Modern Warfare - Can it ever be Just?
As we witness the sheer horror of modern warfare in Gaza, and also in Ukraine, and see the widespread suffering, death, devastation and destruction daily on our television screens, and its impact on innocent men, women and children, any right-minded person is traumatised and forced to confront the question: Is modern warfare ever justified?
Catholic teaching on the elements enumerated in "Just War" doctrine states:
The strict conditions for legitimate defence by
military force 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.
These are the traditional elements enumerated
in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral
legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility
for the common good.
Modern Warfare
On March 16th, 2022, in the context of the ongoing Ukrainian
war, Pope Francis stated:
”There was a time, even in our Churches, when people spoke of
a holy war or a just war. Today we cannot speak in this manner. A Christian
awareness of the importance of peace has developed. Wars are always unjust
since it is the people of God who pay. Our hearts cannot but weep before the
children and women killed, along with all the victims of war. War is never the
way.”
In the October 2020 papal encyclical Fratelli Tutti,
Francis writes:
At issue is whether the development of nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons, and the enormous and growing possibilities offered by new
technologies, have granted war an uncontrollable destructive power over great
numbers of innocent civilians. The truth is that “never has humanity had such
power over itself, yet nothing ensures that it will be used wisely.” We can no
longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be
greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult
nowadays to invoke the rational criteria elaborated in earlier centuries to
speak of the possibility of a “just war.” - “Never again war!”
In footnote 247, the pope cites the ‘Just War
Teaching’ of St. Augustine and states it is a teaching that “we no longer
uphold in our own day.”
Pope Francis' argument about why the Just War doctrine no
longer applies rests on the condition of proportionality. Even should a nation
have a just cause, the threat exists that the death and destruction of modern
weapons means that this will be out of proportion to any good that may come,
even in a country that seeks to defend itself from unjust attack. Thus, because
of this potential, in the more recent words of Pope Francis, “all wars are
unjust.”
Pope Francis' position is not without support.
In 1947, moral theologian and canonist Cardinal Alfredo
Ottaviani, not a ‘modernist’ by any means, wrote in his work Public Laws of
the Church, that:
[E]ven if…the traditional doctrine of the just war…can be
accepted, as a speculative, theoretical discussion, especially if you consider
that these principles refer to wars which are actually wars between soldiers
who fight voluntarily, and not the atrocious massacres of our own times, with
their total ruin of warring nations, we must say that in practice this doctrine
is no longer applicable to the actions of modern nations, unless we wish to be
unjust to the citizens of warring nations and to all mankind. In other words,
apart from the question of a defensive war (and that under fixed conditions)
through which a state seeks to defend itself against the actually unjustified
military aggression of another state, (Note: an important caveat) there
is no longer today any possibility of a just war which permits a state to
uphold its rights by proceeding with aggression.
Other Popes too have expressed similar reservations.
Pope Pius XII delivered a speech on February 21, 1943, to
members of the Pontifical Academy. He warned that because of the development of
atomic weapons, “there could be a dangerous catastrophe for our planet as a
whole.” In 1953, he addressed the Eighth Congress of the World Medical
Association, he affirmed that, in principle, nations have a right to defend
against unjust attack. However, based on the condition of proportionality, Pius
XII went so far as to state:
“When the harm wrought by war is not comparable to that
caused by tolerating injustice, we may be obliged to suffer injustice.”
Pope John XXIII too came close to condemning all wars. In his
1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris he writes:
We acknowledge that
this conviction owes its origin chiefly to the terrifying destructive force of
modern weapons. It arises from fear of the ghastly and catastrophic
consequences of their use. Thus, in this age which boasts of its atomic power,
it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to
repair the violation of justice.
Pope Francis’ more recent repudiation of Just War Teaching is
not based entirely on a failure of modern warfare to fulfil the condition of
proportionality. Rather, he stated all wars are unjust because
“it is the people of God who pay. Our hearts cannot but weep before the
children and women killed, along with all the victims of war.”
Conclusions and Questions
Pope Francis is right that we should have the gravest sense
of compassion for the innocent victims of war. And if innocent
men, women,
and children are targeted as part of an overall war strategy, (and HJ doesn't believe
this to be the case in Gaza), such action is always evil.
And, it is true that nearly always, even in wars fought for a just cause,
occasions of unjust actions such as the direct or indiscriminate targeting of
non-combatants occur.
