Wars Fought to Maintain International Cooperation
Introduction
The deliberate taking of human life is generally deemed morally wrong. Whether one approaches this moral position from a rights-based perspective, namely, that no one has the right to take another human being’s life or from a duty-based perspective, namely, that one has the duty to respect the sanctity of human life, killing is equally objectionable because it is particularly cowardly and intrinsically hubristic. It is cowardly because killing is an ignoble admission that one refuses to find a peaceful way to resolve his disputes and does not have the courage to honorably accept defeat. Rather than dealing with the issue at hand, he seeks an easy exit to terminate his enemy’s very existence. In doing so, he showcases his hubris because he lets his own will and himself get larger than life itself. Moralists also find it objectionable when one resorts to the use of force, another key component of killing, because it underscores the failure of Reason. Indeed, the reign of Reason is the hallmark of our society and the watershed between antiquity and modernity. However much we denounce killing and ridicule the killers though, when “it comes to the killing of thousands and even millions of people in war… this is widely accepted as a necessary and inevitable part of our way of life.”
Pacifism does question whether war is inevitable. Pacifism finds killing and the use of physical force so morally objectionable that all wars, regardless of their cause and their nature, are categorically characterized as immoral. Recent history, however, renders pacifism at best an aspiration because the reality is simply too distant from the end vision that pacifism inspires. Even if we refrain from going back in history, in the 1990s alone, more than 30 large scale wars broke out, mostly in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. The new millennium does not break the world away from the same trend that has gone on for as far as history can remember. The wars in Iraq and Darfur appear in headlines incessantly. But more quietly, another two dozen wars have broken out since 2000 and some are still ongoing. Sharing a similar moral conviction to pacifism, just war theory seems to bring the moral calculation a little closer to reality.
The very existence of just war theory lends support to the use of physical force in certain just scenarios, but clearly bifurcates the universe of all wars into two categories: the just ones and the unjust ones. Just wars transcend the simple moral objection to killing on an individual basis and in the process of doing so, they reveal the fact that wars waged for certain cause and conducted in a strict manner perhaps are a rational, and therefore moral, way to settle disputes in the world we live in today. Perhaps the simple reliance on Reason alone is not sufficient to organize worldly affairs and to maintain international order. Perhaps there are other values and rights that we hold higher than our respect for the sanctity of life and to defend these values and rights, we are willing to employ violent means if that is what it takes.
Before delving into the analysis of the moral calculations behind just war theory, a glimpse into how a modern sovereign handles its domestic affairs might provide a frame of reference to understanding the just war calculus. Max Weber acutely notes that a modern state is “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Various penal systems around the world are good examples of the monopolization of the use of physical force. In order to promote public interest and protect social order, the collectivity, either in the form of a democratically elected government or a dictatorship, enacts penal codes to narrowly define the type of undesirable behavior repugnant to peace and stability. The penal codes coerce the general public to conform to a certain behavioral standard so that societies can be organized around a certain set of expectations, such as quiet enjoyment of one’s own property free from trespassers, or free from theft and robbery in the public life. These penal codes are backed by credible threat to use physical force against those that choose to violate these codes of conduct. Ironically, however much modern societies abhor physical force, physical force turns out to be the guarantor of its peace and stability. Indeed, in the background, a low lever of violence, the use of which is monopolized by the government, is necessary in order to deter disruptive behavior, punish the deviants and maintain social orders. Despite our moral discomfort, physical force is necessary for the purpose of rationally settle disputes when all other methods prove futile or too costly.
To the extent that analogies can be drawn between violence in domestic affairs and violence among independent nations, just war theorists are engaging in a similar project. They accept that, in limited cases, the use of violence may be a necessary, sometimes even rational, means to settle disputes between nations and to resolve ideological differences. By drawing a line between just and unjust wars, just war theorists create a framework to allow the use of force as a last resort in carefully defined scenarios. In all other cases, this just war framework provides a platform to denounce the war, to undermine soldiers’ will to take part in the war and to deter leaders from engaging in wars by imposing criminal liabilities in the aftermath of the war. Unlike the possibility of monopolization within a country’s borders, just war theory does not have the luxury of centralizing the use of force at the collective level, but it rides on the back of the almost ubiquitous moral objection to violence and killing and can use international law and public opinion as vehicles to achieve it goal. The division line between just and unjust wars is therefore almost magical because the presumption of guilt shifts almost immediately when a war traverses from one side of the line to the other.
With power comes responsibility. Since the division line has this magical power, where it is drawn is of utmost importance. The development of just war theory is, interestingly, a history of codifying religious, mostly Christian, penchant for peace to balance with reality. The early Christian tradition “rejected all participation in military activities, but when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire it had to accommodate itself to the realities of political life.” Saint Thomas Aquinas is regarded as the first person to systematically present the religious teaching into a body of just war theory. The influence of religious teaching on one hand provides a solid moral foundation for the just war tradition, but on the other hand requires unequivocal moral clarity. As a result, it is probably unsurprising to see that today’s just war theory enumerates just causes and explicitly defines the codes of conduct during war.
Common to all enumerated system, explicitly defined just causes sometimes fall victim to their own rigidity. Under today’s just war theory, only wars fought in self-defense are considered just causes. Humanitarian concerns and nuclear non-proliferation interests are topics, toward which just war theorists feel the most uneasy, because extending the reach of the just war framework to include these causes might run the risk of being over inclusive, but leaving them out leads to the uncomfortable situation where the prevailing morality and practical needs might have to operate outside of the just war framework.
When substantively defined just causes seem to illy serve the world we live in, it is natural to explore the possibility of taking procedural steps to make just war theory more complete. This paper seeks to explore whether additional procedural hurdles are necessary to qualify just causes in addition to the pre-defined just causes and then tries to answer whether such a move is appropriate. Then, I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of introducing procedural requirements into the just war tradition.
