Just War: Authority, Tradition, and Practice

2 Just War and Political Judgment

C H A P T E R 2 Just War and Political Judgment Chris Brown THE AIM OF THIS CHAPTER is to defend the position that while the categories associated with just war thinking may help us to exercise judgment in particular cases, we should avoid just war theorizing altogether. The intended distinction here is best, if somewhat crudely, summarized by saying that whereas those who look to just war theory expect to be given answers, those who prefer to talk of just war thinking hope to discover good questions. In the first case, the expectation is that just war theory properly applied will tell us whether a particular war, or a particular action in a war, is just; in the second case, the hope is that just war thinking, and the canonical categories of the just war, will help us to make the wider judgment as to whether, in the particular circumstances of the case, a resort to force, or a particular forceful action, would be the right thing to do, all things considered. In the first section of the chapter, this latter conception of the just war will be employed to defend the notion from its enemies, but also from some of its friends. The second section examines the conventional categories used in just war thinking, with a view to showing that they are best understood as the basis for some good questions rather than as providing good answers. Finally, some wider conclusions about the nature of ethical thinking and social science theory are drawn. FRIENDS AND ENEMIES OF THE JUST WAR The position defended here is, I believe, consistent with the just war tradition as articulated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, although I argue that it does not need this support. However, it runs counter to modern expectations, 35 36 Chris Brown at least as those expectations are expressed in popular discourse. To illustrate the point, consider the debate on the justice of the Gulf War 1990–91 in the United Kingdom—interesting because this was the first time in recent British history when classical just war thinking/theorizing was deployed in a quite heated political debate, to the extent that the religious correspondent of the London Times, Clifford Longley , felt it necessary to enlighten the public by publishing a center-page op-ed piece titled ‘‘Going by the Aquinas Book’’!1 In the war of the Oxford Anglican theologians , Richard Harries, then bishop of Oxford, opined that the coming war to evict Saddam Hussein from Kuwait met the standard criteria for a just war; the then professor of divinity at Oxford University, Rowan Williams, later to become archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 until 2013, argued that it did not.2 The two learned doctors expressed opinions on whether the ‘‘last resort’’ had actually been reached, on the proportionality of the coalition war effort in response to the Iraqi offense, on the level of civilian casualties to be expected, and so on—all subjects upon which there was no reason to believe they possessed the expertise or knowledge to make informed judgments. The point is that both controversialists seemed to assume that just war theory would tell them whether or not the war was just. My argument is, first, that just war thinking cannot provide unambiguous answers of this sort, and should not be expected to; and second, that the judgments called for by just war thinking are varied in nature, and require expertise and experience that is not con- fined to, or often possessed by, theologians and moral theorists. In the case described above, just war thinking needed to be protected from its putative friends, but understanding just war thinking as an aid to judgment allays some (but only some) of the concerns of enemies of the notion of a just war. The most serious of such enemies is, I judge, Carl Schmitt, who, unlike modern critics from the left, is clear about the implications of rejecting just war thinking, yet still wishes to do so. Schmitt’s position—expressed most clearly in The Nomos of the Earth—is that to describe a war as ‘‘just’’ encourages a self-righteous fury that will demonize the enemy and stand in the way of establishing limits in warfare.3 Every war becomes a total war, because every war is a war between good and evil, and with evil there can be no compromise. This is strikingly similar to the argument put forward, in different...