“There are limits to what can be done in wartime, even by men convinced that they are pursuing justice.”1
In October 2001, just a month after the 9/11 attacks and three days after the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan, I delivered the inaugural lecture for my appointment to the William Bittinger Chair of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. Because the dogs of war were baying loudly and ferociously,2 I chose just war doctrine (JWD) as my topic.
I’ve reflected for years on the doctrine, turning it every which way, and the Israeli invasion of Gaza has brought it to the center of my thoughts again. Although Israel’s right to self-defense in response to the Hamas-instigated carnage of October 7 falls within JWD guidelines, and even though Hamas has never forsworn its goal of eradicating Israel—American students who joyfully chant Hamas’ slogan “from the river to the sea” seem not to grasp (or, worse, not to care about) its ominous meaning—Israel’s cumulative killing of thousands of civilians crosses the line of JWD’s criteria for a minimally morally acceptable war. This is worth pointing out.
What is Just War Doctrine?3
The first point that needs to be made is that the “just” in “just war” simply can’t mean “morally commendable” or “righteous” or “ethically praiseworthy,” much less “holy” or “pleasing to God.” War is an evil. Even the “mildest” wars take life, destroy property, and inflict physical and emotional damage on innocents. In addition, we know from sorry experience that war tends to erode the moral sensibility of both combatants and noncombatants.
Given this, when we speak of the ethical “justness” of war, the very most that we can mean is that it is an evil which, under certain extraordinary circumstances and within clearly demarcated boundary conditions, is just barely morally acceptable.
JWD offers criteria that attempt to define those boundary conditions. They include minimally morally acceptable reasons for going to war (traditionally referred to as jus ad bellum) and for conducting a minimally morally acceptable war once hostilities have begun (jus in bello). Recently, many commentators have suggested a third set of criteria (jus post bellum), referring to conditions necessary for the just treatment of defeated armies and nations at war’s end.
Aristotle began thinking about moral constraints on warfare twenty-five centuries ago.4 Cicero picked up the ball in the closing days of the Roman Republic, Augustine refined Cicero’s reflections in the fifth century, Thomas Aquinas systematized them in the thirteenth century, and a host of philosophers, theologians, and jurists, most notably Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suarez in the sixteenth century, Hugo Grotius in the seventeenth, Samuel Pufendorf and Emerich de Vattel in the eighteenth, and John C. Ford, Paul Ramsey, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Walzer, and Thomas Nagel in the twentieth, have continued the discussion.5
There are difference in nuance and inflection from author to author, but most people who think about JWD accept the following boundary conditions. War can only be entered into as a barely morally acceptable option if:
The cause is just. This excludes all forms of aggression; only defensive war has the possibility of fulfilling this requirement. (If JWD were taken seriously, this criterion alone would eliminate war.);
The declaration of war is legal, made by a duly authorized government;
The intention with which war is entered into is proper. Granting that motives are frequently mixed, this criterion stipulates that the preponderant intention must be to secure a just peace. Conquest, plunder, ideological control, and vengeance are not proper intentions;
The objectives of the war must be limited. Since peace is always the ultimate goal of just war, demands for unconditional surrender or total destruction of the enemy’s material infrastructure or economic institutions are unwarranted;
There is a reasonable chance of success. Entering into a war that is likely to conclude in either devastating defeat or crippling stalemate needlessly inflicts suffering on innocents and drastically reduces the likelihood of a just and peaceful outcome.
All of these jus ad bellum conditions must be met. No single one is sufficient without all the others.
Moreover, war can only be conducted in a minimally morally acceptable way if:
Innocent noncombatants are clearly discriminated from combatants, and every good faith measure to protect them is taken, even if doing so means sacrificing strategic or tactical advantage;
Only that amount of force absolutely necessary to bring about peace is used. This criterion absolutely rules out the use of excessive force just to win victory—an expedient frequently referred to as “military necessity”—because the final aim of just war is always peace, never conquest.
Both of these jus in bello conditions likewise must be met. Neither is sufficient in the absence of the other.
When ticked off in this shopping-list sort of way, the criteria of JWD seem either unimaginatively mechanical or too prissy to be of much value. It’s one thing to sit in a quiet study sketching out ethical models on fresh sheets of paper. It’s quite another to find yourself in the chaos and confusion and muck of an actual war. Yet I would argue that the standards of JWD are neither mechanical nor prissy. On the contrary, they’re organic and rigorously realistic. Each feeds into the other; no one of the criteria can be examined in isolation from the others without serious distortion. Moreover, the criteria try to avoid either idealism or cynicism by working with political states of affairs as they are, not as we might wish them to be. They try to salvage what good they can from a bad situation.