Certainly just war theory should not expand or contract based on the prevailing morality of the day. A careful analysis of the just war tradition shows, however, that using a set of predetermined procedures to qualify causes for war is in furtherance of the objective just war theory aims to promote. Just war theory is an effort to balance the atrocities of war and human suffering with other fundamental values and rights that we cherish. In a quest to uncover why these values and rights are so fundamental that they transcend the moral objection to killing, we come to realize that in the modern world where cooperation and collaboration are the touchstones of international order, cooperation and collaboration themselves may cause wars as well, especially when individual states try to withdraw from this collaborative scheme. Indeed, the trend toward international cooperation is the coercive force and the underlying reason that procedural requirements need to be introduced to the just war tradition in order to adapt itself to the new century.
I. Just War Theory Helps to Minimize All Incidents of War
A. Self Defense is the Only Just Cause to Go to War
Today’s just war theory covers two important aspects of war: ex ante what wars can be considered just and during the war, what conducts are acceptable. These two aspects are usually referred to as jus ad bellum and jus in bello.
Richard Norman provides a concise summary for the jus ad bellum doctrines in his book Ethics, Killing and War:
1. The war must be fought for a just cause.
2. The decision to go to war must be made with a right intention.
3. The decision to go to war must be made by a legitimate authority.
4. There must be a formal declaration of war.
5. There must be a reasonable hope for success.
6. The decision to go to war should be a last resort.
7. The decision must satisfy the requirement of proportionality.
A just cause is essential in the just war consideration. Norman’s summary calls for a just cause first and the later criteria all concern the source, authority and procedures how this just cause is executed and carried out. In Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer considers the defense of aggression as a just cause. Walzer asserts that all aggressive acts “have one thing in common: they justify forceful resistance, and force cannot be used between nations, as it often can between persons, without putting life itself at risk.” In fact, defending against aggression is so well recognized that Norman summarizes that “the wrong which war should attempt to right is the crime of aggression, and the only justification for going to war is therefore as defence against aggression.”
Reasonable minds might differ over what other justifications qualify as just causes. The Iraq war in 2003 is a good example in that regard. In the days before war broke out, the Vatican, “reputed to be a principal custodian of the just war tradition,” repeatedly said that while the weapon inspectors were still working in Iraq, such a war on the basis of the eradication of weapons of mass destruction would be unjust and “the Holy See opposed the US-led war in Iraq with a ferocity that few issues in the recent past have aroused.” On the other hand, a group of American intellects as well as the U.S. government were morally unequivocal about the just nature of the Iraq invasion. Michael Novak was so compelled by the mandatory nature of the war that “he went to Rome, summoned by the United States ambassador to the Vatican, James Nichollson, to convince the hierarchy of the need for war.” When he failed, Novak led a group of Catholics, including “Jean Bethke Elshtain, John Richard Neuhaus, George Weigel… to [defend the] ‘just war tradition’ they felt the Vatican had abandoned.” Unfortunately, just war theory is silent on how to reconcile such polarized views on the just cause of a war. One has to wonder whether there are justified grievances on both sides and if yes, how they should be dealt with on a conceptual level and in their real world implications.
For the purpose of the exercise in this paper and to the extent that Norman is correct in the sense that defense against aggression is the only universally well recognized just cause, just war theory safeguards the use of violence in extremely limited scenarios and is truly a last resort both in the sense of having exhausted all other means and being pressed with time to defend oneself in the face of aggression. It is less clear, though, even in this conception, what constitutes aggression. Is it a physical attack? Does economic sanction count? How about a blockade? There is no easy answer before we understand substantively what the just war tradition tries to accomplish.
B. The Just War Tradition Takes a Moral Stand Between Pacifism and Realism
Pacifism, just war theory and realism hold different attitudes toward war. Essentially, they all engage in the same balancing act, but assign different weights to each integral aspect in this complex moral, ethical and practical calculus.
Pacifists are clearly at one end of the spectrum. Toward the end of the WWII, Pope Pius XII in his Christmas Message declared, “The theory of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date.” Taken this logic one step further, John Courtney Murray argued that “the use of force is not now a moral means for the redress of violated legal rights. The justness of the cause is irrelevant; there simply is no longer a right of self-redress; no individual state may presume to take even the cause of justice into his own hands.” Instead of deriving pacifism from a religious moral imperative, a secular approach can arrive at a similar conclusion, too. The cost of war, economically and in human suffering, is so formidably high that no gain, economically or morally, can categorically outweigh the cost. Carving out certain wars to call them just wars a priori cannot square with this view. In fact, to the extent that Murhpy’s law rings some truth that if anything can go wrong, it will, any war, just, unjust or however they are labeled, allows too many opportunities for things to go wrong. Murphy’s law also makes it impossible to correctly estimate the cost of war ex ante. Therefore, pacifism is the only logical position to take, even simply following this secular approach.
Not believing in wars, unfortunately, cannot make them go away. One’s pacifist penchant can be a powerful starting point, but as a coherent theory, pacifism must quickly realize that wars are fought, among other reasons, to settle disputes, to gain advantages or to triumph a certain ideology. It is imperative to address these problems and construct a meaningful, workable and peaceful way to resolve the underlying cause of the conflicts. For pacifism to have any real world relevance, it must predicate on a strong presumption that there is always a non-violent solution to these problems. Or more realistically, there is always a non-violent solution to these problems superior to the approach employing force and violence. Hence, by removing war as an instrument of national policy and fostering an international environment against the use of physical force, nations are forced to seek these non-violent solutions and, in turn, achieve a higher good. The non-violent, but active resistance tradition coined by Mohatma Ghandi is a great example of how a peaceful alternative is sought to actively and vigorously combat evil. Regardless of whether this presumption of a peaceful alternative is well heeded, pacifism implicitly requires the existence of this alternative so that pacifism can legitimately and responsibly declare all wars immoral and try to eradicate them on that ground. In the modern age and a marketplace for ideas, only time can tell whether pacifism will succeed in achieving its goal.
Realism is silent on the moral basis of war. Indeed, the use of force is not categorically preferred or disfavored. Realism does not seem to take a moral stand on violence because the use of physical force is only meaningful to realism to the extent of the gains and losses stemmed from it. Realists find a common currency, dubbed as interest, to commonly denominate all relevant factors in the war calculation. In other words, realism is a worldview that embraces the idea that it is possible to weigh different interests on the same scale and therefore the theoretical and moral exercise of the legitimacy of war turns into an empirical question. To the extent that relevant factors can be commonly denominated, realism treats the war calculation exactly as a calculation: it internalizes the human suffering and the moral objection, but balances that with other legitimate interests, such as strategic gains, territorial integrity and prestige interest.
