Taking Ramsey to Task on Just War

May 4, 2010 
I’ve been suspicious of Just War theory for quite a while now.  Some of it has to do with the pacifistic inroads Hauerwas and others made on my thinking, and some of it just has to do with the theory’s terrible historical track record.  The Just War theory has much more often served as a way of providing a justification for desired wars than as a criterion for refusing wars.  By reducing the requirements of justice in war to a convenient little list of criteria, the just war tradition has made it all too easy for politicians to spin the facts and stoke up the rhetoric so as to give a passable imitation of having met the criteria.  And so the most absurd prideful bloodbaths get whitewashed as “just wars”--the Civil War, World War I, the Iraq War.  

And so, as I said, I’d become suspicious, skeptical--not hostile, mind you, just dubious as to whether the theory actually enabled us to fight just wars and refuse unjust ones.  And so I thought, in all fairness to the tradition, I ought to hear its ablest defenders speak, and I planned to read Paul Ramsey’s The Just War and O’Donovan’s The Just War Revisited.  I haven’t gotten to the latter yet, but we were assigned portions of the former to read for class this past term.  I was, I am afraid, sorely disappointed--my hopes in the abilities of modern just war theorists to effectively challenge our warmongering societies were quite dashed.

Paul Ramsey, you see, chooses not merely to major on, but to pretty much exclusively deal with the ius in bello criteria, in my mind the less significant part of the just war tradition; ius ad bellum, in his mind, is essentially useless.

Let me take a moment to elucidate the distinction.  The criteria for just war that the theory has developed can be classified under these two headings, which may be translated as “justice toward war” and “justice in war.”  Under the former heading are the principles of just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, probability of success, last resort, and proportionality, principles that help us figure out whether a proposed or contemplated conflict can indeed be justly entered into.  Under the latter heading are the principles of discrimination--no intentional targeting of civilians--and (again) proportionality--using no means or targets that are likely to cause excessive suffering and death that far outweighs the envisioned benefits.  Without ius in bello, we’d be two pugilists whose friends restrained them from fighting 90% of the time, but who could haul out machine guns and chainsaws once they had a chance to duke it out.  Without ius in bellum, we’d be allowed to fight whenever we wanted, but would have to do it with one hand tied behind our backs.  Perhaps then I wouldn’t want to say that ius in bello is “less significant,” but certainly ius ad bellum has to come first.  

Why then does Ramsey want to leave it out of the equation?  O’Donovan explained it this way: Ramsey was fed up with the Church’s increasingly powerless naysaying.  By refusing to be pacifist, yet indignantly protesting every particular war that came up as “unjust,” the Church was just making itself look ridiculous.  Why?  Because the questions of ius ad bellum are hazy ones, that depend on weighing many different facts and interpreting them in ways that are ultimately somewhat subjective.  So the Church can come across as always just second-guessing the more well-informed politicians.  The questions of ius in bello, on the other hand (or at least regarding the first criterion), can be pared down to a rather sharp moral decision for every soldier and politician: “Will you intentionally target civilians?  Will you take all reasonable steps to avoid unintended civilian casualties?”  These questions the Church can insist on continuing to raise, and can hope to be heard--here, the Church has sufficient expertise to address the conscience, expertise that it cannot expect to have on the complex questions of international diplomacy surrounding ius ad bellum.  

Ramsey’s concern here is understandable, of course.  The Church can make a fool of itself when, without taking a principled pacifist stance, it instantly cries foul whenever a war is declared.  Even in a matter as important as war, we should not hastily rush to assume the worst of policy-makers, but should allow the possibility that they have accurately construed the situation, and it is one that justly calls for a military response.  

