The African American Challenge To Just War Theory: A Christian Approach [1st Edition] 1137347252, 9781137347251, 9781137350329

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
1 The State of Just War Theory Today......Page 20
2 Who Makes Decisions? Right Authority in Historical Context......Page 52
3 African American Thought on Authority and War......Page 84
4 Who Pays the Cost? Military Budgets and Proportionality ad bellum......Page 114
5 What Is the Goal? Rethinking Just Cause......Page 158
Notes......Page 202
Bibliography......Page 234
Index......Page 248

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10.1057/9781137350329 - The African American Challenge to Just War Theory, Ryan P. Cumming

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Content and Context in Theological Ethics offers ethics done from theological and religious perspectives rooted in the particular contexts and lived experience of real people in history, in the present, and looking with hope toward the future. The series raises the contexts or cultures out of which an increasing number of scholars do their thinking and research regarding the influence of those contexts on the content of ethics and how that content has been applied historically, traditionally, and/or subversively by members of the context or community or culture under scrutiny or raised as paradigmatic or as a novel or passing fad. The series explores normative claims about right and wrong, human flourishing or failing, virtues and vices—the fundamental bases and questions of ethics—within the context, culture, or community identified and in correlation with norms inherited from or imposed by colonizing/dominant forces or ideologies while recognizing new voices and/or new understandings of theologically and/or religiously inspired concerns in response to knowledge uncovered by other disciplines that impact ethical reflection on the content explored. Series Editor: MARY JO IOZZIO, active in the American Academy of Religion, Catholic Theological Society of America, Catholic Theological Ethicists in the World Church, Pax Christi USA, and the Society of Christian Ethics, she is a professor of Moral Theology at Barry University, Miami Shores, FL and co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Justice and Peace in a Renewed Caribbean: Contemporary Catholic Reflections Edited by Anna Kasafi Perkins, Donald Chambers, and Jacqueline Porter Theology in the Age of Global AIDS and HIV: Complicity and Possibility By Cassie J. E. H. Trentaz Constructing Solidarity for a Liberative Ethic: Anti-Racism, Action, and Justice By Tammerie Day Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis Edited by Elizabeth M. Bucar and Aaron Stalnaker The Scandal of White Complicity and U.S. Incarceration: A Nonviolent Spirituality of White Resistance By Alex Mikulich, Laurie Cassidy and Margaret Pfeil with a foreword written by S. Helen Prejean CSJ

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Palgrave Macmillan’s Content and Context in Theological Ethics

Spirituality in Dark Places: The Ethics of Solitary Confinement By Derek S. Jeffreys

The African American Challenge to Just War Theory: A Christian Approach By Ryan P. Cumming

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Narratives and Jewish Bioethics By Jonathan K. Crane

A Christian Approach

by Ryan P. Cumming

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The African American Challenge to Just War Theory

THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CHALLENGE TO JUST WAR THEORY

Copyright © Ryan P. Cumming 2013.

First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–34725–1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cumming, Ryan P. The African American challenge to just war theory : a Christian approach by / Ryan P. Cumming. pages cm ISBN 978–1–137–34725–1 (alk. paper) 1. African Americans—Attitudes. 2. Just war doctrine. 3. War—Moral and ethical aspects. 4. United States.—Armed Forces—African Americans. I. Title. E185.625.C86 2013 305.896 073—dc23 2013006554 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: August 2013 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Scriptural quotations from New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. All rights reserved.

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To my wife, Cindy and my parents, Neil and Karen

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Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

1 The State of Just War Theory Today

9

2 Who Makes Decisions? Right Authority in Historical Context

41

3 African American Thought on Authority and War

73

4 Who Pays the Cost? Military Budgets and Proportionality ad bellum

103

5 What Is the Goal? Rethinking Just Cause

147

Notes

191

Bibliography

223

Index

237

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C o n t e n ts

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Every research project involves the work of many people, and I am deeply indebted to the individuals that helped bring this project into fruition. My gratitude is due, first and foremost, to Bill French, Bryan Massingale, and Jon Nilson, who served as the readers of the dissertation that became this book and greatly helped me improve the manuscript. I am also grateful to the faculty and staff at Loyola University Chicago, especially Catherine Wolf and Marianne Wolfe, for their assistance. Thank you, also, to Mary Jo Iozzio, Burke Gerstenschlager, Lani Oshima, Maddie Crum, the staff at Palgrave Macmillan, and the anonymous reviewer who offered very helpful feedback. Special thanks to John Kata for his thought-provoking conversations and challenging perspectives on politics and economics. Lastly in order but never importance, I would be remiss in not acknowledging my wife, Cindy, for her patience and constant encouragement as I worked on this. She is truly a saint.

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Ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts

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W

hat is the Christian witness for questions of war and peace? Are Christians “called away from violence” in all its forms?1 Or, is the justified use of force “a work of justice and a work of social charity” not merely permitted but demanded of Christians in certain cases?2 While pacifism has found a place in the Church throughout the centuries, and a variety of its forms (including strict pacifism, nuclear pacifism, and just peacemaking) took hold in the twentieth century, perhaps the most consistent witness of the Church universal has been the theory of the just war. Originally drawn from pre-Christian sources and developed over centuries, just war theory has informed Christian discussions of war since at least the fifth century of the Common Era. The criteria for just war theory are typically divided into two categories, jus ad bellum, which pertains to decisions made before entering war, and jus in bello, which pertains to the government of conduct during war. Under the rubric of jus ad bellum, theorists typically include right authority, right intention, just cause, proportionality, reasonable hope of success, and last resort. The jus in bello criteria are typically limited to two: proportionality of means and discrimination in targeting. To these two categories, theorists have also added a third, jus post bellum, which governs the ending of war and the potential outcome. Despite the ubiquity of the just war tradition, its acceptance has not been universal or univocal. Rather, at times it has generated more debates than it has solved. What is more, it is doubtful that we are any closer now than we were centuries ago to avoiding unjust wars, despite the development and employment of just war theory’s criteria. Two recent debates have revolved around just war theory. The first debate is an argument about the underlying “presumptions” of the theory itself: is just war theory rooted in a presumption against war (and thus close to pacifism), or is it based on a presumption about the need to use armed force to achieve justice in the world? The second debate is perhaps more cutting: is just war theory, with its reliance on outdated understandings of international politics and its utter inability to prevent unjust wars, still useful at all?

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Introduction

T h e C h a l l e n g e t o J u s t Wa r T h e o r y

Offering preliminary (and certainly not absolute) answers to these questions may help communicate the basic approach to just war theory that lies behind this book. So, to the first debate about the presumption of just war theory, I respond that it is possible to find within the just war tradition evidence of both presumptions—from the presumption against war we find in Augustine to the presumption against injustice we find in Aquinas and Grotius. However, I would add that while this debate is a useful frame for analyzing recent just war thought (and one which I employ in Chapter 1), I’m inclined to believe that the theory itself contains far fewer presumptions than do those who employ it. To say that just war theory contains a presumption against war according to James Childress is to say far less about just war theory itself and far more about James Childress. This is because just war theory is not a self-evident calculus for determining the justice of a war. It is closer to a lexicon, a storehouse of terms and questions that Christians use to “dig deeper” into the question of war and the goods we seek as political communities. Just war theory provides a useful frame for talking about war and politics and so provides the tools necessary to guide dialogue and reflection, but like any methodological frame, it doesn’t come with its own answers. (A comparison might be made to natural law, which does less to offer a solution to moral problems than it does to guide exploration and articulation of these problems. So, for example, both abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates in the nineteenth century could rely on natural law arguments.) Methodological tools don’t provide set answers; they merely offer us paths to take toward that end. As in the case of natural law, how just war theory is employed and what solutions result from its use depend greatly on the assumptions theorists bring to bear on their understanding and use of the linguistics of just war theory. This is why classical theorists located their discussions of the just war within larger treatises on politics. (Indeed, the phenomenon of discrete texts on just war theory unwedded to larger discussions of politics is relatively recent, beginning only in the twentieth century.) Just war theory provides the tools and language for addressing the question of force within broader considerations of politics and political goods in general. In the case of the second debate, whether just war theory is obsolete, I answer more simply, no, for the same reason offered above—it is not a calculus, but a lexicon, a set of questions for thinking about force. As such, the just war tradition offers us a rich source for thinking about the use of force in relation to political goods through history, not a closed system for finally determining the justice of a war.

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The tradition develops; it lives and grows with each generation, as new questions about politics and war are raised by developments in weapons, international relations, and human consciousness. Of course, that is the ideal situation. The reality is that few new questions are raised within the context of the jus ad bellum criteria given such changes, even as the criteria are elaborated and applied to new cases. Ironically, this isn’t the case in many other areas of ethics, where we have benefitted, especially, from the work of marginalized communities in the twentieth century. Feminists, for example, made ethicists rethink the language of gender. Blacks and Latinos in the United States have made us rethink the language of race. Disabled persons have made us rethink the language of the body. Gays and lesbians have made us rethink the language of sex. Ethics, both philosophical and theological, has benefitted from engagement with diverse perspectives that challenge us to ask new questions, to change our language and perspective, and to problematize our perspectives. The work of these “liberation theologies” has profoundly changed the way many ethicists approach sexual ethics, ecological ethics, and economic ethics, but it has not been brought to bear on the ethics of war in any substantive way, with the exception, perhaps, of the emergence of theories of just revolutions. Just as the other fields of ethics have been enriched by such dialogue, I believe that just war theory can be enriched by turning to those on the “underside” of politics, those whose perspectives have been elided by a mostly white, mostly Western articulation of the just war tradition. The goal, however, is not to find new criteria for just war theory; rather, I aim to provide new questions to ask about war, new problems of politics and force to highlight, and a new language to employ when we discuss the use of war. Put succinctly, my aim is not to problematize war, but to problematize just war theory and to offer directions for correcting these deficiencies. That said, my aim is not to “reinvent the wheel” of just war theory. The tradition still offers much hope and possibility for us today. However, the continuing relevance of just war theory may require us to turn toward neglected aspects of the tradition—fragments from classical sources that enjoy less attention than the dominant narrative of the just war provides. My purpose here is to bring modern marginalized voices into conversation with classical authors in the hope that what will emerge is a relevant and robust way of addressing the problem of war. This requires a stance of “critical appreciation” of both the tradition and the recent work of modern scholars (who are themselves part of this tradition).

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Introduction

T h e C h a l l e n g e t o J u s t Wa r T h e o r y

Why do this now? Just as there are certain assumptions about just war theory that underlie my work, there are also certain assumptions about the world that inform my arguments. In the interests of transparency, it is helpful to state these here, though they will receive more attention in the chapters that follow. First, I assume, with others, that political conflicts in the coming years will offer us less moral clarity than, for example, did World War II. Rarely will Americans face such a clear enemy as they did with the Nazis and expansionist Japan. More likely, our opponents will be sub-state actors, and the conflicts emerging in the world will be ambiguous struggles over statehood, sovereignty, and “rights.” Second, and related to the first, these conflicts are less likely to pit two state armies against one another. Unfortunately, most of the conflicts in which states like the United States may engage in the coming decades will be asymmetrical warfare, which will make determining who the “enemy” is and how to resolve conflict much more difficult for both soldiers and policymakers. This will be complicated by the rapid spread of globalization, which will contribute to an increase in sub-state conflicts, terrorism, and the exportation of regional violence across the globe. Globalization itself will challenge not only how we conduct war but also how we conduct politics, how we understand sovereignty, and, importantly, how we understand justice. Moreover, just as it complicates politics, globalization will also complicate economics by intertwining economies in ways we could not have foreseen even 30 years ago. This will make war even costlier than it was years ago by tying economic vitality to political vitality, making war a significant obstacle to the investment needed to ensure the economic health of the nations participating in the globalized world. Because the world is changing, politics is changing; because politics is changing, war is changing. If that’s true, the Cold War–era language we use to describe and discuss war through just war theory must also change. African American thought provides a useful source here, for at least two reasons. First, they have traditionally been a rather powerless group within a rather powerful nation. As such, they raise questions related to the imbalance of political power from the twin position of being relatively powerless and yet participating in, and at times benefitting from, the exercise of unmatched American power. They have fought in every major American war and yet have also critiqued every major American war. Their perspective ranges from a tempered patriotism to a sharp indictment of American militarism and so provides fertile ground for achieving critical appreciation of the use of power. Second, their own marginalization has encouraged identification with

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other marginalized groups across the globe. They thus displayed a globalized political perspective long before the realm of politics itself became globalized. Their insights reflect a concern for politics on a global scale, rather than a narrow nationalism that is out of place in today’s political environment. These insights serve as the foundation for the thought process behind this book. Conceptually, I begin with the questions raised by African Americans and then turn to the classical tradition and modern articulations of just war theory for points of consonance and dissonance. The result is a new set of questions to be raised and problems to be addressed within modern just war thought that is rooted in both classical just war theory and African American thought. It is for this reason that the scope of just war criteria discussed below is narrowed to just three: right authority, proportionality, and just cause. This is not to suggest that the other criteria of just war theory (last resort, hope of success, discrimination, and proportionality in bello) are unnecessary. It is merely to suggest that African American thought may not yield innovations in these other areas. Perhaps turning to other marginalized voices will accomplish this task. Before describing the layout of the chapters, a word must be said about the risks of being a white man drawing on African American voices. I have tried to be cautious here. Any time a white scholar attempts to use non-white sources (or a male to use female sources) in his work, he must navigate between the Scylla of generalization and the Charybdis of misinterpretation. I am fully aware that I am mining the voices of a perspective that I can observe and engage but never claim. I have tried to do so without generalizing any particular voice, as if one African American represents all African Americans. I have tried to reflect respect for the diversity of voices within the African American community while still making broad claims in regard to war. I have also tried to be cautious in reading their work through my own perspective in order to avoid the fatal error of finding there only what I hope to find. I hope that my work reflects this careful approach. Nevertheless, while I am sure there are limitations in my use of African American sources, I am convinced of the need for white ethicists to “sin boldly” in their work, to engage marginalized perspectives with sincerity despite the fact that we may not always get it right. The alternative is to turn reluctance into resistance to non-white sources, an error I believe is deadlier than occasional misinterpretation, which can be corrected in further dialogue. The chapters that follow, I hope, evince the efficacy of using marginalized sources and avoid, as much as they can, the risks that I run by doing so.

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Introduction

T h e C h a l l e n g e t o J u s t Wa r T h e o r y

Chapter 1 begins with a discussion of where just war theory stands today, in the first decades of the twenty-first century. I use the debate between the presumption against war and the presumption against injustice to frame my discussion of modern just war theorists, though I make no attempts to solve the debate. The aim of the chapter is to highlight shortcomings that can be found in both groups of theorists. Following this, I also discuss two characteristics of our political and intellectual landscape that make addressing these shortcomings especially necessary: globalization and recent challenges to objective rationality. The following four chapters focus on three of the jus ad bellum criteria of just war theory: right authority, proportionality, and just cause. In contrast to the other two criteria, the sheer enormity of work on right authority makes it difficult to summarize in only one chapter. In Chapter 2, I discuss the development of the concept of authority from Augustine to the end of the twentieth century by analyzing how a variety of theorists have understood the source, character, and purpose of political authority. In Chapter 3, I employ this same frame to organize my discussion of African American thought on authority, focusing especially on the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars of the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. Placing their work in dialogue with the work of Francisco de Vitoria and Reinhold Niebuhr, I argue for a vision of authority as a decision-making process that is disciplined by both an “inner religious check” and “social and political review.” As with chapters 4 and 5, Chapter 3 concludes with a brief prolegomenon for future applications of right authority, which includes suggestions for maintaining a hermeneutic of suspicion of authority, a methodological theme that continues throughout the remaining chapters. Chapter 4 is an application of proportionality ad bellum to the question of the financing of war. As with Chapter 2, I rely heavily on the just war tradition, especially the work of Erasmus and Grotius. However, because of the nature of the question, I also turn to economists such as Alex Mintz and James L. Clayton, whose work on the question of military budgeting is rather perceptive and helpful. In this chapter, I also introduce the concepts of threat-specific cost analysis and value-relative cost analysis of proportionality as employed by both sides of the “guns versus butter” debate. The prolegomenon offered at the end is drawn especially from the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., African Americans during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, J. Deotis Roberts, and Manning Marable.

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Chapter 5 addresses the constellation of complex questions involving just cause. Like the previous chapters, it begins with a discussion of just cause in classical sources, especially preemptive war in Augustine’s thought, Martin Luther’s prohibition of “first strikes,” Vitoria’s outlining of unjust causes, and Emmerich de Vattel’s opinions on the redress of injury. I then turn to modern international law and the prioritization of defense, the question of preventive war, and the re-emergence of punishment as a just cause of war. The discussion of African American thought in this chapter focuses especially on responses to apartheid in South Africa, the misuse of “law and order” to repress social change, and reflections of black clergy on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The concluding prolegomenon draws from each of these suggestions for ways of interpreting just cause that ameliorate some of the problems associated with order, prevention, and intervention. A final word of caution is due. Readers will not find in here a systematic elucidation of just war thought, such as may be found in the seemingly endless stream of books on just war theory published each year. It is no more my intention to comprehensively reinterpret just war theory than it is my intention to scrap just war theory altogether. In reality, this book is about “the challenge of African American thought” perhaps more than it is about “just war theory.” Some may view this as a weakness. I do not. I began this research with a focus on African American thought and concluded the writing with this focus still in mind. The rule and guide is thus African American thought on war and not the need for a comprehensive retooling of just war thought. What follows here is not the end of the process of reinterpretation but rather a beginning step, an exploration rather than a summation rooted not in the question, “What can just war theorists say to African Americans?” but rather, “What can just war theorists learn from African American thought?” If just war theory is to be relevant, robust, and rich in insight, it must be informed by something more than the same terms, the same questions asked over and over again by the same theorists. We must begin not only to problematize war in new ways but also to problematize just war theory, to challenge the very language and images we use to understand, interpret, and critique moral choices about the use of armed force. This book is an opening salvo in this struggle.

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Introduction

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1

T h e S t at e o f J u s t Wa r T h e o r y To d ay

Despite the importance of just war theory for Christian reflection on

war, it has had at best a discontiguous life in Christian history. Rather than enjoying sustained attention and import, the just war tradition has been characterized by peaks of interest and valleys of neglect. Briefly, we can trace the major peaks across the fourth century with Augustine, the thirteenth century with Aquinas, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the work of Hugo Grotius, and the Spanish theologians of the University of Salamanca, Francisco de Vitoria, and Francisco Suarez. From this last period until about the mid-twentieth century, just war theory largely remained dormant, with little significant development and minimal engagement.1 That said, the last five decades have witnessed a surge in just-war research. The Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the two Gulf wars (1991 and 2003) have all contributed to renewed interest in just war theory. This is not to say that the theory enjoys any more consensus now than it engendered in the past. If anything, interest in nonviolence and pacifism, which increased as much as (if not more than) interest in just war theory, has reinvigorated debates about interpretation and application of the jus ad bellum (war decision-making) and jus in bello (war-fighting) criteria that characterize modern just war theory. One of the central debates among theorists concerns the presumption that underlies the whole theory. Does just war theory, like pacifism, begin with a presumption against violence? Or, does it begin with a presumption against injustice, that is, with a view of war as a morally good means for securing justice in political relationships? Is war the “lesser of two evils”?2 Or, is war part of the “bene esse” of government?3

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Chapter

T h e C h a l l e n g e t o J u s t Wa r T h e o r y

Solving the debate exceeds the purposes of this chapter. However, summarizing some of the authors engaged in the debate offers several benefits. First, it will allow us to determine the place of this book within broader just-war conversations. Second, some of the shortcomings and limitations of some modern theories of just war can be usefully highlighted. Finally, analyzing the debate not only helps name the problems addressed herein, but also adequately grounds the rationale for the work of subsequent chapters. It is necessary to note that the authors examined below are not exhaustive of the debate; however, they have been chosen because they explicitly mention their choice of presumption and together are representative of major ideas on both sides of the debate.

Presumption against War Ralph Potter and James Childress Two of the earliest and most prominent Protestant voices to interpret just war theory with a presumption against war are Ralph Potter and James F. Childress. Potter and Childress are compatible in their views on war, to some extent. It may be easy to consider their similarities, including their arguments for a presumption against war, products of their times, since both emerged from graduate studies in the turmoil of the Vietnam War, with Potter completing his dissertation in 1965 and Childress graduating a few years later in 1968. This would be too simplistic, however, for their work on politics and the ethics of war reflects other concerns drawn from their historical situation. Both authors were affected as much by the civil disobedience and revolutionary movements of the 1950s and 1960s as they were by the violence of Vietnam. For Potter, this concern translated into a non-utopian vision of world government that would limit the necessity of violent revolutions.4 Childress’ interest in civil disobedience, such as the kind erupting in American streets throughout the 1960s, led him not to an uncritical acceptance of nonviolent protest per se but rather to a sharply critical evaluation of when and how such disobedience might be justified. Despite his limited appreciation of the state as such, Childress argued that civil disobedience can only be justified when a society’s injustice is clearly and overwhelmingly intolerable, to the point that other obligations to one’s fellow citizens (who may be harmed by disobedience) may be justifiably overridden.5 These

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contextual concerns, with Christian participation in and justification of violent rebellion (for Potter) and civil disobedience (for Childress) deeply impacted each author’s attempt to reshape just war theory in such a way as to make it meaningful for their historical situations. Despite fundamental methodological differences given their particular concerns, both Potter and Childress reached similar conclusions about just war theory—it must begin with a presumption against war. Both authors agree that “every version of [the moral logic of war, or just war theory] begins with a presumption against the use of force.”6 For Potter, this presumption is rooted in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, inasmuch as both exemplify a commitment to nonviolence. Christians, then, have a special obligation to critique and challenge attempts to justify the use of force. Childress, on the other hand, roots his presumption against violence in a universal “prima facie duty of non-maleficence,” that is, the human obligation to avoid harming and killing other human beings.7 Because of this moral duty, Childress begins his discussion of war by claiming that “nonviolence has moral priority over violence.”8 Moreover, he argues just war theorists and pacifists are similar to each other in that they share this basic starting point. While the two groups differ in that just war theorists believe violence may be justified in certain cases, Childress is quick to point out that this consensual starting point can only be ignored “at great peril to all of us.”9 This congruence with pacifism notwithstanding, neither Potter nor Childress is ready to deny any and all attempts at justifying war. Rather than concern themselves with pacifist arguments against war in all cases, both focus their efforts on ensuring that attempts to justify war vis-à-vis just war theory meet the exceedingly high standard of “rigorous justification” embodied in the overarching theory behind the just war criteria.10 For his part, Potter maintains three causes may justify use of violent force: protection of innocent people, restoration of rights, and reestablishment of “an order necessary for decent human existence,” or what has been referred to since Augustine as the tranquilitas ordinis (though we must note here that Potter has in mind here a “justifiable revolution,” rather than violence to restore a status quo, as Augustine and others understand the tranquilitas ordinis).11 In a more philosophical fashion, Childress draws on the work of W. D. Ross to claim that acts must be judged in their totality. Prima facie obligations (such as non-maleficence) differ from actual obligations because the “ethically relevant characteristics” of an act may require that one prima facie obligation, such as the duty

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to protect innocent people from attack, may override other prima facie obligations, such as non-maleficence. As he puts it, a prima facie obligation “is intrinsically binding, but it does not necessarily determine one’s actual obligation.”12 Thus, for Childress, war may become one’s actual obligation, provided the justification for violence is sufficient to override the prima facie obligation of non-maleficence. Distilling one’s actual duty from sets of competing prima facie duties forms the basis for ad bellum criteria. This is not to say that the moment one of Potter’s causes obtains or one of Childress’ obligations is overridden, anything goes. Pursuits of a just cause and fulfillment of an actual obligation are still governed by the in bello criteria. Indeed, the in bello requirements of discrimination and proportionality arise from the same presumption against violence that informs the need to justify using violence in the first place. Both Potter and Childress are helpful in demonstrating the logical coherence of just war theory, in which the decision to go to war (ad bellum) and the conduct within war (in bello) are rooted in the same presumption against violence. Each author, however, understands this link in a slightly different way. For Childress, prima facie obligations do not cease to function in toto the moment they are overridden. Relying on the work of A. C. Ewing, Childress claims that overridden obligations leave “moral traces,” meaning that they “should in many cases [still] modify in some respect the way in which the act is performed and in almost all [cases] it should affect some subsequent action.”13 Thus, overriding the duty of non-maleficence does not make total war justifiable; discrimination and proportionality function to limit war given the “moral traces” of the obligation. In bello criteria thus logically flow from the same presumption and obligation that gave rise to ad bellum criteria. Moreover, Childress sees such “moral traces” in the regret and remorse, which authors such as Augustine and Reinhold Niebuhr believed should accompany even justified war. Potter, on the other hand, sees the in bello criteria as flowing from the faultiness of war as an “instrument of enforcement.”14 The harm war imposes on innocents and its tendency to escape the limits of the justice it serves give rise to its limitation by discrimination and proportionality, respectively. Whereas Childress’ understanding of the link between in bello and ad bellum is deontological, here with Potter, the logic is seemingly consequential. Despite this difference, both agree that the in bello criteria arise from the same presumption against violence that necessitates the rigorous and stringent criteria of ad bellum.

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Catholic theologian J. Bryan Hehir agrees that just war theory and pacifism share a presumption against war, which at times may be overridden.15 Much of his work in just war theory is an attempt to demonstrate, on the basis of this shared presumption, that both just war theory and pacifism are morally acceptable positions within Catholicism, an argument that is challenged strongly by other Catholic theologians. Hehir tackles this disagreement head-on, noting in several places that twentieth-century Catholic Social Thought has moved from Pope Pius XII’s initial rejection of pacifism, through Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI’s critique of war, and to condemnation of war by the Vatican in the 1980s.16 This shift, which Hehir acknowledges as consistent with the developing nature of Catholic teaching, has allowed for the acceptance of pacifism by many Catholics even as it maintains the Church’s openness to just war theory. Despite the fact that both positions are “Catholic,” Hehir is also quick to highlight the differences between the two and identifies himself in his writing as a just war theorist, not a pacifist. According to Hehir, while pacifism has a single rule—violence is never to be used— just war theory contains a “multiplicity of rules,” which provide for a “rule-governed use of force.”17 As a just war theorist, Hehir sees his task to be interpreting and clarifying these rules in concrete political situations rather than “proving” war to be inherently immoral, as the pacifist might attempt.18 To that end, Hehir has been especially vocal in his interpretation of “right authority” as requiring an international body to declare war. Consistent with much twentieth-century Catholic thought, he has defended the United Nations’ authority in this light, though he is cautious of the UN’s efficacy in practice.19

The US Catholic Bishops and The Challenge of Peace One of the reasons Hehir has drawn much criticism is his work on the 1983 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (hereafter USCCB; named the National Conference of Catholic Bishops at the time) letter The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, perhaps the most controversial Catholic statement on war and peace in the last century. As the Cold War entered its fifth decade, and as America entered the Ronald Reagan era of the 1980s, the Bishops were drawn into two related conversations about war. On the one hand, nuclear arsenals in both the United States and the Soviet Union continued to grow, with no foreseeable end to the arms race or

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the threat of nuclear war. On the other hand, following the election of Reagan, the Bishops found themselves enmeshed in the debate between social spending and military spending by the federal government. Like many others, the Bishops increasingly came to see the nuclear arms race as a threat in itself apart from any risk of actual warfare. Both concerns were addressed in their pastoral letter and formed the context in which their claims about war developed. Following Hehir, the USCCB claimed that “just-war teaching and nonviolence [are] distinct but interdependent methods of evaluating warfare . . . [T]hey share a common presumption against the use of force as a means of settling disputes.”20 In a manner similar to Childress, and as influenced by civil disobedience movements as he was, the Bishops established the priority of nonviolence in the Catholic tradition by claiming that “Catholic teaching begins in every case with a presumption against war and for peaceful settlement of disputes.”21 This presumption, “which is binding on all,”22 may be overridden in certain cases, but further requires that Catholics “seek to restrict and reduce [war’s] horrors.”23 The purpose of ad bellum criteria, then, is to “prevent war”; when this cannot be done, the in bello criteria work to limit the suffering produced by even justified violence. This is not to say that the Bishops believed the mere absence of war to be a morally worthy peace (contrary to charges to the contrary). Actual peace, they claimed, is founded on justice.24 Thus, they, like the authors above, agreed that war may be morally necessary in certain cases, especially in self-defense and in defense of innocent neighbors. War, for the Bishops, may be waged “to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence, and to secure basic human rights.”25 As to the ad bellum criteria of legitimate authority, the Bishops followed much Catholic thought from Pope Pius XII to Pope John Paul II in arguing for the UN’s role as a (if not the) proper war-making authority. Unlike Hehir (but similar to Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris and the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes) the Bishops are decidedly confident in the UN, referring to it as “the last hope for peace.”26 This hope and confidence in the international authority of the UN is prominent in many theorists who share the presumption against war. Though the Bishops declare their teaching to be consistent with the tradition of Catholic Social Thought, they, like Hehir, concede that the tradition itself has developed in response to changes in the political environment. The Bishops ground their “fresh reappraisal of war” in the changing nature of weapons technology. Quoting Pope

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John Paul II, they argue that “[t]oday the scale and the horror of modern warfare—whether nuclear or not—makes it totally unacceptable as a means of settling differences between nations.”27 The Bishops thus ground much of their work on the inherent destructiveness of modern weaponry. In an interesting turn, they reverse the logic of Potter and Childress by, at points, positioning the ad bellum restrictions on war-making as flowing from the in bello restrictions on war-fighting, inasmuch as the ad bellum criteria increase in rigidity as weapons technology (the realm of in bello criteria) increases in destructiveness. Despite the positive recognition by the Bishops of just war theory as a developing discourse, this reversal shifts attention away from jus ad bellum and to jus in bello. The result is a rich discussion of jus in bello but a much less profound examination of jus ad bellum. In contrast to careful, sustained attention, the ad bellum criteria are interpreted in light of the horrific means by which wars may be fought. The Bishops, like several other authors, thus strengthen the ad bellum criteria so completely as to make war nearly impossible to justify. This is most problematic with their understanding of the UN as the most appropriate authority to declare war in light of the “global” nature of sociopolitical problems. It is enough to mention for now that this claim is odd when the clearest just cause, according to the Bishops, is self-defense, a decidedly limited problem not clearly requiring a “global” authority. There may be some truth to the claim that the Bishops have attempted to make just war theory more restrictive than necessary without adequately justifying their interpretation of just cause, legitimate authority, and the like. Absent sustained defense of the UN, the Bishops have a difficult time addressing the criticism that the need for such an authority is little more than one more roadblock to justifying war rather than an inherently more appropriate interpretation of the criterion. Protestant Churches The Catholic Church is not alone in its suspicion (and, at times, denunciation) of war as an instrument for securing justice. Several mainstream Protestant denominations not typically categorized as traditional “peace churches” have released statements showcasing a strong presumption against war. The United Methodist Church, for example, declared in 1986, “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ. We therefore reject war as an instrument of foreign policy.”28 The Evangelical Lutheran Church in

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America (ELCA), less forthright than the Methodists, still claims that Christians are obligated “to prevent wars and to seek alternatives to them, especially in view of modern weapons and their proliferation.” Just war theory, the ELCA claims, begins “with a strong presumption against all war.”29 While admitting of “exceptional circumstances” that may necessitate war, the ELCA is more concerned with the ways in which just war theory is abused than with fleshing out what these “exceptional circumstances” might be.30 The ELCA, then, seemingly uplifts just war theory less as a substantive source for guiding war than as a set of challenges pacifist-minded Christians might use against those who would justify war. This position is quite similar to that of the Episcopal Church in the USA, which, in a 2003 convention resolution, “urge[d] Church members to study just war theory and criteria” as a resource for opposing war. Claiming the same “strong presumption against the use of force” found in the ELCA document, the Episcopal Church concluded the resolution with a not-so-subtle reminder of “the longstanding Episcopal Church view [that] war as a method of settling international disputes is incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ.”31 The Methodist, Lutheran, and Episcopal statements on war appear as a shift away from Hehir’s distinction between just war theory and pacifism and toward an interpretation consonant with that of Lutheran ethicist and seminary professor James M. Childs, Jr., who claims just war theory “is a tool of peacemaking . . . pacifist in its purposes” which “assumes that all war is inherently evil and wrong.”32 What is particularly problematic about this trend in Protestant thought is that the presumption against war is read into just war theory, rather than drawn out of the theory. When one assumes that just war theory is “pacifist in its purposes,” there is little need to develop the theory itself, beyond increasing its rigidity and highlighting the difficulty (impossibility?) of justifying war. This is quite different from what Potter, Childress, and Hehir set out to accomplish. Yet, the linkage between just war theory and pacifism has become so pervasive that even those who present the unjustifiability of war as a conclusion, rather than as a presumption, fare little better in their own work. The tendency to see just war theory as self-defeating, that is, as rejecting the justifiability of most or all wars, has birthed a distinctively twentieth-century school of thought: just-war pacifism. Just-War Pacifists There is some diversity among just-war pacifists, but all agree on a single conclusion—just war theory itself disproves the justifiability of

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most, if not all, modern wars. Andrew Fiala, for example, analyzes the Augustinian notion of legitimate authority to declare that “the just war ideal” is closer to “holy war,” and thus must be rejected as relevant for the modern age, in which few people can accept that God ordains particular uses of violent force.33 (Of course, at this point, we must note that Fiala’s interpretation of Augustine is problematic and selective, at best.) What is more, according to Fiala, the pervasive use of immoral means in war unhinges any justification that may be established through the application of ad bellum criteria. A single act of disproportionate or indiscriminate war-fighting may invalidate the justice of a particular war as a whole, as Fiala claims occurred during World War II, which he declares an unjust war.34 Obviously, it is not necessary to misread Augustine as Fiala does in order to arrive at similar conclusions. Robert Holmes, for example, examines Augustine’s notion of right intention to craft an insightful critique of just war theory that raises questions about the usefulness of a central criterion that (even in Augustinian terms) cannot be proved or demonstrated. Outside observers can never know the intentions of war-declaring authorities and thus can never debate, much less determine, the justice of a war. When it comes to jus in bello, Holmes helpfully addresses the lethality of both nuclear weapons and conventional weapons and challenges the conformability of either to rigorous standards of proportionality and discrimination. Following a lengthy deconstruction of double effect, Holmes concludes, in agreement with Fiala, Robert Brimlow, and others that the inevitable death of innocents delegitimizes attempts at justifying war.35 However, where Brimlow absolutizes the Christian prohibition against war, Holmes claims that “the conditions that might theoretically justify war simply are not met in the actual world, hence . . . war is impermissible in the world as we know it.”36 While Holmes’ rejection of an absolutist perspective on war distinguishes his argument from pure pacifism, the presumption against war he and others defend has made just war theory, in some cases, amenable to a “pure pacifist” position. Just war theory, when read restrictively (and, at times, selectively), comes close to a defense of pacifism in some cases, as opposed to a guide for the “rule-governed use of force” envisioned by authors like Hehir.

Presumption against Injustice Another key difference between Hehir and the just-war pacifists is that while Hehir believes this shift toward pacifism is a development in the tradition of just war theory, Holmes, Fiala, and others believe that

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stringent, rigorous, and nigh-insurmountable burdens of proof for justifying war are part of the historical foundations of the tradition. This claim has met with much opposition by those who argue that the tradition teaches that war can be either morally good or morally evil depending on how it is used and by whom. The shift toward a presumption against war, they argue, is a deviation from history and is not as welcome as Hehir might like to think.37 For the thinkers discussed below, just war theory does not begin with a presumption against armed force but rather with a presumption against injustice, that is, with a presumption that war may be a morally required and morally good response to injustice. This commitment, especially for George Weigel, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Oliver O’Donovan, arises not from the memory of Vietnam, the upheaval of the 1960s, or the nuclear threat of the 1980s, but from the more contemporary threat of terrorism. Unlike the USCCB, which saw American military strength, to some extent, as a threat to peace, the writers below often have articulated their views in the context of Islamist terrorism, a context in which American military strength and efficiency may be the last barrier between peace and tyranny. James Turner Johnson One of the most prominent, and proficient, proponents of this view is just-war historian James Turner Johnson. Johnson’s critique of the presumption against war is rooted in his definition of moral traditions as reflections of values based in “identification with historical communities . . . through time.” The “moral life,” for Johnson, means “keeping faith with such traditions . . . [M]oral decision-making [is thus] an attempt to find continuity between present and past, and not an ahistorical activity of the rational mind.”38 To speak, then, of the irrelevance of just war theory in the modern era (as Fiala does) is to miss the point of just war theory as a moral tradition. Despite its continuing applicability and significance, however, adapting just war theory in such a way as to significantly depart from its historical roots is, for Johnson, a “grave error.” By assuming a presumption against war in the Catholic tradition, theorists “skewed the moral tradition” of just war theory, according to Johnson.39 Johnson delineates two “roots” to the presumption against war. First, as we saw above, many who support such a presumption do so on the basis of the destructiveness of modern war, especially as witnessed in the obliteration bombing of Germany and the nuclear

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bombing of Japan in World War II. To this, Johnson responds, quite accurately, that most wars since that time have been rather limited, regional conflicts dissimilar to the World Wars in their destructiveness. Second, according to Johnson, both presumptions are historical; however, the presumption against injustice is more appropriate to the just war tradition while the presumption against war derives from the “Catholic peace tradition,” which “[denied] the right of the sword to clergy and religious.”40 Insinuation of the presumption against war into the just war tradition represents a conflation of the two traditions. Returning to the first “root” and the destructiveness of modern war, Johnson also argues that claiming that the way in which wars are fought automatically invalidates the justice of a war as determined by the ad bellum criteria is to make “in bello considerations . . . do the work for which classic just war tradition developed the jus ad bellum.”41 The resulting confusion prioritizes prudential concerns (such as proportionality ad bellum) above deontological considerations (legitimate authority, just cause, and right intention), a logical fallacy. As to the second “root,” Johnson argues that the conflation of the “peace tradition” of clerics and religious and the just war tradition of laity confuses two separate, distinct Catholic traditions that “applied to people in two distinct walks of life.”42 The just war tradition for the laity begins with the premise that “the use of force may be necessary to right wrongs and to establish justice,” a claim based on political, historical realities.43 This is distinct from a presumption against war in the peace tradition, which was based on the “higher” spiritual (apolitical) vocation of clergy and religious.44 George Weigel A less compelling, but still important, author on this side of the debate is the neoconservative George Weigel, who agrees with, and often cites, Johnson. Weigel argues that “the just war tradition is best understood as a sustained and disciplined intellectual attempt to relate the morally legitimate use of proportionate and discriminate military force to morally worthy political ends.”45 Against those who have “smuggled into the just war discussion a pacifist premise,” Weigel insists that “the classic just war tradition does not regard armed force as inherently suspect morally; rather classic just war thinking treats armed force as an instrument that can be used for good or for evil, depending on who is using it, for what ends, and how.”46 In positioning just war theory as “a theory of statecraft” (rather than casuistry aimed at preventing use of violence in particular cases), Weigel argues

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that the theory shares the same objective as all politics—creation and maintenance of the tranquilitas ordinis, “the peace of public order in dynamic political community.”47 Such a peace “creates conditions for the pursuit of a more complete justice, a nobler freedom, a society marked by deeper truth and more perfect charity.”48 Despite such utopian language, Weigel is hardly an idealist. Drawing heavily on Augustine, he characterizes the “tranquility of order” minimally as the rule of law, such that “legal and political processes are the primary instruments for resolving conflict.”49 Indeed, so restrictive is Weigel’s definition that, often, his just war theory can aptly be described as defense of the status quo in international politics, inasmuch as situations of economic and social injustice may be a tolerable part of the tranquilitas ordinis.50 Frequently and explicitly, Weigel identifies the tranquilitas ordinis with American democracy and capitalism.51 For this reason, he rejects all forms of pacifism not only for their diversion from Catholic teaching on war (which he describes as “a grave theological and ecclesial problem”52 and “quite simply mistaken”53 ) but also for the sharp critique of American institutions and actions, which often accompanies their critiques of war. In his seminal work Tranquilitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace, Weigel woefully bemoans the “deep skepticism about the American experiment” he sees in much contemporary Catholic thought.54 Lamenting the loss of “confidence in the American experiment . . . in the post-1965 American Catholic debate on war and peace,” Weigel argues that “it is time, in American Catholicism, to love America again.”55 Those who critique war, and especially American wars, find little harbor in Weigel’s thought. Inasmuch as just war theory is oriented toward achievement of the tranquilitas ordinis, and this goal is linked with democratic capitalism, with America as its “principal defender,”56 just war theory becomes less a way of preventing war (as Childress, Hehir, and others would claim) or limiting war (as Johnson might claim) than of justifying coercive uses of American power. Indeed, at times, Weigel argues that the role of the Church, with its just-war heritage, is to sanctify and support decisions of American political leaders. The “charism of responsibility” for determining the justice of a given war lies not with the Christian Church or religious leaders but with “duly constituted public authorities.”57 Arriving at conclusions from and making decisions based on just war theory are the tasks of public authorities, not theologians, ecclesial leaders, or (presumably) private citizens at all.