Whether this methodology is sound is up for debate, as commentators on both sides find it unacceptable to either comprise moral integrity for pure interests or comprise national interests for mere moral concerns. Nevertheless, insofar as realists’ methodology is acceptable, realism makes morality endogenous to its calculation. War becomes a rational and optimal choice, waged only when its aggregate benefits exceed its costs. Of course, problems quickly arise in regards to what are the appropriate weights to assign to each factor and when there is disagreement, who and how the disagreement should be resolved. If and when these problems are resolved satisfactorily, realism enables a nation to maximize its own interests, weighing across a variety of factors. Then the war calculation turns into an effort to conceptually decide what factors are relevant and empirically how much weight to assign to each factor.
When morality becomes endogenous to the war calculation, an independent discourse around morality becomes futile. Walzer acutely summarizes this curious aspect of realism by asserting that it is “a denial… of the meaningfulness of moral argument.” Especially when the prevailing morality differs from nation to nation, “moral discourse is always suspect, and war is only an extreme case of the anarchy of moral meanings.” Indeed, when nations embrace different moral standards and assign different weights to the importance of morality in their separate calculations, the realist framework might lead to different and conflicting outcomes, depending on which nation’s set of factors and weights it employs. A rational decision to wage war from nation A’s perspective might be completely irrational, viewed from nation B’s perspective. In the lead-up to WWII, the United States’ response to the situation in Europe is a great example. When the war broke out in Europe in 1939, the isolationists in the U.S. had the upper hand in the public debate and kept America out of the war until the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Since the prevailing morality at the beginning of the war favored isolationism, the outcome of the realist calculation was at odds with what the Ally nations might have preferred. Even within the U.S., various people had different policy preferences, or in the pacifist language, a different set of weights for each factor. President Roosevelt said even before major combats broke up in 1937 that:
Innocent peoples are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy...Let no one imagine that America will escape...There is no escape through mere isolation or neutrality...War is a contagion, whether it be declared or not. It seems unfortunately true that the epidemic of lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease. I call today for a similar quarantine. A quarantine of the lawless, a quarantine of those that threaten world peace.
The democratic process provides a forum for realism to work out the internal difference over preferences for weights and factors, but the case-by-case nature of such a process makes it almost unworkable on an international basis, not to mention each nation’s difference in their moral standards.
Realists live in the present as much as pacifists live in the future. While pacifists are aspired to a world with peace on earth, realists argue that given the “anarchy of moral meanings,” the best we can do today is to let diplomacy have its turn, but when that fails to resolve the disputes, war and a simple knockout with physical force are rational choices rather than waiting for the divergence of moral meanings to sort themselves out. It is no surprise then that realists always resort to “a necessity of nature” defense to justify their causes for war.
As evidenced in the Melian dialogue, part of that nature is unmistakably self-interest. The Athenians argued forcefully that it is a sign of weakness and undermines their credibility if Athens failed to bring the acropolis of Melos into its empire. From the Athenian perspective, it is only moral to maximize its own interest even at the cost of Melians’ freedom. Indeed, in an “anarchy of moral meanings,” who are we to judge whose version of morality is correct or superior to others? But invariably, we do judge, as does Walzer, who questions whether this depiction of anarchy is accurate since “[m]oral talk is coercive; one thing leads to another.” It is the common experience by people of all nations and all faiths that commonly denominate these moral talks and that experience is the touchstone of a universal morality that people of all faiths can abide to. If Walzer is right and the anarchy of moral meanings is an illusion, perhaps what contributes to that illusion is merely a lack of forum for these discourses to take roots in international affairs.
C. Just War Theory Provides a Narrative to Minimize All Incidents of War
Struggling to find a balance between pacifism and realism is Just War Theory. It is an uneasy admission to the fact that certain natural and well-recognized rights are worth defending in the face of an aggression of force despite the atrocities that warfare invariably brings. It is not easy to define what interests and rights are so fundamental that they can transcend our fear for war though. In that sense, the line drawing engaged in Just War Theory is less morally coercive, but more a reflection of reality. Judged by its effect, if the Just War Theory project succeeded in serving as a basis to promote just wars and limit the unjust ones, Just War Theory would provide a narrative to minimize the incidents of all wars.
Stanley Hauerwas powerfully argues in his book Should War be Eliminated? that in spite of the Christian belief that war is “always the result of sin (a fact [Christians] continue to presume, and it is a presumption consistent with the natural law basis of the just-war tradition)… war is a morally positive institution.” Individuals’ sinful nature or even that of a collectivity certainly plays a role in causing war, it however cannot “by itself explain both war and peace, except by the simple statement that man’s nature is such that sometimes he fights and sometimes he does not.” Instead, war is a “positive moral institution” in the sense that it is a rational way to reconcile certain conflicts between communities. These communities “exist on the basis of shared public concern… [and] must justify its own interests and purposes in terms of its particular history and situation.” Hauerwas’s theory shows a clear break from pacifism, which passes a strong negative moral judgment against the war institution. Hauerwas’s assertion, on the other hand, believes that war is a “morally positive institution” in the sense that it is merely a vehicle that carries out the underlying conflicts and these underlying conflicts are products of the “particular history and situation.” Moral judgments can be formed based on the particular history and situation, but the war itself is simply a real world manifestation of the underlying problem.
Taking a moral position based on the particular history and situation invariably rolls conventions, common sense and other trademarks of the time into the moral discourse. This again is a different approach compared to pacifism and realism. Pacifism simply takes a strong moral view, namely, all wars are so evil that we must do everything in our power to stop all of them indiscriminately. Once this moral position is established, everything else naturally flows as a coercive moral authority. As long as logic holds, pacifism will arrive at the same conclusions at all times and at all places. Realism, too, is conceptually coherent. It sets a clear goal in maximizing national interests and everything else simply follows based on this goal. As discussed in the last section, there can be disagreement over the empirical conclusions on the factors to consider and the weights to assign to each factor, but realism as a theory remains loyal to its goal of maximizing national interests and facilitates the public discourse to achieve this goal. Just War Theory is unique compared to these schools of thought. It is almost a commonsense approach judged by its just cause requirement in the jus ad bellum doctrine. What consists of just cause is one of the most important components of Just War Theory, but Just War Theory leaves that question unanswered, inviting the public discourse and the prevailing morality of the day to interject into the just war calculus. Therefore, Just War Theory can move its division line between just and unjust wars from time to time and is usually in synchronization with the predominant worldview of the time.
