intervention. The future will not allow us to escape such judgments.
................................
Under syndication
arrangement with FE