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In contrast to Weigel’s deep-seated Americanism and concomitant rejection of international authorities such as the UN,58 British moral theologian Oliver O’Donovan argues that the establishment of strong international authority may be a requirement of just war theory. For O’Donovan, like Weigel and Johnson, just war theory does not begin with a presumption against war but with “a practical claim, that God’s mercy and peace may and must be witnessed to in this interim of salvation-history through a praxis of judgment, even beyond the normal reach of states.”59 War, according to O’Donovan, “can and must be re-conceived as an extraordinary extension of ordinary [political] acts of judgment.”60 War, he argues, may be “extraordinary,” but this does not for that reason make it an unacceptable political act. Indeed, inasmuch as the role of political authority (in part) is judgment, war as an act of judgment is properly part of politics. When no authority exists to enact judgment on those who disturb the order of peace and the rule of law in the international community, this responsibility redounds to individual states. (Indeed, this is part of what makes war “extraordinary”—it requires states to impose decisions on those not subject to them and thus extends a government’s power beyond its own sphere of authority.) Establishing a competent international authority, including an international court, thus makes war less “extraordinary” and, in an interesting twist, may thereby make war more limited in aim and scope.61 Understanding war as an extraordinary exercise of state authority and a (less extra-) ordinary exercise of international authority may thus make war a more carefully directed enterprise, aimed at securing order, peace, and security in a world that, admittedly, is fallen to the point of being prone to unjust violence and aggression. O’Donovan’s work, then, is an interesting addition to this discussion, in that he rejects the presumption against war found among the first authors and yet also uplifts the role of international authority in contrast to Johnson, Weigel, and Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Jean Bethke Elshtain At first glance, it may seem odd to include Elshtain in this list with Johnson, Weigel, and O’Donovan, for much of her early work expresses a presumption against war within just war theory. For example, while she claims, in contrast to Childs, that “[c]lassic just war doctrine . . . is by no means a pacifist doctrine,” she also notes that “just war thinking shares with pacifism the insistence that violence,

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not nonviolence, must bear the burden of proof.”62 This presumption informed much of her criticism of the Gulf War, which she argued was a hasty decision. Drawing on Augustine’s “declaration that no earthly order is free from sin,” she sharply critiqued the justificatory rhetoric of the George H. W. Bush administration, which “took off into the stratosphere of moralistic trumpeting of the sort just war cautions against.”63 War, even just war, is a tragic enterprise, she insists, which does not admit of simple dichotomies of “good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, human dignity and freedom vs. tyranny and oppression,” which she calls “a bit of crowing that more sober just war thinkers steadfastly avoided” during the debate.64 However, Elshtain’s 2003 reflection on the War on Terrorism, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power (the 2004 edition of which includes a chapter on the War in Iraq), demonstrates a shift much closer to the Johnson, Weigel, and O’Donovan camp. While maintaining the “presumption against violence and force,”65 she also claims that “the presupposition of just war thinking is that war can sometimes be an instrument of justice” and vociferously chastises both academicians and clergy who opposed the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq.66 In language that echoes that of the three authors above, Elshtain argues here and elsewhere that “just war is not just about war: it is a way of thinking about politics and political life more generally,” inasmuch as “classic warfare is the continuation of politics by other means.”67 “All political theories,” according to Elshtain, “begin with a notion of how to establish and sustain order among human beings.”68 It makes sense, then, for Elshtain to turn, as she does in her book, to Weigel’s assessment of the tranquilitas ordinis as the guiding principle behind the “political” just war theory. This in itself is not surprising given Elshtain’s appreciation of Augustine. She remains firmly committed to Augustinian ethical principles, though her work reveals a shift in emphasis of Augustinian foundations. In her earlier work during the 1980s and 1990s, she emphasized the pervasiveness of sin in all political orders and the nuances in rhetoric, which must therefore accompany just war dialogue. In her later work in the 2000s, however, Elshtain’s emphasis shifts to Augustine’s appreciation of civic order and the political aim of restraint of evil.69 So much has her focus shifted that her critique of absolutist language quoted above seems antithetical to the language of Just War against Terror, which describes Islamist terrorists, and latterly Saddam Hussein, as tyrannical, evil, and oppressive opponents of freedom, democracy, and human rights, while the latter three terms she attributes to the character of the United States. When she says

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of “radical Islamists” that “it is freedom itself that they despise” in their attacks on the United States, it is easy to lose the nuances she insists in her earlier work must characterize “sober” just war thinking. She goes on to chastise those who refuse to see this dualism, as well as those who neglect the importance of an American-enforced tranquilitas ordinis in regards to terrorism. As Cian O’Driscoll has written, for Elshtain, any deviation from the tranquilitas ordinis as envisioned by Augustine (and found in many writers advancing a presumption against injustice) is hardly just-war thinking at all but “better characterized as some variant on liberal institutionalism or a kind of internationalist sentimentalism.”70 The “burden of American power,” according to Elshtain, is to secure the tranquilitas ordinis for the international community, even and especially unilaterally.

Internal Challenges of Just War Theory As stated above, the purpose of this summary is not to solve the debate between the presumptions, but rather to frame the discussion in the next several chapters by highlighting the characteristics of some prominent strands of just-war thinking today. These characteristics may be spoken of in terms of internal challenges to just war theory in the twenty-first century—“internal” because they concern the theory itself and not the political or social milieu of the modern era and “challenges” in that they beg attention and creative engagement from future just-war scholars. These challenges are: (1) to treat the tradition as generative and to participate in and enable its continuing development; (2) to avoid the dualism of some just-war debate, especially in terms of “legitimate authority”; and (3) to reexamine the premises and the hermeneutical process of just war theory in self-critical and tradition-critical ways. Later in this chapter, I will discuss the external challenges to twenty-first-century just-war thinking: globalization and historical consciousness. (1) Shaping a Living Tradition The first internal challenge to just war theory is to treat the tradition as generative, rather than definitive, as a continuing dialogue rather than an established monologue. While attention to history is valuable, much of the current debate contains appeals to historical just war theory that attempt to establish “a foreclosed conception of the tradition that is not amenable [to] the validity of alternative accounts of just war and may even lead us to deny their legitimacy.”71 O’Driscoll argues that there is a “silencing logic” operative in some interpretations of

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just war theory, especially those of Elshtain and Johnson (and we might add Weigel to this list). Both authors, he argues, attempt to forestall innovative interpretations of the tradition by appealing to the origins of the tradition as authoritative and definitive. There are two difficulties with this appeal to history, he explains. First, despite claims of an original position to just war theory, the tradition did not arise ex nihilo; as Roland Bainton’s historical survey aptly demonstrates, just war theory arose from a variety of Greco-Roman influences predating Christianity and continued to develop in a variety of directions over the centuries following Ambrose’s first articulation of the concept.72 The development was so variegated, in fact, that Leroy B. Walters, Jr., was able to discern no less than five “classic just war theories” in his 1971 dissertation.73 Attempting to pinpoint one scholar or school as “original” in just war theory is a difficult task, as evidenced by Elshtain and Johnson’s own disagreement about the origins of the theory. (Elshtain favors Augustine, while Johnson chooses Aquinas as the starting point.) As Childress has noted, “there is no single just war theory.”74 O’Driscoll similarly claims that there are “many just war theories [within] one just war tradition.”75 Second, inasmuch as they treat contemporary discourse that diverges from these original sources as “a perversion of the just war idea,” such attempts may “serve to close down potential avenues of future development for the tradition.”76 If this occurs, just war thinkers may be left with a tradition that fails to function effectively or convincingly in a sociopolitical world very different from that in which most of the tradition developed. (2) Reframing Legitimate Authority The second challenge to current and future just-war theorists is to avoid the dualistic elements of the current debate, especially in terms of legitimate authority. Much of the debate in popular commentary no less than scholarly commentary since the initiation of the War on Terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq has become mired between arguments for liberal internationalism and arguments for conservative nationalism. The Catholic Church, mainline Protestant churches, and schools of thought such as Glen Stassen’s “just peacemaking” cadre often posit the United Nations as the properly legitimate authority to declare war. The Iraq War, they argue, was unjust in large part because of the lack of UN approval for the invasion. This argument should sound familiar to anyone who recalls the dialogue preceding the invasion of Iraq by the United States and coalition forces. What was (and is) missing from both popular and some scholarly

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arguments to this end was a clear and convincing justification of the UN’s authority. Indeed, little response was made to questions about the UN’s inefficacy raised by Elshtain and Weigel, who rightly highlight the deficiencies of the UN in crises in Bosnia and Rwanda.77 Still less response has been proffered to the suggestion that the UN’s legitimacy is undermined by a lack of international consent to its authority. On the surface, this lack of critical attention to the UN’s legitimacy by presumption-against-war thinkers seems to suggest, as some claim, that positioning the UN as the sole legitimate war-making authority arises more from a desire to limit attempts to declare war than from an actual sustained defense of international authority per se. The alternative to this casting of the UN is, to some extent, a defense of individual states’ rights to make war, a right that has been codified (to varying degrees) in international law since the Treaty of Westphalia. (And again, here we find an invocation of history as final arbiter to just-war debates, inasmuch as some statist arguments appeal to the tradition of post-Westphalian just war theory, which contains no requirement of international authorization for going to war.78 ) Such arguments are helpful but not without their limitations. On the one hand, Elshtain, Weigel, and others rightly note that the United States has a particular responsibility in the world given the fact that it remains the world’s sole superpower. Despite their narrow nationalism, Elshtain and Weigel, who similarly reject the legitimacy of international authority, are still correct that the United States bears a special responsibility in the twenty-first century. As the last superpower, the United States, with its powerful military and currency and pervasive culture is currently presiding over an “informal” empire.79 American military and economic power has created and continues to secure many of the international agreements that allow for open trading, international investment, and law enforcement. This, coupled with the fall of Great Britain after World War II and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, leads Thomas Friedman to characterize the United States as “the sole and dominant superpower [with] all other nations subordinate to it to one degree or another.”80 Nancy Birdsall agrees, arguing, “As the world’s only superpower and a leading ‘shareholder’ in the international financial institutions and the United Nations, the US has a particular responsibility, and its own key security and other interests in ensuring progress on [the] global development agenda.”81 As much as critics would like to deny it, it seems readily apparent that much of the world’s politics and economics depends on the United States

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refusing to abdicate its responsibility to help shape the international political order. On the other hand, there are significant problems with the nationalism of Elshtain and Weigel. First, merely claiming that the state has historical primacy over international institutions does not thereby mean that the state enjoys natural primacy over international institutions. The political landscape of states began with the Treaty of Westphalia; this change necessitated a different understanding of authority than that of the era of kings and princes. The state is a historical development; should the political landscape change, so must our conceptions of authority in just war theory. Second, while Elshtain, Weigel, and Johnson may be correct that the Christian Church was not historically pacifist in the sense understood today, at the very least, the Church, especially under Augustine, was critical of imperial power to a great extent, requiring emperors to meet the demands of justice when pursuing peace and justice through war and holding rulers to account for failures to meet these demands. Some nationalists, such as Weigel and the later Elshtain, have lost this sense of suspicion of imperial power as they have sought to counter both the presumptionagainst-war school’s internationalism and the influence of pacifism in the church and the academy. While this suspicion of imperial motives is a valuable balance to the occasionally uncritical bellicosity and nationalism of some just war theorists, many internationalists fail to apply the same hermeneutic to the UN. It is necessary for current and future just-war theorists to work past this impasse, in part, by applying the same stringent, rigorous critique to both individual states and international institutions. Transcending this dualistic divide also requires moving beyond conceptions of authority rooted in notions of law and power. Just-war nationalism too frequently eschews discussions of moral authority in favor of discussions of legality and efficacy (that is, power). The United States, it is argued, enjoys a right to unilateralism because of its legal sovereignty and because of its military and economic strength. Attempts to check this authority via critiques of America’s past failures around the globe are met with revulsion and derision by Elshtain and Weigel. Proponents of international institutions, however, fare no better in this regard. While many are quick to note the moral shortcomings of the United States, few provide an equally sharp critique of the morality of the UN, preferring instead to rest their arguments on international law. Both options restrict just war theory by framing it as a discourse of the powerful, as a source for thought by those with political power, economic power, or military power. This frames just-war reasoning in

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(3) Attending to Hermeneutics The third internal challenge to just war theory is to reexamine the premises of interpretations of the theory. Put differently, if we are going to make just war theory “viable and credible in the 21st century,” we must start by recognizing the importance of the hermeneutics of the tradition and diligently investigate the interpretive questions we bring to our understanding of the theory.83 The importance of the premises and presuppositions one brings to just war theory can be seen in the debate regarding the War in Iraq. Those who applied a presumption against war to just war theory were far more likely to oppose the War in Iraq than those who applied a presumption against injustice. What is important here is (1) the war was not opposed on absolutist pacifist grounds by critical just-war theorists; (2) the war was not supported on purely realist grounds by supportive just-war theorists; and (3) the authors discussed above began with just war theory (and their respective presumptions) and then evaluated the particular war, rather than using just war theory to “prove” their conclusions. Nonetheless, the judgments of this particular war divided along lines similar to those dividing the two presumptions. This in itself suggests, first, that just war theory is not self-interpreting or self-evident—reasonable, faithful people can and will disagree on the conclusions of just-war thinking—and second, that the presuppositions and premises thinkers bring to the task of interpreting just war theory may be more important for their determination of the justice of a particular war than any of the just war criteria themselves. That this is the case should be obvious, for it essentially means, for example, that the criterion of legitimate authority is determined less by concrete political law or the logic of just war theory than by particular understandings of legitimacy, authority, and sovereignty, the definitions of which are far from static. Less obvious, however, is what this means for just-war thinking as a discipline. If just-war thinking is primarily an interpretive enterprise, rather than an objective calculus (or, worse, mere casuistry), than the discipline as a whole must be viewed dialogically, as an interchange of perspectives. Those

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such a way as to lock out those lacking the military power to effectively confront injustice and/or the political power to create and shape legal policy on the national and international levels. The challenge in the coming century will be to widen this frame to allow for new understandings of authority in much the same way as occurred in the years following the Treaty of Westphalia.82

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who claim the single, authoritative perspective on just war theory (e.g. Johnson’s Thomism, Elshtain’s Augustinianism, and Fiala’s liberal secular humanism) must be forced to justify their hermeneutical approach. More simply, they must (and we must) demonstrate why the questions they (and we) ask of war and politics are the most appropriate for interpreting and applying just war theory. This challenge is far from novel. Indeed, it is analogous to the critiques levied by feminism, liberation theology, and critical race theory against dominant modes of sexual ethics, medical ethics, economic ethics, and legal theory. What makes this challenge distinctive, however, is that few of the points raised by these contextual theologies have been systematically brought to bear on the just war tradition. Elshtain, for her part, has in the past cogently and insightfully used feminist theory to tackle the question of war, but this perspective has been largely absent in her recent work.84 In Just War against Terror, she highlights women’s rights as an important aim of the Afghanistan War, but women’s views, as a guiding perspective, are not consistently applied to her analysis. Similarly, the US Catholic Bishops noted the effects of war and militarism on the poor, but the actual perspectives of the poor are not incorporated into their interpretation of just war theory. In both cases, the picture of just war theory that we are left with is one of powerful nations and individuals making decisions about and for marginalized peoples without carefully attending to the beliefs, opinions, and perspectives of marginalized peoples. This is much more the case in Weigel’s work, where his assertion of the “charism of responsibility” serves as a form of “gatekeeping” (O’Driscoll’s term), leaving decision-making out of the hands of those on the political periphery of a society. This lack of diversity is endemic to the just war tradition, inasmuch as it is and has been a mostly white, mostly Western, and mostly male field of study. Inclusion of diverse voices, however, should not be advocated merely because of the presupposed value of diversity. Rather, turning to marginalized perspectives may help us respond to the internal challenges described above, i.e. the challenge to develop the tradition in new directions, the challenge to transcend the logjam of internationalism and nationalism while articulating an ethic of responsibility for the United States, and the challenge to reevaluate hermeneutics. To this end, the perspective of African Americans is particularly helpful. In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. DuBois famously described the “double consciousness” of African Americans.85 African Americans

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as a group, DuBois argued, exist in a paradox of identity. While they self-identify as Americans, they also identify as Africans. As Americans, they are committed to their nation and the constitutional principles of liberty, equality, and democracy and have fought in defense of these in every major American war. Yet, as Africans, they identify with those people at home and abroad who have often been the victims of US power and hegemony. DuBois’ “double consciousness” is marked by a tension between commitment to the United States and a wider commitment to poor and powerless peoples of color around the world. This being the case, African Americans have historically been in a good position to critique US power through a perspective that transcends national borders while concurrently defending the interests and needs of their country of citizenship. Thus, they have been able to criticize foreign and domestic policies of the United States without slipping into an unreflective pessimism that is hypercritical of any use of US power. In short, this dual identity affords them a perspective on US power that takes seriously the necessary use of responsible power while maintaining the prophetic hermeneutic of suspicion of imperial power rooted in a transnational commitment to those most often harmed by the abuse of power, the very perspective that is needed in the twenty-first century and has been neglected by many modern just-war thinkers. The work of African American commentators on war, moreover, reveals a race-critical perspective that is sensitive to underlying issues at work when predominantly white, Western countries politically and/or militarily engage non-white, non-Western nations. This perspective is not only helpful but also necessary, inasmuch as the vast majority of American conflicts have been with predominantly nonwhite or non-Western nations in Asia and the Middle East and may continue to be so for the near future. Neglecting the role of race as the United States has fought against Koreans, Vietnamese, and Iraqis is one significant shortcoming of many just war theorists.

External Challenges of Just War Theory Beyond overcoming the internal challenges of just-war discourse, African American commentary on war also provides a useful framework for responding to the external challenges of just war theory, challenges that arise from developments in the sociopolitical and intellectual milieu in which just-war reasoning is done. While many factors could be highlighted here, there are two that stand out: globalization

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(in the social, political, and economic arenas) and the rise of historical consciousness (in the intellectual arena). It is important to note that terrorism is not considered a particularly “new” or particularly “challenging” element here, for two reasons. First, there is nothing particularly challenging about terrorism for just war theory itself. All theories of just war agree that it is simply unjustifiable. Theorists may differ on any number of questions, but no serious just war thinker can justify the intentional killing of innocents, which defines terrorism. Thus, there is nothing particularly challenging about terrorism for just war theory. The theory declares it simply and forthrightly immoral. Second, there is nothing really “new” per se about terrorism. As a tactic, it has a long, ignominious history. What is new is the ability of terrorists to acquire weapons of mass destruction and to execute their plans around the globe through a wide network of associates. These developments are the result of globalization, which carries several implications beyond, though including, changes in terrorism as a tactic. Thus, I treat terrorism within the context of what makes it (and the political world as a whole) both “new” and “challenging”: globalization. (1) Globalization The greatest challenge to the dominant twentieth-century ways of thinking is globalization. “The inexorable integration of markets, nation-states, and technologies to a degree never witnessed before . . . that is enabling individuals, corporations, and nation-states to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before,” as Thomas Friedman defines it, is making Cold War– era politics increasingly problematic in the twenty-first century. “The slow, fixed, divided Cold War system that had dominated international affairs since 1945 [is being] firmly replaced by a new, very greased, interconnected system called globalization.”86 Bernard Williams agrees, stating, “Theories which effectively reduced international relations to the interaction of independent states are simpleminded in that they have too few thoughts and feelings to match the world as it really is.”87 In reality, the world today is governed by a system of interconnectedness that “is much more complex than the Cold War structure.”88 One prevailing trend in this system that is of particular interest is the rising cost of warfare. Due to the interconnectedness and interdependence of global markets, interstate warfare is becoming much riskier for nation-states. Dependent as domestic economies are on foreign investment and trade, any indication that a national society is

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in turmoil can create significant economic difficulties for that nation. For example, in the wake of India’s nuclear test in 1998 and the sanctions by the United States that followed, Moody’s Investor’s Services, the international credit-rating agency, downgraded India’s economy, which made a recession quite likely, causing the ruling party of India to beat a hasty retreat from its nuclear pursuits in fear of a crippling economic downturn.89 While in the Cold War system a closed-off nation-state that relied on its own investors and production or small circles of trading partners would have been able to survive a foreign war, with the sanctions and embargos such a war entailed, this is increasingly seen as a near-impossibility now, at least between those countries most enmeshed in the globalization system (which, Friedman argues, includes far more countries than most realize). This “wall” that formerly marked Cold War international affairs is swiftly being replaced by the “web” of globalization, such that, as in the case of Japan’s banking industry, the failure to remain open to an increasing wide range of trading partners can lead to stagnation of a national economy or worse.90 In today’s world, a massive war between, say, Russia and China could foreseeably lead to the economic collapse of both countries and a worldwide recession. The loss of trade and revenue when combined with the increasing costs of military technology makes war today a vastly expensive enterprise. As Friedman notes, in regard to the War in Iraq, “the Bush Administration had to spend six months putting together a coalition of partners, not just to wage war on Saddam but, more importantly, to pay for it.”91 At over $700 million a day, going it alone without an international coalition is a risky gamble indeed.92 Moreover, the interconnectedness of world markets makes war risky even for nations not directly involved in a particular war. Thus, the violence and animosity between India and Pakistan deeply affects the ability of Western countries, ostensibly uninvolved, to trade goods and services. Economically and politically, the interests of uninvolved nations can be strongly affected by wars around the globe. The domestic security of a particular nation-state is becoming more integral to the international security of all states than it was in the past and vice versa.93 This is not to say that all the changes wrought by globalization are positive. Still less is it to say that this interdependence points to a new era of perpetual peace where war will be avoided because of economic and political risks. In fact, while the first prevailing trend is toward mutual dependence among nation-states, the second trend of globalization is actually toward more conflict within nation-states and regions. Globalization, while encouraging the movement of capital

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and goods, actually increases the economic divide between rich and poor, such that the poor become poorer, while also increasing the dissemination of information via the internet and television. This increased traffic of information, according to Richard Rosencrance, Etel Solingen, and Arthur A. Stein, creates a situation where “individuals may become dissatisfied as they compare their present situation with known life-possibilities elsewhere,” especially in their own nation.94 Moreover, the power of “Groups of” organizations, like the Group of 8 and the Group of 7, to determine economic and political policies in nations that are not represented in the groups presents to many in the 2/3 World95 an image of wealthy international elites using economic power to override local and traditional policies and structures. There is thus the perception, and in many cases the reality, of an elite group of wealthy people in each nation and an elite group of nations themselves that are reaping the benefits of globalization while many peoples and nations are left paying the costs, which include growing rates of poverty and hunger.96 Rosencrance, Solingen, and Stein note that until these disparities are corrected, “inequalities may be one of the causes of tensions between nations . . . and [may] lead to greater sub-nationalism of the [negatively] affected regions” of nations in places such as India, Mexico, and Indonesia.97 This may become especially volatile when combined with what is perceived to be a loss of control over national identity and destiny. This sense of a loss of control, according to Friedman, is an overarching consequence of globalization. Individuals and countries are finding themselves caught in a web of markets that they do not control and are often at the mercy of economic trends they can do little to direct. As Friedman describes it, while “the defining anxiety” of the Cold War was nuclear annihilation, the defining anxiety today is uncertainty about jobs, income, and standard of living, all of which may be impacted by global changes in politics, economics, and technology.98 But perhaps the most pressing uncertainty facing individuals and communities concerns their cultural identities, sense of self, and traditions, what Friedman calls “the olive tree” of communities. Unlike the Cold War, which pitted olive trees against other olive trees (most notably Communism and Democratic Capitalism) in an ideological battle, “the biggest threat today to your olive tree is likely to come from the Lexus—from all the anonymous, transnational, standardizing market forces and technologies that make up today’s globalizing economic system.”99 What this system represents, according to Friedman, is really the spread of American culture, the dominant culture of globalization.

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As the process of “Americanization” of world markets continues, Friedman and others argue, a growing backlash of those disenfranchised by and disenchanted with “the Lexus” will revolt in order to preserve their “olive trees.” As he writes: “If participation [in globalization] comes at the price of a country’s identity, if individuals feel their olive trees crushed, or washed out, by this global system, these olive trees will rebel.”100 Paul Kennedy observed this trend in the early 1990s, perceptively predicting that economic disparities and ethnic rivalry in the twenty-first century may cause “further internal and regional conflicts [to] break out.”101 Rosencrance et al. agree, arguing that, even if economic benefits are extended to regional minorities, dissident groups who oppose globalization in toto may still arise, as we have seen in Chechnya, Kashmir, and East Timor. Whereas such differences in identity and self-perceived destiny may in the past have been greeted with international approval and resulted in the creation of new nation-states (resulting in 150 new nations between 1945 and 1989), Rosencrace et al. argue that provinces today are fighting an uphill battle for independence. In a globalized world, attempts at liberation or separation require a large measure of international support, which is waning in the twenty-first century. Hence, Kurds, Kashmiris, and Palestinians have been unable to achieve independence despite protracted battles. International support is declining since the “great powers” that govern international bodies like the G-8 and the UN Security Council “rely on peace and stability” to thrive economically. Moreover, “globalization favors bigger players, with a greater supply of cash,” rather than small nations with limited capacities for revenue and production.102 Thus, analysts find little reason to believe that many new states will be created in the globalized twentyfirst century. Instead, dissident groups will remain under the auspices of current governments, either by choice (in the case of Quebec) or by compulsion (in the case of Taiwan). If dissent is met by the latter option, which includes military and/or economic force, and the desire for autonomy is not met satisfactorily, then “terrorism may be the default response,” as in the case of Basques in Spain, Kurds in Iraq, and the Taliban in Pakistan.103 Moreover, the international response to movements for autonomy may reflect a new attitude toward sovereignty altogether. Rather than being rooted in an objective sense of identity or rights of a people to statehood, Colin Tyler argues that sovereignty is more correctly viewed today in terms of “relationality.” Fixed and “juridical” notions of state sovereignty, which were founded on the objective rights of a people to self-determination quite apart from the context

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of international relations, are giving way to a relational theory of sovereignty, in which the relationship between a single nation and the community of nations is emphasized in two ways. First, rights to sovereignty are increasingly viewed in terms of the common good of a globalized international community. Hence, Rosencrace et al. argue that support for movements toward autonomy depend in large measure on the dissident group’s attitude toward globalization, with support being granted (at least tacitly) to those provinces that support globalization. Second, the impact of international recognition is now seen as more important in many ways than any objective argument for rights to autonomy. Tyler cites as an example of this the non-state status of Taiwan, which he argues, is upheld because the United States and China do not support autonomy and not because the Taiwanese fail to make a strong normative case for it.104 Sovereignty itself, then, is viewed now in the context of internationalism and global interconnectedness and less in terms of individualistic juridical rights. This may further be the result of nation-states’ failure to secure the political common good within globalization. As Max Stackhouse puts it, both the classical polis and the modern nation “involve an ‘us’ that is too small to be genuinely common.”105 In sum, there are several characteristics that make the twentyfirst century much different from the Cold War world. First, the interdependence of nations makes direct conflicts between nations both riskier and less likely. Second, the phenomenon of globalization increases the risk that regional and subnational disputes will erupt into violence, often terminating in terrorism. Third, the faster and cheaper movement of capital, information, and human persons also makes it more likely that regional disputes will result in the export of violence to other countries around the globe. Fourth, the interconnectedness and interdependence of the international community demands a different vision of sovereignty than was feasible in the Cold War era. This new understanding is marked by an emphasis on the possession and exercise of sovereignty within the context of international relations. The impact of individual state autonomy on the global community must now be taken into account when evaluating both the possession and exercise of “sovereign rights.” In his 1999 book Morality and Contemporary Warfare, James Turner Johnson argues that current moral reasoning about war demonstrates a “lack of readiness for this new era . . . [given] the legacy of preoccupation by policymakers and moral analysts alike with the United States-Soviet rivalry [of the Cold War].”106 In opposition to those who base the unjustifiability of modern war on the

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. . . [T]he characteristic shape that warfare has actually taken since the end of the Cold War is quite different from that envisioned by the prophets of global holocaust. Contemporary warfare has in fact taken the form of local conflicts, more often than not civil wars, in which no great alliances of nations are involved; these have been wars fought for reasons based in local rivalries, typically inflamed by historical animosities, ethnic disparity, or religious difference, rather than for reasons of global Realpolitik.107

Johnson’s analysis of the effect of global political developments on moral reasoning about war is worth attending to, for he cogently outlines the ways in which globalization and increased local, regional violence should influence modern understandings of just war theory, especially by limiting appeals to the horror of nuclear weapons and world wars to justify just-war pacifism and by encouraging (or at least appreciating) the increasing role of regional organizations such as NATO in settling disputes.108 As we will see below, such regional alliances, as Johnson argues, may well be the via media between liberal internationalism and conservative nationalism that twenty-first-century just war theory desperately needs. Johnson’s work here is significant, not only for its own merits but also for its uniqueness among just war writing today; as he noted in the 1990s, but could still be said today, too few just-war theorists really engage the developments wrought by the changing global political landscape. (2) Historical Consciousness The second trend of the late twentieth century and the early twentyfirst century, which presents a challenge to just war theory as it emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, is a persistent challenge to claims of universality and rationality made by 1/3 World nations. In his book Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism, Cornel West laments the loss of true democracy in the face of political nihilism and the will to power that has filled the void left by the absence of trust and hope in the power of principles. As democratic principles have eroded in the American public and American leadership, the void created by their absence has been filled by civic disengagement and the “unprincipled abuse of power” by the leadership of the country. Without the guiding force of rich democratic principles, the exercise of power continues, unabated by those very principles this power claims to be serving, i.e. liberty and justice.

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destructiveness of modern weaponry (especially nuclear weapons), he argues,

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The principal form of this “political nihilism” is what West refers to as “evangelical nihilism,” or the belief that “might makes right.”109 “Evangelical nihilism” is expressed outwardly through the imposition of a particular understanding of political order and justice on other individuals, communities, and nations in a manner that does not take into account differing conceptions of political order and justice. It is expressed inwardly by a rationalization of the use of power that appeals to fear and greed to silence dissent by fellow citizens. In both cases, the issue at stake is the definition of the common good and the means used to secure it. The “evangelical nihilist” attributes to his/herself the sole power to define the common good and the right to secure this vision while denying to others the same power and influence. This determination is justified by a combination of juristic appeals to sovereignty and realist appeals to effectual power, especially in the case of the United States. Thus, for many just war theorists, the United States has the legal right to defend itself and others, and the moral right to enforce a particular vision of the political common good because no other effectual power exists to do so.110 The circumambulation of the UN by the Bush Administration in 2003 is one example of this type of “hubris,” an action that was defended by O’Donovan, Elshtain, and Weigel.111 As Hartley S. Spatt observes, “The majority of commentators on just war theory today connect authority with legality rather than morality, the legal basis of ‘legitimacy’ appearing to make it a more objective criterion than ‘right.’ ”112 Thus, the defense of the invasion of Iraq was couched by most commentators in terms of the legal rights of the United States, with challenges to the United States’ moral rights summarily dismissed. Elshtain recognizes the problems of authority and power in international politics. She observes, “Given the temptations attendant upon the exercise of power, authority may overstep its rightful bounds, itself become lawless, and thereby lose its legitimacy.”113 However, when it comes to international or transnational authority, she, like Weigel, rejects the role of entities such as the UN or the International Criminal Court in guiding the foreign policy of the United States on the grounds that no such body has the “legitimacy” to make a moral claim on American power.114 Rather, both authors attribute to the US knowledge of and motivation by objective principles such as liberty, equality, and justice.115 Both also argue that the United States is capable of discerning the right use of power without drawing on the insights of other nations or peoples, despite the United States’ historic failure to act rightly in political spheres around the globe, a point that

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both Weigel and Elshtain concede. Indeed, organizations that include these other nations and peoples have no moral authority to contribute to the discussion, according to Elshtain and Weigel, because, first, they have no recognized legitimacy (at least in America) and, second, no power to enforce their own legal or moral claims. As noted above, America’s military and economic power make it the sole legitimate “guarantor of structure and order” in the world, even to the point of justified “imperialism.”116 Such thought seems to lend credence to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s unsubtle warning about American selfconfidence (as stated by West), “Narrow nationalism is a handmaiden of imperial rule,” and Alexis de Tocqueville’s concept of “a democratic despotism” arising from political and cultural hubris.117 Concepts of “objective rationality” and “universal morality” are not new in just war theory. Indeed, in laying out his “law of nations,” Hugo Grotius sought to apply categories of natural law to political matters. He argued that “right” and “justice” in political relations are universally valid and universally accessible by rational persons. The individual political actor, he claimed, was able through reason to discern justice and right in the political order, in law, and in the use of force to defend both. Elshtain and Weigel draw on this tradition. For them, Justice is a universal, objective category. Like Grotius’ rational individual, the rational policymakers of the US government are able to discern on their own what constitutes a just political order and a just use of force without assistance from other voices, either domestic or international. Hence, UN authorization for armed force (especially in the case of intervention) is “desirable” but not necessary.118 (This may be the impetus behind Elshtain’s rejection of diplomacy. If all rational actors are capable of discerning justice and right, then those who commit injustice are not only unjust but also too irrational to respond to reasoned dialogue.119 ) Yet, since at least the 1960s, liberation movements and contextual theologies have challenged the notion of universal, objective rationality, especially in matters concerning justice and power. In contrast to twentieth-century ideologies of “development,” in which powerful nations sought to improve the life-situations of peoples in the 2/3 World by spreading the doctrines of free-market capitalism and constitutional democracy, these minorities have questioned whether the 1/3 World has anything to say about justice and right in the 2/3 World, let alone the final word on morality in the world. More and more, previously objectified peoples who were once deemed “projects” of “First World” sociopolitical moral action have insisted on their own right to subjecthood, their right to contribute to the content of justice, right,

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and the common good in the international order. West, for example, argues that justice and peace in the international order require an engagement with indigenous understandings of justice and peace and an appropriation of native resources for transforming reality in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He argues that 2/3 World peoples must be viewed as subjects of their own salvation and progenitors of native Democracy, not as objects of US salvation and projects of decidedly American democracy.120 The questions that such a critique raises for notions of a “tranquility of order,” especially when viewed as preservation of a law-based status quo, are important for just-war theorists to consider in the coming century. “Order” may often be more oppressive or unjust than “disorder.” Central to West’s argument is the pervasive emphasis on particularity found in liberationist writings. While Western thought is rooted in emphases on “objectivity” and “universality,” 2/3 World peoples have highlighted the role of particularity in human reason. For them, the “objective” justice of a disinterested United States is all too often the particular justice of a mostly white, mostly Christian, and mostly wealthy social elite. In Latin America, for example, liberationists often recall the “objective” justice of American intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador, which ultimately defended American economic interests and left countless indigenous people disenfranchised, destitute, and dead. For some, American claims to objective morality have been a ruse, an expedient justification for action that secures economic interests. For them, West’s words ring true: “Only when the interests of the American empire are at stake—as in Saddam Hussein’s barbaric actions in Kuwait or Kim Jong Il’s vicious threats in Korea—does US moral rhetoric about freedom surface.”121 For still others, language of objectivity is not merely expedient rhetoric but a myth in its entirety. Theologian James Cone, for example, found that the “objective and universal” theology he was taught in seminary was far more likely to be the subjective and particular theology of white Christians. The “central thesis” of his God of the Oppressed is a challenge to all who would claim objectivity or universality for their theological (and we may add here political and social) projects: “[O]ne’s social and historical context decides not only the questions we address to God but also the mode or form of the answers given to the questions.”122 He argues that our particular experiences and contexts are determinative of all of our normative and descriptive conclusions. Such is even the case with the twentieth-century human rights and development movements originating in the 1/3 World. The authors

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of Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures argue that the language of human rights is a Western construction divorced from the thoughts and experiences of the very people human rights activists claim to be serving.123 As Colin Tyler puts it, “The idea that there is some neutral perspective or procedure that determines the ‘objectively correct’ position is a fiction which serves, sometimes consciously, to stifle fundamental debates about power and representation.”124 Rather than arguing for moral relativism, however, Cone, West, and others instead posit that Truth, Justice, and Right are ascertained most sufficiently by aggregating a wider variety of particular perspectives, especially from communities that are suffering. Liberation, then, is seen less as acquiring the rights enjoyed by 1/3 World peoples and more in terms of being in a position to determine the content and meaning of those rights without coercion or imposition by 1/3 World nations. Taken together, the phenomena of globalization and historical consciousness make two demands on 1/3 World nations. First, since the interconnectedness of a globalized world expands the range of effects that actions by these countries cause, especially for the poor around the world, consideration for these far-reaching effects must be taken into account. It will not do, for example, for the United States to pursue its security without due consideration for the ways that this pursuit affects other nations and peoples, given the reality of globalization. It is difficult for the United States to justify unilateral pursuit of its own interests while using tanks built in Egypt from materials mined in South Asia, paid for with funds from coalition members in Australia and Great Britain, transported through foreign airspace with the permission of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and driven by the sons and daughters of immigrants from Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. At the same time, the critique by 2/3 World peoples of the claimed objectivity of 1/3 World rationality demands that 1/3 World nations take seriously voices other than their own when determining the very categories of security, liberty, peace, and justice, as well as the way each of these is pursued. This is true even when talking about “our enemies.” In the new international context, with its above-mentioned relational view of sovereignty, “even if one views the other participants as enemies, one must still at least see them as actors to be answered. Necessarily implied in that perception of their agency is some recognition of their ‘being a person like us’: that is, some recognition of their status as a rational agent whom one can reform, or even with whom one can, at least in principle, compromise.”125 In sum,

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while 1/3 World nations must mitigate the negative consequences of their actions on the rest of the world, they cannot know how to do this adequately without taking into account the perspectives of other peoples, especially the minorities at home and abroad most likely to be negatively affected by war and those who, in a Cold War–type context, would have been demonized as the wholly “other.”

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2

Who Makes Decisions? Right Au t h o r i t y i n H i s to r i c a l Context

This analysis of just war theory begins with the question, “Who

makes decisions about war?” This involves directly the traditional criterion of “right authority,” sometimes rendered variously as “legitimate authority,”1 “duly-constituted authority,”2 or “proper authority.”3 This, obviously, is often tied to the once-important criterion of declaration of war, emphasized by Cicero and other early thinkers, but largely conflated in recent years with the broader criterion of authority in general,4 since a valid declaration of war can only logically be made by an authority capable of making and acting on the declaration of military action. My concern is not to parse these two sometimes-separate criteria but rather to focus intently on the understanding of what constitutes a right authority to make decisions about war. Of special concern here will be the underlying assumptions and presuppositions that have shaped the portrait of authority painted by just war theorists throughout the tradition. Because of the wealth of discussion on authority, this topic will be covered in two chapters.

Why Begin with Authority? Before assessing the tradition, it is worthwhile to defend my choice to treat this criterion first, given the tendency among some modern thinkers to prioritize other criteria like just cause and last resort. There are several reasons why these other criteria must be secondary (at least in order, if not in importance) to right authority in just war theory.

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First, while there is debate over the presumptions of just war theory as discussed in the previous chapter, there is little disagreement in the Christian tradition about the presumption of an earthly authority capable of waging war. Historic Christian thought on war and peace may be said, generally speaking, to begin with a presumption of authority, even while other presumptions are debated. This was true even for the earliest pacifist theologians. Tertullian, despite believing Roman emperors to be among the greatest “enemies and persecutors of Christians,” still claimed that these same rulers had been “called by our Lord to [their] office.”5 While he denies the right of military service to Christians, the famously pacifist Latin theologian still admits that the “dreadful woes” of political instability and disorder are “only retarded by the continued existence of the Roman empire.”6 Thus, while Christians may not engage in warfare, they nevertheless should spiritually support through prayer the emperor and armies of Rome. Origen likewise enjoined such spiritual assistance to the emperor on the part of Christians, arguing against Celsus that Christians constituted an “army of piety” that prayed for the emperor’s continued safety and success in battle.7 Origen questions, and rejects, the right of Christians to serve as either soldiers or public officials; yet, like Tertullian, Origen does not question the existence of a valid secular authority, the obedience owed to such an authority by Christians, or the right and responsibility of that authority to respond to threats with armed violence. All three points, for Origen and Tertullian, are assumed. As the just war tradition developed in Christianity, these assumptions remained, even while more complex questions arose about the nature of authority and the relationship between the government and the Church. Indeed, as pacifist writers cited Jesus’ apparent opposition to violence in Matthew 5: 38–48 and Matthew 26: 52, many just war theorists responded not with a defense of war per se (which most recognized as regrettable or mournful) but with the Pauline assumption of a secular, sword-bearing authority. Long before there is a just cause, a right intention, or a proportional use of violence in Christian just war theory, there is an authority, instituted by God and capable of discerning an appropriate cause, having a right intention, and determining a proportionate response to evil. Put another way, long before there can be discernment, intent, or determination, there must be a subject capable of performing these actions. That such a subject exists is unquestioned in just war theory, whether classical or modern, liberal

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or conservative, pacifistic or realist. Major differences, however, arise when the complex questions of the source, nature, and purpose of such authority is considered, and these are too often obscured when the criterion of right authority becomes a simplistic choice between the nation-state and the international institution. This chapter will briefly summarize the insights of major just-war thinkers on each of these factors in turn: source of authority, purpose of authority, and nature of authority.