However, does the undeniable fact that war causes suffering
and deaths of innocent men, women and children mean that the condition of
proportionality is always unsatisfied?
Does the suffering that citizens are forced to bear in modern
warfare negate the ethical right of a nation state to militarily defend its
citizens?
Certainly the argument that all wars are unjust as they lead
to horrific evils caused by the capacity of modern weapons, and potentially
atomic warfare, and thus fail the condition of proportionality, is weighty,
powerful, and deserving of respect.
If only, Bob Dylan, if only ...
It's interesting that Catholicism was -- in practice, at least -- a pacifist religion up until the time of Constantine. Once Christians became "the establishment", assumptions began to change, and not just for cynical reasons. The civil power -- the prince, if you prefer -- is responsible for the good of the citizenry, and once Christians became part of the civil power, albeit with somewhat divided loyalties, it became THEIR responsibility, too. This touches on the issue of capital punishment, as well as war. It's not a coincidence that Augustine was writing about this time, or shortly afterward.
ReplyDeleteIn Augustine's day, it must have seemed like the end of the world, yet Augustine still held that war could be justified. What Francis doesn't seem to accept is that not everyone works from the same foundational assumptions as he does. Or, to put it another way, not everybody is like him if they were only given a chance, and it's beyond arrogant to think they are. Islam actively teaches that you're either in the House of Islam or the House of War. Judaism is a racially supremacist religion which -- in practical terms, if not definitively stated -- teaches that goyim lives are worth less than Jewish lives. In such conditions, the proportionality of war becomes irrelevant because both of these religions see things in eschatological terms, so death is part of the process. Christianity, despite it's whackier denominations in the American Bible Belt, pretty much takes the attitude that Jesus will be along when He comes, whenever that is, and in the meantime we all have our orders.
From the west's point of view, Islam is obviously a much more immediate threat than Judaism, but indirectly, Judaism/Israel is also a problem because of that country's absolute dependency on the west; for all its boasts of invincibility, Israel would last about three days without the US propping it up. This, in the eyes of many Muslims, makes the west in general, and the US in particular, a legitimate target.
If we take the view that there is no longer any justification for war, that it would be better to suffer the injustice than to bring the danger of conflict on the general population, then the first thing the west should do is cut Israel loose. That attitude has, of course, no place in Islam, which is why suicide bombers are always Muslims. Right now, we have a conflict between two supremacist forces in Gaza. Islam, which is culturally supremacist, and Judaism, which is racially so. By Jack's criteria, the west should just leave them to it.
HJ has no criteria (other than Just War teaching which he outlined) - he's inviting comments on their applicability in this day and age and the issue of "proportionality" and "produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated".
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that proportionality is a very movable feast. At what point do we legitimately say that what we are facing is so evil that opposing it is justified, whatever the cost? It's all very well to say, "it's a matter for the ruling authority to decide", but -- as an example -- the ruling authority in France in 1940 was Marshal Petain. Should Britain then have recognized Vichy? Was Churchill wrong to attack the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir? Almost certainly, a deal could have been made with Hitler after the fall of France, but the ruling authority in Britain refused to negotiate, and the result was the Blitz. Was that worth it? Looking back, we generally think it was, but the wickedness of Nazism may not have been so apparent to the people who had to fight at the time. Fast forward eighty years, and look at it from the point of view of a Palestinian kid born in the massive, open-air prison camp called Gaza. Why would he be afraid to die if he believes life as it has been dealt to him is intolerable? No, I don't believe we HAVE passed the point of proportionality. Accepting injustice if it means holding on to some kind of decent lifestyle MAY be an arguable position for affluent westerners, but not so much where you have nothing to lose by bringing the temple down on your own head. This is what Francis just doesn't seem to grasp. He makes fey statements about justice and equity, but will not accept that some cultures -- like Judaism -- see equity very differently to the way Christians see it. They understand right order as a pyramid with themselves at the apex, and for them, the injustice is anyone trying to claim equality with them and hold them to the same standards as the other races of man. I suppose this lack of understanding is to be expected from a pope who criticises people for proselytising. It's an attitude which can only be explained from the hippy position of "it's all good."
ReplyDeleteJudaism -- see equity very differently to the way Christians see it. They understand right order as a pyramid with themselves at the apex, and for them, the injustice is anyone trying to claim equality with them and hold them to the same standards as the other races of man."
DeleteWow!