However, I am skeptical that this is really the biggest problem for us today.  In my background, at least, it is much more common for the Church to uncritically assume that the war is just than to uncritically assume that it is unjust.  But even if that were not so, Ramsey’s approach seems to leave a huge hole in our responsibility to witness Christ to our society; it leaves the Church as no more than a referee at a wrestling match, blowing the whistle whenever the combatants start fighting too dirty.  Do we really want to consign ourselves to the position of submissively nodding our heads whenever our politicians want to go to war, however unjust, and merely speaking up from time to time to try to keep the war from becoming too bloody?  Let’s look at the ius ad bellum criteria a bit more closely, with the Iraq War as a case study, to see if they are really as useless as Ramsey seems to think.  I will consider only just cause here, to try to stay concise; the other criteria, it seems to me (aside from legitimate authority), are the sort of thing that Ramsey could legitimately object that would be very difficult to judge, and on which we might to some degree have to just give our leaders the benefit of the doubt.  However, even here, the Church ought to ask hard questions of our leaders, rather than accepting vague reassuring declarations of justice--we should at least ask our leaders to make a convincing case to us that they are acting with the right intentions, as a last resort, with a high probability of success, and with proportionality--that is, a likelihood that the harm would not outweigh the benefit.  If they barely even try to make such a case, then we should immediately assume that something is not right.  

But now, let’s look closely at just cause: properly, just cause means innocent life must be in imminent danger and intervention must be to protect life.  It cannot mean merely a defense of national interest, or a defense of property, nor can it be simply for purposes of retaliation.  That is to say, the mere fact that someone else fired first doesn’t mean you can go after them with everything you’ve got--you have to be able to show that they continue to pose a threat.  The notion of pre-emptive strike is debated, but the general consensus is that pre-emption can only be just when the other party has literally pulled out theirs weapon and aimed them at you with clear and imminent intent to fire.  

Now, to be sure, it can be very difficult to ascertain for certain when there is in fact just cause, since, for example, it may look like we have been attacked first, when in fact our leaders secretly incited the other party to attack.  So we should be hesitant to ever affirm just cause without reservation.  But there are many times when we can be quite clear that there is not just cause, and the Church is responsible to speak up in such situations.  It should generally be fairly obvious to the citizens of a country whether or not they are under attack, or under the threat of imminent attack, by a hostile foreign power that is determined to kill them.  It should have been clear at the time, for instance, that the US had no just cause to engage in World War I, and it shouldn’t have required any detailed inside information to make that judgment.  World War II is a more difficult case, and I can understand Christians at the time who thought the US was just to engage.  Vietnam was obviously fought without just cause; so obvious that it’s remarkable to me that Ramsey, writing on just war theory during the Vietnam War, did not see any opportunity for Christians to speak against this failure of ius ad bellum.  

In the age of the War on Terror, this criterion has been deliberately obfuscated.  We are told that we are not dealing with hostile nations anymore, but with hostile groups of individuals who hail from many different nations and derive their support from many different nations, and who are liable to attack us at any moment.  It thus becomes a matter of secret intelligence, rather than visible reality, as to whether our lives are imminently threatened, and if so, by whom.  Christians should know enough to be suspicious about claims made in such murky waters.  But even if we had to withhold judgment, and trust our leaders to do right whenever there was uncertainty (and I can’t see where Christian citizens are called upon to give their leaders such a huge benefit of the doubt), there was still ample basis to call the invasion of Iraq unjust.  For one thing, there was the constantly shifting story as to why we were supposed to attack, with multiple conflicting rationales being thrown around.  This should’ve been an obvious red flag.  If there was a compelling just cause, it should’ve been focused on, to the exclusion of other issues.  

What were some of the reasons given?  1) Saddam was killing innocent Kurds and his own people.  2) It would be beneficial for the nation, and for the region, to have a democratic government.  3) They had harbored and possibly funded Al-Qaeda members at various times, possibly the same ones as had attacked us.  4) They were developing weapons of mass destruction, that they might someday use against us, or give to someone else to use against us.  Let’s cross-examine these.  

