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17 Chapter 2 The Goods of Peace Peace comes dropping slow . . . W. B. Yeats, The Lake Isle of Innisfree Apractical moral theory typically provides some account of required, prohibited , and permitted action. The jus in bello part of just war thought focuses particularly on that in its discussion of the limits of force and the treatment of enemy combatants and noncombatants. The jus ad bellum part of the tradition also has much to say about moral behavior, but what may be more important is its view of the goods and values sought by going to war, without which jus ad bellum makes no sense. Peace is so obviously an integral part of the good sought by war that it is taken for granted, with the result that just war thought on peace is underdeveloped. This chapter discusses peace and other goods involved in decisions about going to war. Neglect of the goods that going to war often intends may also have arisen from the fact that in the twentieth century, just war thought focused too narrowly on the issue of self-defense, assuming that moral permission to use force arises solely from the right of self-defense and that peace is self-evidently the absence of aggression between states. Taking that view undermines the moral claim that the international common good and what John Rawls calls the law of peoples has on policymaking. I argue that understanding jus ad bellum requires the focus to be primarily on the international common good. The right of self-defense is secondary relative to classical (and possibly future) jus ad bellum accounts. Integral to the theory of the good envisioned by the just war tradition is a particular view of peace that can be summarized as follows: (1) Peace is an important good; (2) it usually, but not always, overrides other goods; (3) it is not generally reducible to the mere absence of violence; (4) as the quotation from Yeats cited earlier indicates, it is not to be taken as a given but must be 18 CHAPTER 2 maintained and promoted; and (5) war may be a means of maintaining or promoting it. The goals or goods intended by going to war can be loosely and schematically identified here as some appropriate combination of peace, justice, and order. In this chapter I particularly consider what kind of good peace is. The relationship between peace and justice is also clarified, particularly through discussion of the kind of peace that justice requires. I also look at some recent treatments of the good, including that offered in the later work of John Rawls. Peace: Absence of Violence? In the City of God, Augustine states that wars are fought for the sake of peace (Augustine 1998).1 To some, such a statement may sound self-contradictory in the way that it would be self-contradictory to claim that fornication is done for the sake of chastity, or thefts perpetrated to promote honesty. However, the self-contradictoriness is only apparent. Augustine’s statement can be interpreted in a descriptive sense, concerning the actual reason why states or peoples fight wars, and in a normative sense, identifying the proper goal of fighting war. From a descriptive viewpoint, waging war is a goal-directed activity aimed at establishing a new order or new arrangement of territory or new government. He takes it that states or peoples fight wars in order to achieve some goal and thereafter to enjoy their gain undisturbed. They usually want their gain recognized and accepted as part of the new established order. Even an aggressive state desires to bring about a particular state of affairs so that, when it has been attained, there is nothing left to fight for, and in that sense it has the settlement or order—that is, the peace—it desired. Such a notion of peace is minimalist: it roughly identifies peace with the cessation and absence of armed conflict. The minimalism is also reflected in the fact that such a notion of peace has no logical links to any other positive values. Augustine’s statement also raises the normative question: what is worth fighting for, or for what ought a state fight, or for what might a state be permitted to fight? If peace is that for which a just government may or ought fight, what kind of peace is meant? In the same context where Augustine remarks that some sort of peace is always the goal of war, he distinguishes between...

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