Source of Authority Paul’s Letter to the Romans Christian reflection on the relationship between secular government and war begins with Paul’s letter to Roman Christians: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain. It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. (Rom. 13: 1–5; NRSV)

While he argues that Paul is specifically referring to the payment of taxes here, Thomas H. Tobin, SJ, also notes that Paul’s exhortation to Roman Christians to obey secular authorities reflects widely held beliefs of the proper relationship between Christians and nonChristian government. The passage reflects two aspects of government common to both early Jewish Christians and Greco-Roman Jews in general. First, Paul echoes the common belief that “these rulers received their power to rule from God.” The second aspect, related intrinsically to the first, is that “these rulers ought to be held in honor.”8 While Tobin focuses on the notion of “honor” in this section of his book on Romans, especially in reference to prayers and sacrifices made to God on the rulers’ behalf, Wilfrid Parsons, SJ, highlights the conscientious obedience of verse 5 in his discussion of the influence of Romans 13 on Christian political thought. He argues that,

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R i g h t Au t h o r i t y i n H i s to r i c a l C o n t e x t

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according to Paul, “God and Caesar both have their respective claims on man’s conscience [because] Caesar’s power also comes from God; or rather, it is God’s power exercised by man for man’s good.”9 Tobin is less clear about how the two claims (authority comes from God; rulers are owed obedience) are related. While he does not explicitly deny a causal connection, his concern is to highlight the practicality of Paul’s call for obedience. Submission to authorities, according to Tobin, “was a religiously grounded attitude on the part of a minority group in the Roman empire toward the overwhelming reality of Roman power.”10 Simply put, the power of Rome provided security and stability to the empire, goods which even the Jewish Christian minority enjoyed. What is more, opposing the empire while living in the shadows of the palace would be foolhardy. Obedience had practical justifications for Paul’s Roman audience. Both interpretations, Parson’s deductive obedience and Tobin’s practical injunction, are employed by Christian writers, as we will see. At this point, there is little reason to draw too sharp a line between the two, although the difference will prove important when we turn to African American writers in Chapter 3. While these initial claims by Paul form the foundation for much Christian political thought, what Paul doesn’t say in his epistle is of equal importance. First, he does not claim that all authorities are good merely because their authority comes from God. Paul, like the Christian heirs to his thought, was aware that there are good rulers and bad rulers; both may provide a necessary minimum of stability and order, but that alone does not render evil rule “good.” Second, implicit in Paul’s viewpoint is the recognition that secular authority, because it comes from God and is justified by the authority’s role as “God’s minister,” is therefore limited by God. Secular authority is a minister, which means that no government may claim divinity for itself inasmuch as ministry implies a higher authority to which earthly government is accountable. Secular authority, moreover, is the minister of God, which implies not only limits on its title but also limits on its action; its power is not absolute. Government, for example, cannot command something that is clearly contrary to the will of God. Governments that fail to recognize their due limits, either by claiming undeserved titles or by commanding evil actions, face the judgment of the God who grants their authority in the first place. Put simply, “God punishes rulers who misuse their power.”11 As we will see, both sets of claims, exhortations to obedience, and admonitions to respect due limits, were significantly influential for Christian thought about war and peace. As Parsons notes, “Paul remained

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practically the sole source of political thinking” in Christianity until the fifth century.12

Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa, is arguably the most important Christian political thinker after Paul. His most significant exploration of political authority is found in the monumental City of God, completed over the course of 14 years and written to address the complementarity of Christianity and secular government. As Romans faced sieges and invasions by Alaric and the Goths (in Rome) and the Vandals (in Roman North Africa), Christianity became a popular scapegoat for the destruction wrought by the enemies of the empire. Such misery would not have occurred, they argued, had Rome not traded worship of the older gods for worship of the pacifist, submissive Christian God. Augustine responded by claiming that Christians are no enemy of the emperor. On the contrary, they are among the most loyal citizens, inasmuch as their allegiance to the empire is founded on their devotion to God, which grounds a deeper loyalty than mere patriotism. All emperors, Augustine argued, are granted their authority by God: “the one true God, who never leaves the human race unattended by his judgment or his help, granted dominion to the Romans when he willed and in that measure that he willed.”13 I will consider the reasons for this authorization by God when the discussion turns to the purposes of government. Immediately, however, it is necessary to state that earthly authority, for Augustine as for Paul, comes from God. While he is not unconcerned with the practical difficulties of rebellion (as Tobin highlighted in regard to Paul), it is clear that for Augustine, obedience to earthly authorities hinges on this claim of origins. In City of God, “political allegiance is raised to the level of a Divine service.”14 This contributes to “an assumption of social passivity and quiescence in the decisions and moral judgments of authority” in Augustine’s work.15 Three aspects of this claim are worth mentioning here, though each will receive greater attention below. First, because authority is granted by God in accordance with God’s freedom, obedience is enjoined even when the ruler is a tyrant.16 Indeed, God’s freedom to bestow authority to whomever God chooses, to command war, and to foreordain both the length and outcome of individual wars, is central to Augustine’s just war theory. Augustine’s God is fundamentally active in the human world, ordering the universe to its proper end, at times

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by installing unjust rulers or ordering protracted, destructive wars.17 Opposing either, for Christians, is tantamount to disobeying God. Second, for Augustine, the authority granted by God is not just formative. God does not merely ordain that there be an authority generally but that specific people be endowed with the responsibilities and power of temporal governance.18 God is so involved, and so free, that there is little room to question the authority of a ruler, whose office has been both created by God and filled by God’s appointee. Authority, and the obedience that it demands, is grounded in the will of God to appoint human governors. The authority to rule, and thus the authority to declare war, admit of no other justification in Augustine’s system and thus, in fact, cannot be delegitimized by appeals to other bases for authority (e.g. personal character of the ruler). Indeed, even in cases where war may be “an unrighteous command on the part of the king,” the soldier’s duty is obedience.19 As we will see, this is a significant difference between Augustine and later thinkers. Third and finally, Augustine’s universe is hierarchical. The analogies that Augustine employs between the paterfamilias, the emperor, and God are based on this hierarchical view of the cosmos and human society. God’s activity in the world, on Augustine’s account, occurs primarily through the mediation of authorities. This is not to say that God is unconcerned with those who are under the authority of these various figures. Clearly, Augustine’s God displays love for all creatures, great and small. However, the frame of reference for understanding Augustine’s God, primarily, is the frame of earthly authority. God may love all equally, but God is related in a special way to those in positions of power. It is their activity that God directs for the good of humankind, and thus it is their activity which receives the benefit of the doubt in the consciences of individuals within each sphere of authority, namely family, community, and nation. The quiescence and passivity that John Langan, SJ, noted above is the proper deference individuals are to show authorities in each of these areas. Christians submit to God; citizens submit to rulers; and women, children, and slaves submit to male heads of households. God, significantly, is identified with these authority figures (and vice versa), which makes challenging their freedom not only impractical (given their power) but also sinful (given their role as representatives of God in their proper spheres of responsibility). This hierarchical understanding of the universe and human society will stand in sharp contrast to the picture painted by African American thought in Chapter 3.

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While Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) relies heavily on Augustine in much of his thinking, his admonitions about tyranny mark a significant departure from Augustine’s blind obedience to authority. If God’s will is the central theological category for Augustine’s just war theory, God’s reason is the central feature of Aquinas’ theology. God is still the source of political authority, for Aquinas, though his God is not marked by the type of radical freedom that characterized Augustine’s God. Rather, God’s providential ordering of the universe, according to Aquinas, allows for reasonable claims to be made about the purposes of this order. The universe operates according to the Eternal Law of God, “the rational governance of everything on the part of God.”20 God’s rule of the universe is rational for Aquinas, rather than volitional as it was in Augustine’s thought. For Aquinas, secular government does not have its origin in human sinfulness, as it does for Augustine; government arises from our common human nature as “social and political animals.”21 Since “it is natural for man to live in association with others, there must be some way for them to be governed” in order to maintain the unity of the association and direct the members toward their proper end.22 Because of the close association Aquinas proposes between the origin of government and government’s purpose, it is difficult to discuss the two features separately. Nevertheless, three comments about the source of political authority in Aquinas can be made. First, because political authority derives from the rational governance of the universe—the eternal law rather than the will of God—Aquinas is able to critique tyranny in a way that Augustine cannot. For Aquinas, the origin of authority is not self-justifying; the authority of rulers is not legitimized merely by appealing to God as their source. Unjust rulers, those whose governance contravenes eternal law, are not “rulers” in the proper sense nor are unjust laws that contradict the eternal or natural law “laws,” properly speaking. Both terms, “law” and “authority,” are used to denote conformity to eternal law and its derivative, natural law. Absent this conformity, the very designations are inappropriate. “A tyrannical law, since it is not in accordance with reason, is not a law in the strict sense, but rather a perversion of the law . . . Human law has the quality of a law in so far as it is in accordance with right reason and in this respect it is evident that it is derived from the eternal law.”23 This leaves ample room in Thomistic political ethics for

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Aquinas

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both naming and, to some extent opposing, tyrants (unjust rulers) and tyranny (unjust laws). The second important comment, following from the first, is that Aquinas is not a supporter of civil disobedience or tyrannicide for these reasons. He still, in concert with much Christian thought both before and after him, urges obedience even in the face of tyranny. However, and this is an important turn, Aquinas does not enjoin obedience on strictly theo-ethical grounds (as both Paul and Augustine did) but mostly on prudential grounds. In his treatise On Kingship, Aquinas is clear that “tyranny is to be tolerated to avoid greater evils.” Specifically, he argues that it is likely that a situation of revolt or tyrannicide may lead to conditions which favor the usurpation of the government by “evil men.”24 Aquinas continues this prudential line of reasoning in the Summa Theologiae, where he argues that “the overthrow of [a tyrannical] government does not have the character of sedition— unless perhaps it produces such disorder that the society under the tyrant suffers greater harm from the resulting disturbance than from the tyrant’s rule.”25 While Paul E. Sigmund sees a clear difference between Aquinas’ arguments in On Kingship and the Summa,26 inasmuch as Aquinas counsels acquiescence in the former and refers to tyrannicide as “praiseworthy” in the latter, there is little reason to see the two sections as contradictory. In both, Aquinas is concerned with the practicality of revolution. Because the tyrant can make no moral claim on the citizen, and because the common good of the political community can make this claim, killing the tyrant who threatens this common good is morally praiseworthy. However, if this action is taken by a private citizen, it is likely that the result will produce more harm than good for the community. In both writings, Aquinas supports deposition of a tyrant only if it is done by those who enjoy a measure of authority within the community, such as magistrates or representatives of the people who granted authority to the tyrant in the first place.27 The important point for our purposes is that Aquinas does not disallow resistance to unjust rulers on moral grounds. Authority can be lost in his political thought in ways that it cannot in the work of Augustine. This brings us to the third and final comment to be made here. While Aquinas does not encourage Christians to acquiesce to unjust rule in the hopes that God will judge tyrants, this is not to say that he is some sort of egalitarian or democrat. Much like Augustine, Aquinas’ political community is hierarchical. Sigmund attributes this feature of Aquinas’ political thought to the influence of PseudoDionysius, whose appreciation of hierarchy “gave a theological basis

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to the hierarchical outlook of the Middle Ages and reinforced the antiequalitarian aspects of the medieval order.”28 The result for Aquinas is a social hierarchy derived from a cosmic hierarchy, in which earthly rule of the political community is understood through the lens of God’s rule of the universe. This provides theological grounds, according to both Sigmund and Katherine Archibald, for social and political marginalization of those at the bottom of the hierarchy. According to Archibald, this top-down view of authority translates into a defense of “the structure of hierarchy, status, and privilege as such.”29 Basing her claims largely on On Kingship, Archibald further argues that Aquinas is primarily concerned with the action of those at the top of the hierarchy, “the highest, the nobles,” as Aquinas calls them.30 “The mass of the unfree, this great majority of the populace, are, of course, to be excluded from participation and even apparently consideration in the political life of the state.”31 In Aquinas’ theology, as in Augustine’s theology, God is identified most closely with the “noble” class, the top of the sociopolitical pyramid, as it were. As such, it is their activity that serves as Aquinas’ point of entry into political inquiry, and it is they who have the benefit of the doubt when investigating the justness of political authority or laws. The default response of “the mass” of citizens, even if only prudentially, is obedience. If laws, specifically, or rulers, more generally, are to be considered unjust, this determination is made by their conformity to eternal and natural law, rather than by an investigation of their impact on the people at lower levels in the social hierarchy. The point here is that Aquinas’ theology allows for the marginalization of significant populations within the political community by focusing almost exclusively on those at the top of the hierarchy (God, in cosmic terms, or political authority – God’s agents—in sociopolitical terms). The role of politically marginalized citizens is circumscribed by Aquinas, since they have little role in granting authority and are without sufficient power to challenge that authority when it has become unjust. This latter task, presumably, is left by Aquinas to the work of other princes and rulers who have the requisite authority to depose tyrants. The Salamanca School The Spanish theologians Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) and Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), representatives of what came to be called the “Salamanca School” (from the University of Salamanca), were significantly influential in the development of just war theory. Notably, along with Hugo Grotius, they were among the first to

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place just war theory within the context of the jus gentium (the law of nations). Vitoria, for his part, extended the notion of political sovereignty to non-Christian, non-European peoples, a nearly revolutionary claim at the time. Suarez, equally concerned about questions of sovereignty, represented a shift away from the predominately aristocratic notions of authority found in Augustine and Aquinas; his proposals regarding the source of authority are among the earliest intimations of democratic political theory found in Catholic thought. Vitoria’s dependence on Thomistic philosophy is quite clear in his elucidation of the source of political authority. Using Aristotelian notions of causality, filtered through Aquinas, Vitoria argued that God serves as the efficient cause of public authority. “Sovereigns,” he writes, “have their power by natural and divine law, not from the commonwealth or from men.”32 This establishment of authority by God, as the author of both natural and divine law, grounds Vitoria’s argument that “there can be no appeal against the king to the commonwealth.”33 Because authority comes from God, it enjoys the right of “due obedience” from individual citizens.34 He further argues that “power of this kind cannot be abolished even by the consensus of men.”35 However, it is important to note here that Vitoria is not talking about revolution and regime change; his dominant concern is anarchy, a concern he shares with his forebear Aquinas. Unlike Aquinas, however, Vitoria is much less prone to subscribe to notions of a social hierarchy. While Aquinas and Augustine both held that some classes of men (in their work, women were never fit for such positions) were suited for governing and others suited by nature for being governed, Vitoria argued that “there is no convincing reason why one man should have power more than another.”36 God, as efficient cause, dictates that there must be an authority, a power, which extends over the community; however, Vitoria is unable to find in this efficient cause any particular reason why this office should be occupied by any specific person. Establishing the office of public authority is the work of God; filling that office with a particular individual is the work of the members of the commonwealth, “the material cause of civil power.”37 The commonwealth, he argues, “provides for itself” the actual authority that will best serve its interests, especially the limited interest of protection from threats.38 As should already be clear, this is a dramatic leap from Augustine, who believed that specific rulers were hand-picked by God, and a slight shift from Aquinas, who believed that citizens should have some say in who governs them.39 Despite his limited approval of

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democracy, Aquinas believed that “those of superior intellect are the natural rulers,” and according to Archibald, he “assumes that under the guidance of Divine Providence the position of ruler will be for the most part occupied” by such a man.40 While Aquinas believed that all should have some equal choice in this matter, he was quite clear that not all people are equally suited to occupy this office. Vitoria disagreed; not only are all able to select the person to fill the office of ruler, but all are also equally able to fill the office themselves. This allows him to argue that, while obedience is demanded inasmuch as the ruler occupies an office established by God, mere possession of the office does not mean one is well-suited for authority, nor that a ruler is self-sufficient when it comes to making decisions. His sharp critiques of the Spanish crown in regard to Spain’s imperialist ventures in the Americas demonstrate the effects of his understanding of the source of public authority; obedience does not mean acquiescence, even if he is reluctant, for practical reasons, to justify tyrannicide in the case of an unjust ruler. His framing of the efficient and material causes of authority marks a shift away from Augustinian tendencies to consider the legitimacy of authority based solely on authority’s origin in God. Suarez continues this shift toward broader frames for understanding legitimacy. He initiated two developments in this regard that are worth mentioning here. First, Suarez was much more appreciative of the role of the community in granting political authority. Referring to the commonwealth as a “single mystical body,” Suarez argued “that the civil ruler derives his authority from the consent of the community.”41 The power that is given to the ruler is always retained by “the whole body of mankind.”42 Like Vitoria, Suarez believed that “all men are born free; so that, consequently, no person has political jurisdiction over another person . . . nor is there any reason why such power should [simply] in the nature of things, be attributed to certain persons over certain other persons, rather than vice versa.”43 Second, unlike Vitoria, Suarez believed that there was no absolute transference of power once a ruler was selected; the community always retains its power, even if the public authority, once selected, is permitted to use his office as a steward of the community, “for the state is always regarded as retaining this power within itself, if the prince fails in his duty.”44 It was thus permissible for the community to replace and/or kill a tyrant. This was not sedition in any sense, according to Suarez, for the community grants authority to the prince; the source of his authority is the commonwealth, not God.45

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With Suarez, the shift away from basing legitimate authority on its origin in God to the common consent of the governed was nearly complete. The development of this element of authority became central in the seventeenth century, according to Arthur Holmes, when John Locke “develop[ed] far more fully what was still embryonic in Aquinas and Suarez, namely, the implications of government by popular consent for the legitimacy of revolution.”46 The quietism and submission demanded by Augustine for just and unjust rulers was slowly (and never completely) undone by an increasing focus on this notion of consent. Whereas Augustine believed that the source of authority was the sole necessary ground for its legitimacy, later thinkers embarked on a search for other grounds. This is not to say that theological explanations for political authority are absent from modern thought. Most conceptions of authority still retain an emphasis on God as a source of authority per se, while stipulating the need for consent of the governed. Pope John XXIII, for example, citing John Chrysostom’s gloss on Romans 13 in the encyclical Pacem in Terris, argues that “human society can be neither well-ordered nor prosperous” without authorities sufficient to guide its development. These authorities “derive their authority from God,” whose wisdom, revealed in natural law, stipulates the necessity of public authority. This does not mean, however that every particular ruler is gifted with their authority by God: “Is every ruler appointed by God? No . . . for now [Paul in Romans is] not now talking about individual rulers, but about authority as such.”47 Pope John XXIII also emphasizes every individual’s right “to take an active part in public life,” that is, to participate as a citizen in the social, economic, and political life of his/her nation.48 While Pacem in Terris is forthrightly supportive of the United Nations for its possibility to ensure just international government with the consent of all nations, Jean Bethke Elshtain and others have taken to task those who envision the UN as this sort of authority. However much she may disagree with the late pope, though, Elshtain is also insistent on consent as the source of political authority. Indeed, one of her most salient critiques of international institutions is the fact that they don’t enjoy the full consent of all nations.49 In the introduction to their edited volume, The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics, John D. Carlson and Erik C. Owens note that while the Enlightenment focus on consent of the governed is a helpful corrective to political theory, it

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Modern Conceptions

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is not without a significant problem: as Christian political thought turns more toward consent of the governed, what becomes of God in the Christian story of sovereignty? Indeed, it is difficult, and in the case of Augustine impossible, to reconcile traditional conceptions of God with modern conceptions of sovereignty. Carlson and Owens are concerned that Christian reflections on public authority may become mere political science, rather than the theo-ethical politics of Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez. On the other hand, they are equally concerned that the pre-modern focus on God’s power (e.g. in Augustine) or the Medieval insistence on obedience despite often inconclusive allowances for tyrannicide (e.g. in Aquinas and Vitoria) may result from an overly theocentric reaction to the modern emphasis on consent.50 This appears to be the case with Weigel’s recent work in just war theory. Weigel, in his typical indictments of anti-Americanism, has often invoked the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to argue that political leaders enjoy a special “charism” when it comes to political decision-making in the case of war. Leaders, he argues, are the only individuals capable of, and responsible for, determining the “moral legitimacy” of a given military action.51 He chastises theologians and church leaders for assuming the same powers themselves, arguing (tongue-in-cheek) that their attempts to weigh in on the morality of a war are akin to the establishment of a “parallel government.”52 He is joined in his argument by J. Daryl Charles, an evangelical Protestant, who similarly reserves the right to determine the morality of a war to those in positions of political authority.53 Likewise, Stephen Strehle, in a poorly received 2004 article for Political Theology, went further than either Weigel or Charles, claiming, “The church’s role is one of submission to the powers that be, unless it has a clear word from God to act otherwise.”54 Authority for Weigel, Charles, and Strehle is very much top-down; it proceeds from God (via divine command, natural law, or “charism”) to the political authorities and is then exercised on the behalf of the subjects in a political community. The difficulty here is that little room is left for the type of disobedience Aquinas hinted at and Suarez specifically justified. Top-down models of authority, especially when wedded to theological portraits of God as the transcendent Other, the supreme law-giver, and the highest authority, tend to be very conservative; they may serve the ends of justifying a particular military action, but they also leave little space to disagree with an authority’s decisions about war. Even Vitoria, for all of his encouragement of obedience, was unwilling to take this step, namely to deny the right of those without authority

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to influence, and critique, the decisions of sovereigns. The difficulty for just war theorists today is correcting the deficiencies of Weigel, Charles, and Strehle, while avoiding conceptions of authority that leave God either ancillary or unnecessary. One important question, then, is how do we interpret right authority in such a way that it is neither so conservative as to render dissent sinful (inasmuch as it is opposed to an authority which proceeds from God) nor so liberal that just war theory loses its theological foundations? That question can be answered, in part, by broadening our view of authority to include considerations of the purpose of authority and the nature or character of authority. These considerations may also temper two of the more troubling aspects of modern just war thought, namely the tendency to posit military power and capabilities as a source of authority for making war and the post-Westphalia tendency to equate legal sovereignty with moral authority to wage war. In regard to the first aspect, power as legitimacy, considerations about power have never been wholly absent from just war theory. Indeed, the principle of “reasonable chance of success” implies the necessity of adequate power to accomplish the aims of war. Suicide missions, for example, are disallowed by just war theory. Without adequate power to accomplish one’s aims, it is unlikely that any goal, no matter how good, will be realized. The interesting turn in modern just-war thought is the shift of considerations of power from the “prudential” criteria of just war theory to the “deontological” criteria of just war theory, especially as evidenced in the debates regarding international and national authority to wage war.55 As Daniel Bell has observed, “Even today, the argument for the authority of the state in matters of war is largely an argument about power. Thus the calls for a shift in the locus of legitimate authority to the international level are resisted, in part, on the grounds that there are no international agents that can reliably or competently exercise the power to effectively pursue justice.”56 Both Oliver O’Donovan and Jean Elshtain engage in this type of resistance. O’Donovan argues that the ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the lack of a recognized, efficient international authority justifies unilateralism of the sort exercised by the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.57 Elshtain likewise argues that international institutions lack the requisite “legitimacy” to make moral claims on individual nations’ use of power. As noted above, on the one hand, Elshtain attributes this lack to an absence of international consent; on the other hand, however, she claims that power legitimizes the United States’ authority to act as the sole legitimate “guarantor of structure and order” in the world.58

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In the context of Just War against Terror, this argument is not quite as strange as it may first appear. For Elshtain, power as a legitimizing factor for authority is prior to consent of the governed. The United States, she argues, is free to pursue its goals (to the point of “imperialism”) despite the same absence of consent that plagues international institutions.59 The only reason consent does not function to delegitimize American authority is that the United States possesses an over-abundance of power to accomplish its aims. This, in fact, seems to be the claim former vice president Dick Cheney made to the Council on Foreign Relations in February 2002, when he tacitly denied the necessity of multilateralism by appealing to the military and economic strength of the United States.60 Power, then, serves as a (perhaps, the) primary legitimizing factor for authority to wage war. Similar claims are found in the work of Weigel; the inefficiency of the UN’s power serves to undermine its authority to determine when war is to be waged.61 Harry van der Linden, however, notes one significant difficulty with this argument; the inefficiency of international institutions is largely due to the unwillingness of major world powers, especially the United States, to observe the authority of the UN and the International Criminal Court. He argues, “Just war theory fails when it applies a notion of legitimate authority suitable to a Westphalian world of equal powers to a unipolar world.”62 The inclusion of “power” as a criterion for authority may have worked when power was basically equal between states, when a “balance of power” could reasonably be expected to limit bellicose overreach. However, when one nation (the United States) has such a disproportionate amount of power, discourse about military strength may rather quickly dissolve into a justification for any use of American military power. Moreover, most just war theorists today would be uncomfortable with a conception of right authority that would grant a Napoleon or a Hitler the right to wage war merely because of the possession of sufficient military strength. Yet, to some extent, this is what is justified by an over-reliance on efficient power as a legitimizing factor for right authority. Simply put, there must be other considerations involved; it is not enough to claim that power underwrites the authority to wage war. The second aspect of the origins of political authority in modern just-war thought, legal sovereignty, is also problematic. Hartley S. Spatt observes, “The majority of commentators on just war theory today connect authority with legality rather than morality, the legal basis of ‘legitimacy’ appearing to make it a more objective criterion than ‘right.’ ”63 Spatt may be overstating the case, but his point is apt;

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many just war theorists tend to emphasize the legal rights of political authorities without much substantive discourse about the morality of such authorities. With the 1648 signing of the Peace of Westphalia, a greater emphasis was placed on territorial rights of sovereigns in an attempt to limit wars of religion between states. Initially, this laudable effort worked well to restrain wars between rulers by establishing the legal rights of sovereigns within their own territories and thereby limiting incursions into territories by hostile or expansionist forces. The legal claim to sovereignty depended on the legal claim to a particular territory. Johnson has noted, with regret, that this focus on legal sovereignty contributes today to a lack of attention to the morality of political authorities.64 As Peter Singer has observed, “The standard view has long been that the recognition of a government as legitimate has nothing to do with how that government came to power, or for that matter how it governs.”65 Indeed, several theorists who believed that the lack of UN approval for the 2003 invasion of Iraq made the war unjust argued this point, namely that the war was unjust because it was illegal.66 This understanding of authority, namely that the authority to wage war arises from certain legal rights and claims, is problematic for two reasons. First, practically speaking, it does not seem likely that those who condemned the invasion of Iraq as illegal would be more likely to call it just if it had UN approval. The permission of the Security Council would not solve the problem of a lack of a credible threat by Iraq and the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s arsenal. Merely being approved by the UN does not mean that a war is thereby justified. Second, the narrow focus on legal issues does not do justice to the just war tradition. The tradition, as will become clearer later in this chapter, is not a legal tradition; it is primarily a theo-ethical tradition, which may at times speak to the law of nations (jus gentium). Both Johnson and Michael Walzer have argued that the tradition must recover this element of morality if it is to remain viable.67 Understanding their arguments requires that we look at other aspects of authority, namely the purpose of authority and the nature or character of authority.

Purpose of Authority Augustine As much as John Yoder and a whole generation of pacifists would like to believe otherwise, Augustine’s approach to war cannot be

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described simplistically as capitulation to empire. While his approval of obedience to even the worst tyrants renders his political thought problematic,68 Augustine’s understanding of the purpose of authority reveals his political thought to be profoundly realistic. Augustine recognized, on the one hand, that political authorities are little better than criminals. In an imaginative allegory in City of God, he envisions an exchange between Alexander the Great and a common pirate. When chastised for his crimes by Alexander, the pirate responds that his goals are the same as the emperor’s: “[To] infest the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate; because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.”69 Despite the rapacity and violence with which rulers often govern, however, Augustine also recognized that even a small measure of order was preferable to anarchy. The threats Romans faced in his time were very real; the protection from such threats by even an unjust ruler lent stability to the daily lives of citizens. This minimum level of stability and protection constituted, for Augustine, the purpose of civil government. Much like St. Paul, who believed government to be the “servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer,” Augustine asserted that political authority had its origins in human sin and the real need to respond to and prevent evil.70 Government was not, as it would be for Aquinas, the means to a good, virtuous life for Christians. Augustine had a much more limited purpose in mind: restraining the evildoer and securing a necessary, basic level of security and stability, which he termed the tranquilitas ordinis.71 Albert Marrin rightly notes that civil government’s right to wage war exists, according to Augustine, as a “cure for sin.”72 We will take up the question of “just cause” for war in a later chapter, but it is important to note that the causes Augustine considers just are fundamentally related to the limited purpose of civil government as a whole in his thought. There seems to be some confusion in recent years of what constitutes the “paradigmatic case” of a just war in the Augustinian sense. The root of the confusion most likely stems from the work of Paul Ramsey, an able Augustinian scholar whose work has been misinterpreted by subsequent theorists. Ramsey, along with his student James Turner Johnson, emphasized defense of an innocent third party against unjust aggression when discussing the causes of just wars.73 As Robert Holmes has noted, however, to foreground this cause is to associate love (of the innocent third party) with the functions of government in Augustine’s just war theory.74 This is inaccurate.75 The paradigmatic case for a just war, according to

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Aquinas Aquinas, because he viewed government as natural and not merely a providential response to sin, attributes more positive duties to civil authorities. Aquinas summarizes these duties by appealing to government’s responsibility to pursue and serve the common good. This responsibility charges authorities “to establish the good life . . . defend it [and] foster its improvement.”77 The ultimate purpose of government is to aid the citizenry in their pursuit of virtue. The “good life,” then, includes securing for citizens “a sufficiency of the material goods that are necessary for virtuous action.”78 As should be clear, this is quite different from Augustine’s position, in which the government’s role is not to enable the “good” but to prevent the “bad.” Still, though, Aquinas is not idealistic about the possibilities of the peaceful life of the polis. For that reason he, like Augustine, also believes that the government is charged with defense against both internal and external threats. The establishment of “a sufficiency of material goods” may be logically prior to defense (since one must have some sort of goods which are worth defending prior to defending them), but this does not necessitate a lexical ordering of the two duties; defense happens at the same time other obligations are fulfilled. This has significant implications for Thomistic just war theory. The authority to wage war is not separate from the broader responsibility to seek the common good. The right to wage war, for Aquinas, flows from the authority’s purpose of securing “the good life” for citizens. Johnson has been especially forthright in highlighting this connection between the authority to wage war and the responsibility for the common good.79 He rightly notes that “sovereign authority exists, argued Thomas, for the service of the common good, and it is this purpose that gives the sovereign the right to authorize force, both against internal disturbers of the public peace and against external aggressors.”80 Johnson notes two important features that Aquinas adds to the understanding of sovereign authority. First, the requirement of proper

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Augustine, is punitive: the punishment of evildoers and the rectification of wrongdoing.76 The purpose of government, as a civil authority and as a war-making authority, is strictly limited by Augustine to the negative function of preventing evil when it can and punishing evil when it must.

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authority for waging war limits the right to war to particular parties and denies the right to others. This distinction, between those who are responsible for the common good and thus have authority to wage war and those who are accountable to private interests and thus lack the authority to wage war, is typically delineated by the Latin terms for each use of violent force, bellum and duellum. Hopefully, the use of force will be in service of a just cause, but before the question of cause even arises for Aquinas, there is the question of authority. Bellum, war waged in defense of the common good, can be just or unjust depending on other factors, such as cause or intent. On the other hand, duellum, the use of armed force in defense or pursuit of private interests, can never be just, no matter how noble the cause or how right the intent. This distinction requires that authorities, in fact and not just in intention, represent and act from concern for the community as a whole. An authority who fails in this regard and uses his/her office to serve private interests is a tyrant, according to Aquinas. The second important feature, related intrinsically to the first, is that “sovereign authority in [Aquinas’] thought referred not simply to the fact of rule but to the moral conception of good rule.”81 With his prioritization of obedience to civil authorities, Aquinas is still conservative, as Archibald helpfully observes. For Aquinas, the office of the authority grants the ruler the benefit of the doubt in questionable cases. However, this deference to civil authority is tempered by the purpose for which such authority exists. As Johnson notes, any authority who neglects the responsibility for the common good becomes a tyrant and not only loses his right to wage war but, in fact, loses his claim to obedience from the citizens and his right to remain in his office.82 As Aquinas writes in regard to sedition, A tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to the common good, but to the private good of the ruler . . . Consequently there is no sedition in disturbing a government of this kind, unless indeed the tyrant’s rule be disturbed so inordinately, that his subjects suffer greater harm from the consequent disturbance than from the tyrant’s government.83

What is clear from this passage is that prudence may allow a tyrant to remain in office (and alive). But, and this is important, acting out of private interest without concern for the public good, in every case, delegitimizes a civil authority. Title alone is insufficient for claiming a right to rule or a right to wage war.

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With Vitoria, just war theory returned to a more limited purpose of authority, namely protection from threats to the political community.84 Vitoria’s focus throughout his political writings is on the legal functions of government. This can be seen quite clearly in his emphasis on natural, divine, and human law, but the legal rights of sovereigns reaches a climax in his analysis of Spain’s conquest of South American Indians. The Indians, he argues, may be “heathens” or “pagans,” but they still have legal rights that the Spanish conquerors cannot violate. Indeed, Vitoria even justifies the Indians’ claims to sovereignty on the simplistic observation that the Indians have a system of laws and thus have actual sovereignty. For Vitoria, it was the presence of a law-making, and law-enforcing, power that legitimized claims to political and territorial sovereignty. Government exists to serve these limited functions; the presence of a system of laws legitimizes the government that enforces them.85 Indeed, if Spain were to claim any jurisdiction over South America, it would have to prove that its own legal rights had in some way been violated by the Indians, a case Vitoria believed the Spaniards could not make. Civil authorities, he argued, are permitted to wage war only in pursuit of the limited purposes of authorities, i.e. the vindication of rights, or what is referred to as vindicative justice. Like Vitoria, Suarez posited a rather limited purpose of civil authority, especially in warfare. Drawing on the work of Tommaso de Vio Cajetan, whose commentaries on Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae were used widely throughout the sixteenth century, Suarez distinguished between the two types of justifiable warfare appropriate to the dual purposes of government. In the first, defensive war, a government exercises its right and duty to protect its citizens from threats. In the second, aggressive war, the government prevented threats from developing by “constraining wrongdoers.”86 Whereas Vitoria’s position may be called “vindicative justice,” Suarez emphasized punitive justice and the responsibility of authorities to punish criminals. Following Cajetan, Suarez believed defensive war to be a natural right of any authority and not a terribly important concern for considerations of war. Punitive justice sought through aggressive war, however, was a thornier problem for Suarez and dominated his writings on just wars. Clearly, however, the influence of Aquinas is still present in Suarez’s work, even if he has a more limited purpose in mind for civil authority. The government’s right to wage punitive war, he argued, was

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tempered by that same government’s responsibility for the “common weal.” Power, he argued, was given to a specific ruler with the trust that that same ruler would use that power and authority in the best interests of the community. If a ruler failed to govern according to this purpose, Suarez argued that he lost the right to govern. Tyrants, for Suarez as for Aquinas, have no right to maintain their authority. Even with a sharper focus on the punitive responsibilities of government, Suarez maintains Aquinas’ position that authorities may overstep their bounds and may lose their authority to govern and to wage war, if their purposes do not coincide with the good of the community. Modern Conceptions Part of Johnson’s aim in addressing the concept of the “common good” in Aquinas’ thought is to reestablish the relationship between a sense of the purpose of government and the authority to declare and wage war. With the shift to categories of legal sovereignty, Christian and non-Christian scholars of war have, to some extent, divorced just war theory from its context as a political theory. To say this much is not to claim, as Paul Ramsey did, that war is part of the “bonum esse” of politics. Nor is it to claim that war is a laudable political tactic; if one similarity pervades most Christian thought on just wars, it is that war, necessary though it may at times be, is always to be regretted.87 Rather, to say that just war theory is a theory of theoethical politics is to situate the Christian understanding of war within a broader frame of theo-ethical political convictions that reflect basic claims about God, the common good, and the purpose of government. It is also to claim, with Aquinas and Suarez, that the authority to wage war hinges on the responsible pursuit of the common good by those intent on employing, or deploying, armed force. Unlike the more Thomistic Johnson, Weigel relies on the Augustinian notion of tranquilitas ordinis in an attempt to recover the relationship between the ends of government and the morality of war. Like Augustine, Weigel has a very limited sense of the purpose of government. The tranquilitas ordinis, he argues, is hardly the utopian ideal of equality, liberty, and peaceful existence. The government does not establish true justice by securing it; rather, Weigel’s main concern is that governments work to establish the “peace of public order in dynamic political community.”88 That this sometimes requires war is the basic claim of just war theory, according to Weigel. As an Augustinian, he is well aware that this limited goal does not mean “addressing and resolving virtually all issues of justice before

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there could be a morally worthy peace.”89 Still, “some questions of justice had to be settled before there [can be] a peace of rightly ordered community.”90 These primary questions, according to Weigel, are “questions of legal justice.”91 He explicitly rejects the establishment of distributive justice as a purpose of government, yet argues in regard to economics that “the peace of rightly ordered political community cannot be built in a zero-growth world.”92 In true Augustinian fashion, Weigel’s work evinces commitment to the negative political purpose of securing property rights while lacking a developed sense of the Thomistic political goal of securing basic necessities for citizens. We can say, with no hyperbole, that Weigel’s understanding of authority’s purposes allows for a political authority to pursue economic aims through war, provided that this authority does not seek redistribution of wealth.93 The difficulty with this understanding of authority and war is that Weigel couches his understanding of the purposes of authority within a broader appreciation for the political and economic status quo. The role of government, certainly, is to maintain order. But outside of extreme cases of tyranny, it is difficult to see how the purpose of government can serve to limit the right to wage war (or to rule) in the way that it did in the work of Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez. Part of the problem here may be relying too closely on Augustine; while the bishop of Hippo may have justified maintenance of an orderly status quo by encouraging Christians to focus on the eschatological City of God, such an appeal makes little sense to readers familiar with the effects of an otherworldly focused Church in the nineteenth-century American South and early twentieth-century Europe. Weigel’s appropriation of Augustine’s willingness to defer to established authorities leaves little room for substantive dialogue about the shape that the tranquilitas ordinis is supposed to take, outside of protecting property rights and, curiously, securing religious freedom. He is rather unclear about which “questions of justice” need to be solved and which can be left aside in establishing the “tranquility of order.” Moreover, his argument that questions concerning distributive justice need not be resolved prior to securing a just peace begs the question, when and by whom are these questions to be resolved, especially given the rather limited purpose of government in his political theory? If we are to move past Weigel’s conservative neo-Augustinianism and consider more seriously the relationship between the common good and political authority (as Johnson would like), we must place

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our questions more firmly in the context of the current political environment. Just as Westphalia represented something of a seismic shift in the understanding of sovereignty, so too, does the rapid pace of globalization represent a significant development in the history of politics. We can accurately say that if Westphalia sharpened the borders of territories and internalized civil rulers’ concern for their own citizens, globalization has perforated these boundaries and forced the extension of concern beyond traditional political borders. Isolationism and narrow nationalism, virtues that may have contributed to the economic and political development of states in the past, are now vices that inhibit growth and stultify the well-being of citizens by denying them participation in the technology, communications, trade, and travel that globalization has made possible. What is more, whether their members like it or not, states now are interconnected in ways unimaginable even two decades ago. This situation is fraught with both possibilities and risks. Reconceptualizing the world as an integrated whole, as a global network of relationships rather than an atomistic cloud of independent nations, may allow for a richer conversation about the common good, about a political end not limited to individual states’ interests. However, absent any recognized international authority and lacking the territorial constraints enshrined in the Peace of Westphalia, globalization may also create a vacuum for authority that leaves individual governments unchecked in pursuit of their aims. Perhaps the best way to avoid this risk is to attend to the former possibility—development of a substantive understanding of the global common good. The difficulty is in determining who should define and secure this common good. In contemporary just war thought, much of the debate is split between those who favor the United Nations for this role and those who favor the United States and its allies. Neither alternative is wholly satisfactory. The UN may have a broader concern than any individual nation, but it is largely ineffective and, as Elshtain has noted, it does not enjoy the full consent of the world community. The United States, on the other hand, has the power to effectively achieve political aims but has a history of reticence to yield to international opinion and is thus not fully accountable to any state other than itself. We may say briefly that just war thought today has left us stuck between two authorities: one that has the right measure of concern, but no power; and one that has the requisite power but only limited concern for other nations’ needs and desires. Modern thought on right authority is thus deficient in important ways.

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Character of Authority The third element of authority I consider is the character of authority figures. While the two prior concerns, origin of authority and purpose of authority, focused more on the office of authority than the actual persons who occupy such offices, in this section I attend to the moral character of these actual persons. This element has had a varied history in the just war tradition. Augustine, as should be clear from the discussion above, was decidedly unconcerned about the character of rulers. Inasmuch as he “wants to keep Christians moving on to the peace of the heavenly city,” Augustine spends little time interrogating the moral character of political authorities.94 His assurance of God’s providence, combined with a focus on the eschatological City of God, led Augustine toward complacency about the moral character of authority figures. While it may seem that Augustine’s attitude is rooted in his deep, penetrating belief in the universal sinful condition of humanity, this is inaccurate. Augustine’s acquiescence is not such that he believes all rulers are equal; he is willing to, quite colorfully at times, call unjust rulers “evil.” He is aware that there is a difference between the rule of a Justinian and a Domitian, for example. For Augustine, the central fact of reality is not human sinfulness (though this view in later Christian thought does arise from his work); the central fact of reality is God’s providential concern for God’s creation. The character of a given authority figure was of little concern to Augustine not because he was pessimistic about universal human sinfulness but because he was optimistic about the reality of God’s free choice to govern human affairs by appointing human agents as political leaders. When confronted by an unjust ruler, he argued, Christians obey neither because of pessimism nor prudential calculations but because of faith in the God who is free enough and powerful enough to install unjust rulers and yet still work good from the situation. The ruler’s right to make decisions about war, therefore, flows from his office. As John Mark Mattox observes, “[F]or Augustine, it is the sovereign’s position which confers temporal legal authority, including the authority to declare war, and not the degree of the sovereign’s personal righteousness.”95 Mattox, however, is careful to add, quoting Augustine’s letter to Marcellinus, that “although the political leader who wields authority to wage war may not, himself, be upright and virtuous, it is nevertheless the case that he ought to be . . . ”96 Whether he is or not, however, the fact remains that for Augustine, moral

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character has little to do with the rights attendant to the office of political authority.