The Israel/Gaza situation is bad. Real bad. Even if we grant that Israel’s assault against Hamas satisfies the jus ad bellum conditions (although I have reservations about #4 and #5), the destruction of property and the disproportionate loss of civilian life in Gaza clearly violates the first jus in bello criterion. The second criterion is also arguably—probably, at this point—violated
The Moral Litmus Test
According to JWD, at the end of the day the only justifiable reason for engaging in the barely morally acceptable evil of war is to bring about a peace that’s more enduring and more just than the political situation that existed before hostilities erupted. As Aristotle unequivocally said centuries ago, “We should wage war only for the sake of peace,” and the peace should be genuine, not merely a weary and wary détente. This goal of peace is the corner stone that supports all the other criteria. Take it away, and the entire doctrine collapses.
JWD’s goal of peace is so fundamental, in fact, that this requirement follows from it:
Once war has started, if continuing the war means disproportionately harming innocents or progressively ruining the chance for a genuine postwar peace, then quit—even if it means unilaterally ceasing hostilities or surrendering.
This is an extremely unsettling requirement. But it shows byond any doubt that JWD means what it says when it insists that war is an evil which, if waged, must be rigorously restrained. The possibility that the ethically right thing to do might be to quit rather than continue a war that can be won is the rock bottom litmus test of a peoples’ moral integrity.
I don’t want for a moment to downplay the evil of the October 7 attack on Israel nor Hamas’ murderous intentions towards Israel for the last thirty-five years. Nor do I deny Israel’s or any nation’s right to justified self-defense. Finally, I recognize the strange asymmetry of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, one that puts civilian lives at even greater risk than more conventional forms of nation-against-nation conflict do. But despite all that, Israel is now conducting its war against Hamas in an unjust way. The violation of in bello criteria is bad enough. But the destruction and carnage it’s creating in Gaza practically nullifies the possibility of a jus post bellum rebuilding. The conflict is beginning to take on the character of an Old Testament herem, or total war.
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Michael Walzer, “Moral Judgment in Time of War,” in War and Morality, ed. Richard A Wasserstrom (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1970), p. 62.
A New York Times/CBS poll found that 85% of Americans believed the U.S should strike militarily against the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks. Of that 85%, 75% said a strike would be justified even if innocent people were killed. Of that 75%, 89% said a strike woul be justified even if thousands of innocent people were killed. New York Times, “Poll Finds Strong Support for U.S. Use of Military Force,” 16 September 2001, p. 6A.
Much of what follows is drawn from my inaugural lecture.
At least began philosophical thinkng about it. There’s evidence that just war as a religious concern antedates Aristotle by centuries. The Hebrew Bible, for example, prohibits the destruction of an enemy’s orchards (Deut 20:19). The Indian Laws of Manu, which date from around the sixth century BC, prohibit the use of disguised, barbed, poisoned, or flaming weapons. See Sidney Bailey, Prohibitions and Restraints in War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972).
The literature on just war is enormous, but there are several good overviews. Here are just a few: Roland H. Bainton, Christian Attitudes Toward War and Peace (New York: Abingdon, 1960); C. John Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War (New York: Seabury Press, 1982); Robert G. Clouse, War: Four Christian Views (Downers Grove, IL: IV Press, 1981); Marshall Cohen et. al. (eds), War and Moral Responsibility (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974); Arthur F. Holmes (ed), War and Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1975); James Turner Johnson, Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); William V. O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War (New York: Praeger, 1981); Paul Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1961) and The Just War (New York: Scribner’s, 1968); Jenny Teichman, Pacifism and the Just War (New York: Blackwell, 1986); Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977); and John Howard Yoder, When War is Unjust (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1984).
Kerry, here's my view:
The whole notion that Israel's war on Palestinians began on October 7 is preposterous and, more often than not, disengenuous. Israel's invasion and destruction of Gaza was never -- not even for a day -- a "just war." Occupiers do NOT get to claim self-defense; that's international law.. Prison-camp guards do NOT get to claim self-defense.
Looking at it historically, the WWII Holocaust genocide was definitely attempted within the boundaries of the expanding German state, but it was also clearly unsuccessful. And the Holocaust was immediately weaponized post WWII to justify the immorality and folly of the Zionist project. The entire premise of a Jewish ethno-state based on expulsion, appropriation, and land theft was a mistake from the beginning; a tragic folly. We've been "had." Nevertheless, I have not to date and do not now advocate the destruction of Israel. What I DO advocate is a single, muti-ethnic, democratic state "from the river to the sea" as the ONLY just solution to the Zionism problem that threatens to drag the whole Middle East and perhaps the world into a new world war. No, I do not believe this solution will happen. It is surely possible, but it won't happen. But I also believe that a two-state solution CANNOT happen with a million "settlers" already expelling and brutalizing more Palestinians from their land in the West Bank. Zionist fanatics will not allow a two-state solution and no Israeli government can now control them. That's why I believe that this tar-baby will continue to drag us down. And because it is a betrayal of our own revoutionary ideals of liberty and justice for all, destroy what's left of our national foundation along with its own.
And here, in closing, is a message for my Christian so-called "friends of Israel" --
Matthew 5: 38-40.
38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.
Anything less, you cannot call yourself a follower of the Teacher. You are what I call wanna-believers. You talk the talk, but don't walk the walk. You are sowing the wind and you will reap the whirlwind ... for us all.