Attached below is the resignation letter of Craig Mokhiber, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Deletehttps://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24103463-craig-mokhiber-resignation-letter
This is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Not particularly Article II(c) -- "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part"
https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf
If we step back from the latest atrocity, and instead look across the entire history of the Israel/Palestine conflict since the 1920s, and especially since 1948 -- and do so dispassionately -- it becomes extremely disturbing how many actions and policies of Israeli governments (regardless of whether they are left or right) come under Article II(c), and how consistently the policy has been accepted by the Israeli people across all those decades.
It's disturbing because, while we in the west have not the slightest difficulty accepting the savagery of Islam -- and, for clarity, I do accept that it is savage -- we baulk at the idea of one half of so-called "Judeo-Christian civilization" perpetrating something which comes under the heading of a war crime, and perpetuating it in the teeth of criticism over decades. It only becomes understandable when we realise there is actually no such thing as Judeo-Christian civilization. There is Jewish civilization, there is Christian civilization and there is Muslim Civilization, along with Hindu, Buddhist, etc; and they all have different priorities.
During the height of the covid frenzy, the ruling BJP party in India left millions of Dalit day labourers to starve by the side of the roads and did so with barely a word from the west because, privately, despite our veneer of civilization, we don't expect any better of people with brown skin, and we really don't care. They're different from us. The actions of the Israelis since 1948 make no sense under a Christian model, and only become comprehensible on the same assumptions the BJP aristocracy make about the Dalits. Christians would not make such assumptions, but Jews, clearly, do. We just don't like to think about them in these terms for obvious historical reasons, but what they've actually done to Palestinians since the creation of the state of Israel has no historical parallel since the days of ancient Sparta -- they've essentially redeclared the war on the helots yearly so they can claim the protection of the usages of war.
Within this picture, how are we NOT justified in suspecting an assumption of racial supremacy? Especially when we realise that a) many Palestinians are Christian, not Muslim, and b) the Christians have always been more heavily targeted for land grabbing by the Israelis because they're perceived as much softer targets than the Muslims. Christians don't do suicide bombing. Perhaps if they did, the now routine beatings and spittings Christian clergy suffer from the ultra-orthodox on Israeli streets would not be so commonplace.
More pertinently to the question at the heart of this particular thread, is it "proportionate" to put the defence of your dignity above the risk of war, despite what the pope may think?
Apart from its emotive and one-sided account of 'history', there's no mention of the declared intent of groups like Hamas, supported by certain tenets of Islam, to kill every Jew in the world. Something of an oversight.
DeleteTwo of his proposed "solutions":
One State ('solution') based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dismantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land."
Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.
Apart from the fact that Islam and the wider Arab world does not accept the Western model of a democratic, secular state, a somewhat significant issue, this proposal, in effect, amounts to the creation of an Islamic state, with all that that would entail, and the elimination of the Jewish people. A theocracy that would be essentially a proxy state of Iran.
As for this:
Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.
Yeah, (quite apart from the "river to the sea" mantra), that worked in the 1940s, didn't it.
Is the man crazy!!!
Are we missing a piece of the jigsaw perhaps? The Papal quotations given are pretty much correct when applied to their immediate premise - that any war will be 'all out' and will necessarily use weapons with widespread and indiscriminate destructive power. Modern technology clearly makes these things possible, but it also had provided very targetable and discriminating weapons that could target and kill in very localised and specific ways. One could consider a 'war' where a group of leaders or key people in a country are attacked, and civilians only injured in accidental or unintended ways. [We might think perhaps of the much vaunted 'war on terrorism'].
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps such an enterprise would not be acknowledged as 'war'.
War can be economic too - is a blockade or other set of sanctions prohibited by 'just war' if it results in indiscriminate suffering caused to a civilian populace?
"One could consider a 'war' where a group of leaders or key people in a country are attacked, and civilians only injured in accidental or unintended ways."
DeleteAgreed - but apply that to the current situations in the Middle East and Ukraine. Clearly Just Wars, according to the principles. But, the unintended deaths and suffering are so great, and there's many more to come, that it causes one to pause. Plus, what greater evils might arise? In the Middle East, the hatred of the Arab-Muslim world grows and A new generation of terrorists are born. There's also the prospect of a wider conflict. Perhaps this is all unavoidable and necessary for Israel/Ukraine to survive.
As HJ said, it causes one to pause.
One of the problems with war is that it involves a high level of immortality even with the most just of wars. You are after all sending out frightened boys to risk horrible deaths, to kill the person threatening the horrible death.
