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205 Conclusion The Primacy of the Political The central point of this book on jus ad bellum is: politics first. With respect to the decision to go to war, the political must be neither excluded by the moral nor swamped by the legal. The just war tradition, of which jus ad bellum is part, is fundamentally moral in nature. It is good that it has influenced international law, and that international law has gained wider acceptance, however cautious we have to be in making that optimistic judgment. But attempts to make jus ad bellum into a precise moral decision procedure are unlikely to succeed, and insofar as the illusion of success is generated, it will typically arise from a depoliticized reading of the jus ad bellum criteria. The application of jus ad bellum criteria is impossible without giving due weight to the contextual politics. The historical record clearly shows how remote, from one point of view, the jus ad bellum criteria are from the complexities of decisions to initiate war. That consideration sometimes leads to a kind of dismissive impatience toward the just war tradition for not quickly rendering a verdict on a particular conflict. But the impatience is unreasonable. To borrow a Kantian analogy, the set of criteria is like a formal schema largely empty of empirical content until filled by the data of historical cases and political tensions. Regarding the law, it goes only so far: the judicial branch of government cannot usurp the role of the executive, and judicial overreach typically only brings the law into disrepute. Even allowing that the scope of the political is bounded by the law, effective government requires that the scope be broad: overregulation makes for inflexibility, and inflexible policy hinders responsive government. Accordingly, I have sought to persuade the reader that treatment of the ethics of war must, above all, be historically informed and sensitive to the political context within which decisions to go to war are made, regardless of whether 206 CONCLUSION the decision is made by a government, the UN Security Council, or an insurgent group. The judgment made in hindsight by ethicists about the rightness or wrongness of the decision, or made by professors of law about the decision’s legality, is a different kind of judgment, typically a nonpolitical judgment. In any case, the legal judgment is necessarily confined to what the law provides and must generally be silent about what the law does not address, so legal theorists have warrant for restraint regarding judgment with political implications. The ethics professor has no such alibi. A detached stance on his or her part often reflects lack of awareness of the need to give content to the individual criteria , typically yields a judgment lacking political nuance, and too quickly finds the government in question failing to pass the criteria. On the other hand, an official historian may be so close to the events that he or she is either unable to see the big picture or is at risk of rendering an overly sympathetic verdict on the government decision to go to war or not go to war. Still, I deem the danger of the ethicist being too close to the events less than the danger of being too detached from them. Clausewitz’s point that war abstracted from the political is meaningless could well be adapted by the ethicist: jus ad bellum is a fragment of a moral theory that is useless unless its application is understood as framed by the political. Uncertain Judgment: The Need for Theory Description of the political context in a particular instance quickly reveals complexity and obscurity. Not surprisingly, the decision to go to war is rarely made lightly. Even when the government choosing war is bellicose in its outlook or previous track record, there is at least some awareness in that government that the outcome of war is uncertain, and that resorting to arms is inherently dangerous. Judgment that going to war is necessary is a classic instance of judgment under uncertainty. The uncertainty is firstly epistemic. It is often hard to know if the relevant interests of the state or the people are endangered in such a way that the situation warrants resort to force. It is particularly hard to know what the outcome and consequences of war will be, whether some sort of victory will be achieved, or whether the intentions for which it is undertaken will be realized. The uncertainty is also moral. Even when it seems clear...

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