Later thinkers, like Aquinas, evinced greater concern for the moral character of leaders, even if they still counseled obedience to Christians. The difference for Aquinas (and, latterly, the Salamanca theologians) is rooted in his less volitional understanding of divine providence. While Augustine’s God ordered the world through God’s free will, Aquinas’ God ordered the world through reason, through the rather impersonal divine and natural law. For Aquinas, as stated above, this meant that the office of authority proceeds from the Divine Reason, while individual rulers who occupy the office are chosen by humans. Ideally, the ruler’s “intelligence and virtue are such that he is fit to rule.”97 The need for the requisite moral character, for Aquinas, is closely tied to his understanding of the purpose of government. Ruling rightly requires that a person possess such a moral character that he may avoid the greed and selfishness that causes rulers to ignore the common good and thus become tyrants. Moreover, in terms of the ruler’s decisions about war, determining the justice of war (or, realistically, any political action or policy) requires that one be just. While he cautiously approves of tyrannicide and resistance to unjust rule, Aquinas nevertheless seems to exude a certain confidence that those in power will possess the hoped-for character. Joan Tooke observes in Aquinas a tendency to attribute to the ruler “a superior judgment and authority” than individuals possess on their own.98 Though Aquinas is undoubtedly concerned that those who rule observe the due limits of their office and exhibit the virtues necessary for ruling rightly, in Tooke’s estimation, the benefit of the doubt lies with the person who possesses the title of political authority. Put differently, Aquinas encourages his audience to assume that rulers are virtuous until they prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is not the case. Even when tyranny is evident, moreover, Aquinas at times seems to suggest that this determination is not to be made by anyone less than another, equal sovereign. Tooke, for her part, rightly critiques this assumption of virtue by claiming that there is no reason to believe that a ruler is less prejudiced or self-interested than any individual citizen. To grant authorities the benefit of the doubt is to assume what is really merely ideal, that the ruler is skilled in wisdom, justice, charity, and temperance.99

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Interestingly, though both draw heavily on Aquinas (filtered, as it were, through Cajetan), both Vitoria and Suarez reverse Aquinas’ assumptions. Vitoria, despite his conservative stance,100 is less than confident in the virtue and wisdom of rulers. In response to questions about princes’ decisions about war, he admits that rulers “[may] act in vincible error or under the influence of passion.”101 He further argues that it is “likely that [the prince] may make mistakes, or rather that he will make mistakes.”102 In an impassioned letter to the nobleman Pedro Fernández de Velasco, Vitoria notes his consternation that nearly every citizen can see the mistakes of the Franco-Spanish Wars “except the princes themselves.”103 In a later letter, to Fray Bernadino de Vique, Vitoria appears unwilling to accept the judgment of political authorities as definitive of the morality of particular policies. In regard to the specific issue of slavery in the Americas, Vitoria disregards the excuse that “ ‘the king and his council know and approve it.’ Kings often think from hand to mouth, and the members of their councils even more so.”104 Vitoria, in contrast to Aquinas, seems to assume that political authorities may base their decisions on interests other than the common good or political justice. Suarez largely agrees with Vitoria; the community, he argues, always retains a certain measure of power over against its chosen rulers. While citizens must defer to their chosen leader’s decisions about war, this is due less to an overarching obligation of obedience than it is to the necessity of maintaining unity among the populace. Should the ruler fail, however, Suarez lends unqualified support to the citizenry to “take vengeance and deprive the sovereign of the authority in question. For the state is always regarded as retaining this power within itself, if the prince fails in his duty.”105 Suarez seems to assume, not unlike Vitoria, that the state will occasionally need to exercise this power against rulers whose character proves damaging to the community as a whole. This is an interesting turn in the just war tradition. While the authors examined above agree that there will be bad rulers and that authorities may be immoral, with Vitoria and Suarez we can discern a nascent hermeneutic of suspicion of authority that was not substantially present in the work of Augustine and Aquinas. The latter theologians, still well aware that rulers may fail in their duties, placed the burden of proof on those who would oppose current political leaders. Augustine, for his part, left little option for actively resisting immoral leaders. Aquinas so restricted the right of citizens to depose

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even a tyrant that it is unclear whether they possessed this right at all or when it might be just to exercise it.106 Vitoria and Suarez, on the other hand, are much more forthright about the possible (and, in Vitoria’s case, probable) immorality of rulers. Obedience, in Vitoria, is still a virtue, but it hinges on a properly functioning government, namely one with checks and balances against the tendency for “kings [to] think from hand to mouth” and to make mistakes in their judgments about war. In Suarez’s work, we find both a restriction of the “jurisdiction” of sovereigns and a similar “check” provided by the power of the community.107 With the Salamanca School, the just war tradition’s previous emphases on divine rights of kings, top-down models of authority, and a priori obedience eroded, if only slightly.108 Modern Conceptions The question of moral character of authority is perhaps the central question in just war debates about unilateral and multilateral intervention today. The debate appears to have two sides: those who believe the moral authority of the United States is undermined by a history of imperialism, domestic and foreign racism, and support for foreign dictatorships are pitted against those who view the United States as a bastion of freedom for peoples the world over. Obviously, these positions as stated are extremes. However, to the extent that this debate has marked much of the discourse regarding, especially, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is worth investigating. If those on the former side of the debate are correct in their assessment of the moral character of the United States, then this may be a significant problem for justifying American intervention in foreign territories.109 The difficulty they face is finding a way to link the moral character of an authority to particular instances of war, especially given the varied interpretations of the character of authority in the just war tradition. Despite the advances of Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez in highlighting the moral character of authority, there is a tendency in contemporary just-war thought to recover the Augustinian approach to this question, that is, to respond to critiques by claiming that character really does not play a role in legitimizing authority and/or to highlight patriotism or, at the very least deference to political leaders, as the appropriate Christian political virtue for citizens. Weigel’s early work is a good example of both focal points of contemporary neo-Augustinian just-war thought. In a sharp critique of what has been termed the “Vietnam syndrome” (the tendency to view American wars as inspired by imperialistic bellicosity), Weigel argued

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that the combination of charges of “American greed, American racism, [and] American imperialism [was] overdrawn [and] false in its portrait of the United States.”110 He further inveighs against “a deteriorated sense of American possibility in the world, based on a deep skepticism about the American experiment,” and cites approvingly Jacques Maritain claiming, “The American body politic is the only one which was fully and explicitly born of freedom, of the free determination of men to live together and work together at a common task.”111 His book concludes with the injunction that Catholics should learn “to love America again.”112 In a response to similar charges of American political immorality during the 1991 Gulf War, Weigel summarized his opponents’ critique thusly: “A racist, imperialist, militarist, and, latterly, sexist America cannot act for good ends in the world. That is the orthodoxy in the [National Council of Churches, which opposed the war] and in a depressingly large part of the Catholic episcopate.”113 This is not to say that Weigel is unaware of the failures of America to live up to its creed of freedom and equality. In various places, he refers to foreign policy mistakes in Vietnam,114 Central America,115 and the Middle East.116 However, these do not, he argues, undermine the United States’ authority to wage war in these and other regions across the globe. Indeed, Weigel seems to grant them little import for considerations of the authority to wage war and instead, appeals to the power and position of the United States as the most significant factor in legitimizing its authority to use armed force. In regard to the War in Iraq, for example, he writes, “The United States has a unique responsibility for leadership in the war against terrorism and the struggle for world order; that is not a statement of hubris but of empirical fact.”117 Often employing the classic distinction between bellum and duellum, Weigel argues that the position (or what has been referred to in this chapter as “office”) of authority the United States enjoys grounds the authority it has to act unilaterally. Thus, it is not the case, for Weigel, that the United States has not made mistakes (though he is reluctant to admit this much), but these mistakes, and indeed, the moral character of authority in general, are not central considerations for right authority in traditional just war theory. Elshtain similarly grants little significance to considerations of moral character in her analysis of the United States as a “right authority.” She vacillates between considering American errors as “incidental, flaws that will be overcome with time as the ideal America . . . realizes itself more fully”118 and considering any moral failings of civil institutions as irrelevant given the universality of sin. The first argument dominates much of Just War against Terror. In this examination of

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Islamist terrorism at the start of the twenty-first century, Elshtain argues that terrorists such as those responsible for the 9/11 attacks in 2001 are motivated by a deep hatred for “America and its way of life,” rather than any actual historic errors the United States has made.119 America, she argues, represents the very things terrorists despise: “moral equality,” “separation of church and state,” and “gender equality.”120 Even when these values have been threatened internally by the behavior of the government or by particular public policies, Elshtain argues that the moral character of the United States is such that these threats were incidental to the true character of the United States and “therefore doomed.”121 As Paul J. Griffiths and Stanley Hauerwas noted in their review of her book, this appreciative and uncritical attitude toward America “stands in dramatic contrast” to her earlier work. Indeed, her work concerning the Gulf War is sharply critical of rhetoric which smacks of “moralistic trumpeting” and too easily slips into the binaries of “good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, [and] human dignity and freedom vs. tyranny and oppression.”122 Yet, a common thread does run through both her early and more recent analyses. In a manner typical of her Augustinianism, she is unwilling to accept that any moral deficiencies undercut American claims to authority. In response to challenges like those of Hauerwas and Griffiths, she argues, Because one can attribute to the United States, or any other society fighting terrorism, historic crimes in the past, it follows that neither the USA nor any other society can advance a moral mandate to fight terrorism in the present. If one’s own hands are dirty, one can do nothing. This is an invitation to passivity.123

Much like Augustine before her, Elshtain appeals to the universal condition of sinful humanity in order to dismiss the significance of moral character for determining “right authority” in just war theory. Such considerations, she and Weigel argue, are merely attempts to hamstring political authorities from acting with determination in a “violent world.” As David Fisher has written, arguments regarding “the inconsistency and moral motivation in the behavior of the West [are] fallacious [because] human motives are often mixed.”124 It is unreasonable to require that an authority be morally praiseworthy before that authority can wage war. One difficulty Elshtain faces if she is to rely on universal sinfulness rather than American exceptionalism to defend her claims is finding a way to justify the United States’ use of armed force while denying to

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other countries the same legitimacy. It goes without saying that the mere possession of sufficient strength and the mere title to an office of authority would not be enough to position an identifiable tyrant as a “right authority.” But absent considerations of character, and with a limited, mostly punitive understanding of the purpose of authority, it is difficult to find supportive arguments for this in the work of Elshtain and Weigel. It is even harder to find these in Oliver O’Donovan’s The Just War Revisited. There, O’Donovan eschews language of morality and character in his discussion of authority, arguing instead that what primarily legitimizes right authority is a given institution’s legal status.125 The marginalization of questions of moral character is hardly rare in modern just-war thought. Michael Walzer, whose seminal work Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations informed a generation of scholars, has argued against the predominance of legalistic categories of sovereignty, claiming that the question of war and, especially, of aggression “is of moral responsibility . . . with the blameworthiness of individuals, not their legal guilt or innocence.”126 He goes on to argue, against those who sideline considerations of moral character in favor of legal definitions of sovereignty, that “moral authority is no doubt different from legal authority; it is earned in different ways; but Professor [Joseph] Bishop [who believed just war theory to be solely a legal framework] is wrong to think that it doesn’t exist.”127 Indeed, much of Walzer’s book can be read as an attempt to recover the moral dimensions of an increasingly legalistic tradition. Daniel Bell agrees with Walzer that this focus elides traditional concerns about the morality of persons who occupy political offices. Traditional just war theory, he claims, not only recognizes that “legitimate authority attached to an office charged with overseeing the common good, but it also recognizes that authority attaches to a person or persons of well-formed character who care for the common good.”128 While Walzer, Spatt, and Bell helpfully highlight a weakness in the work of Elshtain, Weigel, and O’Donovan, Walzer and Spatt fail to give a robust account for why character matters for just war theory. Walzer seems to claim that morality matters because human beings make moral claims when evaluating an authority’s decisions about war. Because we consider decisions about war a “moral matter,” moral character matters. That this is slightly tautological is readily apparent. Spatt (though his article on the subject is rather brief) seems to claim that moral character is intrinsically a part of traditional just war theory,

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though his decidedly nontraditional elucidation of the theory fails to lend credence to his claim. Bell, for his part, rightly recalls why character mattered for the just war tradition. For both Vitoria and Suarez, he argues, the character of rulers was a significant factor in political decision-making. Simply put, persons of poor moral character may, and will, make poor decisions. For this reason, both Vitoria and Suarez urged influential counselors to help guide the ruling authority in making decisions. Because he assumed that rulers may give in to “the influence of some passion,” Vitoria argued that every person who has the opportunity also has the duty to advise the king when it comes to making decisions about war. In regard to the king himself, Vitoria argued, “One must consult reliable and wise men who can speak with freedom and without anger or hate or greed. This is obvious.”129 The sinfulness of all rulers was not an excuse to revert to categories of legal sovereignty or power, as it is for authors like Elshtain and Weigel. For Vitoria, sin was a central reason to ensure that a large number of people were consulted before a decision was made. Leaving war up to the sovereign alone is more likely to result in a poor decision, especially given the tendencies toward greed and selfishness sovereigns, especially, faced. Involving wise and disinterested (as much as possible, anyway) advisors may check these tendencies. “So war should not be declared on the sole dictates of the prince, nor even on the opinion of the few, but on the opinion of the many, and of the wise and reliable.”130 Likewise, “Suarez points out that it is precisely this access to public counsel that distinguishes public judgment from private inclination and assists the ruler in avoiding the problems that befall the judgments of individuals.”131 For neither Vitoria nor Suarez was this process a quest for perfection in politics. Rather, its purpose was to sharpen political acumen. It was not a pursuit of perfection (or even peace), but of justice in political decision-making. Few of those who do raise the question of moral character in reference to the United States frame their arguments in this way.132 In the debate about the 2003 War in Iraq, the question of character was more likely to be situated within an argument for multilateralism and, pointedly, a defense of the UN as the proper authority for armed international intervention. This did not solve the debate about character, however. Authors such as J. Bryan Hehir, Thomas O’Brien, and Harry van der Linden failed to apply the same hermeneutic of suspicion to the character of international institutions that they applied to the United States. Their arguments, rather, seemed to hinge on the scope of the problem of terrorism. If terrorism is a global problem,

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they argued, then it requires a global authority. This may be the case, but it doesn’t answer the questions raised by Weigel, Elshtain, or Fisher. The UN, as an institution, does not have an exemplary trackrecord in international relations, and it is often susceptible to the same temptations that plague individual states. In sum, we are left with several difficulties in modern just war thought on each of the aspects listed above, source, purpose, and character of authority. God, power, and international law have all proven to be problematic sources for authority. God, since a theocentric understanding of the source of authority tends to render dissent sinful; power because it ignores a central claim of the tradition, namely that power can be a great evil in certain hands; and law because it eschews deeper questions about morality. In terms of the purpose of authority, we seem stuck at the present moment between the preservation of the status quo Augustine and his followers seem to support and the bellicose activism that may accompany more positive understandings of the purpose of authority. Moreover, if Thomistic political ethics are applied to a globalized world, we can’t even be sure whose “common good” is to be pursued. Perhaps Aquinas himself might leave this to the hands of “the highest, the nobles” whom he deems more reasonable than the other classes of humans. We, however, living after the Enlightenment, are unable to solve the question so simply. In terms of character, modern just-war thinkers seem to leave their audiences stuck between choosing the unilateralism of the United States and the multilateralism of the UN, without an adequate understanding of how moral character is to be evaluated in either case. Character may matter or not; modern just-war thought seems uncertain and so the question itself becomes largely just another support for either option, the United States or the UN.

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Why Listen to Marginalized Voices? There are good reasons to turn toward nontraditional sources. First, opening up the conversation about just war can ameliorate the critiques of just war theory as too limited in perspective. Elshtain, for example, has demonstrated the efficacy and necessity of doing this by highlighting feminist perspectives on war.1 What is more, while the criteria of just war theory may be universally acceptable, these criteria require an interpretation that may be limited by the author’s social location.2 Second, a turn to liberation theology may provide a model of God that is more adequate to modern theology. Recent just war theory, as Carlson and Owens have suggested, doesn’t offer a substantive, consistent understanding of how just war theory is a theological ethic, since, with the rise of international law and secularism, the theological underpinnings of the theory have been partly eclipsed by some theorists. There are also practical reasons for turning toward marginalized perspectives in developing hermeneutics for just war theory. First, the emphasis on obedience and deference found in traditional just war theory is no longer an adequate model for understanding Christians’ relations to the state. With the realities of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and human rights abuses among the dominant concerns for scholars of war and peace today, the virtue of obedience can hardly be an intrinsic aspect of just war theory in the twenty-first century. Yet, this requires something more than just deleting that part of the tradition. As the previous chapter attempted to demonstrate, obedience was a

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logical consequence of more basic assumptions about God, humans, and government. Undoing this will require investigating these more basic claims. Second, while traditional just war theory has tended to focus on the actions of sovereigns, war in the twenty-first century is less likely to involve actors who might traditionally be considered “sovereign.”3 These include citizens’ movements (e.g. Libyan resistance to Qaddafi in 2011), non-state, transnational networks (e.g. al Qaeda), and subnational, nonsovereign territories (e.g. Taiwan). The old methods of defining “right authority” are rapidly becoming obsolete, as a number of books and articles on changes in the definition of sovereignty suggest. Third, it is unlikely that war in the near future will resemble war in the recent past. Rather than the interstate conflicts that dominated most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, war in the twenty-first century is more likely to involve subnational parties, to address humanitarian concerns, and to require international cooperation. Just as the Peace of Westphalia revolutionized our understanding of authority 400 years ago, so too, is globalization currently revolutionizing our understanding of authority today. The question is, which sources will we draw on to reshape this understanding? African American thought may be a particularly helpful resource as just war theory develops in the changing landscape of the twenty-first century.

Source of Authority If we are asking about right authority and war, the question really is, by what right does authority use force? Divine mandate? International law? Territorial sovereignty? Most Christian just war theorists have attributed the right to use force to God, that the right to wage war attaches to an office is the result of God’s establishment of that office and its rights, responsibilities, and duties. As should be clear, this theological foundation grounded (and grounds) the deference to authority found in the tradition. We can say accurately of the Christian just war tradition that lurking behind claims about right authority are claims about God. Investigating these claims may point not only to some shortcomings of some writers in the tradition but also to potential remedies for these flaws. For Augustine, God was identified with the human authorities in each sphere of life—principally, the paterfamilias in the household and the emperor in the empire. For Aquinas, God was identified with the wise, those most closely associated with the power of reason. In modern just war theory, God’s political authority is understood

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through God’s agents—various political authorities who have no superior. Their authority derives from their likeness to a sovereign God. It is undermined to the extent that one can posit other superiors to whom these authorities both can appeal and must submit.4 Certain features of God have been emphasized throughout the tradition as benchmarks for considerations of proper authority: freedom and will, superiority, power, and reason. Authority was understood as residing with those who were superior to other persons and institutions and thus free to exercise their will in a political community; had sufficient power to accomplish political ends; and were believed to possess a higher reason inaccessible to the masses of people. They were, in short, the top of the sociopolitical hierarchy and were understood as being free to act in particular ways because their office gave them both power over and responsibility for the political community. This understanding of authority as deriving from a sovereign God had significant effects on the just war tradition. First, just war theory has become largely a discourse of the powerful. The questions that it addresses are often distanced from the day-to-day concerns of the masses of citizens, those living at the bottom of this hierarchy. God’s political activity in history, viewed through the lens of the just war tradition, is largely understood as the action and interaction of the rulers of powerful states. The pursuit of justice is viewed as the work of militaries and their commanders either defending the status quo of order or acting, often paternalistically, in the interest of weaker peoples through defense against aggression or attainment of some right (e.g. freedom or democracy). In either case, the tradition posits such superior powers as the subjects of history, as those whose action shapes the political world, defeating evil, protecting rights, and securing the good. Peoples at the bottom of the pyramid are the objects of their action. (Weigel’s insistence that political decisions be left to politicians and not churches or community members is one stark example of this trend.) This situation has left just war theory with a second, related inheritance, i.e. the inability to adequately treat conflicts with no clearcut authorities, such as interventions and revolutions.5 With the threat of terrorism today, this shortcoming of just war theory leaves little way to justify a response to terrorism by nongovernmental groups or indigenous community associations, even though the populations they represent are the most likely to suffer from a terrorist attack.6 Liberation theology has gone a long way toward recovering the subjectivity of these masses at the bottom of the political pyramid. This has been accomplished, partly, by re-envisioning God and God’s historical activity. While traditionally theologians have emphasized

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the transcendent superiority, unencumbered freedom, and boundless power of God, liberation theologians have emphasized God’s concrete preferential option for the poor, that is, God’s historical, self-selected identification with the weak, poor, and oppressed masses. Their work has raised attention to this feature of God in other areas and may prove valuable to just war theory. A comprehensive survey of liberationist contributions exceeds the scope of this project, but one group in particular may be helpful, especially given the unique position of the United States in relation to global threats of conflict. African Americans have traditionally responded to American wars with a sort of critical support that is unique given their dual loyalties to both the United States and non-white populations across the globe. Their reshaping of theology, moreover, provides insight into new understandings of right authority for just war theory. (This is not to say that just-war theorists have never before drawn on marginalized sources for new understandings of right authority. However, this is typically done with an eye toward justifying revolution and so legitimizing the authority of revolutionary groups or leaders. As should be clear, this is not my focus here. Rather, my concern is to reshape how we understand the rightness of parties already accepted as “legitimate” authorities in the international sphere.) When it comes to the source of government, African Americans share with white theologians the belief that political authority is instituted by God. Their theological claims about the God who established human government, however, are markedly different from those of white theologians. Benjamin E. Mays, while noting a tension between conservative, traditional theology and progressive theology, contends that African American Christians have tended toward belief in a God who sanctions historical struggles against injustice.7 While white political theologians have often looked to Paul to understand God’s political action in history, African Americans are much more likely to turn toward the stories of the Exodus and the Gospels to highlight God’s special concern for the oppressed. Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example, called attention to “that God who hath destroyed kings and princes for their oppression of the poor slaves. Pharaoh and his princes, with the posterity of King Saul, were destroyed by the protector and avenger of slaves . . . ”8 Such a claim stands in sharp contrast to the dominant white, Western theological tradition which, under the influence of Pauline theology, tended to sanctify the social and political status quo, including situations of slavery, as divinely ordained.

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In fact, to the extent that the God described by white theologians and preachers tended to justify injustice, sanction acquiescence to suffering, and ignore black experience, African Americans rejected this “white God” in favor of one more intimately connected to their own experiences and hopes. As Ronald C. Potter has observed of twentieth-century black theology, “If the concept of God does not make a difference within the ‘actual experience’ of black people, then that concept must be jettisoned.”9 For Langston Hughes, for example, the Christian God was so distant from this “actual experience” that he declared in “Good-bye Christ,” “Listen Christ,/You did alright in your day I reckon/But that day’s gone now.”10 Other African American leaders used God’s historical identification with the oppressed to support claims that God in the present is found among the currently oppressed. African Methodist Episcopal bishop Henry McNeal Turner was among the first to claim, “God is black.”11 This characterization of God has been used by other African American authors, notably James Cone, and reflects the conviction that God has a special relationship to oppressed peoples. The identification of God with blackness is not an inappropriately racialized theology. Rather, it speaks to God’s historical concern for the plight of the oppressed and poor in history. Foregrounding this concern has significant consequences for understanding political authority. For example, theologian Howard Thurman’s identification of Jesus Christ with the “disinherited,” that is, the poor, or as he vividly describes them, “the masses of men who live with their backs constantly against the wall,”12 served as the ground for his distinctive social ethic. The result of this re-imaging of God for Thurman was a belief that there is nothing natural or divinely ordained about current social arrangements and institutions. If God is for the disinherited, then no social arrangement or institution that is against them can be considered divinely instituted. On the other hand, if God is actively supportive of the disinherited, then God is concerned with transformation of these arrangements and institutions. Thurman’s theology exposed the contradictions between the way things are and the way they should be in such a way that he was poignantly able both to critique the status quo and express hope for sociopolitical transformation in history.13 In the absence of this prophetic understanding of social life, he argued, it is easy for humans to succumb to the temptations of power, especially the use of power by those benefitting from the system to support the status quo. In contrast to the belief that social injustice is natural or divinely ordained,

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which “for the man in power . . . is a happy philosophy,” Thurman argued that Jesus’ identification with the disinherited challenged any situation that created or maintained a class of “disinherited” peoples.14 Potter argues that this understanding of the relationship between God and situations of sociopolitical injustice is basic to black theology, since “God, in black theology, is first and foremost the liberative One. God is not the originator and sanctifier of the status quo. Rather, God is the One who continually calls into question the status quo and subsequently transforms it.”15 Indeed, not only have black theologians prophetically critiqued particular instances of injustice, but their work undermines social hierarchies that cement inequality. The oft-used description of God as “no respecter of persons” challenges the types of hierarchy that framed both Augustinian and Thomistic political ethics and is found throughout white theology.16 Equality rather than difference came to be seen as the divine plan for human political communities. This is a distinct contrast with the theology that informed Christian understandings of authority in the just war tradition. While still recognizing government as divinely instituted, African Americans’ understanding of God as identified in a real way with the oppressed, those at the bottom of the sociopolitical pyramid, stands as a challenge to, rather than a sanctification of, human authority. This has two important consequences. First, like Augustine, God’s primacy in the cosmic order undermines any ultimate claims that may be made by human authorities. As Michael G. Long puts it (in language familiar to students of Augustine), “Caesar is not God, and thus is not an object of ultimate loyalty for Christians.”17 Governments are expressly limited in the actions they can perform and the goals they can pursue. Their authority is always subordinate to the authority of God. Second, in contrast to Augustine, Aquinas, and the Salamanca theologians, for whom the divine source of government grounded a presumption of obedience on behalf of individual citizens, African American theologians’ conceptions of God have been much more likely to support a hermeneutic of suspicion of authority. This is not to say that obedience is not still a virtue in African American theological ethics. As Lutheran theologian James Kenneth Echols describes, “The black American religious tradition has acknowledged the gift of authority in this world . . . But on those occasions when the governing authorities have clearly and blatantly violated the will of God, the tradition has been compelled to declare, in both words and deeds, that Christians must obey God rather than humans.”18 The key difference between African American theologians

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and both classical authors such as Augustine and modern authors such as Weigel is not a deconstruction of obedience in itself, nor obedience to God, but rather the identification of God with particular groups within a society. Augustine, Weigel, and others linked God to the ruling authorities and thus enjoined obedience to these authorities according to their divine origin. African American theologians, however, have linked God with the oppressed; obedience to God thus takes the shape of commitment to God’s work among the lower classes. As Cone has argued, the difference is not merely ethical. “The problem of identifying Christian ethics with the status quo [as] found in Augustine and Aquinas” (a problem that has contributed, according to Echols, to both “conformity to [and] complicity in oppression”19 ) is primarily theological.20 “The problem of Christian ethics,” Cone argues, “is its dependence on a theology that does not know the God of the oppressed.”21 To some extent, Cone is correct, at least in drawing a connection between theology and ethics in this way. While a hermeneutic of suspicion of authority is certainly present in some just-war theorists, notably Vitoria and Suarez, the interesting turn in African American thought is that the hermeneutic of suspicion arises from their understanding of the relationship between God, civic authorities, and individual citizens. Vitoria’s practical suspicion of authority, on the other hand, does not undermine his presumption of obedience specifically because his theology identifies God’s historical activity with the ruling classes in a society. His suspicions of the motives and judgments of authorities, while important, are not believed to be the ground for disobedience, and still less for any question of the legitimacy of an authority. Vitoria’s God still demands obedience to authorities, even if those authorities are prone to error in judgment. Obedience and its antecedent, legitimacy, still arise from the divine origin of political authority, long before any particular authority has proved its worthiness of this deference by action. Legitimacy is largely a question of origins. If, however, we are to take seriously the “God of the oppressed” as at once the source of political authority (according to Echols) and identified in a special way with the oppressed (according to Cone, Thurman, and Mays), then the type of obedience demanded by the just war tradition becomes much more dependent on other aspects of authority, such as purpose and character, in which the authority’s congruence with God’s commitment to justice for human beings can be demonstrated. Merely claiming a divine origin of government, positing a special political “charism,” or claiming legal territorial rights to

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sovereignty is not enough to ground obedience and sanctify authority. Such arguments represent a rejection of the contributions of nonwhite, non-Western theologians in favor of a commitment to a status quo that, in the eyes of marginalized peoples, is oppressive and unjust. The divine source of political authority in African American thought is a challenge to, rather than a sanctification of, the legitimacy of governments that fail in their commitment to justice.22

Purpose of Authority While African Americans have traditionally employed a strong hermeneutic of suspicion of government, especially the American government, their response to American wars has been varied.23 Indeed, while the community has often critiqued American domestic and foreign policy, especially in wartime, African Americans have participated in every major armed conflict in American history. This is due, in part, to an acknowledgement that government, when properly directed, may serve good ends. Michael G. Long, in his analysis of the political thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., puts it nicely: “Caesar may not be God, but, on occasion, Caesar may be God’s minister for good. More particularly, the state’s ways are God’s ways when they both order human life and recognize, support, and enhance the freedom and equality of its citizens, especially blacks in need of freedom and justice.”24 While the experiences of political marginalization, slavery, and de jure segregation gave rise to a strong suspicion of the American government, African Americans commenting on American wars have often directed their critiques at the government’s failure to pursue its due goals rather than at the illegitimacy of government as such. The criticism that the United States’ authority in waging foreign wars is undermined by its failure to protect African American citizens at home has been raised during nearly every major American armed conflict. Karin L. Stanford notes that African Americans are much more likely than white Americans to “juxtapose their country’s wars with their domestic experiences.”25 Especially during the Spanish American, Philippine American, and World Wars, African Americans were much less likely to question the just causes of the United States and much more likely to question the authority of the United States to intervene in Cuba, the Philippines, and Europe.26 The dominant question asked by African American authors during these periods of war concerned the legitimate authority of the US government in foreign conflicts. How can a government that fails to protect its own citizens be a right authority for protecting citizens of other nations?

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On the surface, this question appears to concern the moral character of authority, particularly the racism of the US government. This, indeed, was a glaring concern of African Americans, especially as the United States intervened in non-white countries such as Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines, and this will be treated in the following section. However, their elucidation of the charge that American political legitimacy is threatened by domestic injustice also reveals to some extent their understanding of the purposes of government. Several claims can be made about these purposes. First, African Americans, like some other Western authors, believed that a government’s responsibility was to protect the rights and lives of its own citizens. Failure to do so delegitimized ruling authorities. This claim was made quite clear during the Spanish-American War. While the African American community strongly opposed Spanish imperialism in Cuba, many commentators opposed the war on the grounds that the United States had failed to secure its own legitimate authority to declare war by failing to protect the rights of African Americans at home. As Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., notes, the prevalence of lynching, race riots, and other forms of violence against African Americans “prompted Negroes again to remind President [William] McKinley that any nation which could not protect the lives and property of its own citizens was scarcely in a position to promise protection and good government to peoples elsewhere.”27 The problem posed by racial violence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was articulated most forcefully in the African American newspapers at the time, which largely opposed both the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. George P. Marks, III, notes, “Throughout the [Spanish-American] war the cardinal emphasis in the black press was on the anomaly of protecting the citizens of Cuba, and not protecting American citizens in the South.”28 Both Marks and Gatewood note that recognition of this anomaly did not signal animosity toward Cubans. To the contrary, African Americans tended to exhibit a great deal of racial solidarity, both with Cubans and Filipinos. Their concern was two-fold: first, that the United States was neglecting its responsibilities to its citizens, and second, that the aims of American intervention were incompatible with the proper purposes of government. The editors of the Richmond Planet, an African American newspaper, were especially forthright about the former concern. Echoing a common sentiment among many African Americans in 1898, they asked, “If the state governments will not protect us, why should we be expected to protect the state government? If the national government

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will not protect us, why should we be expected to protect the national government? Our allegiance to both is based upon a principle of reciprocity and partakes of the nature of a contract.”29 The notion of reciprocity here is key; the editors of the Planet, like other African American leaders, did not question the justness of the cause of the war, nor did they here specifically address the moral character of political leaders (though in other cases, this was certainly an issue). Their argument, like that of Henry McNeal Turner a year later, was that the US government’s failure to protect its citizens from racial violence and discrimination undermined its legitimacy as a war-waging authority. The US government, a “white man’s government,” according to Turner, lacked the authority needed to make demands on African American citizens during wartime precisely because it failed to fulfill adequately those duties that marked it as a legitimate government. As the editors of the Planet concluded in April 1898, “If colored men cannot live for their country, let white men die for it.”30 As discrimination in the armed forces against African American soldiers increased, this denunciation of the ability of the US government to command the loyalty and respect of its African American citizens also increased. In reference to segregation in the military, a letter-writer chastised the pro-war Kansas State Ledger, writing, “The government did not offer to protect the 25th colored infantry while en route to Tampa and when they were on their way to fight to serve their country’s honor, they were forced to ride in Jim Crow cars. Yet you think the Negro should be patriotic.”31 Many editors in the black press took issue especially with the contrast between waging war to protect Cuban rights while ignoring the realities of lynching in the American South. Editors at the Freeman, for example, expressed revulsion at the thought of African American volunteers for the war: The government of the United States will allow some of her most loyal and true citizens to be burned and butchered and shot to pieces, like dogs without protection, and go right on ignoring their rights and claims as if all were peace and happiness in the family, and yet when a foreign war is threatened, these same ill-treated citizens are wont to be rushed to the front in the name of protecting the nation’s honor.32

The lynching of South Carolina postmaster Frazier Baker and his infant daughter by whites in early 1898 was an especially troubling incident for African Americans listening to American enthusiasm for intervention in Cuba. Editors at the Kansas City American Citizen

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declared, “The southern statesmen who plead for Cuba could learn a valuable lesson by looking around their own bloodcurdling confines of butchery . . . No state, black with treason and anarchy, should be entrusted with human life. That government which is powerless to protect the humblest of its citizens should be wiped from the face of the earth.”33 Similarly, editors at the Washington Bee wrote a year later, “A government that is powerless to protect its own citizens should never attempt to seize other governments by invasion and throw around them an American protectorate . . . ”34 During the lead-up to the Philippine-American War, the editors ridiculed Senator William Jennings Bryan (D-NC) for discussing consent of the governed in the Philippines while his own state debated a constitutional amendment to deny suffrage to African Americans.35 The connections that African Americans make between domestic policy and political legitimacy are far from unique, even though their context within American politics makes them noteworthy. Indeed, while authors like Elshtain and Fisher might dismiss the arguments of the black press as irrelevant to the imperfect, at times ambiguous, task of government, African American commentary on war is, in some ways, akin to Aquinas’ discussion of political authority. Both Aquinas and late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century African Americans argue that an authority’s legitimacy hinges on its commitment to the good of its subjects. For Aquinas, this meant seeking and securing the common good. For African Americans, this meant protecting those who faced widespread denial of their rights and the rampant violence of lynching and rioting. For both, the overriding concern in regard to the purposes of government, especially in its use of force, was that the government’s public task of pursuing the common good not be twisted into the private task of pursuing the good of a select, particular group of persons in the community. Certainly, the connection between the domestic and foreign policies of the United States has been used by African Americans to argue for improvement of their own situation. Yet, to say they were unconcerned with the plight of Cubans, Filipinos, or Hawaiians during the years of American imperialist expansion would be inaccurate. Closely tied to questions about the government’s failure to end lynching and segregation were questions about the ends sought by American military intervention in the Caribbean and Pacific regions. If protecting the rights of and securing the good for all citizens were not ends actively sought by the government in its domestic activities, then what or whose good was sought in its international activities? For many African Americans, the United States’ forays were little more

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than capitalist imperialism. It was no coincidence that American concern for oppressed Cubans grew exponentially only after American sugar barons raised concerns about their plantations on the island, for example. Historian Herbert Aptheker was especially insistent on the connection between American military engagement and white economic prosperity. In a particularly striking keynote address at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in April 1973, Aptheker argued that the historical coincidence of lynching and segregation, the rise of capitalism, and the appearance of imperialism was “not simply temporal; it [was] causal.”36 The desire for greater economic power and new markets for American goods required imperialist expansion; the expansion occurred at the expense of non-white peoples in the Philippines, Cuba, and Hawaii and was justified by the type of paternalistic, racist ideology poetically described in Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden.” Despite the overtly white supremacist message of the poem, Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, said Kipling successfully communicated “a good sense of the expansionist standpoint.”37 Once American influence and power was established in the areas, what was left, Aptheker argued, was to silence domestic dissent. This was accomplished through the disenfranchisement of blacks and poor whites, who significantly opposed expansion. In support of his argument, Aptheker noted the prevalence of sentiments like that published in the San Francisco-based Argonaut newspaper in 1900: “We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but, unfortunately, they are infested by Filipinos. There are many millions there, and it is to be feared their extinction will be slow.”38 Aptheker was not alone in his belief that the government was pursuing economic growth for the few at the expense of the rights of the many. Again, it was the black press which most noticeably raised the question of American moral hypocrisy. Editors at the Planet observed, “It is said the United States began the [Spanish-American] war on a humanitarian basis to relieve the suffering and downtrodden humanity in Cuba. The question naturally arises, why was she not zealous for such in her own midst?”39 Editors of the Afro-American Sentinel similarly asked, “Does it appear ludicrous for the United States government to be waging a war in the interest of humanity and to bring about the cessation of Spanish outrages in Cuba, when it has such a record at home? It can protect Spanish subjects in Cuba [but not] American citizens at home.”40 The black press, like much of

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the black public, believed that the federal government’s true motives were concealed by rhetoric of humanitarianism, rhetoric that had been steadfastly avoided when political leaders talked about the treatment of African Americans at home. Leaders like Senator Albert Breveridge, who hailed success in and continued occupation of the Philippines as essential to opening up the “illimitable markets” of China and Asia, did little to disprove the arguments of African Americans.41 Such arguments should sound familiar to those of us who have listened to cries of “war for oil” in the last two decades. The interesting, if subtle, difference here is that these recent charges are framed as questions of just or unjust cause. For African Americans during the Spanish-American War, as Marks notes, America’s cause in Cuba was rarely questioned. Most African Americans agreed with the goal of freeing Cubans from Spanish domination. Rather, the hypocrisy between the government’s abdication of its duties toward black citizens and its insistence on the rights and liberty of Cubans eroded not the justness of the cause of war but the American government’s legitimacy as a proper authority to wage war and marshal troops in service of its ends. For leaders like Henry Turner, the government’s failure to seek a public good that included all citizens meant that the government had lost its authority over those citizens marginalized by domestic policies. It had become, to use Aquinas’ term, tyrannical, and as such unable to pursue legitimately any cause in war, no matter how just. By serving the good of only select (white) citizens, and failing in its duties as a public authority for all citizens, the American government, Turner and others argued, had guaranteed that its military excursions would be much closer to duellum (the use of force for private ends) than to bellum (the use of force for public ends). Duellum, recall from Chapter 2, is never justifiable by just war theory. Ironically, while Johnson argues that Christians have neglected Aquinas’ contributions here in their discussions about war, the relationship between authority to wage war and responsibility for the common good has never been wholly absent from African American thought on the subject. Indeed, while Johnson and Walzer bemoan the bifurcation of moral authority and legal authority in the post-Westphalian just war tradition, the interweaving of the two has been a persistent, overarching concern for African Americans. What is more, African Americans provide a point of entry for evaluating the morality of authority by forcing observers to ask whose good the government seeks with both its military and non-military policies.

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The emphasis African Americans have placed on the moral character of political leaders is closely tied to their commentary on the purposes of government and is perhaps their greatest contribution to understanding right authority. When just war theorists ask questions about right authority, the central query really is, who is legitimately able to answer the questions posed by the other criteria of just war theory? Who is best able to determine the justness of a cause? Who is best able to determine proportionality, or the chances of success? This may be why legalistic definitions of authority are insufficient for Johnson and Walzer. Legitimation of an authority on purely legal grounds, whether these are territorial or constitutional, tells us little about an authority’s capacity for making right decisions. No amount of territory, for example, makes Hitler able to determine a just cause. No number of articles in a convention makes a corrupt international agency capable of answering questions about justice. Yet, as Walzer has argued, very rarely have just war theorists attended to questions of the moral character of authority in recent years. Still less have the majority of theorists offered substantive reasons why character is so important for determining right authority. Again, it is the African American community that offers much guidance here. In response to questions of the relationship between moral character and authority to wage war, they have made two principal arguments. First, they have argued that an authority shaped by a racist ideology is likely to shape other nations in its own image when intervening in foreign conflicts. Second, they have argued that an authority that adheres to a racist ideology will make poor decisions about wars that concern other races. According to the first argument, if the political system of a nation is racist, then that nation is likely to export racism when it enters into the political affairs of other nations. This appears to have been the case in the Philippines and Cuba, where observers reported that non-white native inhabitants increasingly experienced Americanstyle racism as the US presence increased.42 Gatewood notes that soon after the American military arrived, an Afro-Cuban man was lynched near Havana, despite the fact that lynching, while prevalent in the United States, was virtually unknown in Cuba prior to the war.43 He reiterates what many observers of the Spanish-American War already described in their correspondences with American newspapers, namely “that the color line had become increasingly rigid [in Cuba] under the administration of General Leonard Wood, the

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American military governor of the island.” Moreover, he claims, General Wood was further chastised by many Americans for “barring colored Cubans from the artillery organization and . . . for suffrage regulations during the municipal elections of 1900 [that were] worthy of the most prejudiced politicians in Mississippi and Louisiana.”44 Segregation, denial of suffrage, and lynching, all hallmarks of the experience of African Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were implemented to some extent in Cuba and the Philippines during the United States’ occupation of those countries. During the First World War, American propaganda in France further supported the argument that racism may be exported to other countries. The Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, published a 1918 memo authored by the American Expeditionary Forces for French civilian authorities that discouraged French citizens from “treating the Negro with familiarity and indulgence.” The memorandum further directed the French from eating, shaking hands, and meeting with African American troops, lest the latter become “spoiled.”45 For African Americans, this confirmed the suspicions they had prior to the war.46 In regard to the second argument, the role of such racist ideology in shaping American foreign policy has long been a persistent concern for African Americans. This was especially the case during the Philippine engagement. Stanford notes that “the African American soldier was caught in a serious quandary . . . It was clear . . . that the war in the Philippines was waged to defeat the independence movement of people of color.”47 Whereas many African Americans supported intervention in Cuba, which was viewed as assistance (at least initially) for the Cuban independence movement, it was difficult to see intervention in the Philippines as anything but the armed expression of American racism. The unwillingness to address lynching on American soil, coupled with the government’s overt and covert support of segregation in both the American private sector and the American military, left its commitment to the rights and lives of peoples of color in serious doubt. African Americans argued that a government that ignored the lives lost to lynching could not be expected to exercise any greater concern for the lives of other races around the globe. Indeed, the racism of political leaders, at best paternalistic and at worst outrightly violent, cast doubt on the government’s ability to make good decisions in any conflict involving non-whites. As editors of the Cleveland Gazette put it in 1898, “a country where lynch law survives is unfit to play the judge of other countries.”48

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To a great extent, African Americans were rightly concerned that racism would lead the United States to ignore the personhood of non-whites on which fair treatment, equal regard, and mutual respect must be based. The belief that non-whites were inherently inferior, savage, and unfit for self-rule permeated the white establishment and led the US government to oppose the revolutionary movement in the Philippines. Where white rule was resisted, the American response was similar to that in the Jim Crow South—establishment of rule by force.49 Editors at the white-owned Saturday Enquirer of Richmond, Virginia, summarized the ethos of the white America government at the time: “The westward coursing star of empire should not have a black spot on it. Let the inferior race of Africa, Manila, or Cuba be confident to bask in the protection of their patrons and be careful to show that they deserve it.”50 Similarly, an editor at the popular newsweekly The Literary Digest claimed of the Philippine-American War, The struggle must continue until the misguided creatures there have had their eyes bathed enough in blood to cause their visions to be cleared, and to understand that not only is resistance useless, but that those whom they are now holding as enemies have no purpose toward them except to consecrate their land to liberty and to open for them a way to happiness, to education, and to enable them to possess their country and to enjoy all the fruits of their own toil.51

Such sentiments were not limited to the press. Sen. Breveridge, for example, argued before Congress that governance of the Philippines should not be handed over to Filipinos because “they are not of a self-governing race . . . What alchemy will change the Oriental quality of their blood and set the self-governing currents of the American pouring through their Malay veins? How shall they, in the twinkling of an eye, be exalted to the heights of self-governing peoples which required a thousand years for us to reach, Anglo-Saxon though we are?”52 Referring to General Emilio Aguinaldo and his followers in the Filipino independence movement as “a syndicate of Chinese half-breeds,” Theodore Roosevelt argued in 1900 that “not one competent witness who has actually known the facts believes the Filipinos capable of self-government.”53 Deciding how to end the war, whether Aguinaldo’s forces represented a just cause, or determining the likelihood of successful transference of governance from Spanish colonists to Filipino inhabitants would all be difficult tasks for political officials convinced that Filipinos were inherently incapable of self-rule.