In addition to serving the popular wisdom of the time, Just War Theory manifests a narrative to minimize all incidents of war in its effect. By bifurcating wars into two camps, just war theory essentially declares that certain wars, fought for specific reasons and conducted in a specific way, are moral and should receive international support whereas any other incidents of war should be condemned. This distinction allows international law, the public and the relevant authorities to have a theoretical basis to deter the immoral wars before they take place, rally support against them during the war and punish the leaders of unjust wars in the aftermath. This bifurcation also lends moral support for the just camp by postulating just causes and guiding the code of conduct during the warfare with the hope that only under very limited circumstances will community leaders attempt to use physical force to settle conflicts.
This bifurcation approach is attractive not because of its appeal to justice and morality, but because we hope it can reduce violence, by cutting back total incidents of war, and in the meantime, maintain international order as we know it. As discussed earlier, a parallel example of this bifurcation approach can be found within most nation states where the government monopolizes the legitimate use of physical force. After centuries of human development, we have not made obsolete the use of force and violence, but rather reserved the right to use force as a rational method to resolve disagreements in limited cases. Nation states publicly enact penal codes and use them to coerce orderly behavior in order for people to live in a harmonious society and function together in a cooperative model for everyone’s gain. By centralizing the use of force, a line is drawn between the government using physical force strictly according to the law and all other violent incidents. This way, the legal use of force remains available as an option to settle disagreements whereas society can work together to minimize all other incidents of violence. The end vision is certainly that within a nation state, all private use of violence is deterred and public use is not longer needed except for its deterrence effect. Under this model, not only is force available as a rational choice to resolve differences and conflicts, but it is also the guarantor of peace and its successful use will hopefully lead to a world where force is no longer needed, except for in the books.
Similarly, the Just War narrative that separates the just and unjust wars will have similar effects. Once this framework is established, the world can work together to eliminate or at least minimize incidents of unjust wars. On the other hand, the end vision for the just war framework is not a world without violence. Wars with just causes and conducted according to the just war teachings are not only permitted under this framework, but if just causes are of a deterrent nature, Just War Theory can achieve exactly the same goal as what penal codes do within a country’s borders.
As Just War Theory was first articulated by Augustus, and then later augmented by Aquainas, just causes for war heavily depends on religious, mostly Christian, morality and focuses on substantive causes clearly derived from religious doctrines. This reliance on religious doctrines helps to legitimize just war claims and draws upon moral beliefs indoctrinated in the population at large through centuries of religious teaching. However, it also leaves out any room for procedural solutions to decide whether a cause is just or not because religious doctrines tend to give clear and definitive answers. Indeed from a religious perspective and using the coercive moral standards, whether a cause is just or not should not be subject to the scrutiny of the international community.
This lack of procedural solutions to decide the just nature of a war, however, might be at odds with the narrative to describe Just War Theory as a theoretical framework to allow war as a rational means to settle conflicts in limited circumstances if it is difficult to define these circumstances to a level of precision to allow exactly the wars we would otherwise call just. Indeed, the success of the Just War Theory project, in this narrative, is measured by how effective it is to deter unjust wars, defined by irrational use of physical force when alternatives are both rational and abundant. Its success also relies on Just War Theory’s ability to include those incidents where war is a rational means to maintain the international order, as we know it. Nevertheless, before we see whether this narrative is consistent with the moral ethos of the just war tradition, we must conduct a thought experiment to see whether there are indeed circumstances where we think war is rational and just, but are unable to substantively define it ex ante.
II. Cooperation Can Be A Source of Conflicts as Well
Self-interest is commonly thought of as the major source of conflicts between nation states. The Athenians invaded Melos in order to solidify its influence abroad; the Mongols were famous for plundering the wealth of their neighboring states; a long series of wars were fought during the era of colonization to gain entrance to foreign markets, take control of the supply of natural resources and sometimes to enslave a people. Similar examples of warfare to promote self-interests have littered the entire human history. Left in isolation, a country’s military prowess is the only effective deterrence against aggression.
A. Cooperation is a Superior Model to Isolation in Maintaining International Order
Since isolation may lead to instability, cooperation is naturally thought of as the better alternative. Indeed, whether it is cooperation through a multilateral defense treaty or a simple trade and economic alliance, there is always a positive influence on international relations through a few different mechanisms. The balance of power doctrine, commonly adopted among the European nations starting in the 16th century, is a good example of using a cooperative model in foreign policy to preserve peace. England was the forerunner in formulating this policy:
The continental policy of England was fixed. It was to be pacific, mediating, favorable to a balance, which should prevent any power from having a hegemony on the continent or controlling the Channel coasts. The naval security of England and the balance of power in Europe were the two great political principles which appeared in the reign of Henry VIII and which, pursued unwaveringly, were to create the greatness of England.
By juggling between alliances to always side with the weaker, England prevented either Germany or France from gaining hegemonic power. With roughly balanced power on both sides, neither was certain about the outlook of a large-scale war and was therefore incentivized to find alternative solutions for their disputes. Bismarck is another avid supporter of the balance of power doctrine. With careful maneuvering, he created the League of the Three Emperors in 1873 because in his view, it is beneficial “in a world of fiver powers ‘try to be a trois.’” Balance of power enables small nations to increase the effectiveness of their military deterrence. Its fluid nature also ascertains that the overall balance is roughly maintained at all times, or can be rebalanced with relative ease. Cooperation under this model does not always eliminate skirmishes, but helps to prevent clashes between the big powers, which often prove to be of much graver consequences.