What about #1?  Assuming this was happening, and to some extent we would have to take the word of our leaders on this point, though we have a responsibility to look at other sources as well, does that constitute just cause?  Well, just possibly, if you believe that defending other people’s innocents, not merely your own, can be a just cause.  This is a debatable point, but I am inclined to say that it may be in situations where the situation is dire, and the innocent and the murderers are clearly discernable--the only situation like this I can think of off the top of my head is the Rwandan genocides.  90% of the time, though, either the plot is much too thorny to justly and successfully intervene from a distance (both sides are at war and guilty of atrocities), or else the murder and oppression is on too limited a scale to justify invasion and the horrors of war, which would kill at least as many innocents as they would protect (here, the criterion of proportionality comes in).  In Iraq, I think both of these ambiguities were clearly operative, which should have made us deeply skeptical that #1 could constitute just cause.  

#2 doesn’t even make an attempt to satisfy just war criteria, and seems to stem from the school of thought that treats war as “politics by other means”--a useful tool for accomplishing any beneficial purpose, not a means of last resort for preventing mass murder. 

#3 has a vague aura of justice about it, but when you look closely, this aura disappears.  Nowhere in just war theory does it say that anyone who has at any time been friendly to an enemy of yours is a just target for invasion, and I can’t imagine how one could begin to justify such a broad rationale.  Even if it were conclusively shown that Iraq had directly and intentionally aided those who carried out 9/11 attacks, that wouldn’t suffice for just cause, since just cause does not mean retaliation, but protection.  The Bush administration would have had to show that Iraq was currently offering direct and significant support to people who were currently attacking, or imminently planning to attack, innocent Americans.  I don’t even recall them trying to claim this, and even if they had, we would’ve then turned to the criterion of proportionality, and so it’s hard to imagine how such support could have justified a massive invasion.

#4 also has a vague aura of justice, since it makes it look like we’re defending ourselves.  But this strains the notion of pre-emption well beyond the breaking point.  So far as I recall, not even the wildest rhetorical excesses of the lead-up to war tried to show us that they were clearly armed and preparing to attack any day--it was all based on foggy fears about the future.

Now, what are we to make of this?  Of the four criteria, #2 could not possibly comprise a just cause, while #3 and #4, although lying in the general neighborhood of a just cause, could not themselves, as they were presented in the lead-up to the war, comprise just causes.  Only #1 could have, in theory, comprised a just cause, though it seems almost certain to have failed the test of proportionality, and, in any case, would have failed utterly to move public sentiment to war. 

All of this suggests that, leaving out the benefit of hindsight and considering what was publicly known at the time, there was ample cause for the Church to stand up and say, “This appears to be an unjust war; as it stands now, Christians cannot support it.”  This would be no pouty pseudo-pacifist naysaying of the sort Ramsey derides, but an objective, principled, thoroughly defensible stand that could have prevented a great deal of evil.  I would thus suggest that, if we are to revive the just war doctrine, it is both crucial and practicable that we revive, and insist upon to the best of our ability, ius ad bellum, rather than merely trying to referee the brawl after its already started, as Ramsey would have us do.

Bullinger: Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori

April 28, 2010

In my researches on Reformation political theology, I have been struck how the same Reformers who are so adamant about returning to the Church Fathers on issues of soteriology and ecclesiology (though even here, we must confess, they are rather selective), seem to have little such interest when it comes to matters of ethics.  On the contrary, they tend to be very modernizing on ethical issues.  Where the Church Fathers tend to be against marriage, and the medievals allow marriage but put tight constraints on it (e.g., no divorce), the Reformers gladly affirm marriage and relax the constraints on it (e.g., opening the doors wide for divorce).  Where the Church Fathers tended to be hostile to private property, and the medievals allow it but put tight constraints on it (e.g., no usury), the Reformers gladly embrace a market economy and relax the constraints.

Along these lines, I was particularly struck (and disturbed) by a passage in Bullinger, when he is talking about the obligation to fight in defense of one’s country, freedom, and possessions, and extolling the virtues of patriotism.  For Augustine, you may recall, it was never righteous to kill in defense of one’s possessions, or of anything pertaining to oneself; and though it was permissible to fight in defensive wars, the language of patriotism is deeply undermined in the City of God.  