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As the United States continued to engage in wars against people of color in Asia, African Americans continued their attack on American political decision-making. In an appeal to the United Nations during the Korean War, for example, the African American-led Civil Rights Congress (CRC) argued that racism pervaded every level of American government and rendered suspect the United States’ authority to wage war in Asia. A government that abuses its own citizens, they argued, cannot be expected to respect the rights and lives of people elsewhere. “We solemnly warn,” they wrote, “that a nation which practices genocide against its own nationals may not be long deterred, if it has the power, from genocide elsewhere.”54 According to the CRC, “It was not without significance [that the same] statesmen who prate constantly of ‘Asiatic hordes’ ” are members of the same government that dropped nuclear weapons on Japan. “The lyncher and the atom bomber are related.” Both are motivated by a worldview that denies the humanity of non-whites and views people of color as little more than beasts.55 While the appeal specifically concerned the treatment of African Americans within the United States, the CRC displayed significant concern for the fate of Asian peoples during the Korean War. This concern for the fate of Asians in the hands of racist American policymakers was also a predominant concern during the Vietnam War. The role of racism in undermining American political decisionmaking, in fact, was one of the few points on which both integrationist and black nationalist leaders agreed. Huey P. Newton, founder of the nationalist Black Panther Party, contended “that the United States lost its right to claim nationhood when it used its nationalism as a chauvinistic base to become an empire.” Newton sought an alliance between the Black Panthers and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on the basis that both had been victims of the racist aggression of the United States.56 While he certainly would not have suggested joining the war, Newton’s concern for the common racism exercised against both African Americans and Vietnamese people echoed earlier criticisms of the war made by Martin Luther King, Jr. In his now-famous Riverside Speech of April 4, 1967, King first voiced his public condemnation of the war, arguing, “Our government felt [in 1945] that Vietnamese people were not ‘ready’ for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With this tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination.”57 The “tragedy” of decisions in Vietnam, King argued, could be attributed to “racist decision-making by white

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men in the United States [which] led to disasters” both at home and abroad. In King’s view, these disasters occurred, in large part, because “[these white men] don’t really respect anyone who is not white.”58 Indeed, Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, seemed to admit long after the conflict ended that many of the mistakes American policymakers made during the conflict can be attributed to a failure to understand the Vietnamese people. While he certainly did not suggest that racism was behind this failure, his later writings on the war reflect a concern that the US government at the time made poor decisions based on an unwillingness to understand the Vietnamese people and an inability to distinguish their motives, needs, and goals from those of the Chinese.59 What is clear from his admission, at the least, is that foreign policy mistakes in Vietnam may have been rooted in precisely the sort of mindset that King and Newton critiqued sharply, namely, “the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them.”60 In more recent years, Manning Marable has written extensively about the connections between domestic and foreign racism as they relate to war. In his 2002 book The Great Wells of Democracy, Marable recalls a conversation he had about the Cold War with General Edward Romney, then a chief negotiator with the USSR under Reagan. When asked about the possibility of diplomacy, Romney responded, “The real problem with Russians is that they are Asiatics.” For Marable, this indicated “that there was a distinctly racial foundation for the Cold War that transcended the conflict between capitalism and communism” and may have undermined the potential for successful negotiations.61 Marable further argues that a similar “foundation” can be seen when the United States does not intervene internationally. It was no mere coincidence, he suggests, that Ronald Reagan, the same president who stoked racial fears among white Americans and virtually ignored the black community also refused to intervene in apartheid South Africa, even while stretching the limits of international law through intervention in Central America.62 The Reagan administration’s seeming failure to deal fairly with African Americans was closely tied to its poor decision-making regarding foreign relations abroad. Indeed, Marable notes, it was under Reagan’s leadership that the anti-apartheid African National Congress was labeled a “terrorist organization.”63 The racism of Reagan’s domestic policy was closely tied to the racism of his administration’s foreign policy. With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the twenty-first century, similar questions have been raised regarding political decision-making and anti-Arab racism. Marable argues that “the ugly politics of race”

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lie behind much of the fervor for war in the Middle East. While former President George W. Bush was careful to avoid anti-Arab and antiMuslim rhetoric in his public addresses on the War on Terror, other leaders were not. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for example, opined that “ ‘Western civilization’ was clearly ‘superior to Islamic culture.’ ” According to Marable, Berlusconi warmly praised “imperialism,” predicting that “the West will continue to conquer peoples, just as it has Communism.”64 David Ryan argues that similar supremacist attitudes have contributed to foreign policy errors in the Middle East since the midtwentieth century. He cites as examples of racism several CIA profiles from 1949 and 1971 that refer to Arabs as “non-inventive and slow,” “skilled mainly at avoiding hard work,” and lacking “the necessary physical and cultural qualities for performing effective military services.” Ryan argues that such “stereotypes of Arabs and Islam [have served] to justify Western cultural and economic imperialism” in the Middle East.65 Lest we believe that such stereotypes are relics of the past, Donald Rumsfeld, a principal architect of the War on Terror, echoed these earlier stereotypes in various post-9/11 memoranda, writing that Arabs are detached “from the reality of work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world.” Continually employing terms such as “Islamic fascism,” Rumsfeld was instrumental in stoking the racial fears that generated widespread American support for war in Afghanistan and Iraq.66 Much like the expansionist wars in Cuba and the Philippines, American political leaders today continue to rely on racial ideologies and stereotypes when making important decisions about war and foreign policy. The influence of such ideologies makes concerns about the moral character of leaders as important today as they were when African American writers foregrounded the influence of character on decision-making in the early twentieth century. The reality of racism, white supremacism, and Western chauvinism as potential stumbling blocks to good moral decision-making is of vital concern for theorists today, given the likelihood that most of the United States’ military engagements will involve peoples of different races, religions, and cultures for the foreseeable future.

Authority as Institution versus Authority as Process One of the most common responses to such criticisms is that they ignore the necessity of making political decisions even in the midst of sin. Both Elshtain and Fisher, as noted above, have argued that

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denying an authority the ability to make decisions in the present because of mistakes in the past is “an invitation to passivity,” which avoids the necessity of action in response to real threats.67 Both authors are correct, to some extent. The Christian just war tradition presumes that authorities exist, in part, to prevent the harm caused by sinful individuals and groups. It is nonsensical to insist that the authority that responds to pervasive sin must somehow itself be unaffected by the sin of its own leaders prior to acting within its sphere. However, Elshtain and Fisher (and we could add Weigel here) fail to recognize that their own realism can also be an “invitation to passivity,” especially the type of passivity that dictates that because all actors are equally sinful, there is nothing to be done to mitigate the sin of a given authority. This may be consistent with an Augustinian (or, more appropriately, a neo-Augustinian) political ethic, but it certainly eschews important facets of the just war tradition, especially as it was articulated by Vitoria. Vitoria recognized that political leaders can, and often do, make poor decisions because of their own sinfulness. Yet, he was not contradicting himself by arguing for obedience to such sinful authorities. Rather, his work exhibited a helpful distinction between two sides of the authority “coin.” On the one hand, when we speak of right authority, we are talking about particular institutions that are responsible for decisions and may command obedience, even if they are sinful in certain respects. On the other hand, when we speak of authority, we are also speaking of the process by which agents arrive at their decisions. In this respect, Vitoria was quite clear about limiting the opportunities a sovereign’s immorality might have to affect decisions about war. Even if a prince enjoyed final say about whether and how to wage war, he still “must consult reliable and wise men who can speak with freedom and without anger of hate or greed.”68 “The king,” he argued, “is not capable of examining the causes of war on his own, and it is likely that he may make mistakes, or rather that he will make mistakes . . . So war should not be declared on the sole dictates of the prince, nor even on the opinion of the few, but on the opinion of the many, and of the wise and reliable.”69 For Vitoria, the authority to declare war hinged on a process of decision-making designed to include a diversity of perspectives such that any single individual, motivated by greed, selfishness, or ignorance, would be unable to prosecute a war unjustly. Vitoria’s understanding of right authority thus included particular stipulations about the internal processes that mark authority as “right” and “legitimate.” Absent this process, both the ruler and his counselors fail

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to fulfill their duties and draw into question the justness of their declarations of war. Even Reinhold Niebuhr, whose vigorous insistence on the sinfulness of all human institutions has been a source for theorists who oppose internationalism and multilateralism, was unwilling to allow his Christian realism to be the end of the debate. In The Irony of American History, he wrote, “[W]e ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.”70 While claiming that “power cannot be wielded without guilt,” Niebuhr also argued that in order for power to be legitimate, it must be disciplined.71 To this end, while he was certainly no cheerleader for international institutions, Niebuhr praised the United Nations, “not so much as an institution . . . but as an organ in which even the most powerful of the democratic nations must bring their policies under the scrutiny of world opinion.”72 The process of decision-making enabled by the UN, he claimed, mitigated the sinful “will to power” of individual nations, particularly the American government by “correct[ing] the inevitable bias of western nations.”73 Despite the ways in which Niebuhrian realism has been co-opted to support unilateralism in recent years,74 Niebuhr himself insisted that “it is important that the fragmentary wisdom of any nation should be prevented from achieving the bogus omniscience, which occurs when the weak are too weak to dare challenge the opinion of the powerful.”75 To this end, Niebuhr recommended that power be disciplined by both “an inner religious and moral check” and social and political review in order to be considered legitimate in its exercise. His concern, like that of Vitoria, was that the authority of an institution be legitimized by a rigorous, inclusive process of decision-making, rather than merely by the legal or territorial justifications of an authoritative institution. (1) Disciplining Power—Inner Religious Check It is possible to find in African American thought practical suggestions for what such a process might look like in terms of Niebuhr’s proposals for political discipline, “an inner religious check” and social and political review. By “inner religious check,” Niebuhr meant the “cultivation of a sense of justice” and the exercise of humility in political judgments. This is remarkably akin to Cornel West’s recent proposals in light of the War on Terrorism, which he viewed as an exercise in political hubris. In Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against

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Imperialism, West advocates for a “check” on such hubris that may prevent the prosecution of unjust wars in the future. Impassioned political rhetoric and the Manichean tendency to equate the United States with “Good” and its enemies with “Evil,” he argues, stifled debate in the lead-up to the War on Terrorism and the War in Iraq. Both factors undermined the “genuine, robust democracy” that resists simplistic evaluations of conflict and engenders creative, nuanced responses to violence. Ironically, his argument recalls Elshtain’s early opposition to the similarly simplistic and Manichean rhetoric of President George H. W. Bush during the Gulf War of 1991, even though Elshtain and West were miles apart in their analyses of the War on Terrorism. Both argued that individuals must resist the sort of grandiose, unsophisticated political rhetoric of leaders who assert unequivocally the justness of their own cause and the wickedness of their opponents. The best check on the sort of uncritical hubris that hastened the rush to war in 2003, according to West, is for American citizens to don their “democratic armor.” This “armor” has three elements, according to West. First, Americans must put on the “Socratic” armor of honest, critical questioning. West argues, “The Socratic love of wisdom holds . . . that to be human and a democratic citizen requires that one muster the courage to think for oneself.”76 To be a responsible citizen, he adds, requires that one enact “parrhesia—frank and fearless speech” that at once is honest about the threats one’s country faces and the threats one’s own country poses for others. “Socratic” armor protects citizens from being seduced by the imprecise (and often hypocritical) claims of governments to be acting solely in defense of lofty ideals such as “Freedom” or “the Good.” It furthermore requires that dissent be acknowledged and invited rather than stifled and ridiculed. Any government that rejects criticism or parrhesia among its citizens and neighbors undermines its own trustworthiness. Second, West argues that citizens must don their “prophetic” armor. This armor represents the union between a hermeneutic of suspicion and a preferential option for the poor. West argues that prophetic armor symbolizes the “heartful solidarity with the agony and anguish of oppressed peoples” that gives rise to “visions of justice and deeds of compassion,” the “senses” which Niebuhr believed vital to the discipline of power.77 This solidarity is not without a practical reason; as West, Marable, and others have argued, poor and oppressed peoples are the most likely to suffer in any given war. Yet, they may also stand to benefit from some military actions, especially humanitarian intervention and justified revolutions, provided

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that such actions are performed with attention to their needs and desires. Paternalistic intervention, which is done for rather than with oppressed peoples, has often created situations worse than those which intervention was designed to correct. What is more, active solidarity with oppressed peoples may undercut some of the anti-Americanism popular in volatile regions and help to bolster the United States’ perceived legitimacy as an intervening power. This is especially necessary in the twenty-first century, given that intervention and nonconventional warfare within various nation-states is much more likely to be the shape of war in the future than the sort of interstate warfare witnessed in the World Wars and the Cold War. Third and finally, West argues that individuals and societies must adopt the willingness to confront “harsh reality [without] innocent sentimentalism or coldhearted cynicism” symbolized by the “tragicomic” democratic armor.78 A tragicomic approach to political affairs disallows the belief that a just peace is either inevitable or easy. It takes seriously the pervasiveness of sin, which breeds violence and injustice, yet it refuses to believe that this sin is the whole story. It resists both naïve pacifism and naïve realism. It recognizes the necessity of confronting sin and violence, while resisting the conclusion that military action is always the best, or even usually the most successful, response. In a sense, it is evocative of the sort of responses African Americans have made to American wars in the last three centuries. Their arguments cannot easily be characterized as either idealist or realist. Rather, African Americans have at once taken seriously the necessity of war (especially when it was used to secure freedom from oppression) and have been sharply critical of those who declare and prosecute war. Their “tragicomic” armor challenges political authorities to uphold their principles, fulfill their duties, and ensure fairness and honesty in their decisions. This “armor” further resists the tendency to assume that justice is merely a matter of determining which authority, the nation-state or the international institution, has made a particular decision. For African Americans, as for Niebuhr, unjust political decision-making is as likely to occur in international institutions as it is in national governments. The sort of legalistic support for the UN offered by some just war theorists who opposed unilateral action against Iraq in 2003 neglected the ways the UN had failed to serve the needs of oppressed peoples in the past, even while it often recalled the same failures on behalf of the US government. African Americans focused less on which institution was legitimate and more on what type of decision-making process grounded legitimacy to wage war, an emphasis that coincides

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with concerns raised by both Vitoria in the sixteenth century and Niebuhr in the twentieth.

In regard to disciplining power by means of submitting to social and political review, Niebuhr was clear that all nations, but especially powerful nations, should submit their proposals for military action to review by other nations, especially weaker nations. Doing so, he believed, might help keep powerful nations from exploiting or subjugating weaker nations in the name of “justice.” Such review also may minimize the risk African Americans highlighted throughout the twentieth century, namely the risk that ideology (especially racist, but we can add supremacist, chauvinist, or sexist) may inhibit political ethical decision-making. Both Manning Marable and Maulana Karenga offer proposals that may be considered forms of such review. Prior to his death, Marable posited the need for “multicultural democracy” in America. He argued, “Multicultural political democracy means that this country was not built by and for only one group—Western Europeans; that our country does not have only one language—English; or only one religion—Christianity; or only one economic philosophy—corporate capitalism. Multicultural democracy means that the leadership within our society should reflect the richness, colors, and diversity expressed in the lives of all our people.”79 This type of democracy would allow and encourage the sort of vigorous debate West and Niebuhr recommend. Marable, however, is no idealist. Engendering multicultural democracy will not be accomplished through reform of current institutions but through the active work of “a multiracial, multiclass political movement with strong participation and leadership from racial minorities, labor unions, women’s organizations, and other left-of-center groups [which] could effectively articulate important interests and concerns of the most marginalized and oppressed sectors.”80 This “democracy from below” would challenge the alignment of the interests of particular groups within a society with the national interest, thereby ensuring that the public authority remains public and the common good it seeks remains common.81 This requires ensuring participation in the decision-making process by “small scale, ad hoc, grassroots organizations,” which Marable terms “great wells of democracy.”82 Clearly, Marable’s argument is sharply distinct from that of Weigel, whose overreliance on a questionable interpretation of the Catholic

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Catechism leads him to deny the role of such groups at the political decision-making table. What Weigel neglects (and Marable recalls), however, is that the reality of political marginalization leaves certain groups unable to participate in politics through conventional channels. Marable, Peter Paris, and James Cone rightly point out, for example, that the church was often the only place left for African Americans to exercise their political witness. Locked out of political parties, denied suffrage, and without substantial economic power, African Americans have often relied on the church “as a pressure group in national politics and public-policy debates.”83 In sharp contrast to Weigel and Strehle, who similarly argues that the Christian churches should remain acquiescent toward political authorities, Marable argues that churches and other faith-based community organizations may and should use their power and influence to help guide American politics and provide the sort of social review of domestic and foreign policy that Niebuhr suggests. In response to the invasion of Iraq, political scientist and social ethicist Maulana Karenga, one of the few African American authors to address just war theory directly, argued, “War as a life-and-death matter should not be decided or declared without adequate discussion and debate . . . The gravity of war requires a vigorous and varied public discussion.”84 Karenga goes so far as to amend the right authority criterion to include what he terms “collective considered judgment.”85 The criterion as he frames it would require that a declaration of war be made not only by a recognized, legitimate institution but also only after that authority obtained widespread approval from a diversity of participants engaged in robust dialogue. While on the face of it, Karenga’s suggestion may appear interesting but irrelevant (just war theorists are often reluctant to accept new criteria for just wars), in actuality, Karenga is only making explicit what Vitoria implied in his understanding of declaration of war by a proper authority. Both writers are less concerned with diversity as a value itself than with the epistemological limitations of any individual authority. Like Niebuhr before him, Karenga argues that the self-interest and prejudice that limit any individual’s access to objective knowledge can be ameliorated by submitting an authority’s proposal to review by a broader audience. Like both earlier authors, Karenga is less insistent that decisions be made by a particular institution than he is that any institution making decisions about war seek the counsel of others through a vigorous, dynamic process of social and political review.

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Hermeneutical Principles of Right Authority

(1) Hermeneutic of Suspicion The sort of deference to political authority Augustine counseled is no longer tenable, if it ever was. Most just war theorists recognize this, though Weigel is a notable exception. Unfortunately, even astute theorists like Elshtain are not immune to the tendency of employing patriotism as a hermeneutical principle of just war theory. Her overly nationalist defense of America lacks the depth and subtlety that mark her attacks on the UN. The result is a proposal of America as the right authority in the War on Terrorism that places an overwhelming emphasis on power as self-legitimating and that ignores questions of moral character. On the other hand, as Johnson has rightly noted, theorists such as Albert Weeks and Chris Dolan, who opposed unilateralism, have emphasized legal categories of sovereignty at the expense of traditional understandings of the purpose of authority. Neither law nor power is a sufficient ground for right authority in the just war tradition inasmuch as neither category allows for the hermeneutic of suspicion of authority, which has been emphasized at various points, and to varying extents, in history. African American writers, by contrast, have been conscious of the ways in which authority may be manipulated to serve private interests and the way in which ideology, especially racist ideology, may undermine an authority’s ability to make moral decisions about war. Both risks necessitate attention to moral character and past behavior of authorities. Both also require that authorities bear the burden of proof when claiming for themselves the ability to make good decisions in the affairs of other peoples, especially when these other peoples are of a different race, ethnicity, or religion. This hermeneutic of suspicion of the decision-making capacity of authorities avoids the false choice between the US government and the UN as right authorities in favor of a more penetrating analysis of both state-based and international institutions. Neither institution will enjoy prima facie legitimacy in a given war. On the other hand, neither institution will be denied legitimacy a priori in a given conflict. A robust hermeneutic of suspicion

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Having discussed both the understanding of right authority in the just war tradition and some valuable contributions African Americans have made to the conversation, it is now possible to draw from the above analysis several hermeneutical principles that should guide future just war theorists on the question of right authority.

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enables just war theorists to analyze more precisely what legitimacy means in the context of a particular war. It may be that the UN is the proper authority in certain cases, or that a single nation-state is the right authority. However, just war theorists should be suspicious of all claims to unilateral authority in a given conflict, not because the UN as an institution enjoys greater legitimacy per se, but rather because multilateralism itself requires at least some measure of varied discussion about the use of military power. (2) Authority as a Decision-Making Process The false choice between individual states and international institutions does justice neither to the just war tradition nor to the current global political landscape. In regard to the tradition, theologians like Vitoria and Suarez, and we could add here Niebuhr, presented a broad analysis of authority, which attended to the reality of the criterion: right authority primarily designates one who is capable of judging the morality of a cause for war and one who is capable of determining a right course of action. Both the Salamanca theologians and Niebuhr were fully aware that calling for a perfectly just institution of authority is idealistic. Therefore, they turned their attention to specific directives for the process by which authority is exercised. Similarly, African American thinkers such as West, Marable, and Karenga were less likely to call for wholesale reform of the American government than they were to suggest practical ways that the decision-making process might be refined. Taking up this mantle in the future means that just war theorists must both participate in and advocate for “collective considered judgment” and “multicultural democracy.” It is impractical and unwise for theorists to deny legitimacy to any authority or to resign themselves to the sinfulness of all institutions. If just war theory is to remain relevant, it must offer something more than Westphalian or utopian descriptions of legitimacy. If justice is a central purpose of government, then decisions about how to achieve this end must be made within a process that is itself just. This may require attention to, and engagement with, Marable’s “great wells of democracy,” but it also indicates that decisions about regime change, humanitarian rescue, and preemptive war should be made in a transnational forum marked by “vigorous and varied discussion.” This is especially the case today, when wars are more likely to involve subnational actors, to occur in non-Western regions, and to concern questions of liberation, human rights, and genocide.

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As Carlson and Owens observed, many modern just war theorists have great difficulty relating their theology to their political ethics. In modern debates about war and peace, the Christian community is often presented, again, with false choices about God’s relationship to political authority. Augustinian just war theorists often present earthly authorities as God’s agents, a claim that is inherently problematic, for it has been used to justify obedience and loyalty to authorities whose actions are manifestly unjust. On the other hand, some pacifists tend to draw too sharp a line between political authorities who may wage war and a God who opposes violence in all forms. A more appropriate method of relating God to government is present in both Thomistic and African American political ethics—an authority is not sanctified by God in its office but in its action. Both Aquinas and African American scholars recognized that a government may be said to serve God if it exemplifies justice in its action and serves the common good. Unjust authorities who abdicate their responsibilities are incompatible with the intentions of God for human society and thus do not enjoy legitimacy from a theo-ethical perspective. While Aquinas was less clear about what it meant for a government to fail in its task, African Americans were more explicit. Any government that oppresses its citizens through exploitation, marginalization, and violence ceased to be legitimate. God’s identification with the oppressed underscores the importance of examining an authority’s relationship to the poor in its realm. The existence of an oppressed group in a political community may point to the privatization of public authority, inasmuch as only one group within a society enjoys the benefits of the government’s activities. How the poor are treated may also reveal the extent to which the good a government seeks is common and not particular. The demand that just war theorists exemplify a preferential option for the poor means that theorists must ask, first, how will the poor be affected by an authority’s decision? Does a choice for war benefit the oppressed? Or, will war ultimately engender or maintain oppression? Second, what role do marginalized peoples have in making decisions about war? Are interventions, rescues, and regime changes really in the expressed interest of oppressed peoples? Has the decision-making process allowed for their participation? These questions have practical significance. First, as Marble has observed, the poor are the most likely to be negatively impacted by a war. Moreover, the poor are least likely to enjoy the power and influence necessary to guide decision-making.

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It may be, and often is, likely that if special consideration is not given both to their interest and their perspectives, decisions made by an authority will serve the particular interests of select members of a political community rather than the truly common good of that community. The commitment to the public interest that marks authority as legitimate and grants it the right and responsibility to wage war may best be exemplified by a concern that the needs, rights, and perspectives of the poor are protected and valued. What is more, creating space for the full participation of poor peoples and poor nations, according to Niebuhr, may mitigate the sinful will-to-power, which often tempts strong nations. This may help reduce the likelihood of unjust wars. Finally, this is an especially urgent consideration for just war theorists if just war theory is to remain relevant as a theo-ethical framework in the future as theology itself continues to be challenged by nontraditional, non-Western, non-white understandings of God. As we will see in the ensuing chapters, this may be the next stage of development for just war theory. The theory itself has developed in tandem with changes in culture, politics, and theology through the centuries. With the rise of Scholastic natural law, Aquinas articulated a version of just war theory that avoided the theocentrism of Augustine and added other concerns to the criteria. With the rise of international law, Vitoria, Suarez, and Hugo Grotius shifted the focus of just war theory to considerations of legal sovereignty and the law of war. In the twentieth century, nuclear weapons forced just war theorists to reconsider proportionality, discrimination, and the possibility of waging a “just” war at all. In the twenty-first century, it may very well be the case that the next developmental stage of just war theory is a turn to liberationist, nontraditional theological ethics as a source for refinement and reformulation.

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African American Thought

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4

W h o Pay s t h e C o s t ? M i l i t a r y Bu d g e ts a n d P ro p o rt i o n a l i t y ad bellum

In a speech broadcast on German radio in January 1936, Joseph

Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda in Hitler’s Germany, infamously remarked, “We can do without butter, but despite all of our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns.”1 Later that same year, Hermann Goering put the choice more starkly for the German people: “Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.”2 In recent decades, the seemingly zero-sum choice, “guns versus butter,” offered by Goebbels and Goering, has become a common frame for both proponents of increased military spending (the “guns” side of the debate) and proponents of increased welfare spending (the “butter” side of the debate). Despite the ubiquity of this argument in economic circles, just war theorists have rarely engaged the issues raised by the debate regarding the financing of wars and war-readiness even though the criterion of proportionality ad bellum would appear to offer a useful lens for such questions.3 Unfortunately, just war theorists have rarely engaged the question of budgets at all, preferring instead to focus on loss of life as the dominant determinant of proportionality or disproportionality in warfare. My aim in this chapter is to correct this narrow view of proportionality by focusing attention on the question of proportionate financing.

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Engaging the question of budgets requires something of a turn from the deontological criteria of just war theory (just cause, right authority, and right intention) to the consequentialist criterion of proportionality, a criterion that does not enjoy the fevered attention of many just war theorists that is brought to bear on right authority or just cause. This is despite the fact that proportionality, for many classical thinkers, is a central element of just war reasoning. In fact, “concerns of proportionality are among the most important in any discussion of the justice of war.”4 For Hugo Grotius, one of the most significant just war thinkers, proportionality should be located alongside right authority and just cause; even if both of the latter conditions obtain, it may sometimes be a duty to avoid war if war is not an expedient, proportionate option.5 Formatively, it is proportionality, more than any other criterion, that most clearly places just war theory between absolute pacifism and holy war. Proportionality represents the formal establishment of basic just-war claims about human activity, namely, that humans are fallen, that even their good acts are never without some measure of evil, and, principally, that humans will never save the world in some ultimate sense, for humans are not God, no matter how much we desire to be.6 We are creatures. Our potential is limited, and thus our goals must be limited as well. No human political activity will usher in the Kingdom of God. No war will rid the world of evil once and for all. This is the work of God, not humans. The introduction of proportionality into Christian political discussions reflects the humility that this realization necessitates. Life this side of the eschaton requires that we weigh the good and evil that we face, and the good and evil we create, and make decisions in the midst of tension between the two. It also requires that we weigh actions honestly, as never wholly good, as always tinged with sin. This is the work of proportionality. It is an attempt to weigh the costs and benefits of a war, cognizant of the fact that there will be costs. Proportionality brings authority and cause “down to earth,” as it were; it forces us to consider neither our rights nor our intentions in themselves but the realistic exercise of both in the real world, where our intentions are always mixed and enforcement or protection of our rights may likely result in harm to others. Yet, as Walzer notes, proportionality is rarely discussed intelligibly, and even when it is treated, it is developed in only the most cursory fashion.7 Even a cursory glance at twentieth-century just war literature, especially regarding nuclear weapons, suggests that

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he may be overstating things. Proportionality is discussed, as we will see below, but this is usually in terms of proportionality in bello, not proportionality ad bellum. He does, however, point to an important deficiency in just war literature, namely the failure to treat proportionality ad bellum as either linked systematically to the other ad bellum criteria or independent of proportionality in bello. Why is this so, especially since most just war theorists name it as a separate criterion under the rubric of ad bellum concerns? First, proportionality, at least in the last several decades, is generally placed alongside the other “prudential” criteria of just war theory, such as last resort and reasonable chance of success. Despite Johnson’s lucid explanation of the relations between deontological criteria and prudential criteria and his appreciation of both, some just war theorists still understand Johnson’s picture of prudential criteria to mean that these criteria are secondary or even ancillary to other criteria.8 Second, as Johnson notes, proportionality requires “reflexive thought” and careful consideration of things that can’t always be weighed easily. It requires weighing both the costs and benefits of an action and the values to be protected or threatened by an action. On the one hand, as both Johnson and A. J. Coates point out, it is very difficult to know with assurance exactly what the consequences of an action or policy might be.9 On the other hand, values are rarely quantifiable. How do we quantify, for example, freedom or security in any reasonable way? Even if we could quantify these values, how do we weigh them against other values, such as human life or ecological preservation? The terms proportionality is intended to consider are unpredictable, amorphous, and often unquantifiable. This makes analysis and responsible decision-making quite difficult. Complicating this is John Courtney Murray’s insistence that proportionality only concerns the “hierarchy of strictly moral values.” While Murray is to be respected for his attempt to recover Catholic moral wisdom for American political discourse, when it comes to proportionality, he seemingly denies relevance to any costs or benefits that are quantifiable or physical. Even loss of life, the standard counterbalance during the Cold War, holds little weight with Murray, for “there are greater evils than the physical death and destruction wrought in war.”10 Be that as it may, what is important here, especially given Murray’s influence on Coates and a host of other theorists, is Murray’s insistence that any attempt to limit war by appealing to concrete costs like life or money is merely an example of the materialism that dominates so much of American life. Just war theorists, especially Christian just war theorists, must oppose rather than appropriate

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such critiques of war and armament policy. Murray intentionally leaves no room for the sort of quantifiable costs and benefits that make proportionality concrete and, quite honestly, useful. Even if we could quantify values and predict consequences with certainty, Walzer, ever the realist, offers a third explanation for proportionality’s absence in the discussion. Simply put, according to Walzer, politicians lie. Or, as Thucydides put it long ago, “In war, the first casualty is truth.” Politicians often exaggerate threats or aggrandize aims in order to gain support for military actions. While “proportionality is a matter of adjusting means to ends . . . there is an overwhelming tendency in wartime to adjust ends to means instead, that is, to redefine initially narrow goals in order to fit the available military forces and technologies.”11 In short, the values, the costs, and the benefits can be, and often are, easily manipulated by policymakers and commanders. Realistically, proportionality may not be discussed as widely since its calculations can be so easily twisted to serve almost any purpose.

Proportionality in the Tradition Obviously, none of these difficulties is new. Values have always been hard to quantify, consequences have always been difficult to predict, and politicians have never been fully honest. Proportionality, though, wasn’t always so marginal in the just war tradition. Before considering in more depth the shortcomings of modern thought on proportionality, it is worthwhile to consider how earlier thinkers dealt with the criterion. As should be clear, the focus here is proportionality ad bellum, and not its more popular cousin, proportionality in bello. Johnson notes that what would eventually come to be formally called proportionality was already present in early Roman thought and, indirectly, in Augustine’s work.12 Mattox agrees, arguing that Augustine’s concern for the spiritual well-being of soldiers (especially as they faced the temptation of bloodthirstiness and cruelty in war) reveals a nascent appreciation for the importance of proportionate action in wartime. Certainly, Augustine never uses the language of proportionality in his work on war. However, his belief that disproportionate actions such as unnecessary killing or plundering damaged the souls of soldiers by feeding the love of violence is an early indicator of the importance of proportionality in the moral evaluation of war. The frame that he uses to highlight this, namely the spiritual welfare of soldiers, was not especially influential to later analysts of proportionality,

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which may be why Charles and others don’t acknowledge Augustine as an important early source in this area of just war theory. Still, Augustine’s work reveals that such concerns were present, from the earliest period of Christian just-war reasoning. Augustine likely drew on early Roman sources for his thinking in this area. In fact, some of the earliest comments about proportionality come from Cicero in his treatise De Officiis. There, Cicero claims that “there are certain duties that we owe even to those who have wronged us. For there is a limit to retribution and to punishment.”13 Cicero, like Augustine, is concerned that the harm inflicted by war not exceed that which is necessary to achieve war’s aims, that the punishment demanded by justice not itself become unjust. Augustine, with his focus on the soul, adapts Cicero’s original concern for justice into a concern for spiritual well-being. Cicero’s duty owed to enemies becomes, in Augustine’s hands, a duty Christians owe to themselves. Either way, we find with both Cicero and Augustine that proportionality is linked with the primary concerns for right intention and just cause in just war theory. In the Middle Ages, the view of proportionality as a primary criterion continued. Johnson argues that proportionality was a dominant concern for princes and knights, who had to weigh not only the vague notions of justice or spiritual values when considering war but also, and principally, the economic costs of war.14 Whereas proportionality in bello, with its focus on means and targets, has become the dominant concern of modern just war theorists, Johnson argues that thinkers in the Middle Ages, such as Thomas Aquinas, were more concerned with proportionality ad bellum, with its focus on the goals of war and the resources expended to achieve these goals.15 This was partly due to the very real concerns regarding kings’ responsibility for the economy of their kingdoms; wars could easily bankrupt the kingdom if not held in check by the limits imposed by proportionality ad bellum. These limits eventually gave rise to other limits, especially the limits imposed by discrimination and proportionality in bello. Despite the foregrounding of the latter two criteria by theorists such as Ramsey and Walzer in the twentieth century, Johnson insists that proportionality ad bellum remains “logically prior” to in bello criteria, since the limits imposed ad bellum (goals and resources) are logically prior to more immediate and secondary concerns of in bello (means and targets). This is an important observation to keep in mind; what Johnson is claiming, and rightly so, is that proportionality ad bellum is more appropriately linked to the ad bellum criteria of right authority, just cause, and right intention than to the in bello criterion

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of discrimination. As we will see below, this distinction is not always made by modern just war theorists. Charles is right to highlight the role the Salamanca theologians played in shaping just-war discourse on proportionality. Both Suarez and Vitoria were insistent that a disproportionate war, even if waged for a just cause, was an unjust war. For his part, Vitoria linked proportionality to right intention and just cause, arguing that a war “must not be waged so as to ruin the people against whom it is directed, but only so as to obtain one’s rights and the defense of one’s country and in order that from that war peace and security may in time result.”16 Vitoria drew proportionality from just cause and used it to shape right intention; a just war pursued limited aims and directed action toward the rightly intended end of peace. Disproportionate wars were inimical not only to justice (since they exceeded the limits placed on war by the just cause) but also to peace, for they threatened the possibilities for reconciliation on which peace and mutual security are founded. By this sort of argument, Vitoria addresses proportionality within a broader discussion of rulers’ responsibility to protect the common good. Despite this valuable contribution, it is really Suarez who deserves much credit here for his careful analysis of proportionality. Among the conditions for just war, after “legitimate power” and just cause, Suarez argued that “the method of its conduct must be proper, and due proportion must be observed at its beginning, during its prosecution, and after victory.”17 With Suarez, we have the first clear distinction between proportionality ad bellum and proportionality in bello. Beginning with the assumption that a just cause for a given war is already determined, Suarez then moves to other concerns, especially that a prince not “expose his own realm to disproportionate loss and peril” through an imprudent war.18 To do so, he argues, is to sin against justice, since it would violate the prince’s responsibility to the “communal welfare” of his community. On the other hand, a disproportionate war would also be a sin against the charity demanded of the prince toward the warred-against state. In either case, sovereigns must make the sort of cost–benefit analysis that Johnson discusses both prior to and during a war. Suarez and Vitoria are both clear on this point; a disproportionate war is not an unfortunate mistake. It is a sin against both justice and charity. Perhaps no thinker was more insistent on this point than Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536). Commonly labeled a pacifist (and not without reason), Erasmus’ opposition to war came as much from his disgust of the wars of his time as it did from any Christian conviction.

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Part of this disgust for war came from what Erasmus saw as a swift rush to war following little consideration of the consequences of war. In order to temper this bellicosity, he argued that a prince must “take a rational estimate long enough to reckon what the war will cost and whether the final end to be gained is worth that much—even if victory is certain . . . ” This “rational estimate,” he argued, must include not only the loss of life but also “the worries, the expenditures, the trials, the long wearisome preparation” for war.19 This included the financial costs and the harms to the household that follow the loss of a family member. Death was not the sole concern for Erasmus; he was cognizant of the fact that a war’s effects may stretch far beyond the battlefield, and “the greatest hardship falls on those to whom the war means nothing and who are in no way deserving of these catastrophes.”20 The responsibility of rulers to protect the common good means that they must walk a careful line between being deeply committed to justice and also guided by prudence. One scholar who agreed with much of Erasmus’ argument (and mentioned him by name) was his fellow Dutchman Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), widely considered the father of international law and one of the most important just war theorists. Grotius was equally concerned with the “lack of restraint in relation to war, such as even barbarous races should be ashamed of” in the Christian world. He lamented “that men rush to arms for slight causes, or no cause at all, and that when arms have once been taken up there is no longer any respect for law.”21 Indeed, it was “such utter ruthlessness” that led Grotius to write his influential magnum opus De Iure Belli ac Pacis (The Rights of War and Peace) in 1625, during both the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and his homeland and the Thirty Years’ War between Catholic and Protestant Europeans. Unlike his contemporary Erasmus, whose abhorrence of war eventually led to pacifism, Grotius believed that war could be limited, and thus just, if kept within certain bounds. He saw proportionality as a vital means to this end. If war is to be just, he argued, those who wish to prosecute it must demonstrate that the means and the ends of war have been “duly weighed” and that the good to be obtained clearly outweighed the evil that may be prevented or corrected.22 Proportionality, for Grotius, was especially linked to the chances of success for a war; any war that might be inexpedient, or whose good aims were unlikely to be obtained, was unjust. The evil that might foreseeably result from a war waged without careful deliberation would likely outweigh any good intended by the sovereign authority. Grotius thus emphasizes two important elements of war.

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First, war is an imperfect instrument for achieving justice, and second, determining the justice of a war requires not only examination of legal issues and questions of values but also careful prudential and consequentialist analyses of the ends to be achieved and the costs to be incurred by even justifiable warfare. For him, as for his predecessors and contemporaries, these costs encompass more than just loss of life. As Johnson has noted, proportionality in the just war tradition “requires reflexive thought” about damage and harm to one’s own nation and enemy nations, the effect of a war on future national security, and expenditures one’s society is likely to make for success.23 Proportionality has a broader frame of reference than the narrow focus on weapons and targets modern discussions of proportionality in bello may suggest. This is true even of those theorists considered by some as more bellicose than other authors. Carl von Clausewitz, a former Prussian soldier during the Napoleonic Wars, is perhaps most famous for his aphorism, “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.”24 While his strategic proposals for war are considered obsolete, Clausewitz’s observations on the relationship between war and politics remain as astute today as they were in the nineteenth century. Despite a careful deconstruction of “total war” as unrealistic and unreasonable, Clausewitz is still viewed as a rather bellicose author. His brief statement above is sometimes interpreted as supportive of war as a normal means of political activity. That is, Clausewitz’s claim normalizes war against pacifist detractors and elides special moral questions about warfare (perhaps much in the same way as Sherman’s famous comment, “War is hell”). This was not Clausewitz’s purpose, however. As he makes clear, framing war as a “mere continuation of policy” was meant to limit war by linking it to policy. “Policy,” he argued, “is interwoven with the whole action of war, and must exercise a continuing influence upon it, as far as the nature of the forces liberated by it will permit.”25 From beginning to end, politicians and commanders must continually weigh the sacrifices of war against “the value of [the political] object” sought by war. Once “the required outlay becomes so great that the political object is no longer equal in value, the object must be given up, and peace will be the result.”26 Clausewitz’s limitation of war is derived from his view of war as an instrument of politics and is framed significantly by appeals to proportionality ad bellum, though Clausewitz does not use that term. Far from normalizing war, Clausewitz was restricting it. To claim that war is a matter of politics, or that just war theory is a theory of politics, is not a way to normalize war, but a way to limit and restrict it,

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especially in the interests of the populace expected to make sacrifices to support war.27 Again, it was not merely loss of life that limited war thusly but a broad spectrum of costs that a nation could reasonably be expected to (or actually did) incur from a war. It is rare to find in twentieth century just war thinking reflections on proportionality that sweep this broadly. Proportionality took a different shape, but no less a significant place, following the first use of nuclear weapons in Japan in 1945. The immensity of destruction humans were capable of wreaking on the world, in fact, made proportionality once again central to just war thought, though the focus throughout the Cold War was on questions of means and targets, proportionality in bello. When considerations more properly considered ad bellum were addressed, this was typically done with questions of weaponry in mind: Is it possible to fight a just war with nuclear bombs? In some sense, this was construed as an ad bellum question, inasmuch as just war theorists asked whether one could enter into a war that one could not fight justly. Though this question became central for discussions of proportionality, it neglected, as Johnson rightly argues, the distinction between questions about goals and resources (ad bellum) and means and targets (in bello). Proportionality was tied to questions of targeting, double effect, discrimination, and loss of life and was thus much narrower than originally intended by classical theorists. One of the few examples of a broad understanding of proportionality in the nuclear debate was the USCCB’s The Challenge of Peace. There, the bishops retrieve both the Augustinian focus on “spiritual costs” of war and the medieval focus on economic costs of war. While they still mostly view proportionality as the balancing of death and injury with the values sought by war, the bishops also consider the psychological and spiritual costs of “entering a world where we have no experience of control.”28 Moreover, in a particularly perceptive section on the “relationship between disarmament and development,” the Bishops argue, “If the arms race in all its dimensions is not reversed, resources will not be available for the human needs so evident in many parts of the globe and in our own country as well.”29 The economic costs of war, especially the costs incurred by the arms race, are such that other social goods may have to be neglected. Recognizing that proportionality, in the classic sense, requires taking stock of both our limited resources and the limited goals we are able to pursue, the Bishops argue that just war theory provides a framework for talking about war’s total costs, and not just the costs of death and injury.