Economic cooperation through trade is another way to deter war, but by increasing mutual understanding and by raising the ante of the economic cost of a full-scale fallout. David Ricardo theoretically proves that trade is not a zero sum game where one country’s gain is another’s loss. Instead, trade allows every country to specialize in what it naturally fits best to do and generates more wealth than each country would be able to if left in isolation. In essence, Ricardian economics establishes the notion of comparative advantage where even if one country is better at making everything, trade still allows it to free its labor to focus on the product that it is best at making. This division of labor theory in the international arena is no different from the same argument made within the borders of a country. Since Ricardo’s logic is shown to be correct inside a country, there is no reason to expect it to break down when economic theories are extended across artificial borders dividing one country from another.
Trade and economic success are certainly not the entire story. Social and economic interactions make it more likely for countries to understand each other’s cultures and values. In addition, trade removes a number of causes for war, such as access to other countries’ natural resources and access to their markets, because instead of fighting a war for these economic reasons, a country may now focus on making something it can sell to others so that it can, in return, purchase the raw material, sources of energy and other products that it desires. Unlike the cooperative model through military alliances, economic connections and trade does not strengthen military deterrence. Instead, it provides an alternative to achieve many of the same goals that wars set out to achieve. In addition, countries must risk the prospect of foregoing the economic benefits that trade enables them to enjoy based on the Ricardian theory. A more subtle point is that since many people, such as those in the export industry and the merchants, benefit disproportionately from trade, in a modern state that assumes a republican form of government, they will be the loudest protesters against a war with trade partners. Thomas Friedman in his book The Lexus and Olive Trees articulates the famous Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention where he notes that “No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.” There is certainly only very tenuous causal relations between having a McDonald’s restaurant and fighting a war against each other, but the effect of trade in promoting peace should not be underestimated. Countries remain self-interested. What trade has managed to do is to align a country’s self-interest with that of international peace because only in peace can countries freely trade with each other and benefit from that trade as a result.
B. States Withdrawing from the Collaborative Model De-stablize the Entire System
Cooperation is, however, no panacea for all the ills inflicted by isolation and self-interest. Despite being a superior model than isolation, it is not a stable equilibrium of the world in the sense that a small perturbation away from this equilibrium can correct itself by pulling the world back into this equilibrium. For example, the complex alliance that Bismarck endeavored to put together did not survive his departure. Keeping the Russians away from the French was the one thing that Bismarck did everything within his power to maintain, but in one stroke, Wilhelm II changed the course of Germany’s foreign policy by distancing the Russians and signing a treaty with the Great Britain. The balance of power model was replaced by Wilhelm II’s desire for expansion to protect Germany’s “place in the sun.” A change of heart dooms the entire framework and a catastrophic war ensues.
As an unstable equilibrium, the paramount danger facing a cooperative model is that an individual country tries to move away from this model for its own short-term gain. Withdrawing from cooperation need not always have devastating consequences. Indeed, if Luxemburg decided to quit the World Trade Organization, there might be some rippling effects on economies around the world, but its negative effects would be limited in scope and temporary in nature. It does weaken the cooperative framework somehow, but does not fundamentally alter the structure of cooperation. In other words, the equilibrium is still unstable, but in the Luxemburg quitting the WTO example, there is a second best equilibrium not so far away from the original one. Nevertheless, this is not always the case.
Rousseau’s famous stag hunt dilemma illustrates exactly the disaster that can be caused by abandoning the cooperative model. Kenneth Waltz recapitulates Rousseau’s hare-stag hypothetical:
Assume that five men who have acquired a rudimentary ability to speak and to understand each other happen to come together at a time when all of them suffer from hunger. The hunger of each will be satisfied by the fifth part of a stag, so they ‘agree’ to cooperate in a project to trap one. But also the hunger of any one of them will be satisfied by a hare so, as a hare comes within reach, one of them grabs it. The defector obtains the means of satisfying his hunger but in doing so permits the stag to escape. His immediate interest prevails over consideration for his fellow.
This stag hunt example captures a fundamental problem where the opportunity cost of joining a cooperative project is one’s ability to act alone. Failing the goal of that cooperative project necessarily means that one is even much worse off than if he could have done it by himself. But if the cooperation already exists, then it is within each participant’s interest to prevent others from withdrawing from the cooperation if doing so significantly undermines the goal of the collective.
This problem is by no means unique to stag hunting. Modern game theorists have noted numerous examples of our inability to maintain the cooperative model despite its apparent superiority to other scenarios. For instance, in the wake of professional hockey player Teddy Green’s 1969 head injury, Newsweek stated:
Players will not adopt helmets by individual choice for several reasons. Chicago star Bobby Hull cites the simplest factor: “Vanity.” But many players honestly believe that helmets will cut their efficiency and put them at a disadvantage, and others fear the ridicule of opponents. The use of helmets will spread only through fear caused by injuries like Green’s – or through a rule making them mandatory.... One player summed up the feelings of many: “It’s foolish not to wear a helmet. But I don't – because the other guys don't. I know that’s silly, but most of the players feel the same way. If the league made us do it, though, we'd all wear them and nobody would mind.”
Professional hockey players’ failure to come to an individual decision exemplifies the perverted interest here. It seems only two scenarios are attainable: either no one wears a helmet or everyone wears a helmet. With a clear-cut dichotomy like this, hockey players are stuck in the equilibrium of not wearing helmets without external enforcement.
A more salient example is the moral dilemma facing the scientists who built the atomic bomb. The world would be better off without the bomb. But if some rogue countries moved away from this model by initiating a research program to make atomic bombs, everyone with the same capabilities would rush to make the a-bomb. Indeed, it is better to have the a-bomb than not having it if your enemy has a chance of obtaining it. It is therefore an extraordinary act for the world to come together to enter the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (the “NPT”). There are currently 189 signatory countries to the treaty where five of them publicly admit that they have nuclear weapons. Even before NPT was signed, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had in place a secret nuclear weapon sharing agreements whereby the United States agreed to deploy and store nuclear weapons in other NATO countries. It was a cold war common defense strategy against the U.S.S.R., who also had a very strong nuclear capability. By including NATO countries into this same defense network, the U.S. prevents those non-nuclear powers in Europe from developing their own nuclear capabilities and those existing nuclear powers from manufacturing more warheads. In spite of deploying these nuclear weapons to other countries, the U.S. remained control of all of them and there was no transfer of weapons or technology of any kind. Cooperation has again saved the world from a downward spiral where every country enters into a race to obtain nuclear capabilities where we would be living under constant fear today, knowing that it would only take one ruthless leader to destroy the entire international order.