But Bullinger, in expounding the fifth commandment (in vol. 2, sermon 5 of the Decades) uses pagan Roman and Greek sources to establish that we should think of our country as our father and mother, and therefore, ought to honor and fight for it.  He cites a couple Israelite wars, including the Maccabaean’s fight against Antiochus Epiphanes, as examples to be emulated, arguing that Hebrews 11 links the faith of their fighting to our own: 

“Now, since our faith is all one, and the very same with theirs, it is lawful for us, as well as for them, in a rightful quarrel by war to defend our country and religion, our virgins and old men, our wieves and children, our liberty and possessions.  They are flatly unnatural to their country and countrymen, and do transgress this fifth commandment, whosoever do (under the pretence of religion) forsake their country afflicted with war, not endeavoring to deliver it from barbarous soldiers and foreign nations.”  

Preempting the blasphemy of many modern war memorials, he goes on to quote St. John in approval of military sacrifice: “By this we know his love, because he gave his life for us; and we ought to give our lives for the brethren.”  Then he goes so far as to say that mercenaries (often the target of Reformation treatises on just war), who risk their lives for money, are more to be respected than those who “will not hazard the loss of a limb for their religion, magistrates, wives, children, and all their possessions.”  He ends by approvingly quoting a Greek writer, Hierocles, “Our country is as it were a certain other god, and our first and chiefest parent.”  

Looks like the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells have found their soulmate.  

Christians in the Military?

February 28, 2010

There's a lot of debate right now over whether or not we should openly permit gays to serve in the military; but hardly any Christians seem to be asking the much more important question--should Christians serve in the military?  The early Church Fathers, as a general rule, thought not.  Ah, we say, but that's because they were pacifists, and we know better than that now.  Well, no, not necessarily--for one thing, opposition to killing is not the primary reason they cite for their concern.  Rather it is, as we see in Tertullian's The Military Chaplet, a concern that enlisting in the military would require a kind of allegiance and loyalty that only God could properly command, that it essentially committed one either to idolatry, or to invite severe punishment by refusing to engage in the practices required of a soldier.  Ah, we say, but this does not apply now.  Rome was pagan, and so their military was deep in idolatry, but we're secular, and so none of our practices can be idolatrous.  

Unfortunately, it's not that simple.  
So-called "secular" phenomena can be every bit as religious as those associated with traditional religions.  After all, the main idolatry that the early Christians were concerned about, and martyred for refusing, was the emperor-idolatry--declaring absolute loyalty to the state and its rulers, and participating in rituals and symbols designed to enact their allegiance and reverence to the state.  How different really are things now?  Not very, if you listen to William Cavanaugh in The Myth of Religious Violence.  He cites the historian and US diplomat Carlton Hayes, who identified "the American religion's saints (the founding fathers), its shrines (Independence Hall), its relics (The Liberty Bell), its holy Scriptures (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution), its martyrs (Lincoln), its inquisition (school boards that enforce patriotism), its Christmas (the Fourth of July), and its feast of Corpus Christi (Flag Day).  According to Hayes, the flag occupies the same central place in official ritual that the eucharistic host previously held: 'Nationalism's chief symbol of faith and central object of worship is the flag, and curious liturgical forms have been devised for 'saluting' the flag, for 'dipping' the flag, for 'lowering' the flag, and for 'hoisting' the flag.  Men bare their heads when the flag passes by; and in praise of the flag poets write odes and children sing hymns.  In America young people are ranged in serried rows and required to recite daily, with hierophantic voice and ritualistic gesture, the mystical formula: "I pledge allegiance to our flag and to the country for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."  Everywhere, in all solemn feasts and fasts of nationalism the flag is in evidence, and with it that other sacred thing, the national anthem.'"

It is truly bizarre that Protestants, with all their paranoia about any hint of Catholic Eucharistic devotion, have no objections about any of this except the omission of "under God" from the pledge, since they feel that we need to bolster the sacral dimensions of the pledge by affirming that God himself has commissioned this nation.  