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This is an important recovery of proportionality. While Paul Ramsey, William V. O’Brien, and others were busy writing about proportionality in relationship to discrimination and targeting, the Bishops and authors like Johnson were trying to recover a distinct sense of proportionality ad bellum, which was logically prior to, and much broader than, proportionality in bello. In more recent years, Thomas Hurka has continued to parse the distinction between proportionality ad bellum and proportionality in bello, especially in regard to the economic issues that have been included as relevant costs in just-war calculations of proportionality. In perhaps one of the best treatments of proportionality in the last several decades, Hurka lists three questions that are asked by the criterion of proportionality: (1) “What are the relevant goods that count in favor of a war’s or act’s proportionality?” (2) “What are the relevant evils that count against it?” and (3) “How do these goods and evils weigh against each other?”30 Hurka argues, first, that the “relevant goods are only those contained in the just causes” for a war. Goods that might be incidental, “such as boosting the economy,” are not relevant to determining whether or not a war is proportionate.31 A good that would not count as a just cause, such as increasing economic wealth or expanding territory, is not a good that can count in favor of a war’s proportionality. However, Hurka argues, second, that “economic harms are relevant evils,” that is, that calculations of proportionality must include consideration of the negative economic effects of a war.32 The reason for this distinction is rooted in Hurka’s derivation of proportionality from just cause and right intention. Rather than relate proportionality ad bellum to other prudential ad bellum criteria or to in bello criteria, Hurka places proportionality under the rubric of cause and intention, arguing that proportionality must be seen as the consequentialist accompaniment to the deontological criteria of cause and intention. This allows him to justify a broad view of proportionality that is missing from just war thought that locates proportionality primarily in relation to discrimination. Economic gain is neither a just cause for war nor a just intention for war; it cannot, therefore, count as a “relevant good.” However, economic hardship is a reasonably expected effect of war and, therefore, counts as a “relevant evil” to be weighed. This does not mean that an overly expensive war can never be justified, but it does mean that such expenses (among other concerns) should be considered part of a substantive analysis of the proportionality of a war and that proportionality must considered as

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a properly ad bellum criterion, with its own field of questions separate from those of proportionality in bello.

Hurka’s article, one of few substantive treatments of proportionality in the last few years, represents a corrective counterpoint to the rather brief and insubstantial discussions of proportionality ad bellum found in much just war thought. His article is an attempt to address several shortcomings of modern applications of proportionality. The first shortcoming is the rather narrow focus of just war thought on lives lost as the only evil to be weighed against the good ends of war. This focus may be the result of the context in which twentieth-century just war theory developed, especially the Cold War and the nuclear weapons debate. Certainly, nuclear weapons raised a whole host of questions and shaped significantly the parameters of just war theory from the 1940s to today. As Johnson has argued, the influence of nuclear weapons on just war theory has resulted in interpretations of the just war tradition that foreground certain aspects of classical scholarship while neglecting other aspects. The difficulty we face now, decades after the Cold War, is that discussions of proportionality have focused so much on death that just war theorists often don’t have much else to say about the relevant goods and evils that Hurka, Johnson, and earlier authors add to the equation. Proportionality has become so narrow that it is, in some ways, little more than a shell of the robust criterion it once was. The second shortcoming is related to the first. In many instances, proportionality ad bellum and proportionality in bello have been collapsed together. Johnson first observed this as endemic to Paul Ramsey’s treatment of proportionality. Despite his obvious appreciation of Ramsey’s work, Johnson takes his mentor to task for tying proportionality too closely to discrimination and thus essentially eliminating proportionality ad bellum as a distinct and important criterion in its own right.33 Proportionality becomes, in Ramsey’s hands, yet one more way of looking at casualties, especially civilian casualties, rather than a broad, robust lens for viewing all of the assorted values pursued and costs incurred in war. Kateri Carmola continues this trend, arguing that proportionality “is used to refer to acceptable or justifiable levels of civilian casualties incurred during military operations: it refers to the ‘proportionate’ level of collateral damage, the

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unintended killing of civilians, justified by the benefit of hitting a specific target.”34 In Carmola’s view, proportionality becomes merely a way of justifying indiscriminate targeting, a sort of counterpoint to discrimination. This is indeed a strange twist of just war theory, in which the criteria work against each other rather than with each other. Carmola seems to suggest that one criterion (discrimination) can be overridden by another criterion (proportionality) and that this is the inherent way the criteria are to be employed. While she does briefly mention economic costs of war as a concern of military commanders, a rare extension of proportionality for her, her basic confusion of proportionality ad bellum and proportionality in bello (and, Johnson would argue, of proportionality and discrimination) renders her interpretation suspect. That this is the case with the work of well-known scholars such as Ramsey, too, highlights an often ignored but certainly major shortcoming of just war theory as it has been filtered through twentieth-century interpreters. The important point here is not Carmola’s or Ramsey’s confusion of discrimination and proportionality in bello, but the basic collapsing of proportionality ad bellum and proportionality in bello. This elision is such that in recent decades, proportionality ad bellum has been subsumed and absorbed by proportionality in bello, to the extent that the former almost ceases to exist as a separate criterion itself. The “teeth” that proportionality ad bellum had in the hands of Vitoria, Suarez, and Grotius are extracted, to some extent, in favor of a more casuistic interpretation that may render certain acts of a war unjust but cannot reasonably be expected to render an entire war unjust, much less make it a duty to avoid the war, as Grotius would have it. Because of this casuistic interpretation of proportionality, modern thinkers lose the connections earlier theorists drew between the values pursued by war and other political values. Proportionality becomes merely another way of asking how many deaths are worth such-and-such a value. Loss of life is the only relevant evil to be considered. This leads to a third shortcoming in some modern interpretations of just war theory, namely the loss of relationship between the criteria of just war theory. Other theorists have related proportionality to just cause and right intention (Hurka), reasonable chance of success (Grotius), and legitimate authority, with authority’s attendant responsibilities (Clausewitz). Unfortunately, when the focus is solely on loss of life and proportionality is so closely tied to concepts like collateral damage and discriminate targeting, these other relationships are ignored. Rather than being a call for politicians to make careful

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decisions about values and policies, proportionality becomes a casuistic calculation, unconcerned with the sort of broader questions asked by earlier theorists in the tradition. Some have addressed this diminished role of proportionality by restoring the ties between proportionality and the ad bellum criteria of just war theory. Coates, for example, describes proportionality as the prudential balancing of political values, especially in terms of values threatened by aggressive states and values threatened by the pursuit of justified war. This is helpful in some regard, for it highlights the underlying claim made by earlier theorists, that proportionality concerns weighing not only relevant goods and relevant evils but also weighing relevant goods and other goods that may be threatened by war. He also attempts to divorce proportionality from noncombatant immunity by linking it to other prudential criteria of jus ad bellum. Coates’ proposal, however, has two glaring problems. First, if proportionality is supposed to be prudential, we need some way to quantify the terms balanced against each other. Simply put, values can’t be quantified easily. This is one of the principal difficulties of proportionality; it asks us to compare things that can’t be quantified. Coates doesn’t make our task any easier by rejecting out-of-hand any attempt to quantify values by counting economic harms or loss of life as relevant evils. He argues that such comparisons are wrong-headed attempts at comparing material and spiritual values. He goes so far as to claim that avoiding war because of material and physical costs represents “the low point in the life of any given political community [and] marks the moral demise of that community.”35 This may be a fine moral judgment to make on a society that has cashed in its spiritual wisdom for materialism, but it’s not a guide for political decisionmaking. Policymakers certainly should attend to “spiritual costs,” but they also have to attend to material costs, such as financial hardship and loss of life. Coates’ work here is a good example of moralism but not political ethics. Surely, when we talk about proportionality we are talking about values; but these are not abstract values. They are civic values that we pursue through concrete policies. If just war theorists who focus too sharply on loss of life can be said to be too near-sighted in their thinking, Coates can perhaps be said to be too far-sighted; his vision is divorced from the concrete reality that must be in the sight of political decision-makers. Unfortunately, it is sometimes the decision-makers themselves who are guilty of overly moralistic, nonprudential critical thinking. Thomas E. Ricks argues that this was the case with the Bush Administration’s

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approach to the War in Iraq. Administration officials insisted on the “rightness” of the war without fully considering whether an invasion would be prudent. This contributed to artificially low estimates of financial and physical costs of the war and unreasonable assessments of the duration of American involvement in Iraq. Even H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., the four-star general who led the Persian Gulf War effort in 1991, vocally expressed his concern that the administration’s plans were imprudent. Despite his belief that Saddam Hussein armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was a “frightening” thought, Schwarzkopf also insisted that the United States should defer to UN weapons inspectors in its judgments about a possible invasion.36 The administration, bolstered by the moralistic rhetoric of the War on Terrorism, failed to listen to the two commanders with the most experience in dealing with Iraq, Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell, who was dismissed for his admonishment of the more hawkish advisors to Bush. The second major problem is that Coates fails to draw the connections between proportionality and just cause that Grotius, Hurka, and Johnson describe. Proportionality, in Coates’ hands, ceases to function as the prudential guide to political decision-making in an imperfect world and becomes casuistry. War, if we take Coates at his word, is an isolated occurrence that is disconnected from the regular responsibilities and functions of government. In contrast to Clausewitz, Coates views war as unrelated to (and thus not limited by) policy. This makes it difficult to claim that just war theory is a theory of politics. Instead, it renders just war theory as a casuistic doctrine similar to that employed by the pacifists and pseudo-pacifists Coates rails against. This also makes it difficult to maintain the underlying limits proportionality places on decision-makers. As noted above, proportionality is rooted in the belief that individuals and collectives cannot pursue ultimate goods; our goals as political communities must be more realistic, more humble. Just war theory, and especially proportionality ad bellum, is grounded in two realities. First, not every good is worth war. This distinguishes just war theory from bellicose “total war” philosophies. Second, some evil must be tolerated in political activity this side of the eschaton. This distinguishes just war theory from pacifism. On either side of the balance, Coates is right to insist that human life is not the only good to be considered. However, he is wrong to believe that no material value is therefore relevant to Christian moral thinking about war. Keeping the discussion limited either to loss of life (as Elshtain, Charles, and Carmola would have it) or to ephemeral spiritual values (as Coates would have it) is a disservice

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to a tradition that viewed proportionality as substantive, broad, and vital to considerations of the justice of war.

Correcting the misuse of proportionality ad bellum requires, first, that we view war as a means of achieving certain objectives that are proper aims of government, and second, that we find some method of balancing these objectives against other proper aims of government, which implies, third, that we have a way of quantifying the policy objectives pursued by government. Without this, we are left with a criterion that is vague and moralistic, rather than substantive and realistic. One area which provides some promise is the debate over military spending. The “guns versus butter” debate, which pits the federal government’s military and defense outlays against its outlays for welfare, health care, and education, is grounded in a particular understanding of proportionality that attempts to balance the aims pursued by governments through defense and social spending. Participants in the debate argue over the relative worth of values pursued by military spending and by social spending. Their work affords us a point of entry for discussing the proportionate relation between competing values on the one hand, and between values pursued and costs incurred by war on the other. More “Butter” One of the earliest observations in the debate actually came from Dwight D. Eisenhower. In a 1953 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the president and five-star general brought into sharp relief what it actually costs to maintain American military strength, and his words are worth quoting at length: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that

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Eisenhower echoed these concerns in his 1961 farewell address, warning that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by the military-industrial complex that arose in response to World War II, the Korean War, and the beginning of the Cold War.38 Obviously, it is a mistake to characterize the former Allied Commander in World War II as a pacifist who campaigned against the military-industrial complex. His message was much more nuanced. Eisenhower saw the United States caught in a web of conflict generated by the threat of communism. His warning was that the American people, and especially the American government, not allow the threat of communism and the promise of wealth through the arms trade to blind them to the other responsibilities and possibilities of good governance. Other commentators have not been quite so subtle in their analyses. Many have presented the debate as if it were zero-sum, as if a nation must choose to invest either in welfare or in warfare, but never in both. Activist and researcher Frida Berrigan, employing Eisenhower’s phraseology, has characterized the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as “a theft from those who hunger.” She argues that the current levels of defense spending reflect an elected leadership that has continually chosen warfare over welfare, to the expense of the American people, and especially the poor.39 She goes so far as to call the military and political leaders of the arms manufacturing industry “pimps and pushers with a lucrative global monopoly on a killing drug.”40 While her work does raise important questions about what drives the weapons industry in America, Berrigan’s sensibilities toward pacifism don’t allow for a contextualization of expenses like the defense budget within a broader understanding of the role of government. Her argument is compelling and important but ultimately of little value for constructive proposals about war. The same might be said of Jeff Atkinson, whose work also concerns the global arms trade. Atkinson argues that “[w]eapons imports can kill even without a shot being fired, when they take badly needed funds away from health care, food subsidies, and other safety nets of the very poor.”41 His argument is that industrialized countries dependent on export of weapons create a situation in which “third world”

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could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron . . . Is there no other way the world may live?37

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countries are forced to devote ever-increasing funding to the purchase of arms, funding that would have gone to social spending if not for the arms trade. Atkinson does get one thing right in his analysis; “third world” nations are more likely to suffer from the arms trade, while “first world” nations are more likely to benefit inasmuch as “third world” nations are compelled to spend a larger percentage of their budget on arms produced by the “first world.” However, he also fails to contextualize his argument within a broader frame, especially one that includes defense as a major responsibility of government. Rather than see the two goals, defense and social spending, as both valuable pursuits of government, he characterizes the two as inherently conflictual. Governments, it appears, must choose either warfare or welfare, but the choice for more guns than butter will ultimately implicate political leaders in the deaths of impoverished citizens. Interestingly, neither Berrigan nor Atkinson addresses the consequences of an aggressive war by a foreign power on this same class of citizens. Apparently, lack of “butter” puts more people at risk than lack of adequate defense against aggression. In their 2008 book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes offer a “guns versus butter” argument that is more nuanced than those of Berrigan and Atkinson. Rather than attempt to portray war as an inherent theft from the poor, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that the financial cost of war is a moral issue that is often ignored. In a claim reminiscent of Grotius and Erasmus, they argue that “making informed choices about realworld options should clearly include cost as one of the factors to be taken into account.”42 The authors appear aware that war may on occasion be necessary, that it may serve a good end. They do not present a case for pacifism. What they do attempt, rather, is to draw attention to the often hidden costs of war, from payments to private contractors for security to medical costs for the care of veterans. In an interesting addition to the dialogue about the War in Iraq, Stiglitz and Bilmes do not attempt to solve the questions of authority or just cause; their approach is to address the justice of the war from the perspective of proportionality, though they do not use overt just-war language. Stiglitz and Bilmes highlight two aspects of the war-funding discussion that are relevant here and will come up again later in this chapter. First, they point to deficit spending as an obstacle to grasping the true costs of war. By paying for wars like the War in Iraq through borrowing, the United States has been able to defer the actual costs of warfare. The trillions of dollars spent on war are thus not reflected in

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the federal budget, but as the authors observe, “the costs of war are real even if they have been deferred.”43 Second, the authors use the lenses of “opportunity costs” and “expenditure switching” to demonstrate the effect of military spending on other areas of concern. In brief, the concept of opportunity costs invites us to ask, “On what else could the money now going to war be spent?” Stiglitz and Bilmes, drawing on research from the National Priorities Project, argue that one trillion dollars (only a third of what they believe will be the total cost of the War in Iraq) could have been used to provide 8 million housing units for American families, salaries for 15 million public school teachers for one year, the annual cost of Head Start for 120 million children for one year, and 43 million four-year scholarships for American college students.44 Clearly, as the authors argue, there are other possibilities for investment that could have been explored with the money spent on war. “Expenditure switching” is a way of looking at the consequences of these investment choices over time. For example, Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that “switching $800 billion (over the fifteen years [they] project [the US] will be engaged in Iraq) to domestic investment would result in increased [gross domestic product] of $320 billion.”45 Both opportunity costs and expenditure switching are prominent areas of discussion in research on the economics of military spending, and we will revisit them below. More “Guns” Obviously, not all commentators are as concerned about the loss of social spending. Stephen Moore, for example, laments the fact that American defense spending in recent years has fallen to its lowest percentage of the GDP in history. He argues that the nature of contemporary threats demands that the United States increase military spending from its current rate (4.7 percent of GDP at the time of his article) to a rate similar to that in the early 1960s (approximately 50 percent of GDP). With such a low percentage of GDP dedicated to defense spending, it is no wonder the United States was vulnerable to attacks like 9/11; “we have converted our military into a global social welfare agency” by reducing funding, especially, for personnel and procurement.46 This is an intriguing claim, since Moore’s argument for increased spending is framed as necessary for the execution of “the primary responsibility of our federal government [which] is to protect our nation’s security [and its] borders.”47 His discussion of spending priorities reflects a basic understanding of the responsibilities

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of government in general, an understanding that is decidedly more Augustinian than Thomistic. Moore, much like Augustine, holds a very limited role for the federal government. Social welfare is ancillary to the real purpose of government—protection from assault. By directing funding into social projects, the government is neglecting its duty and leaving the United States less safe. Of course, as Jeff Huber points out, if percentage of GDP were truly an indicator of military strength, the United States “would be at the mercy of juggernauts like Burundi (5.9%), Eritrea (6.3%), and Qatar (10%).”48 Still, Moore’s framing of budget decisions as related to beliefs about the purpose of government is intriguing. Mike Franc, writing six years after the War on Terrorism began and four years after the invasion of Iraq, agrees with Moore that American military spending is far too low, especially given the threat posed by terrorism—“nothing less than the survival of the free world.”49 Franc argues that increased expenditures for entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security (commonly called the “big three” entitlements) come at the expense of defense. His arguments, like Moore’s, are based on proportions of spending relative to GDP, which he believes are declining for defense and increasing for the “big three” entitlements. In an interesting shift from Moore’s argument, Franc does not portray spending discrepancies within the framework of proper purposes of government but rather within the context of threats faced, which he believes are ultimate. While Moore’s argument looks at military spending in relation to other types of spending as reflective of the priorities of government, Franc’s argument invites consideration of the proportion between levels of spending and intensity of threats. Framing the Debate: Threat-Specific and Value-Relative Cost Analysis This is a subtle yet important distinction to make when discussing proportionality. Arguments on both sides of the debate can be framed by the distinction between costs relative to threats and values pursued through either military or social spending. Traditionally, just war theorists concerned themselves with the first proportion, between the costs incurred by a war and the value threatened by an aggressor. In this case, political decision-makers are tasked with determining whether the threatened value is worth the probable costs incurred by its defense. The second frame of reference was never far from their minds, however. Resources expended in the pursuit or defense of one

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value are resources denied to the pursuit of other values. It is this reality that Eisenhower highlights and that Johnson claims was central to medieval just war theory. These two frames, which I refer to as threat-specific cost analysis and value-relative cost analysis, can be used to apply proportionality to the question of war from different angles. The first, threat-specific cost analysis, is narrower than the second, for it sharpens our focus on a specific threat and a specific value threatened and attempts to determine the proportionate costs worth expending in a possible defense of that value against that threat. The second frame, value-relative cost analysis, is broader; it places the value pursued through armed force in the context of the multiplicity of values Christians believe the government is tasked with securing. These frames are not mutually exclusive and often are employed in tandem by authors, though emphasis is typically placed on one or the other. Each frame does have its own attendant considerations, however. For both (but especially threat-specific analysis), we need to be honest about the threats we face and the goods we pursue as a nation. As Elshtain rightly noted of political rhetoric during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, just war theory requires that we remain humble about the goods pursued through politics. Truly, there are some values that necessitate protection by armed force. Rarely, however, do we encounter threats so grave that the “fate of the free world” is at stake. World War II may have been such a case, but that makes a poor analogy for all conflicts since then. Certainly, Elshtain was right to question then-president George H. W. Bush’s description of the good defended in Kuwait as the survival of “Freedom and Democracy” or establishment of a “new world order.” A more honest assessment may have included values such as property or security rights of Kuwaitis or deterrence against future aggression. These are the more limited goods of armed action. Value-relative cost analysis includes this honest assessment of threats and values but goes further to incorporate our basic understanding of the purposes of government. This requires two distinct considerations. First, this type of analysis requires that we consider just war theory as political discourse, that is, as part of the broader commentary Christians make about politics and government. Just war theory does not cease functioning when a particular conflict ends any more than the Department of Defense or the armed forces cease functioning when no declared war is being waged. Rather, just war theory, and especially value-relative analyses of proportionality, continually investigates policy priorities and political decisions of leaders in terms of the multiplicity of goods contained in the “common good.”

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This implies, second, that we view government from a perspective that is more Thomistic than Augustinian, more Grotian than Lutheran. Certainly, protection of citizens is an important responsibility, perhaps even the most important responsibility, of government. But it is not the only responsibility of government. Aquinas clearly did not think so. In fact, he distinguished between the responsibility to establish the common good and the responsibility to protect the common good once established. Indeed, the discussion of the character of authority in chapters 2 and 3 is founded on the claim that a government has duties beyond mere protection from aggression. These duties are lost in the limited-government political ethics of Augustine, Luther, and some of their modern heirs. In recent decades, African Americans have been, perhaps, the most vocal contributors to the budget debate through both frames of analysis. This may be due, in large part, to the fact that African Americans are among those most likely to suffer from tradeoffs in social spending created by increased military spending. They are also among those least likely to benefit from macroeconomic incentives of increased military spending. Neither case arises from conscious choices to disadvantage non-whites through federal spending policies (though some might argue this was the case with President Ronald Reagan), but rather because tradeoffs are more likely to negatively impact the poor in general, and racial minorities are disproportionately represented among the poor. They are thus more likely to suffer from cuts to welfare, housing and education subsidies, and Medicaid and least likely to benefit from increases in defense industries, which are located in majority-white regions of the country. Concerns about spending, therefore, have been central to African American discourse on politics and war.

African Americans and Military Spending (1) Threat-Specific Cost Analysis Despite the widespread belief today that opposing the Vietnam War was the norm for Americans in the 1960s, antiwar activists at the time were often reviled by the American public. Opposing the war, especially before 1968, was not a popular political stance. This was especially true in the African American community. Much like the public sentiment during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the American public and its leadership had the tendency to “equate dissent with disloyalty.”50 Avoiding the appearance of disloyalty to America and to the sympathetic administration of President Lyndon

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Johnson was especially urgent in the African American community. Their struggle against segregation already earned the charges of Communism from whites, and their pursuit of civil rights required that they maintain the support they had (superficial as it may have been) among white supporters. Vietnam was too controversial, too polarizing, and many argued, too disconnected from civil rights and the movement at home. Martin Luther King, Jr’s opposition to the war was hardly welcome, given these opinions among African Americans. King was aware of the risks he took by going public with his antiwar stance. Yet his belief that the escalating conflict in Vietnam was tied to the domestic struggles he and his supporters waged for civil rights led to his first public statements against the war in April 1967. In one speech, King argued that “adventures like Vietnam [functioned] like some demonic, destructive suction tube,” drawing resources away from domestic concerns, especially the War on Poverty. While he was horrified by the loss of life caused by the war, King was equally disturbed by the hidden costs of the war, the diversion of funds from social programs and the lack of political and social willpower to fight domestic poverty. So great were these hidden costs that King “was compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor.”51 To some extent, King was correct. The expense of the Vietnam War made other federal programs nearly unsustainable. As Adam Fairclough observes, the “optimistic belief” that the United States could afford both Vietnam and the War on Poverty “seemed more and more fatuous [by late 1966 when] Congress reduced the budget of the Office of Economic Opportunity (the principal agency of the ‘War on Poverty’) by half a billion dollars, cutting the money available for ‘community action’ programs by a third.”52 Such spending cuts amid increasing outlays for Vietnam led King to argue before the US Senate in 1967 that “poverty . . . and social progress are ignored when the guns of war become a national obsession.”53 In his final Sunday sermon before his assassination in 1968, he lamented the disparity between America “spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier [while spending] only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program.”54 This point was not lost on many in his audience. The domestic costs of the war to social programs were not “hidden” to everyone. Indeed, as both Fairclough and Peter B. Levy note, many African Americans came to see domestic spending as a direct casualty of the Vietnam War.55 Some, like Bayard Rustin, held out hope for a peace

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dividend for social spending following the end of the war. Others were less hopeful. King, despite his modern-day legacy as the optimistic dreamer, believed that “the bombs in Vietnam . . . destroy hopes and possibilities for a decent America.”56 He was well-aware that the draining of resources from domestic programs for the war effort, readily observable to many African Americans, contributed to “a new quality of bitter antagonism and confused anger” among youth.57 Contrary to popular belief, King was no isolationist nor was he consistently opposed to war.58 Rather, he sought to highlight the real costs, both material and spiritual, of America’s cause in Vietnam. He argued that American priorities and values must be restructured such that the poor are not further harmed by bellicose foreign policies. The disproportionality between the cause pursued in Vietnam and the costs incurred at home led King to see the war as a sufficiently grave injustice to risk his reputation, his position, and his support among both blacks and whites by opposing it publicly. The costs, for King, were not proportionate to the threat faced in Vietnam, nor were the resources expended in pursuit of American goals proportionate to the resources spent in pursuit of domestic goals. Neither threat-specific nor value-relative cost analysis could justify Vietnam to King and his audience. Concerns about the costs of war—and who pays them—did not begin with the Vietnam War, but King’s incisive comments about the “guns versus butter” debate have informed African American commentary on war ever since. The debate over welfare and warfare reached its peak during the 1991 Gulf War, which Karin L. Stanford claims “set the foundation for African American expression on US wars in this contemporary age.”59 The 1980s, marked by strong political support for “guns” over “butter,” left the American public sharply divided about social spending. Former president Reagan, though not entirely successful, had attempted to bolster military spending at the expense of social welfare programs. Many African Americans, disappointed by the gradual decrescendo of Johnson’s War on Poverty and Carter’s antipoverty programs, were left feeling wholly disillusioned by a federal government that not only lost its will to fight poverty but was outwardly hostile to such programs. By the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and President George H. W. Bush’s call for military response, more blacks were open about their opposition to war in the Gulf than perhaps to any previous American war. In contrast to these other conflicts, where concerns of imperialism, racism, and colonialism formed the basis of African American opposition, the need for increased domestic spending during the Gulf War

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was “the overwhelming reason for opposition” to US involvement among both African Americans and Hispanics.60 US Representative Ronald Vernie Dellums (D-CA), for example, drew clear connections between American militarism in Vietnam and the pursuit of a military solution in the Gulf, claiming that both policies came “at the direct expense of those Americans whose marginal existence depended to a great extent on federal programs.”61 Both conflicts, he argued, reflected “misplaced spending priorities” that diverted funds from social welfare programs to military operations aimed at protecting other nations’ rights.62 Activist Andrea Young and public policy advocate A. Knighton Stanley echoed Dellums’ concerns, claiming that “Pres. [sic] Bush has shifted resources and protection away from our communities.”63 While Young and Stanley went on to cite Bush’s opposition to the Civil Rights Bill and minority college scholarships in their editorial in order to highlight the hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s commitment to freedom and democracy, other authors kept their arguments more tightly focused on spending priorities. Richard Hatcher (former mayor of Gary, Indiana) lamented the fact that the same federal government that had claimed “it couldn’t afford” subsidies for improvements to Gary’s sewage systems was at the same time spending billions of dollars in Kuwait, not only fighting Iraqi aggression but also rebuilding Kuwait’s urban infrastructure. US Representative Jose E. Serrano (D-NY) similarly had difficulty justifying spending “billions [of dollars] to restore ‘a prince and his 50 cousins in a little kingdom’ instead of ‘taking care of the poor in [his] district.”64 The issue, for Hatcher, Dellums, Serrano, and others, was not intervention per se (in fact, many anti-Gulf War activists supported intervention in apartheid South Africa), but rather the costs incurred by poor Americans who bore the brunt of domestic cutbacks made to help fund a war to assist “a little kingdom” in the Middle East. These costs, they argued, were disproportionate to the aim of intervention as they understood it, viz. the restoration and protection of Kuwaiti territorial rights. This good goal may have justified sanctions (and many folks supported this tactic), but it certainly did not justify “$30 billion for technological warfare” when cutbacks were leaving domestic welfare programs radically underfunded.65 The threat posed by Saddam Hussein simply was not great enough to justify the costs of war. (2) Value-Relative Cost Analysis Their opposition to the Persian Gulf War, however, did not arise ex nihilo but rather was the culmination of a national debate that began

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a decade earlier with the election of Reagan amidst a conservative backlash against liberal social spending. A staunch social conservative, Reagan made clear his belief in the limited purpose of the federal government as military protector of the nation. Even while bemoaning the funds spent on social welfare and safety nets for the American poor and working classes, Reagan embarked on a journey to raise defense spending to unprecedented levels. While defense spending did increase somewhat during his tenure, however, Reagan was largely unable to secure the sort of debilitating cuts to social programs that he originally wanted. Despite this limitation, he was able to effectively frame the budget debate as a choice between “guns” and “butter”; increases in social spending came at the expense of defense, he argued. “Entitlements” for education, health care, and social security left Americans less safe. In the midst of the Reagan-era cuts to means-tested entitlement programs like Medicaid, food stamps, and the now-defunct Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), Jesse Jackson launched the most successful African American bid for the presidency until Barack Obama’s victory in 2008.66 Jackson’s campaigns in 1984 and 1988 directly “challenged Reagan’s budget cuts that reduced support for poor and minority Americans and Reagan’s massive increase in military expenditures.”67 In contrast to Reagan’s 1988 budget proposals, Jackson proposed freezing military spending at 1988 levels and using the dividend to help pay for social services, especially child care, health care, and education.68 Such changes are necessary, Jackson argued, if Americans are to “shift our priorities from spending on weapons to investing in people.”69 In recent years, Thomas L. Friedman has argued that this economic principle is at the heart of President Obama’s policies. “Nationbuilding at home,” Friedman argues, is the key to reversing the downward trend of American power and prestige. Far from being idealistic, such policies are realistic approaches to the changing needs of American citizens in a world marked by energy, security, and health crises. Redirecting monies currently invested in the War on Terrorism abroad to domestic concerns like health care, education, and environmental sustainability will increase American security and American well-being at the same time. What is more, such policy priorities may contribute to a “national renewal” that extends far beyond merely financial interests.70 Friedman, at a foundational level, agrees with Jackson that, inasmuch as the “the federal budget sets the moral, political, and financial direction of a nation,” the spending debate is not merely economic— it is political and ethical.71 This was a fact that economist James

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L. Clayton had noted years before. Budget debates are rarely valuefree discussions about needs and resources. Rather, choices about spending reflect deeply-held beliefs about the responsibilities of government and help determine policy priorities for the coming fiscal year.72 Budget debates are value-laden political discourse about which policies——and, according to Jackson and Clayton, which populations—should receive the political attention and investment of the federal government.73 Cognizant of this reality, Manning Marable, another staunch critic of Reagan, highlighted the plight of the poor in the face of high military spending. His concern was not the proportionality of costs to the benefit of particular war aims but the proportionality between military spending in general and federal funding of domestic social programs. Unlike Hatcher, Serrano, and Dellums, his work reflects the value-relative cost analysis prevalent in the 1980s and early 1990s. He argued that the United States’ military and defense programs represented a disproportionate segment of the federal budget relative to social goods that the government should pursue. This disproportion, he claimed, was particularly harmful to poor Americans and exacerbated economic inequality. Marable was particularly opposed to the philosophy of military Keynesianism that prevailed during the Reagan era. According to proponents of military Keynesianism, increased military spending yields substantial, widespread economic benefits and may serve to correct downturns caused by other factors, such as recessions or unemployment. In contrast, Marble contended that any economic benefits would be narrowly reserved for particular socioeconomic classes and would do little to correct inequality of poverty. Marable relied on what Stiglitz and Bilmes referred to as opportunity costs and expenditure switching to demonstrate the costs to African Americans of military spending. Certainly, he claimed, “any type of federal spending . . . will generate jobs. The real question for black America is, How many jobs are created by spending the identical amount of money [in other areas]?”74 Citing the research of Marion Anderson of Employment Research Associates, Marable claims that “[e]very time the Pentagon’s budget goes up $1 billion, 1,300 [potential] jobs disappear from black Americans.”75 This is due to two related realities. First, investments in defense industries are more likely to benefit “highly trained white collar workers,” who represent a disproportionally small fraction of “the modern black labor force.”76 Second, the money diverted from other programs, combined with increased taxes on money that could have been spent

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on education, job creation, and training, contributes to scarcity of jobs and education for low-income blue collar workers. This is the lost opportunity created by increased military spending, according to Marable. The federal government, which should sponsor programs to alleviate poverty and inequality, instead exacerbates these problems by disproportionately funding military and defense industries. This last statement requires some added comment. First, the claim that governments are tasked with responsible action toward economic justice may seem to belie a commitment to a liberal-welfare state. This is not the case, however. It is not necessary to be a liberal or a socialist to conclude that government has social responsibilities to its citizens. J. Deotis Roberts, for example, argues (in Thomistic fashion) that “the state has its source in its people’s need for a just and secure social order.”77 Through the use of its power, “the state, then, is to provide a context within which human beings shall have room to lead the good life.”78 Certainly, this requires that the government provide adequate protection against internal and external threats such that citizens are able to pursue “the good life” securely, in freedom from fear and danger. But this also requires some measure of those resources necessary for free action. As Roberts puts it, “We cannot live by bread alone. Neither can we live without bread.”79 African Americans, he argues, have long understood the connection between economic wellbeing and social and political freedom. Without adequate resources, an individual’s ability to determine his/her life-situation and activity is undermined. The question of economic justice is largely a question of freedom. Welfare and social investment themselves may not be on the list of governmental responsibilities for many classical and modern Christians, but inasmuch as they provide the economic, educational, and occupational resources necessary to exercise freedom of self-determination and to participate fully in civic life, they can be understood as essential features of the government’s accountability to the common good. A state need not be communist “to ensure that [all citizens] share in the prosperity of the nation.”80 Such responsibility merely requires an honest, realistic assessment of the access to self-determination and “the good life” sufficient material resources provide. Moreover, to assert, as authors like Moore do, that protection of borders and citizens’ lives is the sole responsibility of government is to create a trap of sorts for just war theorists. Were just war theorists to agree with this position, it is difficult to see how they can avoid the tendency to claim that defense is the only just cause for war. Claiming that there are other causes which may justify the use

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of armed force requires claiming that there are other purposes for government beyond mere defense. It is to assert that there are other goods, including self-determination, civil rights, and freedom, which may serve as just causes for war precisely because they are proper purposes of government. Ironically, to suggest otherwise, namely that the various goods Roberts and Marable point to as constitutive of freedom and democracy are not part of the task of government, implies that they also cannot serve as just causes for the government’s use of force. This would make the American Revolution, ostensibly, an unjust war, since Britain was not in the process of slaughtering Americans, and America, as a colony, did not have legal borders deserving of protection. It is difficult to imagine any reasonable just war theorist taking this position. Second, it is important to note the research that supports Marable’s claims, especially given the continuing influence of military Keynesianism. Simply put, a wealth of research suggests that military Keynesianism is an untenable economic policy. While “war is inversely correlated with poverty,” there is “a direct relationship between peacetime military spending and poverty.”81 The difference between war and peacetime effects on poverty rates may have something to do with areas of defense spending that increase or decrease depending on the presence of conflict. Personnel spending, more likely to increase due to the need for troops during war, is inversely correlated with poverty, since it provides direct economic benefits to soldiers, who are more likely to be low-income civilians.82 Operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and development, however, are directly correlated with poverty and are the most likely recipients of increased spending during peacetime. Errol Anthony Henderson, John D. Abell, and others who have researched such patterns conclude that not only does peacetime military spending contribute to poverty but such spending also aggravates income inequality, for the same reason Marable posits, namely that the poor are less likely than highly educated white collar workers to benefit from non-personnel spending increases.83 There is also substantial evidence that increased military spending has a negative impact on the economy as a whole. Bruce Russett’s influential work in the 1980s on the relationship between military spending and economic performance has been confirmed by numerous studies in the years since he first noted the inverse relationship between the two.84 Alex Mintz and Chi Huang, for example, found numerous indirect costs of military spending on the economy. Military spending, they argue, “crowds out investment, which reduces

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growth,” thereby limiting funds available for other sectors of the economy, such as education, jobs creation, and lending.85 Stiglitz and Bilmes, Uk Heo, Michael D. Ward, and David R. Davis all agree substantially with Mintz and Huang, especially in regard to the “crowding-out” effect of military spending.86 Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that the War on Terrorism alone has resulted in a loss of private investment ranging from $1.7 to $5 trillion.87 The results of Ward and Davis’ research also “suggest that military spending is a significant drain on the economy,” especially when compared to other forms of public spending. Their results are consistent with a 1972–1988 International Monetary Fund study of 125 countries, which concluded, “While some have argued that military expenditures enhance economic growth, there is no question that more efficient alternative means of using the resources exist that would provide greater benefits to the economy.”88 Clearly, research suggests that there are numerous hidden costs to war and war-readiness, and that the poor may be more likely to bear the burden of these costs. Moreover, as Mintz and Huang suggest, these costs are such that military spending may come at the expense of other programs. More guns may mean less butter; more butter may mean less guns.