However, the NPT does not rid us of all fears. This again is an example of unstable equilibrium where if some states move away from this cooperative model, it will have an avalanche effect on all other states, essentially dismantling this cooperative framework. For example, India had never been a signatory country to the NPT and launched its first nuclear test in 1974. As a result, its contentious neighbor, Parkistan, never joined this treaty, either, and tested its own nuclear weapons in 1998. Shortly after, Libya was discovered in violation of the NPT when the United States intercepted the illegal transport of Pakistani-designed centrifuge parts sent from Malaysia as part of A. Q. Khan’s proliferation ring. Libya later agreed to terminate all its nuclear programs, but did leave the world wondering what would have happened if it was not caught violating the NPT.
One interesting episode was North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT. North Korea ratified the NPT in 1985, but withdrew in 2003 as it had started an illegal uranium enrichment program. However, contrary to what the unstable equilibrium theory would predict, North Korea’s neighbor states and historical enemies, such as South Korea and Japan, did not rush to develop their own nuclear weapons. There are a few other factors at play. First of all, there is a large technology imbalance in the region. It will be years before North Korea can successfully develop its nuclear weapons and manufacture the launching system to pose a serious threat to the region. But on the other hand, Japan, for example, has a very extensive nuclear program for its energy consumption and is widely believed to have the technology, raw material and capital to develop nuclear weapons in six months to a year’s time. In addition, the six party talks held among North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China is using diplomatic means and economic incentives to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear program. All these efforts reaffirm the central thesis of the stag hunt problem, namely, in order for an unstable equilibrium to remain in force, external and credible forces are needed to raise the exit barrier and to deter even the most irrational and ruthless participants from attempting to destabilize the system.
C. Wars are A By-Product of the Effort to Maintain the International Cooperation Model
This unique feature of cooperation poses a difficult moral choice. Hauerwas succinctly asserts that some forms of “war is an unavoidable by-product of our cooperation. While in itself morally ambiguous, as a by-product of cooperation, its elimination would mean as well the extinction of cooperation. Therefore we should not seek to eliminate war.” Indeed, war as an institution, in spite of being a human one, is neither morally good nor bad. It is the human conceptualization of war that gives it its moral significance. From this perspective:
We can appreciate the ambiguity we often feel about war as an institution. We do not generally seek war; we think of it as something we choose when we have no other choice. Even though war is clearly human activity, we tend to conceive it as an external agent, a fate that we had not willed but which we cannot but follow. It is just in the “nature” of things. War is finally no one’s fault; it is an unsolicited yet unavoidable consequence of our shared activities. War in this sense is simply beyond good and evil.
Under the premise that war might be a positive moral institution, we must review whether war can be used morally as a last resort in the stag hunt example in order to maintain a cooperation that was entered into willingly, but circumstances or even minds change over time, threatening to dismantle the entire cooperative system. A concrete example is that in order to curtail nuclear proliferation, whether it is just to deploy physical force to stop a country from setting off a chain reaction that will eventually lead to the destruction of the entire nonproliferation framework. Indeed, since we know the stag hunt scenario does not have any self-corrective force and that a certain state of the world is much more preferred than its clear alternative, perhaps it is a rational choice to use drastic measures, limited in its reach and scope, as a deterrence to provide for the corrective incentive in case an unforeseen event pushes the world away from the cooperative equilibrium. To make this deterrence credible, physical forces have to be used sometimes as the very last resort.
War fought for this reason is therefore to provide for the stability of a cooperative model that history itself has validated for us as superior to isolation. For the same reason, we acquiesce to a government using force against its own citizens strictly based on publicly pre-enacted penal codes because force is required in order to coerce individual behavior to accord with standards required by a public life. In a way, having a public life at all is a human experiment that, we fundamentally believe, is superior to its alternatives. It is the collective and its will to organize society into a large network of relationships and interactions that underscore our experience today. In Rousseau’s term, being subject to that force is part of the social contract we each have entered.
Extending this analogy to the international arena, it is noted that certainly not any collaborative treaty should be raised to the level where withdrawing from it should be basis for the use of coercive force. The following conditions have to be met: there needs to be a pre-existing war related treaty ratified by almost every nation state in the world; this treaty makes the world a significantly safer place; this treaty would be reduced to rubbles in a short time even if only a small number of signatory states decide to withdraw; a world without this treaty would face significantly more danger; most signatory nations, in reliance on this treaty, have significantly ordered its public and private life accordingly, such as giving up its own nuclear program; those states withdrawing from the treaty are not doing that by an urgent necessity. One immediate problem with these conditions is that there are so many subjective terms that even if we could successfully define them now, we cannot update them timely to accord with the prevailing understandings of the time when they are invoked. A public forum with procedural hurdles must therefore go with these conditions in order to decide what these terms all mean. The only treaty that fits the definition here is the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, but it still helps to define the treaty in broad terms to account for other similar treaties in the future. Of course, this does not mean that Just War Theory, especially the set of just causes, must expand to incorporate wars fought to protect international cooperation, but to realize the narrative of minimizing all incidents of wars, Just War Theory must account for those deterrent uses of force if in effect, they help to promote the same goal. In addition, such use of force, especially in the nuclear non-proliferation context, is consistent with a strict moral view.
III. Wars Fought to Protect International Cooperation are Moral
Section I reviewed the effect of the just war project, namely, to separate just wars from unjust ones so that one camp might receive moral justification and the other camp can be minimized or eradicated. For Just War Theory to be effective, it must focus on both goals simultaneously. If we are to believe that certain wars fought in order to keep international cooperation are a rational last resort for the cooperative model to work, we are admitting to the fact that these wars should not be eliminated, as also suggested by Hauerwas when he claims these wars are a by-product of cooperation. As such, judged purely by the effect of the just war project, those wars fought to upkeep the cooperative model seem to belong to the just camp because it would otherwise run contradictory to the thesis of Just War Theory to reserve war as a last resort where it is necessary and rational.