ReplyDeleteTo expect absolute moral behaviour is sadly unrealistic. Which is why surrendering Germans were killed at D-day. Anger and fear erode norms.
Do you mean immorality, Clive?
DeleteDamn it, yes! Apologies.
DeleteImmortality would be great though ...
DeleteGaza church scam warning from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem:
ReplyDelete... ... ...
It is with deep regret that we alert you of fraudulent appeals being launched in the name of the Holy Family Church in Gaza and / or the Latin Patriarchate.
Please be particularly aware of emails received from [holyfamilychurchgaza@gmail.com](mailto:holyfamilychurchgaza@gmail.com).
https://www.lpj.org/posts/fraud-alert.html
I think that there's a distinction that has become muddied between wars that are justifiable and wars that are just. Pope Francis is correct: we do tend to treat wars perceived as 'just' like holy wars, and too easily tolerate the 'collateral damage'. Many wars, particularly defensive wars, are justifiable, but it's doubtful that they are ever just, since taking a life - destroying the image of God - is always a sin.
ReplyDeleteSt. Basil the Great wrote that the Fathers did not consider 'killings [of combatants] committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all', yet still assumed that these killings were sinful, requiring the Church to extend 'a pardon to men fighting in defence of sobriety and piety', and adding that 'it might be advisable to refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that they are not clean-handed.' The Canons of Hippolytus (4th Century) also instructed that: 'A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.'
The later merging of Church and State complicated matters, since the enemies of the State also became the enemies of the Church. Even then, the Church refused the request of a 10th Century Emperor of Byzantium to declare as martyrs those who had died in defence of the state, since 'How could they be regarded as martyrs or equal to the martyrs those who kill others or die themselves at war, when the divine canons impose a penalty on them, preventing them from coming to Divine Communion for three years?'
I would say that the greatest failing of modern Just War Theory is that it seeks to tie up too neatly one of the most messy and difficult facets of human life. It seems to me that it is impossible for a war to be entirely just, or entirely justifiable, in its cause and conduct. Ss. Augustine, Aquinas et al. could not have foreseen scenarios such as the current conflict in Gaza, where terrorists (or brave, peace-loving freedom fighters if you're a BBC journalist) are encamped with devastating ranged weapons among civilians. Hamas' war on Israel is neither just nor justifiable (although I presume they would beg to differ). The Israeli war on Hamas has just cause and is justifiable in self defence, but are the deaths of so many civilians just or justifiable, even if they're unavoidable? They're perhaps only justifiable insomuch as there is no other choice, but it's all surely cause for much sorrow and penitence.
Hello stranger! Good to see you back. Hope all is well.
DeleteAll good points and exactly the sentiments all people of goodwill should share.
On Saturday, 24th October, Netanyahu said, "You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible, 'Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt.'"
Those knowing Scripture and the Talmud and Midrash will have understood his reference.
One the other side, we have Hamas. A representative of one strand of (extreme or mainstream?) Islam intent on the eradication of all Jews because it is Allah's will.
How do you fight an enemy who shelters among civilians and bases itself in hospitals and refugee camps? An enemy that has miles of labyrinthian tunnels beneath residential areas. How do you judge "excessive force" in this situation? An enemy that robs from the people it supposedly protects, misappropriates international aide for its own evil purposes and will use a cease-fire to regroup and strengthen?
God help the world.
Thanks, yes I'm well. I somehow ended up being talked into giving a friend's daughter extra tuition for her grade 8 piano exam, and I'm still recovering from the flashbacks to my own. Emergency chocolate is helping. I hope you and yours are keeping well, too.
DeleteThe radicalism of Hamas is something that nobody sitting safety in the UK and condemning Israel's response seems to have considered. Hamas are not a conventional enemy who can be defeated by conventional means; they will not stop while they still draw breath or and Jew in Israel (for now) still draws breath. This isn't a war over territory or resources, it's an ideological war that can only end when one or the other side is utterly eliminated. That's terrifying (and our government's apparent inability to stop it being acted out on the streets of London is also terrifying). The death of Palestinian civilians is heartbreaking, but how can you minimise civilian casualties when there's a rocket base in a hospital? Demanding a ceasefire is, it seems to me, demanding Israel commit suicide.
I'm still unclear as to what Hamas imagined would happen when they launched their attacks.