But, I stray from the matter at hand.  What about Christians in the military?  Well, Tertullian has an interesting concern about the crown of laurel leaves that soldiers were to wear: "Is the laurel of the triumph made of leaves, or of corpses? Is it adorned with ribbons, or with tombs? Is it bedewed with ointments, or with the tears of wives and mothers? It may be of some Christians too; for Christ is also among the barbarians. Has not he who has carried a crown for this cause on his head, fought even against himself?"  

How dare Christians wear a symbol that commemorates the state's slaughter of its enemies? Tertullian asks.  This seems like overkill to us, but we need to ask ourselves--should Christian American soldiers object to bedecking themselves in apparel and symbols that honor the triumphs of US soldiers against its enemies in many unjust wars?

But here's Tertullian's biggest concern: "Do we believe it lawful for a human oath to be superadded to one divine, for a man to come under promise to another master after Christ, and to abjure father, mother, and all nearest kinsfolk, whom even the law has commanded us to honour and love next to God Himself, to whom the gospel, too, holding them only of less account than Christ, has in like manner rendered honour?... Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God?"

Is this kind of loyalty a thing of the past, or do modern militaries also go too far in the allegiance they demand?  It's certainly a question worth asking, as, when you look at the kinds of loyalty oaths that the various branches of the military demand, and how they describe the kind of allegiance they involve, it certainly borders on idolatry.  I won't name any names here, but it's certainly worth reading up on some of the material on the US military websites.

Pity Obama's Speechwriter...

...he had to write a speech explaining why we should continue to escalate the war in Afghanistan just a few days ago; now he's got to write Obama's Peace Prize acceptance speech for next Thursday.

Sounds like a bit above his pay scale...

Shock and Awe, Old School

One of the most helpful features of Niall Ferguson's narrative is how it gives one a new and clearer perspective on modern American imperial policies by seeing them through the lens of another empire's actions more than a century ago. Kinda like Nathan telling David the story of the rich man stealing the poor man's beloved sheep--you find yourself thinking, "Wow, that's horrible...oh wait...that's us."

For instance, Ferguson tells of how popular the Empire was in pop culture--in young adult fiction (e.g., G.A. Henty), in advertising, in newspapers and magazines--in particular, how much the public loved to read about smashing imperial victories over half-clad natives half a globe away. All of which, when you think about it, is rather pathetic...I mean, how could any self-respecting Brit feel a swelling sense of national pride and triumph by reading about British troops with machine guns obliterating hordes of Africans with spears who are trying to defend their homeland? How's there any glory in that? I mean, c'mon, pick on someone your own size.

Perhaps the most appalling example of this was the Battle of Omdurman, 1898.
Here Lord Kitchener's 25,000 British and Egyptian troops, with several batteries of Maxim machine guns, engaged a force of 52,000 Dervishes, armed with swords or primitive rifles. In a five-hour long massacre, Kitchener lost only 400 dead or wounded; the Dervishes suffered, by some reports, 95% casualties. The battle was considered a glorious triumph for British arms, a sensation in the press. And you ask yourself, "Why? Didn't they feel just a little bit awkward about fighting with such an unfair advantage?"

Until you remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq. How many Americans (including myself) were glued to the TV to watch with glee, triumph, and national pride as the largest air force in the world dropped thousands of tons of explosives on a country that had essentially zero air force, in a intentionally theatrical "Shock and Awe" campaign? Weren't we so proud of our good ol' boys for crushing a bunch of poorly armed foot soldiers in the desert? The memory made me feel a bit sick when I recalled it after listening to Ferguson's account of the Battle of Omdurman.

In fact, the parallels go much deeper. Omdurman was the culmination of an invasion that aimed to take care of unfinished business from 13 years before, when a British force sent to relieve George Gordon had never properly "revenged" his death, unseated the Arab dictator in power, or taken control of the country. Hence the national excitement after the victory. Sound familiar? (The 1st Gulf War began in 1990; the 2nd in 2003.)

A lot of valuable lessons to be learned here, though unfortunately Ferguson fails abysmally to draw them (a later post to come on this).