However, that does not complete the just war analysis, as the moral justification of Just War Theory requires the protection of a significant natural right so as to consider the use of physical force as a last resort. Wars fought to protect international cooperation satisfy this test as well for three major reasons: First, in order to have the right to liberty in the international community, there must be the inherent requirement for countries to act without significant harm to others and within the accepted rules of conduct for the benefit of the general public; second, these wars as defined are in essence preventative wars to save the world of catastrophic consequences; third, since individual nations must withdraw from a treaty without compelling reasons first, these wars gain moral justification from correcting a wrong, practically often committed by ruthless despots.
As Walzer points out, “the duties and rights of states are nothing more than the duties and rights of the men who compose them.” For John Locke, individual’s rights to liberty is summarized as “a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man.” Indeed, in concept, individual’s liberty has its limits: one must be restrained if his exercise of his liberty significantly hinders another’s ability to exercise his fundamental right. In practice, such restraint should not be enforced unless the behavior is clearly and explicitly prescribed by the laws. It is arguable whether these limits to liberty abruptly stop at the borders of a country in the sense that it is not repugnant to moral values if country A exercises its liberty right at the expense of B’s. Nevertheless, situations are quite different when there is an international treaty, ratified by almost all nations, regulating such behavior.
For Rousseau, this would be a perfect example of a partial “social contract” on a specific issue and a “general will” is formed when this contract is adopted by essentially the entire world. In the case of the NPT, since this “social contract” is formed, for this contract to have any practical meaning, each country’s liberty interest must be restrained by the clear prohibitions codified in this contract. A war fought as a last resort to punish those that withdraw from the NPT and coerce their rejoining this treaty is nothing more than protecting the right to liberty of those countries remaining faithful to the cause of the NPT because withdrawal without a compelling reason is explicitly prohibited and is not considered a free exercise of the withdrawing country’s right to liberty. This withdrawal also recklessly interferes with others’ right to liberty because they are now coerced into starting their own nuclear programs out of security concerns. No country should be subject to such coercion especially given the fact that the NPT is in place to prevent just that. On this one issue of nuclear nonproliferation, by ratifying the NPT, “each… puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, [every country] receive[s] each member as an indivisible part of the whole.” The NPT sets the restraints and boundaries of each country’s right to exercise its liberty interest. And it is only moral to defend these boundaries for the survival of the right to liberty.
Second, these wars fought as a last to save a cooperative model are in essence preventative. Preventative wars are historically considered immoral because they “respond[] to a distant danger, a matter of foresight and free choice” and they are “fought to maintain the balance, to stop what is thought to be an even distribution of power from shifting into a relation of dominance and inferiority.” But some procedural hurdles can offset these concerns. First of all, if such wars are to be fought, the security concerns are as real as the majority of the world is willing to believe it. That is a very high bar to reach and suffer much less from the subjectivity and arbitrariness that the justification of a preventative war from one single state often embodies. Second, the universal ratification of the NPT shows that the current state of the world, or “the balance,” is strongly preferred by the entire world. There is an element of randomness in which nation currently owns nuclear weapons, but by freezing up the status quo where it was in 1968, the entire world reveals its true preference that keeping it where it is despite all the shortcomings is better than disturbing “the balance.” Third, the threat of nuclear destruction and the magnitude of damage ensued from a nuclear attack necessarily mean that nuclear proliferation needed to be contained with much more agility. It is no surprise that President Kennedy used almost all the power to his disposal in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The prospect of a nuclear war cannot be dealt with lightly and moral standards must be adapted to be proportional to the danger faced.
This does not mean that, once ratified, nations may never withdraw from these treaties. The NPT, for example, provides:
Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.
The terms of withdrawal turn on whether there are extraordinary events that have jeopardized one nation’s supreme interests. However, every other nation will have a view on whether these reasons are compelling and whether they amount to the extraordinary status, whether they have jeopardized one nation’s interests and whether these interests are supreme. Ideally, the NPT should have included a provision to arbitrate the withdrawal decision at a forum, such as the General Council of the United Nations. Despite the fact that the NPT does not formally require other nation’s approval in order to withdraw, public discourse holds a separate scrutiny on the reasons laid out to justify the withdrawal. If an international consensus is reached that the withdrawal is arbitrary, reckless and without compelling reasons, the withdrawing party is at fault for not complying with the requirements of the NPT. This fault also shifts the moral superiority to the parties attempting to compel these nations to return to the NPT framework as the Six Party Talk has tried to achieve exactly on this point.
With this moral support, coupled with the necessity of these wars, there is a compelling case for Just War Theory to develop a set of procedural hurdles in order to account for their just causes.
IV. Procedural Hurdles Must Be Established in Order to Safeguard the Just Nature of These Wars
An aggression-based Just War Theory has a unique appeal because, inter alia, the delineation between aggression and non-aggression corresponds to worldly and physical events independent of subjective views. This delineation not only accords with public sensibility rooted in the self-defense aspect of Just War Theory, but also makes the justice calculus easy to administrate. Indeed, with such a clear divide, all the disputes over who has the moral high ground can, in theory, be easily resolved. The country that first commits an act of physical aggression forfeits her claim to the moral legitimacy regardless of the weight of other factors that might otherwise lend her moral support. The Bay of Pigs Invasion helped to illustrate this point. For those that lived in the free world, any effort to topple a totalitarian communist regime would probably be considered justified. But the United States never publicly supported the Bay of Pigs Invasion, led by Cuban exiles in order to overthrow the Castro government in Cuba. President Kennedy made sure that U.S. support was kept to a level where the entire operation could appear to be planned solely by the Cuban exiles so that the United States would be able to plausibly deny its involvement in this operation. The U.S. certainly did not want to agitate the Soviet Union to risk the prospect of World War III, but it also shows that first aggression carries so much negative moral weight that regardless of the cause the war fights for, no one is willing to risk it if there are better alternatives. This signifies the triumph of Just War Theory that postulates the fundamental belief that there is always a better solution to disputes than a simple showdown of physical forces. But this postulation is not bulletproof, especially in the nuclear age.