I'm still unclear as to what Hamas imagined would happen when they launched their attacks.
Delete@Lain, in case you haven't seen it, Lionel Shriver makes the same point on the Spectator website. Not behind the usual paywall.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-did-hamas-think-was-going-to-happen/
@ Lain
DeleteHJ suspects precisely what is happening. Look at so called "world opinion", the importation of Jihad into Western democracies, and the hardening of the Islamic world against Israel.
In line with HJ's own thinking:
DeleteHamas knew precisely the wrath they would provoke – and provoked it anyway. When an action is guaranteed to trigger a given reaction, we hold the instigator responsible for the reaction, too. Being perfectly foreseeable, Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground incursions into Gaza are therefore Hamas’s fault. This bloodthirsty faction invited the bombs upon the heads of the Gazan people, and any regional expansion of the war will be Hamas’s fault as well.
However, HJ would go further and say they had the deliberate intention of drawing the Israeli response and the deaths it would bring to Gazans, to provoke a wider conflagration.
https://ccjr.us/dialogika-resources/primary-texts-from-the-history-of-the-relationship/herzl1904
DeleteThe above is an account by Theodore Herzl of an audience with Pope Pius X in 1904. A number of things are noteworthy, not least the sneering, contemptuous tone in which Herzl recounts the meeting. However, from the Catholic perspective, it occurs to me that had the world followed Pius's attitudes, we would not be in this mess now because the state of Israel would not exist. Pius was the oldest of old-school Catholics, and even Herzl was forced to acknowledge his "coarse-grained" religiosity.
You do know Hertz's Zionism was secular, not religious.
DeleteTimes change and history moves on.
Israel today is a full nation state with a duty and responsibility to protect her citizens. Do you deny this?
My own father, raised an Orthodox Jew, believed the Zionist movement was misguided and, indeed, traditional Judaism of his time opposed this movement.
@ Bell
DeleteDo you recall Pope John Paul's historic visit to Israel?
During that pilgrimage, he remembered those Jews who died in the Holocaust and asked forgiveness for the inaction of Christians who did not assist our Jewish brothers and sisters in their suffering. At Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the victims of the Shoa, the pope prayed, wept, lit a memorial flame and met with Holocaust survivors. At the Western Wall, a frail, shaking and very sick pope prayed at Judaism’s holiest site and added his written prayer to the countless millions that have been left there.
@Ray - thank you for that. What do you do in the face of an enemy that's willing not just to sacrifice your civilians for its cause, but also its own? The amount of westerners rushing to support them is deeply worrying.
Delete@Jack -- I think we're at cross purposes here. I'm not blind to the wickedness of Islam, or the fanaticism of Hamas. I'm starting from a foundational assumption that the world is savage and human beings are fallen. I utterly reject the leftist assumption that man is basically good and is only turned to evil because of prevailing social or political conditions. To some degree, that philosophy is even more wicked than Hamas. It's a lying and lazy creed for people who think some earthly paradise can be created by state action. What does Jack imagine the Nazis were actually trying to achieve with the Holocaust? How were all those German Christians persuaded not only to look the other way, but often to actively take part? It was rationalized under the heading of "It's a filthy job, BUT once it's done..."
DeleteI'm seeing this attitude in Benjamin Netanyahu as surely as I'm seeing it in Hamas, and I don't like it in either of them. Germans justified it back in the day on the assumption of their own racial superiority. John Paul called this out in Jerusalem, but there seems to be some assumption that such a mindset could only be present in people of another time and another place. WE would never do such a thing, would we? CS Lewis called it chronological snobbery.
Jack's question about the state of Israel TODAY carries with it the implicit assumption that it does not have to face it's past the way the Germans faced theirs. The very fact that Herzl's Zionism was purely secular is itself an argument of rights based on racial assumptions; if we take out the religion and the theology, what else is left?
I realize this is a difficult sore to treat, but if it isn't addressed, we are damned to an endless cycle of the last atrocity. Whether we like it or not, millions of European colonists invaded a piece of Asia, expelled the indigenous population with extreme violence, stole their property and now expect their fellow Europeans to blindly support everything they do as though they were just minding their own beeswax when they were attacked by a ravening pack of wolves for the sport. It's an insult to the intelligence and is only explicable by an assumption of superiority over other westerners, as well as people of colour.
I'm sorry, Jack, but this is not going to stop until this mindset is abandoned, and the only way that even MIGHT happen is by calling them out on it.