No Christian—and for that matter, no “soldier worth his salt” (as General Schwarzkopf put it)—will proclaim himself to be “pro-war.” We desire peace. And yet we disagree on how to achieve the peace we desire.
At one end of the spectrum, pacifists refuse to participate in wars of any kind, for any reason. At the other end of the spectrum, crusaders seek final peace by waging war on behalf of an ideal. In the middle of the two views are just war proponents. Unlike pacifists, they are willing to wage war, but unlike crusaders, they are not willing to do so to achieve ideological perfection.
The Signs of a Just War
Just war proponents provide certain criteria that must be met before going to war. A just war must be waged, for example, with just cause (defending against an unjust aggression), with right intention (to restore the tranquility disrupted by the unjust aggression), as a last resort (having exhausted all realistic nonviolent options), and in the right spirit (with regret rather than with glee, hatred, or a lust for power or glory).
Just war proponents also outline certain principles that must be followed while fighting a war. Among those principles are proportionality (no more force than necessary), discrimination (distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants), avoidance of evil means (such as rape and pillage), good faith (treating POWs with civility), probability of success (fighting only until there is not a hope of victory), and right spirit.
Ten Signs that a “Just War” is Really a Crusade
Proponents of just war sometimes lapse into a crusader mentality. I fear that many just war advocates—of both the conservative and liberal varieties—risk lapsing into such a mentality at the present moment. For that reason, I am providing a list of ten contrasting characteristics that help us distinguish between just wars and crusades. These characteristics come from a public paper delivered by Daniel Heimbach, a former White House staffer, ethicist, and just war theorist.
- Crusade treats war as an unconditional effort of good against evil, whereas just war teats war as a morally restrained effort to restore a just peace.
- Crusade treats war as a matter of religion and is led by some religious authority (or ideological authority that functions in the place of religion). In just war, war is treated as a responsibility of civil government and is fought under the conscience of the one who heads the civil order.
- Because crusade is fought for the sake of that which defines good and evil (God, the ideal), there is for crusade little place for moral restraint in war. Anything that serves God (or the ideal) is right by definition, so wars of crusade are “total” wars. By contrast, just war places moral limits on what can be done in war—force must be limited only to what is necessary and used only on military targets.
- Because there can be no compromise between good and evil and because war is “total,” crusade has little place for surrender, enemies because they personify evil deserve no mercy, those who give up need not be spared. By contrast just war spares those who surrender and protects the rights of those taken as prisoners of war.
- In crusade, the objective of war is to impose an ideal, whereas just war seeks a limited good–the restoration of recognized borders or a balance between conflicting rights.
- Crusade seeks to conquer or punish, whereas just war seeks only to rectify the injustice that warranted entering into conflict.
- Crusade opposes the whole social order and value system of an enemy, so there is no distinction between combatants and noncombatants. In just war it is important to distinguish between combatants and noncombatants.
- In crusade, soldiers go to war with zeal; war is a vocation for saints and soldiers fight a war of religious vision (or ideology) as well as a war of flesh and blood. In just war, soldiers regard the use of force as a tragic necessity and a last resort, and are not agents for religious or ideological transformation as such.
- Crusade requires no declaration of war, whereas just war must be declared by those responsible for the civil order.
- In crusade, the state of war tends to become permanent (because the ideal can never be perfectly realized), whereas in just war hostilities cease when the specific infraction of justice that led to war has been rectified.
Further Resources
Further resources for studying just war include:
- Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3d ed. This book defends just war theory and provides commentary on a number of armed conflicts throughout history. Intermediate.
- Walzer, Michael. Arguing about War. This book deals with a number of hard issues (e.g. terrorism, humanitarian intervention) and analyzes several recent wars (e.g. Kosovo, Afghanistan). Intermediate.
- Richard S. Hess and Elmer A. Martens. War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century. This book includes a number of helpful essays, including one by Daniel Heimbach, “Distinguishing Just War from Crusade: Is Regime Change a Just Cause for Just War?”
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Morally speaking, it would seem to me that we put ourselves on a slippery slope whenever we move away a position of pure pacifism. Even invoking the right of self-defense can get us in trouble. Certainly we were defending ourselves in the Battle of Midway and the campaign in the Aleutians. Can the same be said about our firebombing of civilian areas of Tokyo and other Japanese cities? And what about the horrible fate we visited upon the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the war had nearly ended? (I have in recent years become convinced that Truman ordered the atomic bombings more to deter Soviet aggression than for any pressing military reason.)
When it comes to matters such as the Islamic State, we are in a deep moral morass. Around 2012 and thereafter, the United States set up the conditions for the birth of that entity in hopes of using it to destroy the Assad regime in Syria. We acted in concert with Turkey, whose government had designs on Syrian territory and Iraqi oil; with Qatar, whose ruling house wanted to build a pipeline to keep down the costs of exporting its natural gas; with Saudi Arabia, whose leadership’s prestige depends upon promoting Wahhabism around the Islamic world; and with Israel, whose government likes to see Arabs fighting one another rather than supporting the Palestinians. Do any of those reasons sound like justification for a “just war” or a “crusade?” Now the Islamic State is spreading like a cancer through the Muslim world, and it’s largely our fault. There may be ways of destroying it short of war, though.
I don’t know who it was who first observed that in war, truth is the first casualty. A bellicose regime has many means of subverting the truth in order to fool its people and the rest of humanity. So when our government next attempts to promote a “just war” argument, we should keep in mind General Smedley Butler’s hard-earned conclusion that “War is a racket.”
Roger, thank you for your thoughts. Within the next week or two, I’ll be posting a couple of brief articles that lay out the conditions for launching and waging a just war. I think pacifism is well-intended (we should all desire peace) but is unworkable. In the end, pacifism ends up being violence towards one’s own. If we do not defend ourselves against unjust aggression, we eventually invite violence upon our families and neighbors. Still, to your point, I agree that just war theory can be employed as a smokescreen for unjust wars. Which is what I was pushing back against in this post.
Thanks so much for the article post.Much thanks again. Much obliged. Dorsette