Just War

Just cause is an elastic concept. Who determines what is “aggression”? Could violating a disputed border region (e.g. Ethopia-Eritrea, Pakistan-India) or imposing economic sanctions (e.g on North Korea) be aggression? And if a state is unable to defend itself, can another state intervene militarily on its behalf? These borderline cases make invoking this criterion very problematic.

Reality is a lot murkier than theory. How are we to determine a state’s intent? Sometimes good intentions are bound up with bad; public justifications for war may not always represent the real reasons. And who is determine if a peace is just or a wrong has been committed? The nation initiating the war will use its own values to justify its intentions, and these values may be at odds with those of the other party to the conflict. Furthermore, the best way to protect innocent lives is by peaceful means, not by endangering them through armed conflict.

Many nations wage war without official declaration (e.g. the USA’s involvement in Vietnam) and act unilaterally instead. Such unilateralism does not necessarily lead to an inevitable circumvention of the Geneva Conventions, it merely avoids the bureaucracy necessary to draw authoritative approval. Moreover, who is to decide which entities can and cannot issue calls to arms? Legitimate authorities have sanctioned some of the most horrific wars in history.

Sometimes going to war before all alternatives are exhausted is the most moral action. For example, a nation might decide to go to war if it determines that waiting would enable to the enemy to increase its strength and to do much more damage than an early war would have inflicted. This, after all, is the bitter lesson of the failure of appeasement in the 1930s. Waiting might allow an invading state to entrench itself so that far greater force would be necessary to remove it at a later date.

We have seen that a proportional response frequently doesn’t work. Suicide bombers continue to blow up victims in the Middle East despite the response. Why should a nation tolerate continued aggression for the sake of proportionality? And if a nation knows it is likely to be attacked, why should it wait to disarm the aggressor? Is not pre-emptive action justified to prevent the loss of innocent life? Finally, what of deterrence: a vigorous response to an aggressive act may not be strictly proportionate, but by making all potential aggressors think twice about future actions, it can be justified as saving more suffering in the long run

Sometimes it is morally imperative to fight against overwhelming odds, as resistance fighters did in World War II. Also this condition may give large nations free rein to bully small ones because they could not win a war. It also may cause a country to surrender in a war it might actually win. Weak countries have won wars against powerful ones – look at the American Revolution. Finally, the point at which a war became unwinnable, and therefore unjust by this definition, is often only identifiable with hindsight – consider the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, or the American involvement in Vietnam.

The formulation of the just war doctrine, a moral framework for the institution of war, inadvertently serves to legitimise its activities and inherent barbarity. It undermines the intuitive norm against warfare by emphasizing the ‘just’ and undercutting the ‘war’, leading to a framing of public discourse whereby anti-war campaigners can be presented and ostracized as traitors.

Bhikku
War happens. Buddhism does not deny such facts. It tries to understand how war happens. But Buddhism never accepts or legitimizes war as necessary or “just.” One naturally defends oneself when attacked. One may prevent someone from doing harm to others. Neither, however, justify harming the alleged or imagined perpetrator/aggressor.

The just war doctrine establishes a framework for leaders to justify the resort to force in any given situation whereby they can find ostensible evidence for all the necessary criteria. It, in other words, leaves war on the table constantly as an option; diplomatic negotiations and bargaining must succeed with the constant shadow of war looming as not only a realistic eventuality, but an eventuality that could potentially be deemed ‘just’ by either side.

The ‘Global War on Terror’, according to the Bush administration and its legal team, ushered in a new ‘paradigm’ of warfare (Lukach, 2005). Characterised by non-state actors, acting across international borders, often from failed states, just war theory is arguably out of its depth in dealing with it. The United States’ war in Afghanistan was not proportional, had little prospect of success in eradicating the ideology of Al-Qaeda itself and certainly was not a last resort, but nevertheless many felt it was ‘just’ in 2001.