Before the dawn broke on the morning of September 7, 2007, four Israeli fighter jets “crossed into Syrian airspace and carried out a secret bombing mission on the banks of the Euphrates River, about ninety miles north of the Iraq border.” By any measure of international law, this is an act of war that would entitle Syria to a legitimate military response. Curiously, it was not the first time that Israel attacked another country without any prior provocation. In 1981, Israel destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak near Baghdad and afterwards, not only did Israel not try to conceal this unprovoked attack, but it instead showed pictures of the strike and allowed the pilots to be interviewed by the media. From the Just War perspective, how Iraq and Syria reacted to these attacks is less interesting than how the international community acquiesced Israel’s attacks. There seems to be something uniquely different about the attacks made to neutralize nuclear weapons.
There is no doubt that Iraq and Syria were in violation of the NPT if they were indeed developing nuclear weapons. However, the interesting question is not whether their nuclear threat was real, but whether breaching an international treaty gives rise to the right of first attack to those whose safety is threatened by this breach. In addition, even without such a breach, if one country decides to develop an attack weapon so powerful as nuclear weapons, those threatened by this unilateral move need to be protected by Just War Theory. For example, North Korea is not a signatory country to the NPT since it withdrew from the treaty in 2003. Its neighbor countries, such as Japan, might feel so threatened one day that it follows the clear example set by Israel and tries to neutralize North Korea’s nuclear weapons itself. Even if Japan does not strike first, it might want to employ a nuclear deterrence strategy by either developing nuclear technology itself or turning to the United States for a definitive security guarantee in the event of a nuclear attack from North Korea.
Nuclear weapons change the whole aggression based calculus because the grave consequences of a nuclear attack significantly raises the cost of any miscalculation. In other words, no country can afford to cede the right of first attack if it is facing credible nuclear threat. Just War Theory must cope with this reality in order to stay relevant
Just War Theory must adapt to the nuclear age in the sense that certain types of aggression needs to be permitted so as to maintain the current world order. It is therefore essential for the Just War Theory to include additional criteria to account for incidents where aggression might not be the best indicator and subjective standards must be employed to justify a war. In order to safeguard the just nature and mitigate the likelihood of subjective influence in these wars, it is essential to have a worldly forum, such as the General Assembly of the United Nations, where the just cause of a war is examined. Of course, there are many other possibilities for effective procedural hurdles. Instead of designing a set of perfect procedures here, I will instead talk about some important features that these procedures must have.
Before the Iraq war, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made his case in front of the U.N. to win international support. Of course, the U.S. had planned to go ahead with the war with or without the support of the U.N. The procedural hurdles that will work in our case require that the U.N. either sanctions a war plan or vociferously opposes it. It allows no middle ground, as it is either a just cause that for world peace and stability, a small scale and limited war must be fought or the cause is less than just or there are still hopes for other measures.
In addition to a definitive answer, these procedural hurdles must be structured in order to let Reason, not coalitions of mutual interests, prevail. For any country to support or oppose a war plan, they must use Reason to make their case. Then this process itself is a mechanism to induce the world to converge onto a model where states gain legitimacy for their governing scheme by way of Reason, rather than through terror, fear or other coercive means. The triumph of Reason will be the hallmark of the ideal envisioned by Kant in his pamphlet Perpetual Peace. For Kant, in a world where Reason is the thread that binds a society together and all sovereigns assume a republican form of government, perpetual peace may be achieved simply because physical force is no longer needed as it is through Reason that we gain legitimacy and it is by resorting to Reason that disagreements and conflicts reach settlements. W.B. Gallie summarizes Kant’s vision succinctly in his book Philosophers of Peace and War that only with the triumph of Reason and by taking a “very long historical perspective” can countries come together to “be confined to the one paramount task of keeping the peace… as chose to sign a non-aggression treaty.” Similar to modern medicine that often puts out the symptoms before it treats the root of the ailment, by dictating the use of Reason in international affairs, it will hopefully induce the kind of sovereigns that Kant hoped for. At the very minimum, it will provide a basis to resolve international disputes with civility.
The decision mechanism should not be consensus based, but should be more stringent than a simple majority. To build a moral case, some might argue a consensus is necessary to gain the maximum legitimacy. But unfortunately, we live in a world where states have practical concerns and might let their immediate interests sway their moral obligations. To account for that, something short of a consensus should be adopted as the basis for a decision. A single majority vote, however, tends to err on the other side where manipulative or influential countries will use their power to build a coalition of simple majority.
Conclusion
Just war theory lends moral justification for fighting specific wars as a rational means to settle international disputes. It is just because these wars are fought to protect certain fundamental rights that we all hold dear to our hearts and are willing to consider the possibility of fighting a war in their defense. Once we realize that the cooperative world we live in today is superior to a world where states remain in isolation, we are accepting its by-product: those small scale and limited wars we may have to fight in order to make this cooperative model work. Despite the fact that reasonable minds often disagree on worldly issues, there are limited cases where a “general will” of the international community is formed in the format of a treaty, ratified by almost all countries. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is a perfect example. Protecting this “general will” suddenly becomes an important task especially if the alternative to the collaborative equilibrium we live in today significantly undermines the security and stability of the international community. Arguably, general wills are only formed in these scenarios because there is so much at stake to keep the world order as we know it even if that means to entrench the status quo into an international treaty, ratified by almost all countries.
Wars fought as an absolutely last resort to protect this world order are in perfect alignment with Just War Theory. Morally speaking, these wars are fought in protection of the right to liberty – individual’s right to be free of the coercion of precaution. In addition, the fault created by those countries withdrawing from these international treaties without compelling reasons lends further moral justification for these wars. Nevertheless, to determine whether it is a just cause or not in this subset of wars involves a lot of subjective and judgment calls. Since reasonable countries might disagree on the justness of a war in this subset, perhaps the most sensible thing to do is to use the United Nations. as a forum to build the moral support for such a cause. It is then the responsibility of Just War Theory to codify the procedural hurdles for a war to be considered just. In this nuclear age with an explosion of new technologies, only with a uniform approach to qualify the just causes of these wars, coupled with the other just war traditions, can we hope for the maximum moral support for the wars essential for the world to maintain its order.
