Between Pacifism and Crusade: Justice and Neighbor Love in the Just-War Tradition

I. Introduction

With the collapse just over a decade ago of the Soviet empire and the formal end of Cold War tensions, many people—from the average layperson to the policy maker— considered the use of military force as a question lacking urgency. Yet it is precisely those developments since the end of the Cold War that call forth the need for reexamining the merits and moral substructure of armed conflict. Consider, for example, the exile and enslavement of Coptic Christians in Sudan by Islamic fundamentalists; Iraq's occupation of Kuwait and genocidal treatment of its own people, notably the Kurdish sector of its population; the starvation of civilians in Somalia; the slaughter of between half a million and a million people in Rwanda;¹ genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo; the need for massive humanitarian efforts in Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan, and Afghanistan; the production of chemical and biological weapons in Libya and Iraq; drug trafficking on several continents; the breathtaking rise of maturing, international terrorism; and the Talibanization of Afghanistan, Pakistan, portions of central and southeast Asia, as well as northern and western Africa.²

These diverse crises force laypersons, educators, politicians, and policy analysts alike to reflect on the morality of war, the use of force, and military intervention. Is intervention justifiable? Why or why not? Under what circumstances? By what criteria and in what measure?

And what role might the Church (and Christian social ethics in particular) assume in national or international debate over war or military intervention? What contribution might the Christian moral tradition, with its attempts to apply political-moral wisdom, make toward ongoing moral discourse?

At the most basic level, our determinations are rooted in our understanding of the nature of justice as a "cardinal" virtue. "What is by nature just has the same force everywhere," wrote Aristotle.³ This fundamental assumption undergirds the just-war tradition—a tradition that is living and not stagnant, evolving yet in constant conversation with authoritative voices within the mainstream of historic Christian moral reflection. As we enter the twenty-first century it is critically important to reaffirm that any Christian moral-philosophical reflection on the ethics of war and force be done in continuity with this tradition and proceed within the parameters set by this tradition. Our thinking about such matters will raise important questions. For example, what is the relationship between charity and moral- or social-political evil? What moral obligations proceed from charity in the context of social-political evil? And specifically, does justice as guided by just-war thinking have a crucial role to play in helping bring about restitution for those who have suffered gross injustice in such a context?

In this article I propose that justice as it is developed in the just-war tradition—by which force is both permitted and limited—can be a legitimate expression of charity, based on its concern for the neighbor or third party, and has as its aim the achievement of restitution for those who have suffered as a result of grievous human rights violations. Justice, while it does not necessitate the application of force, can sanction it for humane purposes. These purposes, which are anchored in the requirements of the second great commandment, are restorative in character. They constitute a response to the violation of the most fundamental of human rights and needs.

II. Between Pacifism and Crusade:Just-War Thinking as a Mediating Position

Presumption against Force or Presumption against Injustice?

How we think about war and force cannot be extracted from our own social and cultural location. I am married to a gracious German whose father spent most of World War II working for the railroad in German-occupied Poland. It is not easy for my wife to reflect on what her father might or might...