Potential Counterarguments Before we move to the constructive finale of this chapter, it is necessary to address certain aspects of the “guns versus butter” debate and its potential application within just war theory. The purpose of this section is two-fold. It will, on the one hand, address popular counterarguments to my proposal, and on the other hand, in so doing, it will lay the groundwork for the constructive proposals that follow. The counterarguments addressed below are (1) that budgetary decisions are based purely on economics; (2) that substantial tradeoffs do not exist between warfare and welfare; and (3) that any reductions in military spending will necessarily make nations less safe. (1) Budget Decisions Are Economic Decisions First, the notion that budgetary decisions are purely economic is at best naïve and at worst deceptive. Part of the reason the “guns versus butter” debate became so heated during the 1980s was precisely the fact that it was a value-laden political debate about “whether the primary goal of government policy should be to achieve a more secure society or a more equitable one.”89 For some, like Jackson,

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the decision was not necessarily either/or, even though many politicians tried to paint it as such. A more secure society, Jackson argued, would use social spending to mitigate security threats arising from inequality, dependence on foreign energy, and narcotics.90 For others, the two goals were incompatible; Americans must make the choice between “guns” and “butter.” Numerous studies, however, have concluded that this choice is not a result of economic scarcity but rather of political expediency. At various times, it may be beneficial for politicians to increase one form of spending or another. More often than not, increased military spending has been the popular choice to this end, especially given the influence of military Keynesianism, whose proponents used military spending to achieve economic goals that the research above suggests would never be met through such spending. So, some have used military spending to gain economic benefits. Others have used such spending to achieve political goals. In his analysis of election cycles and the awarding of defense contracts, Kenneth R. Mayer found that a direct relationship between the two exists “without question.”91 His results suggest that “defense contracting activity increases immediately before elections, both to stimulate the economy and to advance the interests of incumbent legislators.”92 The result, he argues, is “artificially high defense budgets” that are unrelated to actual security interests. His conclusions have been echoed by other economists who argue that defense spending levels and concomitant cuts to social spending are often the objects of political manipulation rather than financial calculation. As such, they reflect motivations unrelated to real security needs or the severity of actual threats.93 (2) Tradeoffs between Guns and Butter Are Inconsequential The second consideration we must address is that a bevy of research has failed to find much significant evidence of tradeoffs between military spending and social spending, despite the widespread belief that tradeoffs do exist.94 While both liberals like Berrigan and conservatives like Franc use the perception of tradeoffs to argue, respectively, for decreases or increases in military spending, there is little statistical evidence to bolster either of their claims. Jim Whyu Mok and Robert D. Duval, for example, found in their study of the federal budget from 1954 to 1986 that military spending and social spending appear to have two different sets of determinants and are largely unrelated. At best, the authors found “moderate confirmation” of tradeoffs but no systematic relationship between the two levels of spending.95 This

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lack of tradeoffs was true even in Alex Mintz’s disaggregated analysis of social spending levels.96 In fact, none of the studies in Mintz’s 1992 edited volume, The Political Economy of Military Spending in the United States, found evidence of systematic tradeoffs between military and social spending. Some, then, might claim that the “guns versus butter” debate is not rooted in actual spending data. This is not the end of the story, however. Several authors point to the role of deficit spending in mitigating tradeoffs that might exist if the federal government were to balance its budget.97 In an interesting study on the role of the deficit in the “guns versus butter” debate, James C. Garand and Rebecca M. Hendrick studied state, rather than federal, spending during the years 1948–1984. “Tradeoffs,” they argued, “may be more likely to occur in the states than at the federal level because state decision makers face greater legal impediments to increased revenue and/or debt.” The authors found that within individual states, “priority changes in one spending category are made at the expense of priority changes in other spending areas.”98 While states don’t have the equivalent of defense spending, the authors found significant evidence of tradeoffs at the state level among other budget categories, including welfare. What this suggests is that the freedom of the federal government to increase debt through borrowing or revenue through taxes may be one reason why little evidence of tradeoffs is found at the federal level.99 Welfare itself is particularly susceptible to negative tradeoffs because those people most directly affected by changes, namely the poor, “lack political leverage.” Thus, “policy makers will not be as responsive to the needs or demands of these groups as to other clients.”100 What is more, because of the perception that tradeoffs exist, budgetary increases and decreases can be manipulated for political purposes. Russett argues that this was the case during the Reagan-era backlash against welfare, when tradeoffs were imposed by the president’s proposed budget for 1982, which contained an 8.0 percent increase for military spending and 26.1 and 10.5 percent decreases in education and health spending, respectively.101 While Russett agrees that tradeoffs do not exist objectively, his research demonstrates that they can be imposed artificially, for reasons that have little to do with actual necessity. Clayton agrees, noting with chagrin that the tendency to polarize “guns” and “butter” ignores moderation and mutual sacrifice and divides us into interest groups that are unable to think of “the good of the whole nation.”102 Finding, again, little evidence for tradeoffs between military and welfare spending, Clayton argues that the debate is mostly political,

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fueled by competing visions of the purposes of government. However, were Congress to balance the budget, Clayton believes it is likely that such a clash over spending is likely to occur, since rates of both military and social spending are only sustainable through increased taxes or increased borrowing.103 The deficit, on the one hand, obscures the real costs for both warfare and welfare and, on the other hand, allows for political manipulation of spending levels in each area. As pressure, especially from the right-wing Tea Party Movement, to balance the federal budget continues to build, we may expect to see very real trade-offs between military and social spending in the coming years. (3) Spending Reductions Are Safety Reductions The third dominant counterargument is that reductions in the military budget of the United States (or other countries) will make citizens less safe from threats. This is not necessarily the case, simply because the US defense budget, some argue, is not reflective of the nature or intensity of modern-day threats. Many authors argue that the United States’ defense budget is still based on Cold War–style superpower threats rather than the sort of threats most likely to characterize conflict in the twenty-first century. The United States, they claim, has failed “to make the institutional and fiscal transitions to a post-coldwar world.”104 Jeff Huber, for example, claims that the US military has failed to move away from a World War II model, which was “suited to symmetrical enemies whose political behavior could be compelled by defeat of their armed forces.”105 Even Moore, who disagrees with Huber’s call for spending reductions, similarly contends that “many of the weapons, ships, and planes that we produce are to fight yesterday’s Cold War, not today’s grey war against terrorism.”106 The assertion that the financial direction of the US military is based on a Cold War– era assessment of threats is widespread on both sides of the funding debate. Stiglitz and Bilmes, who agree with Huber and certainly not with Moore, still contend that the US army is “long on submarines and other heavy equipment designed to confront a Cold War–style enemy” and short on the body armor and reinforced vehicles necessary to protect soldiers facing threats from terrorists, roadside bombs, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs).107 William D. Hartung and Charles Peña agree, arguing that current weapons systems and proposed procurement programs will do little “to combat the terrorist threat.”108 As discussed in Chapter 1, the international political landscape has changed considerably in the past two decades and so, too, has the

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nature of warfare. Whereas the United States and other nations were able to respond to threats by deploying large armies and navies or developing increasingly destructive weapons in oft-successful attempts to wear down the national resolve (or the national pocketbook) of enemy nations in interstate conflicts, for the foreseeable future “large conventional military operations will be the exception rather than the rule in the war on terrorism.”109 Despite this reality, Peña claims, the United States still relies on a “forward-deployed force” of approximately 386,000 troops around the globe designed to check a Soviet program of expansion that no longer exists.110 Even were a “rogue state” to pose a threat (which Peña does not believe is likely), the United States already has vastly superior armed forces and a nuclear deterrent, even without the new weapons systems currently in development.111 These new weapons systems are an especially good example of defense budgets out of sync with real threats. If the $435 hammer was a highlight of Pentagon waste in the 1990s, today the symbol of excess is the $338 million F/A-22 Raptor, a fighter plane designed to combat proposed improvements in Russian MIG jets, which were never made. Even Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official under Reagan, has called the Raptor a needless expense.112 In more recent years, as Huber points out, the Raptor seems cheap compared to the 2,458 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters on order, procurement of which is expected to exceed $1 trillion, despite the fact that even the Air Force has asserted that the current F-16’s capabilities exceed those of “all potential threat fighter aircraft.”113 Indeed, the Joint Strike Fighter was a rare point of agreement between the conservative National Taxpayers’ Union and the liberal US Public Interest Research Group, both of whom advised its cancellation in 2011.114 While the continued procurement of F/A-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters was canceled in 2010 and 2011, other unnecessary projects remain in the Pentagon’s budget. One stark example is increased spending for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI; more commonly known as “Star Wars”) advocated by authors like Moore to counter a hypothetical nuclear attack by terrorists, a scenario that is highly unlikely. Peña further argues that while spending for such programs as SDI continues, programs like intelligence, a central component of any antiterrorism operations, are radically underfunded. Indeed, less than 1 percent of the $503 billion provided for the War on Terrorism from 2001 to 2007 was spent on both intelligence and the US Coast Guard.115 Because of such shortfalls, Peña notes, many documents and communications intercepted by US intelligence officers

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are still awaiting translation.116 There simply aren’t enough personnel to handle the intelligence end of the War on Terrorism. Moreover, not only are many weapons nearly useless against the real threats Americans face from terrorists and insurgents. Authors such as Frank Shann and economist Paul Collier argue that many weapons produced by the United States are not even going to American armed forces but rather are being exported to developing countries as part of the global arms trade.117 In 2010, for example, 41 percent of the arms sales to developing countries came from the United States.118 It may be likely that continued investment in defense industries in the United States is not the result of clear and present dangers to American security interests but rather the economic interests of American arms manufacturers and the political interests of incumbent legislators, both of whom stand to gain from the continued manufacture and export of American-made weaponry. This may also be a reason why developing nations have disproportionately high defense budgets. According to Amnesty International and Oxfam International, about 20 percent of developing world debt is due to loans used for weapons purchases.119 This is a significant problem for the developing world, as Collier points out. In agreement with the research cited above, Collier argues that military spending in developing countries has an especially pernicious influence on local economies. Forced to import military equipment, developing countries’ economic growth is further retarded by outlays that pay for foreign products. Even the minor economic growth experienced by some industrialized countries during defense industry booms is not felt by developing nations as defense budgets increase. Budget increases simply mean more money being spent on imported arms and less money invested in positive-growth projects.120

Threats, Duties, and Supreme Emergencies This is all well and good if we are talking about war-readiness, but what about war-waging? What do—or should—just war theorists say about choices to engage in particular wars and the proportionality of costs to benefits of actual military action? The War in Iraq provides a good case for drawing out several considerations that just war theorists must keep in mind when applying proportionality ad bellum. First, proportionality ad bellum must be accorded its proper place within just war theory. While some modern theorists neglect proportionality ad bellum entirely and others force it into the background in favor of proportionality in bello, classical theorists

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understood proportionality as central to the definition of a just war. For Grotius, even in the presence of a just cause, it may be a duty to avoid a war that will likely result in disproportionate harm. For Suarez, a disproportionate war was not merely an imprudent political choice but a sin against both justice and charity. To question the proportionality of wars is not an academic exercise ancillary to Christian just war thought. It is a central question, and the justice of a war hinges on the answer.121 Quite obviously, any sort of just-war analysis should begin not with the costs of a war but with its aims. What are the goods pursued by military action? This may have been a bit easier to answer with a war like that in Afghanistan, where the United States’ primary goal seems to have been deposing a regime that failed to do what it could to prevent (and may even have encouraged) terrorism. With Iraq, the question was much murkier, in large part due to the fact that so many causes were proffered that it is difficult to name with certainty the primary one. Quite clearly, the values pursued in both Afghanistan and Iraq were security and safety. (These may not have been the only values, but they were the primary and most apparent values.) The immediate end to both wars was regime change that would preserve the security and safety of Americans and others threatened by the terrorism encouraged or allowed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The extent to which each posed a threat to the safety and security of the United States in particular varies. There was good evidence that the Taliban had created a safe haven for al Qaeda in Afghanistan. There were training camps, safehouses, and financial networks there, which allowed bin Laden and his cohorts to plan and execute acts of violence around the world. Iraq, however, was a different story. There was no clear link between Hussein and 9/11; indeed, by all accounts al Qaeda and Hussein had a contentious relationship. Perhaps the worry with Iraq was not that Hussein harbored terrorists but that he himself was something of a terrorist—a hateful, violent tyrant ready to harm and kill innocent people in service of his political agenda. That he possessed WMDs made the threat he posed seem especially urgent. Of course we know now, as the United Nations knew then, that Hussein did not in fact have WMDs at his disposal. Nor was he close to acquiring either WMDs or a viable nuclear program. The threat posed by Hussein was, at best, vague and minimal. It was not clear whether Hussein possessed the weaponry necessary to make a clear threat, whatever his anti-American rhetoric may have been.

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The costs to counter the supposed threat posed by Iraq have been very steep. As early as 2002, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that a potential conflict with Iraq would cost $6–9 billion per month. Even after combat ended, the estimated cost of occupation would be $1–4 billion per month, without the additional money needed for reconstruction and aid.122 The best-case scenario, in which US troops in Iraq declined from 102,000 in 2005 to 50,000 in 2008, would still cost the US $200 billion over nine years, according to CBO estimates in 2003.123 Of course, this scenario did not actually pan out. Troops remained at 100,000 by 2010, and the cost of the occupation in 2008 alone was over $180 billion.124 Even with President Obama’s plans for withdrawal beginning in late 2010 and continuing through December 2011, the CBO estimated that the United States would pay out $156 billion per year between 2009 and 2014.125 This would make the base cost, just for the Iraq War, well over $1 trillion by 2014. This doesn’t include the outlays for Afghanistan. Nor does it include interest on the loans used to finance the Iraq War or disability benefits for veterans, which Stiglitz and Bilmes argue will raise the total cost of the war to $1.754–2.655 trillion by 2017.126 Assuming there are 145 million taxpayers in the United States (slightly more than the 144 million in 2008), that would mean each taxpayer is responsible for about $108 per month for the 14 years between 2003 and 2017. If costs are any indication of the threat posed, then it would appear that Hussein was a greater threat than world hunger ($30 billion per year to eradicate127 ), lack of sanitization and clean water ($22.6 billion per year to provide for world’s population128 ), and inadequate access to primary education ($10–30 billion per year to ensure for world’s population129 ). These costs were not part of the broader discussion of the jus ad bellum of Iraq. Few just war theorists asked questions about the cost of invasion, regime change, and occupation. Most were overly concerned with just cause and right authority. This is not necessarily a weakness— cause and authority are important—but it is a limitation, especially given the importance accorded to proportionality in the tradition. By not engaging cost, just war theorists were unable to interrogate the artificially low estimates of the Bush administration, whose representatives treated the financial burden of Iraq as a mere pittance.130 They were also unable to move the discussion away from WMDs and multilateralism to a broader reflection of Christian political discourse, a reflection that, in the tradition of Aquinas, recognizes a multiplicity of civic goods that includes (but is not exhausted by) security, and a

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reflection that, in the tradition of Reinhold Niebuhr, reminds us that the goods we achieve are neither absolute nor free. Of course, weighing proportionality of costs becomes irrelevant when a threat is viewed as ultimate. The rhetoric of the Iraq War and the larger War on Terrorism, even from accomplished just war theorists like Elshtain, was such that an observer may be led to believe that the United States and its allies were facing what Walzer has termed a “supreme emergency.” Walzer uses this term to designate a situation in which the threat is so grave, the consequences so dire, that the normal rules of war can and should be overridden. Such emergencies arise when significant threats are such that the very survival of a nation is at stake. Walzer argues that proportionality and discrimination may need to be overridden in such a case. If we are to take the word of politicians like Bush and Cheney and theorists like Elshtain, Weigel, and Norman Podhoretz, the United States was in such a situation after 9/11. How could one possibly raise the question of costs when what is at stake is the “survival of the free world,” or the very existence of America as a nation? What would have happened if the Allies had determined the costs were too high to fight Germany in World War II? Surely, no material costs are too great to expend in the defense of freedom, democracy, and human rights. Even to weigh such costs is morally reprehensible, according to Murray and Coates.131 On the other hand, the notion of a supreme emergency is not universally accepted, nor is it problem-free. Even Walzer, in his discussion of emergencies, is more likely to criticize the false panic induced by political exaggeration of threats than he is to highlight the likelihood of such situations. Moreover, Walzer is careful to note that supreme emergencies are not constant states of being but, rather, particular, limited occasions in which threats are grave and immediate and defeat is likely. Johnson is even more reticent to admit of supreme emergencies, since “typically, the values threatened by war are less than ultimate, and so is the threat.”132 It is highly unlikely that nations will face such threats, he claims, so Johnson “tends to be dubious of supreme-emergency claims.”133 Brian Orend likewise is doubtful that supreme emergencies actually obtain in real political conflict. Like Walzer and Johnson, Orend tends to believe that the notion of supreme emergency is used more often to justify disproportionate warfare than it is to describe a situation objectively. This has been the case, he argues, throughout the War on Terrorism. The actual threats from rogue states and terrorist cells, he claims, do not clearly constitute a situation of “victimization

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by aggression, military collapse, and widespread massacre,” the characteristics of a supreme emergency that allow us to ignore the physical and material costs of war.134 Any analysis of proportionality, according to the dominant narrative at the time, reflected not prudent ethical analysis of the justice of war but ignorance of the dire threat posed by terrorism. Orend challenges this logic by arguing that the threat of terrorism, while certainly serious, does not constitute a supreme emergency in which the fate of the United States is at stake. More recently, Craig M. White has offered a cogent, incisive analysis of the War in Iraq in light of proportionality ad bellum, arguing that apocalyptic rhetoric about the possibility of Hussein using WMDs sidelined realistic thought about both our goals and the cost to achieve them. Certainly, he argues, Hussein had many faults. But were the likely benefits of his removal sufficient to outweigh the costs, including loss of life, social chaos, and likely economic burdens? White thinks not. Part of the reason this calculation wasn’t done, he argues, is that the United States believed its goal to be nothing short of the ideals of freedom, democracy, and liberty. Saddam Hussein was such a threat that no calculation was necessary.135 White also rightly responds to the objection noted above—What if calculations of proportionality ad bellum had prevented the United States from entering World War II? This is a false comparison. Hussein was not Hitler. Nor had he attacked the United States as Japan did in 1945. Hitler’s Third Reich was a special case that is far too often used as an analogy for other conflicts. Even if Hitler’s actions may have constituted a supreme emergency, merely invoking a comparison to his reign of terror does not make for reasonable ethical analysis. What made Hitler so dangerous was the combination of means and intent— the intent to conquer the world and the means to make a good run for that goal. Islamist terrorists, as Elshtain notes, certainly have the stated intention to destroy the Western world. However, as she fails to point out, they do not have the means to do so. Merely desiring the extermination of America is one thing. Having the resources to achieve that end is something different. Hitler had both; terrorists do not.136 It is unclear to what extent Hussein had either. Without both the intention and the means, it is not possible to characterize a threat as supreme or ultimate. The danger of supreme emergencies is not only their use in justifying the sort of “total war” condemned by the tradition but also their tendency to act as a sort of moral scotoma, a blind spot that makes it easy to ignore other pressing responsibilities. The fatalistic, emergency rhetoric of both politicians and analysts throughout the War on

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Terrorism has rendered impotent the sort of critiques levied by the African American leaders discussed above. Both White and Johnson see this as a result of the failure to consider proportionality ad bellum at all, especially the proportionality between the values pursued in Iraq and “other obligations our society has to its own people and to other nations.”137 If just war theory is to be a theory of politics, those who employ it must place war within the context of other political responsibilities. We must ask not only the threat-specific questions about the costs and benefits of a war (a question that is already often ignored) but also value-relative questions about the overarching responsibilities of government. It would make little sense for a government to pursue a just order in the world if the pursuit of such security bankrupts programs to secure justice at home. This is a dominant theme of African American discourse on war and a neglected aspect of just war theory in the last century.

Hermeneutical Principles of Proportionality ad bellum Proportionality ad bellum is not a secondary or ancillary part of just war theory. Getting the analysis of costs and benefits right can make the difference between a duty to go to war and a duty to avoid war. The costs incurred by the pursuit of even a just cause can be a heroic sacrifice or a sin against justice. Either way, the costs are still real, and they still must be paid. This is as true during “peacetime” as it is during declared conflict. When properly applied, proportionality ad bellum requires us to consider these costs in a more substantive way than is often the case. For African Americans, this has meant more than just counting bodies. It has meant accounting for the needs of all citizens, but especially the poor, which go unmet when national resources are diverted from social programs and spent instead on military operations, procurement, and research and development. From their commentary on war and the “guns versus butter” debate, we can draw several suggestions for recovering the substantive, wideranging applicability of proportionality often neglected in recent just war thought. (1) Honest Assessment of Threats The first requirement for a robust application of proportionality is an honest assessment of threats to values. This means neither exaggerating nor downplaying the real dangers nations may face. However,

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as Walzer notes, the former is more likely among political decisionmakers. Just war theorists must maintain a hermeneutic of suspicion of political rhetoric that invokes the idealistic language of Freedom, Democracy, and Liberty. The Christian heritage which informs just war theory is never so optimistic as to believe that a “new world order” or a world free from fear will ever be created by human action. On the other hand, the just war tradition recognizes that sin is very real, and combating it, at times with armed force, is nevertheless a morally praiseworthy action. This is sometimes a duty, even if it incurs costs that otherwise would be unbearable. The goal of the just war theorist is to determine whether the costs are necessary and whether they are proportionate to the end sought. This requires that we see threats for what they are, that we avoid simplistic, impassioned analogies and that we take seriously the danger we face from others. Supreme emergencies may exist, but they are exceedingly rare. No matter how much some theorists may insist otherwise, a fatwa issued over Arabic airwaves does not constitute evidence of an emergency. An honest assessment of threats must take into account not only rhetoric but also means and resources when determining the nature and scope of risk. This further requires that we consider the changing political landscape of the twenty-first century. The ability for insurgents, small cells, and individual dissidents to export their violence across the globalized world may give the appearance of a global threat. However, our enemies today are neither German Nazis nor Soviet Communists. What may have been proportionate in those situations may be disproportionate in today’s security environment. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and trillions of dollars does not appear proportionate to the capture of less than 500 members of al Qaeda.138 Then again, neither would zero soldiers and only a paltry amount of foreign aid seem proportionate to the threat. (2) Honest Assessment of Costs The second requirement is an honest assessment of costs. Achieving our goals as a nation is not free. There are always costs to the pursuit of any value. These may be the spiritual costs of engaging in violence, which Augustine rightly foregrounded, or they may be the material costs of conflict, which Erasmus and Grotius highlighted. Just war theorists are responsible for assessing both. The difficulty is that we have so circumscribed what counts as a “cost” that we are unable to maintain the broad view of war held by authors like Erasmus. Surely, loss of life is a major component of the costs to be considered by just

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war theorists. However, war’s effects reach far beyond the battlefield. They are felt when military spending is funded at the expense of social programs, when, as Eisenhower recognized, governments make the choice between battleships and housing, between bombs and schools. Deficit financing can obscure these costs, making it seem as if we can have both “guns” and “butter,” as if we can pursue our values as a nation without considering the resources necessary for achieving these goods. This is not the case, however, as economists have observed. Even if we maintain deficit spending, the macroeconomic costs of loss of investment, rising interest rates, and retarded economic growth are felt by individuals and families who may never experience warfare firsthand. Were we to end deficit spending, the costs would be more immediate and may inspire deeper reflection on the proportionality of a proposed war. For this reason, some authors, such as Stiglitz and Bilmes, propose funding war through special surtaxes rather than deficit spending or emergency funding.139 Recognizing that some wars may be necessary, the authors do not propose de-funding defense industries. Instead, they argue that wars lasting longer than one year should be funded through a “war surtax” rather than deficit spending or emergency supplemental funding. Again, their purpose is not to discredit war itself but rather to make the financial costs of war as immediate as possible to taxpayers and voters. Doing so, they believe, will force the public to make the sort of “informed choices about real-world options” that characterize prudential political reasoning. This may be an important suggestion to consider. Moreover, it is reasonable to believe that politicians’ jobs would not be at risk by proposing the United States enter World War II or begin armed conflict with Afghanistan in such a situation. Given the support for both wars, most Americans might agree to surtaxes.140 This might make more dubious ventures, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, however, more difficult to initiate. Still, countering the dominant trend in just war thought to count either spiritual costs solely (as Murray and Coates argue) or to count merely loss of life and limb (as Carmola argues) is a necessary but difficult step. Certainly, protecting innocent people from the tyranny of their own leaders or other groups is a good goal, and a value to which we should be sensitive. So is ensuring that all people have access to the resources necessary for self-determination, as Roberts argues. With funding for wars representing 51 percent of federal discretionary spending in the United States, education representing 4.9 percent, and housing and urban development only 3.3 percent, it is at least questionable whether the United States is adequately pursuing the

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latter goal.141 This is problematic, especially given Murray’s insistence that self-determination is a constitutive aspect of true freedom in the Christian political tradition. Even if war is inversely correlated with poverty (according to Henderson), this does not make military Keynesianism a good policy. Economically, it simply does not work during “peacetime.” What is more, as Murray observes, the soul of the nation is at stake when its fiscal and military policies become unhinged from its moral commitment to shared purposes and values.142 To engage in the preparation for and execution of war without thought to the consequences of either for our other pursuits is to lose a sense of the panoply of values that together form the “common good.” In recent years, authors such as Lester Brown and Barry Commoner have argued that analyses of the cost of war should extend to environmental damage as well. This is certainly a set of costs to which few just war theorists attend. However, given the human costs of ecological destruction wrought by war (e.g. air pollution, water pollution, and destruction of arable land), Brown, Commoner, and others are helpfully raising our awareness of the dangers war may pose long after hostilities have ceased. Commoner, for his part, invites us to see the common good from an ecological perspective, as including the health of the nonhuman environment, as well. This is a potent topic for further exploration in regard to the costs of war.143 (3) Incisive Analysis of Burden of Costs While African Americans have been cognizant of the pressing needs of, especially, poor Americans, this has not been a major concern of the predominantly white community of just war thinkers. Perhaps that is why it is easier for many to ignore the economic costs of war-readiness and war-waging. They simply have not been part of the population most directly affected by the economic effects of war. Engaging African American thinkers on war and peace may serve to correct this shortcoming. For African Americans, the diversion of funding from social welfare to international warfare, whether in the waging of or the preparation for war, is evidence of a disjuncture between the stated commitments of policymakers to freedom and human rights and their actual commitment to these same values. In a very real sense, they argue, the costs for war are paid by those whose existence depends on federal programs whose funds may be cut or frozen during times of increased military spending. Even if the United States were to maintain its programs for “guns” and “butter”

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through deficit spending, the poor are still likely to feel the effects most directly, especially through the reduction in job-creation caused by the economic downturns that often accompany high levels of federal borrowing. If the United States were to balance the budget, it is likely, as Garand and Hendrick note, that those programs that benefit the poor will be among the first to be cut.144 Maintaining such programs, Clayton argues, is an essential component of the moral fabric of any nation. Without “a ‘safety net’ for the poor and the near-poor . . . no society can call itself civilized.”145 This is especially true for Christians, whose concern for the vulnerable serves as the basis for their espousal of just war theory. The innocent, the aggrieved, and the powerless are those groups whose defense often serves as a paradigmatic moral cause for war. It is nonsensical, then, to assume that the political responsibility for the vulnerable to which decision-makers are called by Christians should be limited to armed defense. A word must be said here about the preferential option for the poor that grounds this concern for the vulnerable. First, the Christian tradition has already applied this option to other areas which concern our common life as citizens. The economic policies and practices which characterize our government and our private businesses have been a central concern for the Christian church in this regard. However, when it comes to war, this has not been the case, despite the clear implications of our military policies for the economy. If Christians are “to assess life styles, policies, and social institutions in terms of their impact on the poor,” then this must be as true of the military institutions and policies as it is of the economic institutions and policies of nations.146 Second, this preferential option for the poor is not meant to reflect class-based identification with only part of the population. Nor is it meant to communicate hostility or ambivalence toward the middleclass or the wealthy. Rather, as theologian Bryan N. Massingale points out, the inspiration of the preferential option “is not adversarial, but inclusive, rooted in the conviction that all people are created in God’s image and count as human . . . [I]f justice is to be a reality for all, then special attention must be given [the poor].”147 Providing a “safety net” for the poor, such that those negatively impacted by poverty, homelessness, hunger, and unemployment are able to continue their participation in the benefits and responsibilities of civic life, is a way of ensuring that no human being is excluded from the rights and benefits of the common life. In terms of war, ensuring that the costs of conflict are shared equitably, that war does not necessarily mean a “theft

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from those who hunger,” is a way of protecting the rights of all human beings. It does not mean that only the wealthy should pay for national defense. It does mean that the disproportionate burden for financing defense must be redirected toward a more equitable situation. A graduated surtax for war may be one way to do this. Whichever solution we arrive at, those of us who have internalized a preferential option for the poor in our theology cannot fail to see its implications for our analyses of war. We must begin to see budgets, especially the military budget, for what they are, namely reflective of shared values and expressive of moral commitments. A holistic commitment to justice cannot mean that we pursue justice through war by increasing economic inequality and poverty through financial mismanagement. Asking questions about who pays for war, who is burdened by military spending, and who benefits from increases in defense budgets is a way of applying proportionality in a more substantive, and more realistic, way than has been done in the last century.

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Defense of self, defense of others, defense of values, prevention,

preemption, punishment, evangelization, democratization, liberation, restoration of goods, enforcement of laws, deposition of tyrants, honor, order, justice, peace, and so on have all, at one time or another, been considered just causes for war. It is not my intention in this chapter to add to this lengthy list. Still less is it my intention either to limit just cause to one or another justifiable aim of armed force, or to reject out of hand any of the contenders for the title of “just cause” proffered by just war theorists (though, admittedly, some causes may come to be seen as so problematic that support for them is tenuous). Rather, in this chapter, I problematize contemporary understandings of a variety of just causes with the hope that future applications of the criterion will transcend mere legalism and avoid the pitfalls of nationalistic realism.

Just Causes for War in the Tradition Augustine While he never laid out a systematic theory of the just war, Augustine’s writings remain an important starting point for discussions of just cause, especially given his influence on later writers, from Aquinas in the thirteenth century to Ramsey in the twentieth. Indeed, it was Ramsey who may have contributed to one of the most pernicious misinterpretations of Augustine on just cause, namely that defense of an innocent third party is the paradigmatic just cause for war in the

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Augustinian tradition.1 Charles continues this tendency to position Augustine as an interventionist, claiming that both Augustine and his predecessor Ambrose of Milan “believe it to be the obligation of Christian love to defend and protect the innocent third party” in cases of injustice.2 Both Holmes and (to a lesser extent) Johnson have challenged this claim, and indeed, there is little support in Augustine’s writings for interpreting the Augustinian understanding of love in war as the type of “neighbor-love” exercised in heroic interventions to defend the innocent.3 Love for Augustine, especially the political love exercised in war, is highly paternalistic. This is neither the love of a friend for a friend nor the love between two equal neighbors but rather that of “the loving father who must discipline his disobedient son.”4 The editors of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Vatican’s official newspaper, are thus closer to the truth in claiming that, according to Augustine, “a war is just if it is waged to avenge injustices—that is, to make up for the violation of a right.”5 This is not to say that Augustine was opposed to intervention; however, to emphasize intervention is to lose sight of the primacy in Augustine’s thought of the vindicatory and punitive dimensions of just wars. This can be seen clearly when Augustine refers to the intentions appropriate for just war. Rather than contrast love in war with apathy or indifference, as would seem to be the case if the “loving relationship” was with an aggrieved innocent party, Augustine, in his reply to Faustus, refers instead to cruelty, enmity, and rapaciousness, intentions that characterize the relationship with enemies or, as Augustine notes, those parties deserving some sort of just punishment.6 “Love” refers to this relationship. Leaving aside the first just cause for war Augustine offers, i.e. divine command, J. Warren Smith notes that the primary just causes Augustine discusses are avenging injustice, establishing “order,” and civic defense. Smith’s article is particularly helpful in outlining the latter of these just causes, for he adroitly draws Augustine into modern discussions of preemptive and preventive war as variations on the theme of defense. While Augustine denies to Christians the right to defend themselves from violence on the basis of charity, according to Smith, he does allow for the killing of an aggressor on the grounds of justice, “not as the defense of transitory goods per se [which includes, for Augustine, life], but it seeks to prevent an injustice being inflicted upon the state and the people about to be attacked.”7 Justice, which Augustine understands in the sense of giving to each what is due to him or her, grounds an ethic of defense that may justify preemptive action in order to prevent an injustice.8

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Smith makes two points about preemptive war in Augustine that are worth highlighting. First, Smith makes clear that Augustine does not believe that the goal of punishment in war is “purely punitive or retributive.” Rather, the love that the justified party is to embody, like the loving father in the analogy above, calls for the prosecutor of a just war to “seek restorative justice, that is, [to reestablish] peaceful and amiable relations with one’s defeated enemy.”9 Punishment is a good and primary just cause for war, but punishment must be placed within Augustine’s understanding of the purposes of judgment and correction, namely the restoration of relationships and the rehabilitation of criminals, both on the individual and the national level. Second, Smith cogently describes the limitations of preemptive war for Augustine by describing the theologian’s evaluation of the Third Punic War between Rome and Carthage in 150 BCE. Prior to 150, Carthage was a significant threat to the Roman Empire. After a period of decline, however, as Scipio Nasca observed, Carthage had become rather weak and, by the 150s, hardly represented a threat at all. This observation did not prevent Cato from proposing, successfully, that Rome finish off Carthage once and for all to prevent Carthage from posing a threat at some point in the future. Cato’s suggestion was the catalyst for the Third Punic War, which ended with the destruction of Carthage in 150. Augustine, appreciative of “the great Scipio,” understood this as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire, not because the war itself was unjust, but because the removal of the Carthaginian threat, and the period of prosperity that followed, allowed the baser lusts of Romans free rein. While “the abolition of Carthage certainly removed a fearful threat to the state of Rome . . . the extinction of that threat was immediately followed by disasters arising from prosperity.”10 For Augustine, the two phenomena, removal of fear and disastrous licentiousness, were intimately related. Smith argues that the point Augustine makes referring to the history of the Punic Wars is not that states are unjustified in responding to threats. Rather, for Augustine, there is a difference between a healthy amount of uncertainty (or, perhaps, fear) that nations must live with and a clear and present threat that might justify preemptive action for defense. According to Smith, Augustine uses the Punic Wars to highlight the “constructive tension between prosperity and adversity” in which all peoples must live.11 The justice of “anticipatory self-defense,” for Augustine, requires that armed force be “a reaction to a real danger that is clear and present” and not rooted in a “promise to secure ‘freedom from fear’ by eliminating any or all potential threats to national security.”12 Vague, potential, or imagined

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threats do not justify preventive military action for Augustine. Only clear and specific threats provide just grounds for initiating war. For several centuries after Augustine, few theorists offered substantive discussions about defense. As both Alfred Vanderpol and James Turner Johnson have noted of the scholastic period, in particular, the emphasis in just war theory was clearly on punishment of evildoing as a primary just cause.13 Of course, this may be attributed less to a punitive mindset of classical theorists and more to the fact that most, if not all, of them simply assumed that self-defense was justifiable and needed little clarification. At any rate, what is important for the purposes of our journey through history here is that just cause was not limited to defense in classical just war theory. Isidore of Seville One of the best examples of this is the discussion of just war by Isidore of Seville in the early 600s CE. Between the 610s and the 620s, Isidore compiled his Etymologies, an encyclopedia on topics ranging from sports to botany. The work is hardly creative, not because of Isidore’s deficient imagination, but because of the lexicographical and encyclopedic style of the Etymologies. It is precisely this lack of creativity, however, that makes Isidore so valuable, for his tome gives us a glimpse not of a single theory of war but rather of where the tradition stood by the 600s. In his brief treatment of war (included in the same chapter as his discussions of ball games and contests), Isidore primarily relies on Cicero to note that a just war, properly speaking, “is waged for the sake of recovering property seized or of driving off the enemy.”14 Interestingly, Isidore divides war into four types: “just, unjust, civil, and more than civil.” Just wars require “a formal declaration” and are waged, primarily, for the purpose of “avenging or driving off the enemy,” rather than “out of rage and not for a lawful reason.”15 What is curious is that he specifically separates civil wars from just wars in his treatment. While he fails to characterize civil wars as unjust wars per se, this should not provide much hope to those looking for early indications of a just revolution in classical theorists. Isidore’s discussion, while not very substantive, seems to place him in a line stretching back to Augustine and forward at least to Thomas Aquinas that specifically excluded civil war as justified. The “just war,” properly understood, did not include humanitarian rescue, intervention, or oppression or internal injustice as a just cause for war. It would take nearly a millennium before these types of causes would enter

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Aquinas The first real indication that domestic injustice might provide a just cause for war comes from Aquinas. Aquinas begins his discussion of just cause by citing Augustine’s commentary on Joshua: “A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly.”17 Two features of the ensuing discussion of just cause in both the Summa and Aquinas’ On Kingship (written as he worked on the Summa) are worth noting. First, Aquinas began a shift away from the Augustinian assessment of anticipatory self-defense by noting that “those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault.”18 It is unclear whether Aquinas rejected the notion of a justifiable “first strike” (indeed, he never specifically rejected it), but it does seem that such a case would be far more questionable to him than a case of defense against aggression or avenging some injury. He specifically compares justifiable interstate warfare to defense of the commonwealth from “internal disturbances,” however, which gives some indication that a just cause must be a response to some aggressive action by a belligerent who disturbs the peace. As we will see, by the sixteenth century, the notion of prior injury would become central to defining a just cause. The second feature of Aquinas’ writing that is worth discussing is his stance on intervention and humanitarian rescue. Charles argues that Aquinas posited “protecting the innocent from harm” as a primary just cause for war. He goes on to paint Aquinas as an “interventionist,” insisting that Aquinas clearly believed that intervention to stop domestic oppression constituted a just cause.19 However, what Charles fails to note is that Aquinas’ appraisals of sedition and tyrannicide are not framed within his treatment of just cause but rather are located within his discussions of sovereign authority. Aquinas did allow for deposition of tyrants, but his concern was not to enumerate this as a just cause. His comparison between true sovereigns, who enjoy the right to rule, and tyrants, who are not “sovereign” in any true sense, should not be understood as an indication of Aquinas’ unquestioned

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the discussion, perhaps because Isidore himself excluded them. While taking the perspective of the objective reporter in his Etymologies, Isidore’s impact on just war theory would be felt for several centuries after his death, most notably in the Decretum of Gratian and the work of Gratian’s interpreters.16

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Martin Luther Quite clearly, because of Aquinas’ emphasis on right authority in just wars, he is not very supportive of rebellion. While overthrowing a tyrant is allowable (a huge step away from Augustine), this activity is primarily within the ambit of other sovereigns. The only time he allows for true rebellion or revolution is in cases where authority comes from the people themselves, in democratic societies. While this is somewhat hierarchical, and a bit distressing to those born after the eighteenth century, it is nothing compared to the rejection of rebellion by the Reformer Martin Luther. Luther, in a characteristically conservative manner, rejected rebellion out-of-hand, arguing, “[I]f the subjects rise up and rebel, as the peasants did recently [in the 1524–1525 Peasants’ War in Germany], then it is right and proper to fight against them.” Moreover, if the people rebel against the authority granted by God to sovereigns, “get others to join them, and break loose, and take the sword, then before God they are worthy of condemnation and death.”20 Nothing, not even tyranny, can justify the usurpation of authorities who, after all, are put in place by God. Luther didn’t have a particular vindictiveness for the poor masses. Rather, his stance on war was essentially conservative and placed the burden of proof on those who would disturb the relative peace of the kingdom by initiating war. He argues, “It is not right to start a war just because some silly lord has gotten the idea into his head. At the very outset I want to say that whoever starts a war is in the wrong.”21 Wars of desire, he continues, which include all wars not “provoked when an attack is [first] made by someone else,” are “of the Devil” and cannot be justified.22 For Luther, there is no justifiable “first strike”; all just wars are only so because they respond to some injury inflicted by domestic or foreign belligerents. Luther is worth noting for his harsh rejection of rebellion and his insistence on injury received, but it is inaccurate to call him foundational for just war theory. By the sixteenth century, even the insistence on injury received was hardly novel; as we will see, it had become de rigueur for other theorists by the time Luther came along to chastise “silly lords.” On the whole, as I’ve noted in previous chapters,

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support for intervention. Rather, in his treatment of sedition in the Summa, Aquinas’ concern is to clarify his understanding of authority. This isn’t to say that he would not justify such intervention—he does, to some extent—but we should be careful in highlighting this aspect of his discussion too strongly when we address questions of just cause.

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the next major step in the development of the just war tradition after Aquinas was the work of Vitoria in the 1500s. Indeed, it was Vitoria who embarked on one of the first substantive treatments of just cause, superior in depth and breadth even to that of Aquinas.

Vitoria’s treatment of just war theory was profoundly influenced by Spanish ventures into the Americas and, especially, the attempts by the Spanish crown to justify the use of armed force against native American peoples. Because of his concern that Spain not overstep its bounds in its dealings with “the barbarians,” Vitoria offered a rich discussion of what counted as a just cause for war. In his On the Law of War, Vitoria recounts the just causes operative in just war thought since Augustine: “our own defence [sic] and the defence [sic] of our property . . . the recovery of property that has been seized . . . in revenge for an injury received; and lastly, to establish peace and security.”23 His specific treatment of the situation in the New World, however, led him to delve deeper into the meaning of just cause and in this way allows him to say more than either Augustine or Aquinas. In his treatise On the American Indians, Vitoria argues that there are several aims that could count as just causes for armed force in the New World: (1) to defend against infringement of rights to travel, commerce, and citizenship in the New World; (2) to defend against infringement (i.e. violent suppression) on the preaching of the gospel; (3) to defend native converts to Christianity from violence or its threat; (4) to defend the innocent against tyranny; and (5) to protect allies and friends from aggression.24 He frames each of these in terms of both natural rights and the law of nations, arguing that each just cause requires, as Aquinas said before him, that the nation to be attacked must deserve it because of some fault. For Vitoria, that fault was the violation of rights guaranteed either by natural law or by the law of nations. Perhaps what is most valuable in his discussion is not the causes that he designates as just but rather the lengthy list of causes he specifically rejects as unjust. First of all, Vitoria rejects any war waged prior to the reception of an injury or violation of right. All wars, he insists, must be predicated on the avenging of injury or the protection of some right guaranteed by either natural law or the law of nations. As he writes, “[T]he sole and only just cause for waging war is when harm has been inflicted.”25 Religious differences, forced conversion, conquest or “enlargement of empire,” glory, and honor are all rejected

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It is quite unacceptable that a person should be killed for a sin he has yet to commit. In the first place, there are many other measures for preventing future harm from such people, such as captivity, exile, etc. It is not lawful to execute one of our fellow members of the commonwealth for future sins, and therefore it cannot be lawful with foreign subjects either; I have no doubt on this score.27

On the question of humanitarian intervention, Vitoria is more circumspect. While he allows for the “lawful defence [sic] of the innocent from unjust death [by] anyone,” Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Laurance note that Vitoria is reluctant to justify this sort of war.28 They observe that Vitoria uses the “reserved conditional” posset rather than the more forthright potest when he states that defense of the innocent “could be a title” (that is, a right) to war.29 In his discussion of every other justified “title” to war, Vitoria uses the term potest (“is”). This, according to Pagden, Laurance, and Jonathan Barnes (author of the article on just war theory for the 1982 Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy), signals Vitoria’s unwillingness to accept unconditionally humanitarian intervention as a just cause of war. Francisco Suarez As I noted above, most classical just war theorists simply assume the justice of defensive wars. This was certainly the case with Vitoria, for whom offensive war such as intervention was, at the very least, more problematic than defense against injury or violations of rights. It also was true for Suarez who, following Cajetan’s commentary on Aquinas, distinguished between defensive and offensive war, arguing that the former is always lawful and may, in fact, be required at times.30 However, one qualification that Suarez is clear to add to offensive war, in agreement with Vitoria and Aquinas, is that an injury must have been received in order to justify war. By “offensive,” Suarez does not have in mind the “wars of desire” Luther referred to, or the humanitarian rescue missions Vitoria conditionally approved, but rather the prosecution of war after an act of aggression has ceased.31 This is consistent with what Johnson and Vanderpol referred to earlier, namely the priority of punishment as a just cause in the just war tradition. For Suarez, just cause requires either defense against a current injury or

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as justifiable causes for war.26 He further rejects, in agreement with Augustine, the use of armed force to prevent future acts of aggression. According to Vitoria,

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punishment of a past harm. In the latter case, moreover, the aggrieved party must first seek restitution before resorting to war.32

Grotius, like Vitoria before him, is a valuable resource in this discussion for his lengthy examination of what does not constitute a just cause for war. Among unjust causes, he mentions “advantage to be gained by a war,” colonization, imperial acquisition on the basis of “wickedness, impiety, or incapacity” of native populations, liberation of natural slaves, the imposition of slavery, and “national honour [sic].”33 Unsurprisingly, Grotius follows the tradition in claiming three just causes for war—“defence [sic], indemnity, and punishment . . . [the] right to defend, to recover, and the encroachment on which it is right to punish.”34 Unlike Vitoria, however, Grotius expressly forbids preemption, provided legal recourse to solving a dispute is available.35 Even where no legal recourse is possible, Grotius insists that “they are themselves much mistaken, and mislead others, who maintain that any degree of fear ought to be a ground for killing another to prevent his supposed intention.” Rather, for Grotius, “the danger must be immediate, which is one necessary point.”36 While in many ways Grotius was restrictive in his elucidation of just cause, Johnson perhaps overstates things when he claims that the modern era’s prioritization of defense began with Grotius.37 While the abuses of the Thirty Years’ War did contribute to Grotius’ underlying revulsion for war, the Dutch jurist was even more permissive than Vitoria when it came to the issue of punishment. Whereas both Vitoria and Molina forbade sovereigns from punishing those who did not fall under the ambit of their rule and restricted punishment to a response to prior injury, Grotius believed that sovereigns were within their rights to punish all “pirates, general robbers, and enemies of the human race,” regardless of their citizenship.38 What is more, Grotius, in stark contrast to Vitoria, allowed for a certain measure of anticipatory punishment, inasmuch as he claimed that “punishment must have in view either security against future aggressions, reparation for the injury done to national or private honour, or it must be used as an example of awful severity [to deter other potential wrongdoers].”39 In this case, contra Johnson, Grotius represents a slightly more permissive view than earlier theorists. Grotius also is one of the first theorists to offer a substantive defense of what might be called “humanitarian intervention.” In his discussion of “causes of undertaking war for others,” Grotius argues that

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“the causes which justify the principals engaged in war will justify those also, who afford assistance to others.”40 He goes on to aver that humanitarian intervention is allowed when rulers “provoke their people to despair and resistance by unheard of cruelties, having themselves abandoned all the laws of nature, they lose the rights of independent sovereigns, and can no longer claim the privilege of the law of nations.”41 While he believed revolutions are “fraught with the greatest danger,” Grotius prohibited neither revolution nor “defence [sic] of the oppressed” by foreign powers in his understanding of just cause.42 While his belief that “injury, or the prevention of injury, forms the only justifiable cause of war” contributes to the accuracy of Johnson’s claim about his restrictiveness, Grotius’ rich understanding of what constitutes “injury” actually made him slightly more permissive than others, especially when it came to intervention and punishment. Emmerich de Vattel A better candidate for Johnson’s hypothesis might be the eighteenthcentury Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714–1767). Perhaps more than any other theorist before him, Vattel insisted that unless an injury had been received, or the threat of injury so clear and so grave as to be manifest to even neutral parties, no war could be just. The right of employing force, or making war, belongs to nations no farther than is necessary for their own defence and for the maintenance of their rights. Now if anyone attacks a nation, or violates her perfect rights, he does her an injury. Then, and not till then, that nation has a right to repel the aggressor, and reduce him to reason. Further, she has a right to prevent the intended injury, when she sees herself threatened with it. Let us then say, in general, that the foundation or cause of every just war is injury, either already done, or threatened.43

Further, he comments that “war is so dreadful a scourge, that nothing less than manifest justice, joined to a kind of necessity, can authorize it, render it commendable, or at least exempt it from reproach.”44 In continuity with Vitoria, Vattel insisted that punitive war, when it is justified by an injury received, must be pursued by a nation directly affected by the injury and not by those “who, madly setting themselves up as defenders of the cause of God, take upon them to punish the moral depravity or irreligion of a people not committed to their superintendency.”45

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In terms of preemptive war, Vattel again was rather restrictive. He argued that two things were necessary to justify preemption, power and will, for “power alone does not threaten an injury—it must be accompanied by the will.”46 The past deportment of the nation threatened with preemptive action by its neighbors was especially important to Vattel for determining whether or not preemption is justified. In the case of a nation known for its “rapacity, pride, ambition, or an imperious thirst of rule,” other nations may act to prevent that nation from attaining power sufficient to exercise its viciousness.47 However, when a nation has given no manifest evidence of such character, the most its neighbors may do is form coalitions for their collective security should an attack occur, impose economic sanctions to prevent the acquisition of arms and wealth, and maintain confederacies that might deter aggression.48 They are expressly forbidden, however, from preemptive action merely to prevent a possible future injury. They cannot justly attack a state unless it is reasonable to assume that the sovereign has both the power and the will to launch an aggressive attack.49 Humanitarian intervention by the time of Vattel had become rather firmly implanted within the just war tradition. We can trace its development from Aquinas, who was more concerned with authority, to Vitoria, who gave cautious approval, and finally, to Grotius, who firmly planted humanitarian intervention within the natural rights of nations. By the eighteenth century, the otherwise systematic and verbose Vattel rather simply declares, “[I]t is lawful and even praiseworthy to assist those who are oppressed, or unjustly attacked.”50 Despite his otherwise restrictive analysis of just cause, Vattel was realistic and blunt in this respect. Some rulers are vicious, and may need to be “reduced to reason,” either by other sovereigns whom they threaten or by their own subjects whom they oppress, with the assistance of lawful interveners. The tradition of the just war, then, gives the lie to any interpretations that might suggest a long history of increasing restrictiveness, at least in this regard. While the colonial wars of the sixteenth century and the religious wars of the seventeenth century may have contributed to a tightening of just cause that no longer allowed the sort of imperialism of Vitoria’s Spain or the ideological warfare of Grotius’ Europe, by the time of Vattel, just war theory had also expanded to include humanitarian intervention and, in some cases, revolution, a cause that would have been unjustifiable, if not wholly unthinkable, during the centuries between Augustine of Hippo and Isidore of Seville.

