I began reflecting seriously on the wider just war tradition in the context of doing criminal justice research in Washington, DC, before entering the university classroom full-time. Those days were for me formative, not least because (1) I discovered both Catholics and Protestants on Capitol Hill who took their faith seriously as they worked on policy matters and (2) I was forced to wrestle with the moral-philosophical foundations of justice. That season of life profoundly – and forever – changed me.
In the reflections that follow, I do not wish to conflate domestic and foreign policy in a simplistic manner; each sphere has its unique character and challenges. However, the wisdom and moral principles undergirding just war moral reasoning are, in practice, the same elements of prudence and policy that anchor sound domestic policy. Policy, of course, is the essence of statecraft, and just statecraft constitutes the very foundation of the international order. For this reason, Paul Ramsey could state, “The just-war theory is precisely a theory of statecraft,”1 and George Weigel could insist, “That [i.e., advancing moral political ends] is why the just war tradition is a theory of statecraft, not simply a method of casuistry.”2
Wise policy will aim at the common good, and the common good necessitates a peace that is justly ordered. People do not flourish – indeed, they cannot flourish – in simply any arrangement that declares the presence of “peace.” As Augustine wisely insisted, and as any relatively “free” society through the ages can attest, peace is authentic only to the extent that it is highly qualified and justly ordered, hence the Augustinian emphasis on the tranquillitas ordinis (tranquility of order). Only in such an environment can human beings flourish. After all, the mafia, terrorists, pirates, and violent criminals maintain an orbit of “peace,” in order that they may carry on their vile business.
In the international context, and to a certain extent in domestic affairs, not only war and conflict but contrasting visions of peace confront us and hence must be critically examined. The cry for “Peace! Peace!” is all too frequently heard when and where, in fact, there is no peace or when it is employed to hide perverted means and shield injustice. The pacifist, the militarist, as well as the just warrior all possess a particular vision of peace, yet they construe that peace in very different ways. For the pacifist, peace is the highest possible good and thus escapes serious qualification. Even in a social or cultural context in which injustice prevails, coercive force is viewed by the pacifist as immoral and therefore to be denied. Therefore, it is morally wrong to use force to resist, to punish, or to prevent gross injustice. Self-protection and self-defense, thus, are illicit. As Elizabeth Anscombe famously observed, pacifism teaches people to make no distinction between the shedding of innocent blood and the shedding of any blood.3 Remarkably, prior to the unleashing of World War I, as Jean Elshtain has reminded us, there existed some 425 – think of it, 425! – peace organizations throughout the world.4 But despite the many vague international pronouncements and treaties that had been fashioned, one observes, then or now, that in the pacifist utopia politics (properly construed) disappears. Statecraft is no more.
For the militarist/political realist, war and peace are merely different phases of the same continuum; they simply mirror the dialectic of power between states. Whether for the religious militarist and jihadist or its secular counterpart, this is true. Force, it is assumed, can and must be utilized in the ebb-and-flow of history. It needs emphasizing, nevertheless, that militarist realism and pacifism both presuppose an unbridgeable gap between morality and statecraft. While the political realist confuses state political necessity with personal bias and conviction, the pacifist effectively abandons politics.
For the just war proponent (and Christians particularly), however, political authorities are instituted by God for both praise and punishment, in order that justice is protected and the common good is guarded. This, again, in order that human beings might flourish. The venerable tradition of “just war” – best understood as “justified war” – is important precisely because it is a public resource; it serves the duty of statecraft and offers moral wisdom that has accrued over the ages. Where it is forgotten or ignored, policy and statecraft suffer immeasurably, since it embodies a moral realism and the awareness that no aspect of the human condition – especially politics – falls outside moral judgment.
Law and order will on occasion require the coercive arm of force. And the nature of authentic peace is such that it will need a forceful defense to protect the basic goods of humanity. This is true for both domestic and foreign policy. Thus, “civil” society punishes those who perform criminal behavior; such individuals are not simply slapped on the wrist and then forgiven. Precisely this is justice – rendering what is due – for the establishment of the good of peace. The same applies to ius ad bellum (justice in going to war) and considerations of coercive intervention in foreign affairs. Just war moral reasoning justifies intervention to prevent gross evil and/or to punish the perpetrators.
Power needs to be guided by moral principle. In the words of John Courtney Murray, it is the function of morality “to command the use of power, to forbid it, to limit it, or, more in general, to define the ends for which power may or must be used and to the judge the circumstances of its use.”5 But that power cannot be properly guided unless it first has permeated the fabric and order of politics, by which it is then incarnated in the form of social and public policy.
Given the social chaos that percolates in Western nations at the moment, compounded by the increasingly vexing character of totalitarianism around the globe, it is urgent that we rediscover the moral wisdom emanating from the just war tradition as it applies to sound policy and justly ordered statecraft.
- Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility, p. 260. ↩︎
- George Weigel, “Moral clarity in a Time of War,” First Things (January 2003). ↩︎
- See in this regard her essay “War and Murder,” which appeared in War and Morality, ed. Richard A. Wasserstrom (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1970), 42-53. Here we can also understand George Orwell’s impatience with Mahatma Gandhi, whose commitment to non-violence in the end led him to the disturbing position that European Jews caught in the Holocaust should commit suicide in order to stir the conscience of the world. Such outrageous thinking, alas, is neither just nor charitable; it is a demonic abandonment of wise policy and just statecraft. ↩︎
- Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 126. ↩︎