Can war be just or does it have to be justified?

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida

Perhaps in a hundred years the world might arrive at the smart conclusion that war does not bring peace. As costly and painful evidence accumulates, humanity is bound to discover that military intervention is often of little help to effective conflict resolution.

Wars are often morally unjust; they are usually artificially justified. Brian Orend identifies a cluster of six variables in the Just War Tradition: cause, intention, authority, last resort, probability of success, and proportionate cost. For a war to be called just by the Tradition thinkers, it must meet all six criteria. (Brian Oren: Michael Walzer on War and Justice, McGill 2000.)

Some explanation of the Just War Tradition is in order. First, a just war must have a good cause. Often just wars are waged to combat threats to national security. Second, just wars are based on good intentions: e.g. to rescue people, to prevent genocides, or to restore legitimate borders. Third, wars must be explicitly declared and properly authorized. The use of force across borders must respect international laws of state sovereignty. Within the borders of a free nation, only the state is authorized to use force. Under colonial occupation, liberation movements have the right to armed struggle. Fourth, wars should be measures of last resort to be used only after all peaceful means of resolving conflict fail. Fifth, wars must be avoided if the prospects of their success are slim. Lastly, the cost of war should not be disproportionate to the intended outcome of the military intervention.

To show how difficult it is to justify war, I examined 12 (mostly Middle-East) wars and classified them into two neat categories of “just” and “unjust”.

CRITERIA	JUST WARS	UNJUST WARS
Cause	2001 Afghanistan	Second Gulf war
Right Intention	1991 Iraq	1990 invasion of Kuwait
Proper Authority	NATO/Bosnia	Turks invasion of Cyprus
Last Resort	UN intervention in Darfur	2006 Israel/Lebanon war
Likely Success	South Lebanon Liberation	1967 June war
Proportional result	Alge War of independence	Iraq-Iran war

A war can be called unjust for violating a single criterion, but for a war to be considered just, it has to pass all six criteria. The unjust wars listed above are considered unjust for the following reasons:

Unjust wars and failed criteria

- No cause in second Iraq war: The 2003 US War on Iraq was unjust because there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and there was no connection to Al-Qaeda and global terrorism.

- Bad intention in occupation of Kuwait: Saddam rationalized his invasion of Kuwait to deal with Iraq’s financial crisis after the Iran war.

- Unlawful authority in Occupation of Cyprus: In 1974, Turkish forces launched a surprise attack on a sovereign state, Cyprus. It was Turkey, not the Turkish Cypriot community which declared the war on the Greek Cypriot community.

- Last resort ignored in 2006 war on Lebanon: Before diplomacy was exhausted in the border hostage crisis, Israel launched a devastating war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006.

- Prospects of security remain poor for Israel: The 1967 Israeli occupation of Arab land did bring a military success but not a solution to Israel’s future security.

- Result of Iraq-Iran war devastating: The Iraq-Iran war of the eighties, which Saddam Hussein started and the West fuelled, exhausted both countries, ended in a stalemate, and created immense Muslim distrust of the West.

Just wars

Shifting to just wars, consider the US-led coalition war in Afghanistan to destroy Bin Laden terrorist training camps and dismantle the Taliban government. When this war was launched, it was legitimately linked with the 9/11 tragedy and justified on criteria of cause, intention, authority, last resort, prospects, and result. However, after the US-led distractive and destructive 2003 war on Iraq, the Taliban regrouped, international support for US efforts weakened, and the Muslim world became less motivated to participate in the international war on terror. There are now alternative theories on how to deal with the conflict in Afghanistan. Increasingly, the resolution of the conflict looks political rather than military. This war started as just, but it is losing its legitimacy.

Next, consider the first Gulf war of 1991, in which an international coalition invaded Iraq. This war is considered just on cause (Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait), intention (respect of state sovereignty), authority broad multinational coalition) and last resort (adequate diplomacy preceded intervention). However, this war is weak on the criteria of success (a second Gulf war followed) and result (high Iraqi casualties, immense environmental degradation, and growing political discord).

The verdicts on Darfur and Bosnia are still undecided. Bosnia remains insecure, and the Darfur intervention is too late and limited in scope.

The last two wars on my “just” list were liberation from colonial occupation. Led by Hezbollah, the armed struggle in Lebanon in the 1980s and 1990s forced Israel to withdraw from south Lebanon in 2000. With a heavy human toll (1.5 million Algerians and 27,000 French soldiers), the Algerian war of independence liberated the country from France in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. The “success” criterion in Lebanon was met through land liberation. Despite heavy casualties, Algeria’s liberation “resulted’ in the birth of a large and independent nation. Algeria’s independence became a model of struggle for emerging nations. Land liberation wars are relatively easy to justify after liberation is achieved. However, the moral character of the struggle is not irrelevant.

The scholars who worked out the theory of just war were morally demanding. Few wars meet all six criteria of justice. But the real challenge for making war of lasting positive impact goes beyond meeting the moral criteria of justice. It is true that going to war requires a just, cause, a noble intention, an authorized force, exhausted diplomacy, good outcome, and limited cost; however, just wars can only advance conflict resolution to a limited extent.

In order for war to resolve conflict effectively, the root causes of the conflict must be addressed. War can not reduce world poverty, generate jobs for millions of youth, level opportunities among nations, protect the environment, or reduce population pressures.

Just war theory is limited because it is just about war. For centuries the world has lived under a war- based paradigm of conflict resolution. Today we understand better the connection between social, economic, and political problems. A better and more effective approach to conflict resolution must reflect the complexity of social causation.

War may be necessary in rare cases; but it is often not sufficient to restore social order in a “flat, hot and crowded” world, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Friedman. In an absolute sense, war can be justified but it can rarely be just. War is often condoned collective punishment.

Globally, the day has not come yet to stop venerating war and its champions. I dream that, a century from now, war, like slavery, will be abolished.