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(1) Prioritization of Defense The first major limitations placed on just cause came from the realm of international law. While most theorists generally affix the start of this trend to the signing of the United Nations Charter in 1945, it is appropriate to start two decades earlier, with the Kellogg–Briand Pact, signed in 1928. While contemporary commentators such as O’Driscoll cite the Pact as the first expression of the narrowing of just cause to self-defense, the Pact actually goes much further. Article Two of the treaty, for example, demands that “the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among [the signatories] shall never be sought except by pacific means.”51 Indeed, there is no permission for defense of any stripe within the treaty itself, hence its nickname, the World Peace Act. Profound as it may have been at the time, the treaty was decidedly ineffective until the Nuremberg Trials of October 1945, when the Pact was dusted off and used as the basis for charges of “crimes against peace” against Germany, one of its signatory nations. Regardless of its relative uselessness, the Pact did reflect an international consensus at the time of its signing, namely that war needed limiting (at least on paper). The United Nations Charter, while its own effectiveness is debatable, represented the first time international law had expressly limited justifiable war by individual nation-states to self-defense. Article 2.4 clearly reflects the influence of the earlier Kellogg–Briand Pact, prohibiting all member nations from employing “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” Unlike the Kellogg–Briand Pact, however, the Charter explicitly grants to member nations “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs . . . until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security” (Chapter 7, Art. 51).52 O’Driscoll asserts that this limitation of just cause to self-defense was most likely due to the dawning of the nuclear age following World War II. Nations, he argues, came to see the need to limit war at that particular moment in history because of the destructiveness of new weapons systems, given that “even a limited engagement could trigger a wholesale nuclear exchange.”53 There are two problems with this theory. First, it ignores the impact of Kellogg–Briand on the

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Charter. The attempt to limit war as a means of solving disputes didn’t begin for international jurists with the nuclear age, but rather with the destructiveness of conventional weapons in World War I. Second, O’Driscoll’s theory ignores the impact of American Dixiecrats and Jim Crow on the “domestic jurisdiction clause” of Article 2. I will address this in more detail in the following section, but it may be enough to suggest, for now, that the origins of Article 2 of the Charter may have had less to do with nuclear weapons or the fear of war as they did with sustaining post-Reconstruction American racism. While the applicability of O’Driscoll’s theory to the development of international law is dubious, he certainly calls attention to trends within the ethical tradition of just war theory after World War II. By the 1980s, a whole school of just war thought had emerged, which insisted that defense was the only justifiable cause for war. The erstwhile historian of just war theory, Johnson, attributes this especially to three sources in the mid- to late twentieth century, namely Ramsey, Walzer, and the USCCB. Ramsey, for his part, insisted “on protection of the innocent from unjust harm as the sole Christian reason for use of armed force.”54 Concerned as he was to locate just war theory within the Augustinian frame of “neighbor-love,” despite the aforementioned problems with this view, Ramsey argued that the primary just cause for war for Christians was love for the injured, innocent neighbor, and thus defense of him/her from aggression. The Jewish Walzer, unconcerned with the religious aspects of just war, relied instead on both international legal consensus (the “legalist paradigm”) and his own deep appreciation for self-determination to argue that “the defense of rights is a reason for fighting. I want now to stress again, and finally, that it is the only reason.”55 Intervention, understood as offensive war both by Walzer and (as we saw) by classical theorists, is only justified as a response “to acts ‘that shock the moral conscience of mankind,’ ” such as genocide.56 In any other case, the territorial sovereignty of other states must be respected. It was, however, the US Catholic Bishops who were most affected by the threat of nuclear weapons. Indeed, Catholic social teaching on war since at least the early 1960s reflects a constriction of just cause to defense due to the destructiveness of nuclear arms. The Challenge to Peace is the clearest example of this trend in Catholic thought. There, the Bishops argue, “War is permissible only to confront ‘a real and certain danger,’ i.e., to protect innocent life, to preserve conditions necessary for decent human existence, and to secure basic human rights.” The Bishops go on to argue that “if war of retribution was ever justifiable, the risks of modern war negate such a claim today.”57

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As they note, this claim is fully compatible with the tone of Pacem in Terris, in which Pope John XXIII wrote, “[I]n this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.”58 For both the USCCB and their intellectual and religious forebear Pope John XXIII, the destructiveness of modern weaponry made war justifiable only in the clearest situations of self-defense. Other theorists have likewise limited just cause to defense. Orend, for example, claims that “a state has a just cause for resorting to war if and only if . . . it is the victim of aggression, or is coming to the aid of a victim of aggression . . . ”59 Coates likewise limits just cause to defense, although he includes both anticipatory self-defense and the right to resist an act of aggression even after the act has achieved its aim. Both of these ancillary causes, however, are framed within a broad understanding of defense, rather than offense (as was the case for both causes in the work of classical authors).60 Jeff McMahan also limits just cause to “self- or other-defense against aggression,” including anticipatory defense, though he argues that there is “a moral statute of limitations” on responses to an act of aggression that occurred in the past. As an example, he cites the settlement of citizens of an aggressor state who have assimilated into the society of a nation that they originally unjustly invaded.61 (2) Humanitarian Intervention Because intervention has become such a central component of just cause discussions since the 1990s, it is important to clarify what we mean by “intervention.” Charles and Demy, drawing on the work of Drew Christiansen and Gerard Powers, point to three different types of intervention. First, intervention may take the form of foreign interference in civil wars. This typically occurs when the situation has become so chaotic that the violence threatens to spread to other nations in the region. Second, intervention may occur in situations of genocide or ethnic cleansing. In this case, authorities who commit or permit such injustices effectively lose their rights to sovereignty. In this case, a change in regime is often justifiable. Third, and closely related to the second situation, in cases of widespread and egregious violations of human rights, intervention may be justified as a means of securing the rights of an oppressed group.62 There is a tension in each case between claims to political sovereignty, strictly speaking, and the liberal claim of universal human rights that became increasingly prominent throughout the mid- to late-twentieth century. Ironically, both sides of the coin were stressed

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in the documents of the United Nations. The Charter, as we saw above, stressed the right of states to “domestic jurisdiction,” or the freedom from interference by other states in domestic affairs. On the other hand, the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” enshrined the notion that all individuals, regardless of citizenship, are entitled to certain rights and privileges based on natural law reasoning. Since World War II, the natural rights side of the argument has gained much support. This most likely has less to do with more trenchant natural law reasoning among politicians than it has to do with increasing attention to grave abuses of power by rulers. While the threat of nuclear weapons and the possibility of mass extermination may have played a role in the limitation of just cause to defense, the reality of mass extermination of Jews by Hitler, Cambodians by Pol Pot, and Bosnians by Slobodan Milosevic all contributed to an expansion of just cause that legitimated intervention in extreme situations. Narrow claims to legal sovereignty despite evidence of human rights violations have grown increasingly dubious over the past few decades.63 This is especially true given the reality of globalization, where failure to rule one nation effectively may lead to deleterious consequences for other nations. Civil war, for example, may contribute to global financial crises; similarly, the failure to capture and incapacitate terrorists in one nation may result in attacks around the globe. Both self-interest and liberal concern for human rights have contributed to a distrust of appeals to sovereignty—self-interest inasmuch as instability anywhere has become a threat to stability everywhere, and liberal concern inasmuch as rights are increasingly understood as natural and inalienable regardless of citizenship. That being the case, intervention has enjoyed increasing support among just war theorists. Charles and Demy, for example, argue that “Christians and other people of faith should be at the forefront of addressing human suffering and defending the truly oppressed.”64 While they support nonviolent means of intervention, they also defend the right and duty of political authorities to intervene in situations of grave injustice.65 Oliver O’Donovan likewise argues that “international law should not demand [turning one’s back while a neighboring community is being slaughtered] without reasons so strong as to seem, when pointed out, morally irresistible.”66 For O’Donovan, humanitarian intervention is a prima facie duty of governments. The USCCB similarly appeals to politicians to seek nonviolent solutions to global injustices. However, in their 1993 pastoral The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace (written to commemorate the tenth anniversary of The Challenge of Peace), the Bishops assert that

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isolationism is a “dangerous temptation to turn inward, to focus only on domestic needs and to ignore global responsibilities.”67 While the Bishops remain committed to nonviolent solutions to political problems, they, like Charles and Demy, assert the right and responsibility of those with power “to employ limited force to rescue the innocent and establish justice.”68 In the ten years between The Challenge of Peace and The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace, the USCCB shifted the emphasis of their discussion of war, from strict limitation of war to the duty to employ armed force, when necessary, for the defense of the oppressed. While it is not the case that the basic message of the USCCB had changed in that decade, the shift from a decidedly pacifist stance to the duty to employ armed force is noticeable and important. Elshtain has also been vocal in her support for intervention, both in cases of violations of human rights and cases of “rogue states.” In her defense of the War on Terrorism, Elshtain argues, “To save the lives of others, it may be necessary to imperil and even take the lives of their tormentors. The latter response is the appropriate way, suggests the just war tradition, to meet the challenge of systematic violence.”69 She further argues that such “systematic violence” and gross injustices of the Taliban regime of Afghanistan bolstered the United States’ case for war against Afghanistan. While her claim that the restrictive treatment of women by the Taliban is “a central issue” of the War on Terrorism is dubious, her belief that such injustice represents a just cause for war places her among those who support humanitarian intervention.70 In regard to rogue states, she agrees with Michael Ignatieff and others who claim that regime change and neo-imperialism may, at times, be necessary to ensure international security.71 In both cases, she argues against an isolationist just-war political morality that prioritizes self-defense and emphasizes territorial sovereignty in cases of rights violations and failures to curb terrorist activity. Similarly, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, in its influential 2001 report, The Responsibility to Protect, argues that sovereignty implies specific obligations to citizens, especially the obligation to prevent and to respond effectively to “situations of compelling human need,” including those involving “large scale loss of life [or] large scale ethnic cleansing.” When the relevant government is unable or unwilling to do so, “there is no better authority than the United Nations Security Council to authorize military intervention.” The new direction described in the report is thus toward a more active and involved Security Council, which can avoid passivity and act cooperatively and swiftly to correct grievous violations of rights, rather than a more active United States.72 While

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(3) Preemptive and Preventive War Perhaps the most visible, and complicated, candidate for a just cause for war is preemption or prevention of a future threat. The notion of preemption became central soon after the publication of the Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy of 2002 (NSS 2002) and the subsequent invasion of Iraq a year later. The threat of global terrorism, known well in other regions but brought home to Americans in the 9/11 attacks, has made the reactive posture of no-first-strike war policies inadequate and dangerous. In the present geopolitical climate, marked by the threat of massive suffering wrought by terrorists with WMDs, car bombs, or even box cutters, those who preempt such criminal activity might seem less like the “silly lords” of Luther’s world and more like prudent, responsible policymakers. It is no longer enough (if it ever was) to say that “whoever starts a war is in the wrong.”73 It is understandable why “no-first-strike” policies enjoyed such prominence during the Cold War, given the destructive potential of nuclear weapons. However, the threat we face as the twenty-first century wears on is very different than the threat posed by nuclear weapons in the twentieth century, and it may require retooling of such moral proscriptions.74 While the threat posed by terrorism is “new” in some ways, preemption itself does have historical precedents that can aid us in understanding when such action is justifiable: first, the sinking of the Caroline, an American-owned supply ship, in 1837 and second, the Arab-Israeli Six Day War of 1967. During a brief armed rebellion against British rule in Canada, Canadian rebels used the American Caroline to transport supplies from the American side of the Niagara River to the ship’s Canadian port. As part of its efforts to quell the insurrection, Canadian troops loyal to Great Britain boarded the Caroline, killed several Americans on board, and set fire to the ship, letting it drift from its port in America to sink in the river. The US government, which was uninvolved in the insurrection in Canada, was understandably outraged and communicated its displeasure to Great Britain over the next several months. The British government responded, in turn, that the attack was justified by Great Britain’s right to self-defense in its skirmish with Canadian rebels. In 1842, Secretary of State Daniel Webster responded to a belated British apology for the incident with an explanation of the criteria

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an important step in the development of humanitarian intervention, the report does beg the questions asked in Chapter 2 about the UN as a “right authority” in such situations.

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which would have justified Britain’s claim to self-defense. First, he argued, Britain must demonstrate that the threat posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means,” and ultimately “necessary” for self-preservation. Second, the act must be proportionate to the threat, “limited by that necessity and kept clearly within it.”75 Webster thus clarified the criteria for a justified act of preemptive selfdefense: “the imminence of an attack, the necessity of preemption, and the proportionality of its intended response.”76 Webster thus denied the British claim to preemptive defense on all three grounds. First, because the ship sat anchored in an American port, the threat it posed was not imminent. Second, since it was merely a supply ship and posed no direct threat to British lives, the attack was not necessary. Finally, because there was no evidence that the threat it posed was sufficiently grave, the killing of Americans on board and the sinking of the ship were disproportionate. The 1967 Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, according to Walzer, is “crucial for an understanding of anticipation.”77 Ostensibly, the war began with an Israeli first strike against Egypt on June 5, 1967. In actuality, however, it is more difficult to pinpoint the moment that either nation established a sufficient just cause for war. At any rate, as Walzer notes, the two countries enjoyed a “near-peace” that was broken by Israel’s first strike in June. The hostilities in that year had their immediate origin in Soviet reports that Israel’s government was amassing troops at the Syrian border in preparation for an aggressive invasion of Syria. The Egyptians, despite mountains of evidence from the UN denying the allegations, deployed their own troops to the border of Israel. The presence of the Egyptian military, combined with Egyptian president Abdel Nasser’s stated intention to achieve “the destruction of Israel”78 and the alliance of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq with that objective, led Israel to initiate war on the grounds of preemptive self-defense. The criteria by which Walzer justifies Israel’s preemptive attack on Egypt are similar to the criteria Webster elucidated in reference to the sinking of the Caroline. First, Walzer argues that the attack was necessary, inasmuch as “current and particular signs” of the threat pointed to “the intensification of present dangers” and constituted a grave threat to Israel. Second, the threat was indeed imminent, since Egypt was clearly engaged in a massive military build-up near its border with Israel. Finally, because both the build-up and the stated objectives of Nasser threatened the very existence of Israel, the response by Israel was, indeed, proportionate.79

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In sum, he claims, a potential enemy must demonstrate “a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active preparation that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk.” While he downplays the significance Webster lent to imminence of attack, Walzer is careful to add that “current and particular signs,” “actual preparation for war,” and “the intensification of present dangers” are all necessary factors in justifying preemptive action.80 Walzer, ever aware of the abuse of justifications of war by politicians, is quite clear that while an attack need not be imminent (as Webster argued), the threat must be clear and direct, or in a word, “sufficient” to represent a real danger to the state pursuing justified preemption. Both Webster and Walzer agree on this point; threats must be clear, direct, and grave if preemption is to be justified. Understanding the criteria that justify preemptive attacks is important, given the foregrounding of preemptive self-defense in the justifications offered by the Bush Administration for its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Hussein, according to Bush and his associates, represented a clear threat to the safety of the United States and its allies because of his alleged ties to terrorists, his supposed proliferation of WMDs, and his alleged pursuit of nuclear weapon-making materials, such as “yellowcake” uranium. These factors, along with Hussein’s past hostility toward the United States and Israel, contributed to “the intensification of present dangers” such that preemption, they argued, was justified. As many authors have noted, however, the actual policies of the Bush Administration amounted not to a policy of preemption, but rather prevention.81 NSS 2002 contained the first official pronouncement of what would come to be known as the “Bush doctrine,” a policy of preemptive, offensive action against developing threats. According to the Strategy, “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failed ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of an embittered few.” In response to these new threats, “as a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”82 Earlier in 2002, Bush articulated his belief in the necessity of preventive action in a speech at West Point, arguing, “If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long . . . We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge.”83 If the Websterian criterion of imminence was not already jettisoned with the publication

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of NSS 2002, Bush made it clear in a 2004 “Meet the Press” appearance that the United States would no longer view imminence as necessary for justification. Instead, he claimed, “I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It’s too late if they become imminent.”84 Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister and Bush’s ally in the War on Terrorism, agreed, arguing, “This is not a time to err on the side of caution; not a time to weigh the risks to an infinite balance.”85 (This may help explain the lack of attention to financial costs incurred during the war. See Chapter 4.) Preventive war is not new to American foreign policy, in some ways. Indeed, the Vietnam War can be seen as a preventive war in some ways, given the use of the popular “domino theory” as justification for continued American involvement. However, as O’Driscoll notes, Bush and Blair did reinterpret the justifications for preventive war that had guided policy debates since Webster’s evaluation of the Caroline incident. In addition to “jettisoning the imminence requirement,” Bush and Blair also gave little attention to the requirement of a clear and direct threat to safety that Webster and Walzer agreed must be present in order to justify a first strike. Relying on apocalyptic narratives of a nuclear-armed Iraq acting in collusion with terrorists, Bush and Blair “present[ed] Iraq as a threat on the basis of little more than vague fears concerning what Iraq could choose to do with WMD if it were to acquire them.”86 In his 2003 State of the Union address, for example, Bush invited Americans to reflect on their deepest fears, positing, “It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”87 Whereas the paradigm for war rooted in Webster’s evaluation and Walzer’s recovery and reinterpretation had previously required a direct threat made manifest by stated intentions and actual preparations, support for the Bush doctrine of preventive war required only one of these, and at times, neither. George Weigel, for instance, has argued that the very possession of WMDs by certain states constitutes an act of aggression that may be met with armed response.88 Given the supposed necessity of preventing certain nations from obtaining such capabilities, some politicians and just war theorists have also argued that prevention from attack may be justified prior to the acquisition of military power. In the Defense Planning Guidance document of 1992, associated with prominent neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush and principal author of NSS 2002), the authors argued that the United States “must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them

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from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Regional competitors must also be deterred from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”89 As Chris J. Dolan notes, under Bush, the notion of preventive war was extended past prior justifications for preemption to include prevention of “the rise of any potential global rival.”90 Neta C. Crawford may be correct when she claims that “the goal of US strategy is to maintain preeminence . . . by reducing or eliminating the military capabilities of potential adversaries even before rivals have acquired these capabilities” or devised a plan to use them against the United States.91 Crawford is quite right to argue against such policies on the basis of the just war tradition. The justification of armed attacks prior to the presence of a clear threat and prior even to the acquisition of capabilities that might pose a threat is a far step from preemption, “in which a nation initiates military action against an enemy in order to eliminate an immediate and credible threat of serious harm.”92 It is quite clearly representative of a policy of preventive war, in which “there is no immediate threat, real or perceived, and there is no certainty that such a threat will emerge.”93 This distinction is significant for just war theorists, for preemption in itself has the benefit of at least tacit support. While Vitoria and Luther clearly opposed the use of preemptive war, Grotius and Vattel allowed for its use in exceptional situations, with some reluctance. Grotius, for his part, allowed it only in the absence of legal mechanisms which might prevent an impending attack. In the international community, where such recourse is unavailable, he allowed for preemptive attack on the basis of “selfpreservation . . . and not [on the basis of] the injustice or misconduct of the aggressor.”94 The distinction he makes is an important one, for it strictly limits preemption to response based on the presence of a grave and “immediate” threat, rather than the character or past conduct of a potential aggressor. While he admits that some form of “indirect hostility” short of war might be justifiable in the face of vague threats, he is clearly opposed to the idea that “the bare possibility of some remote, or future annoyance from a neighboring state affords a just ground of hostile aggression.”95 In defense of his claim, he agrees to some extent with Augustine. Augustine, as Smith notes, “reasonably limits anticipatory self-defense by excluding preventive wars that promise to secure ‘freedom from fear’ by eliminating any or all potential threats to national security.”96 Grotius likewise argued, “Such is the condition of human life, that no full security can be enjoyed. The only protection against uncertain

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fears must be sought, not from violence, but from the divine providence, and defensive precaution.”97 While neither theorist disallowed defensive measures, neither was willing to justify preventive war, which sought to remove all potential, as yet unformed threats to security. Vattel, insistent on the prior reception of injury to justify war, was equally reluctant to justify preventive war. His writings on war present an interesting rejoinder to the neo-conservative justification of preemptive/preventive war. While earlier theorists like Vitoria viewed the world as an international community of nations, and others, like Grotius, saw it as a group of independent states governed by a common law (jus gentium), Vattel was one of the earliest scholars to see the international community as ideally marked by a balance of power between essentially competitive states. Both Louis XIV in the seventeenth century and Charles V in the sixteenth century serve for Vattel as examples of monarchs who sought to upset the balance of power in Europe by their imperial designs and military strength. In order to prevent this disruption in the balance by rulers whose intentions their contemporaries rightly assumed to be unjust, Vattel argued that other nations were justified in taking preventive measures against the two kings. However, it was not the mere acquisition of power by Louis or Charles that was grounds for preventive war, according to Vattel. In fact, in the case of monarchs who acquire power but whose past deportment “affords us no room to take exception to her proceedings,” Vattel stringently argued that no authority was justified in resorting to preventive war. In order to be justified, preventive war must be waged solely against those who have both the power and the stated will to pose a danger to other states.98 While he advises that states take defensive measures by forming coalitions, imposing economic sanctions, or establishing confederacies, Vattel does allow room for the preventive use of force, provided both the power and the unjust will of the enemy have been clearly established.99 What is curious here, in light of the Defense Guidance document of 1992 and NSS 2002 and its accompanying supports in Bush’s speeches, is that Vattel approves preventive war in light of a threat to a balance of power among states and not in light of a threat to the hegemonic power of a single state or coalition of states. It would appear that even among realists like Vattel, the Bush doctrine would receive little support, given Vattel’s insistence on both a clear threat (in line with Walzer, who cites Vattel) and maintenance of a balance of power. Overall, Charles and Demy are correct in noting that while violent preemption of clear, direct threats does have some tacit support among just war theorists in the tradition, “preventive war cannot

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be accommodated in traditional just-war categories as they are currently articulated.”100 In terms of just cause, Charles and Demy are right to foreground the necessary presence of a “breach of justice” that must occur prior to the initiation of a just war.101 That said, authors like John W. Lango have argued, in a manner similar to Weigel, that the mere possession of WMDs by certain states presents a sufficiently grave threat to peace and security that it may warrant justified preventive action.102 There are two points to make here, however, in opposition to Lango’s claim. First, if the policy of the Bush Administration was to wait until “rogue states” had acquired WMDs before responding, this would be preemptive war, properly speaking, and may be justifiable. However, this was not the case in 2002–2003. Rather, the Administration’s intention both generally and specifically (in regard to Iraq) was to pursue military action before the acquisition of WMDs by certain states. If we trace NSS 2002 to its roots in Wolfowitz’s earlier work, the Defense Guidance document of 1992, we find further support for Dolan and Crawford’s argument that Bush and his advisors actually advocated military action before other nations gained any power capable of challenging the United States’ hegemony and influence. This is a stance very different from Lango’s argument, for while it coincides with his notion that the mere possession of WMDs by rogue states constitutes a threat to peace, the government documents advocate military action before this breach has occurred. This is not preemptive but preventive, in the sense that Webster, Walzer, Charles, Demy, Grotius, and Vattel understand it. Second, the just war tradition, while varied in many respects, is at the least clear on this point: war can never be justified as an appropriate response to vague, indeterminate threats. While the threats do not always have to be imminent (as Walzer argues), for each of the theorists discussed in this chapter, the threat can never be vague and indeterminate. It must be represented by “current and particular signs” (Walzer), “power and [unjust] will” (Vattel), and “immediate” gravity (Grotius). In the case of the War on Terrorism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, none of these criteria was sufficiently met or even applied by policymakers. (4) Punitive War The last development in just cause discussed here is closer to traditional categories of cause and can be seen as a recovery of, rather than a step away from, the just war tradition. Despite claims to the contrary by theorists who prioritize defense, Johnson is right to state, as we saw earlier in this chapter, that punishment was a significant just

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cause in the theories of earlier writers. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there was a recovery of the punitive dimension of just cause that remained somewhat dormant throughout most of the twentieth century. O’Driscoll is particularly helpful in organizing our approach to this recovery, for he sees two major trends within arguments for punitive war. The first is the tendency to foreground maintenance or restoration of law and order as a just cause for war. Second, O’Driscoll notes the “evangelical” tendency, especially of Bush and his supporters, to understand the cause of the War on Terrorism to be ridding the world of evil.103 Among just war theorists, the former tendency, the foregrounding of restoration of “law and order,” is much more prominent. Weigel has been especially vocal in his recovery of the Augustinian notion of tranquilitas ordinis, the tranquility of order in a society governed by law. Since at least the 1980s, he has argued that the Catholic tradition of just-war reasoning from Augustine to the 1960s was characterized by an emphasis on rightly-ordered community and the use of war as an instrument to punish violators of this order.104 Weigel is somewhat circumspect in delineating what this “rightlyordered community” might look like, though his 1987 book on the subject gives us some ideas. First, and minimally, a society marked by the tranquility of order will have established legal structures and procedures that allow grievances of members to be addressed without violence. In this regard, he is quite clear that American democracy constitutes “the best available means of ‘rightly ordering’ the peace that [is] one end of governance.”105 Second, while he dismisses the notion “that all controverted issues of justice (e.g., the question of how the canons of distributive justice should be applied to the organization of a modern political economy) [have] to be settled before there [can] be a morally worthy peace,” Weigel quite clearly prefers models of community that include market capitalism as a “sine qua non of the evolution of tranquilitas ordinis.”106 Finally, while other questions of justice can remain open, Weigel insists that questions of “religious liberty” cannot.107 Taken together, Weigel believes that the tranquility of order is marked by democracy, capitalism, and religious freedom. Since he believes achievement and/or maintenance of tranquilitas ordinis is the primary just cause for war in the Catholic tradition, we can then conclude that, at a minimum, a punitive war that redresses and corrects violation of any or all of these components is motivated by a just cause. Indeed, his writings since 2001 have said as much.108 In both his earlier writings and his more recent work, Weigel identifies the American system of social order

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as a primary example of tranquilitas ordinis, worth not only defense but “love.”109 Elshtain, while not quite as glowing in her patriotism as Weigel, is nonetheless insistent that punitive war, which aims at correcting violations of law and order, is inherently just. An Augustinian like Weigel, Elshtain similarly argues that the primary good of government is to secure “civic peace,” which creates “those minimal conditions that prevent the worst from happening.”110 The necessity of war as an instrument to achieve this goal, according to Elshtain, arises from the recognition of the sinful will to power and impulse toward violence that leads some persons and groups to violate the peaceful order of law. The world in which we live, she avers, is “one in which the ruthless would prevail if they faced neither restraint nor the prospect of punishment.”111 Grappling “with the fog of war and politics,” according to Elshtain, requires grappling with the responsibility of governments to punish wrongdoing through the limited use of armed force.112 She is careful to distinguish retribution from justice in her discussion of just cause (and its related criterion, right intention), but ultimately, “the primary reason Christians enter politics . . . is to restrain evil”; this responsibility requires, at times, that we authorize the use of force for the purposes of punishing transgressors of the law and reestablishing the “civic peace” of international society.113 Much of Bush’s rhetoric about Iraq in 2002 and 2003 reflected this concern for law enforcement and restraint of evil. In his September 13, 2002, address to the United Nations, Bush outlined the numerous UN resolutions Saddam Hussein allegedly violated in an effort to depict Hussein’s regime as lawless. He urged the UN to approve the use of military action to enforce the resolutions and punish Hussein for his crimes by claiming, “The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to authority of the United Nations,” and asking, “Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”114 While Bush melded various causes for war together within his speeches, his rhetoric often reflected a concern for the enforcement of international law and the punishment of a regime that had become “rogue” with its defiance of law and order. His appeal to the UN did not reflect an appeal to humanitarian sympathies (which would have framed the war as a protective intervention) or an over-abundance of dystopian possibilities given a nuclear-armed Iraq (as was the case with his speeches to the American public), but rather represented an appeal to the authority of the UN as a law-making and law-enforcing political body.

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A similar dynamic was at work in an earlier joint statement given by Bush, Blair, and Spanish prime minister José María Aznar in the Azores on March 16, 2002: “Saddam’s defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding the disarmament of his nuclear, chemical, biological, and long-range missile capacity has led to sanctions on Iraq and has undermined the authority of the UN.”115 In a speech to the House of Commons two days later, Blair used similar rhetoric to argue that, unlike previous situations with Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, “this time compliance [with UN Resolution 1441 which demanded disarmament] must be full, unconditional and immediate.” The difference, Blair insisted, between earlier resolutions sanctioning Iraqi weapons-development programs was “the threat of force” should Iraq be in violation of the resolution. Decrying the hesitancy of the Security Council to authorize the use of force stipulated in Resolution 1441, Blair argued that “failure to enforce [the resolution] would do the most deadly damage to the UN’s future strength, confirming it as an instrument of diplomacy but not of action.” His appeal, while punctuated at times with reference to Hussein’s vile treatment of Iraqis, focused most clearly on the punitive dimension of war with Iraq, on the necessity of enforcing law and order against a criminal regime.116 Rutgers University professor of political science Wojtek Mackiewicz Wolfe has argued that Bush especially used the language of punishment to appeal to the American desire for retribution for 9/11 by increasingly emphasizing the connections between Hussein and Islamist terrorism.117 By framing the Iraq War within the War on Terrorism as a continuation of the punishment meted out by the United States for 9/11, Bush was able to appeal to a wide swath of the American public that remained thirsty for vengeance against any parties even remotely tied to the attacks. Indeed, Bush astutely invoked the enraging image of 9/11 to garner support for the invasion of Iraq. Such manipulation of public sentiment was not without a measure of effectiveness; Linda J. Skitka et al. found significant evidence of a correlation between anger for 9/11 and support for the invasion of Iraq in their study of American emotions and political attitudes.118 Perhaps the most glaring connection between Iraq and 9/11 remains Bush’s famous description of Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and (implicitly) the Taliban regime of Afghanistan as an “axis of evil.”119 In his 2002 State of the Union address, the first occasion in which he used the nowfamous moniker, Bush extended the punitive dimension of the War on Terrorism beyond law enforcement to include O’Driscoll’s second

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feature of discussions of punitive war, namely the tendency to depict war as waged for the purpose of “ridding the world of evil.” In his speech, Bush made clear that through the War on Terrorism, the United States and its allies “seek a just and peaceful world beyond the war on terror.” In a claim typical of his evangelical tendency to characterize war as a conflict between Good and Evil, Bush further avowed, “[E]vil is real, and it must be opposed.” The War on Terrorism was a battle between those who “embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed” and those who “choose freedom and the dignity of every life.”120 The address to the nation was reminiscent of Bush’s earlier appeal at Washington’s National Cathedral just days after September 11, 2001, where he stated unequivocally, “Our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.”121 Peter Singer and others have noted the “Manichean tendency” of Bush to fixate upon the reality of evil and the role of the United States as a global force of good opposing it.122 In addition to claiming that punishment of law-breaking is a just cause for war, as O’Driscoll notes, Bush displayed a propensity for framing an “evangelical” war against evil in all its concrete expressions as a primary justifiable cause for offensive war.123 Bush was supported in this by Norman Podhoretz and Elshtain, who similarly framed the War on Terrorism as a war between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Both expressed support for Bush’s contention that “ridding the world of evil” is a justifiable cause for war within just-war reasoning, despite Elshtain’s claims about ambiguity and the pervasiveness of sin in all politics.124 In sum, we can make several claims about the state of just cause in the early twenty-first century. First, the centrality of defense remains a point of contention for just war theorists, despite recent shifts away from its prioritization. While just war theorists are unanimous in accepting self-defense as a just cause, conflict arises when defense of others is posited as a just cause. In light of this, we can also say, second, that justification of humanitarian intervention has increased in prominence among just war theorists, but disagreement is still clear when it comes to questions of when, how, and by whom intervention should be initiated. It remains to be seen if the Responsibility to Protect (commonly called R2P) will move this conversation in a fruitful direction. Third, preemption and prevention remain hotly contested just causes. While preventive war finds little support within the tradition, the changing face of both warfare in general and weapons technologies in particular may render the tradition (established in

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times when terrorists with WMDs were not an issue) suspect as an aid to moral reasoning about war today. At any rate, disagreements that hinge solely on what the tradition says are of equally little use in offering different lenses (besides the tradition) for understanding preemptive and preventive war. Finally, the issue of punitive war has become much more central to just-war reasoning than it was for many years. Understanding the role offensive wars of punishment might play for just war theorists requires interrogating the two trends O’Driscoll helpfully outlined for us, i.e. the emphasis on law and order and the division of global politics into Good and Evil with the concomitant claim that “ridding the world of evil” is a justifiable cause.

African Americans on Intervention Overseas intervention has been a thorny issue for African Americans. Chapter 3 addressed the varying attitudes toward intervention by the United States in Cuba and the Philippines, which were sources both of muted support for intervention in the former and criticism of the US government’s repression of revolution in the latter. David Fisher’s assertion that “the inconsistency and moral motivation in the behavior of the West” has contributed to general opposition by some groups to any intervention by the United States is not an adequate interpretation of the hermeneutic of suspicion that African Americans have applied to the use of American military might.125 What we find instead in African American approaches to American overseas intervention is the sort of cautious approach that marks employment of a hermeneutic of suspicion. Sometimes, this hermeneutic results in opposition to intervention; other times, it results in support for the same. The difference is often predicated on the convergence between American intentions and methods and those of oppressed groups in other countries. Far from a blanket condemnation of the use of military force, this approach assumes neither that intervention is always wrong nor that intervention is always in the best interests of oppressed peoples. At times, this hermeneutic is seen most clearly when the United States or international coalitions have failed to act. One good example of this is the American approach to apartheid South Africa. The apartheid system in South Africa officially began in 1948 with the electoral victory of Daniel Malan and the National Party over Jan Christian Smuts and the United Party. Racial segregation was nothing new in South Africa at the time, but the program for oppression of black South Africans, which formed a large part of Malan’s platform, introduced a level of white supremacy that was previously unseen in

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South Africa. Under Malan, legislation segregated housing, denied blacks political representation and freedom of movement, and segregated nearly all public services and public places. The United Party, which had been racially mixed and, to some extent, protected limited rights of non-white South Africans, gradually declined in favor of the National Party, whose Afrikaner nationalist ideology was rooted in white supremacy. Apartheid, the legal denial of rights to nonwhite South Africans, continued from Malan’s election until the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress party. Initially, the United States was cool toward Malan. As Thomas J. Noer notes, President Eisenhower and US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles disliked apartheid as a policy and Malan as a person and thought both would be short-lived in South Africa.126 Despite their dislike of Malan, the administration under Eisenhower was equally unsupportive of calls to sanction or depose Malan. Instead, they, like administrations for the next three decades, chose the “middle road” of chastened toleration, neither supporting the National Party nor supporting calls for protection of rights of non-white South Africans. When South Africa killed 69 antiapartheid protesters in what became known as the Sharpeville massacre on March 21, 1960, Assistant Secretary of State Francis Wilcox expressed the “middle road” position quite succinctly. Echoing American displeasure with both the National Party and the African nationalist movements sweeping the continent, he averred, “On the one hand, the sentiments of those who feel oppressed and discriminated against are easy to understand. On the other hand, one can appreciate the feelings of people . . . who now find themselves in a minority on a restless, stirring, continent.” Wilcox further warned against United States and international support for “political extremists [who sought] the premature withdrawal of white men from positions of authority.”127 His refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of liberation movements in South Africa was indicative of the attitude of Eisenhower and his administration, who feared the economic consequences of “too rapid independence in Africa and Asia.”128 As Noer contends, “Immediate strategic and economic interests dominated over such abstract notions as self-determination and political freedom.”129 The American approach to South Africa, up to and including Ronald Reagan’s policy of “constructive engagement” in the 1980s, may have reflected a narrow concern with Cold War political interests rather than a broader concern for human rights in South Africa. As future administrations navigated the “middle road” laid by Eisenhower in the 1950s and early 1960s, African American concern

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for non-white South Africans grew more intense. Charles C. Diggs, Jr., a Democratic Representative to Congress from 1955 to 1980, is representative of this intensification of African American opinion on South Africa. Dubbed “Mr. Africa” for his knowledge of and concern for the people of the continent, Diggs was at the forefront of American policy decisions regarding Africa.130 As a junior representative, Diggs traveled with then vice president Richard Nixon throughout Africa and attended conferences on African issues in both the United States and Ghana. As president of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Diggs led other CBC members on a fact-finding tour of South Africa in 1971. Following this trip, the initially moderate Diggs moved gradually toward “a more radical stance” on apartheid, fueled by “the radicalism in the black community [in the US], the universities, and the civil rights movement in general [which] rejected Digg’s gradualism and favored instead ‘an aggressive advocacy of resistance and liberation.’ ”131 The clearest indication of Diggs’ growing radicalism came in his “Action Manifesto,” written in early 1972, shortly after his tour of South Africa. Diggs begins his statement by chastising the US government, which “decries violence as a means of liberation without condemning the violence which the South African government uses to enforce the subjugation of the majority of the people.”132 Diggs is careful in his statement; nowhere in it does he advocate unilateral military intervention by the United States. Instead, he recommends a two-pronged approach. First, he argues that the United States should cease all military and financial aid to countries like Portugal that provided material assistance to the government of South Africa. Second, he urges the United States to support UN Security Council deliberation on the issue of apartheid, arguing that apartheid constitutes a “threat to peace” as defined by Article 39 of the UN Charter and represents a form of aggression prohibited by international law. For Diggs and a majority of African Americans by 1972, the choice in South Africa was not between an orderly peace and revolutionary violence but between two types of violence, one repressive, the other liberating. Diggs and his supporters were clear that only the latter was justifiable; the former was reprehensible and illegal and, as such, necessitated swift and meaningful intervention by the Security Council, even to the point of armed support of revolutionaries.133 Diggs’ delineation of two types of violence echoed a distinction that had become clear to other international observers of South Africa by the late 1960s. The World Council of Churches (WCC),

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for example, while refusing to forthrightly advocate revolutionary violence, also refused to forthrightly condemn it. The WCC’s recommendation that member-churches financially and morally support all antiapartheid groups, including those using violent means, drew much criticism, especially from the Dutch Reformed Church, which had supported (and in some ways helped create) the apartheid regime. In a 1964 consultation in Zambia, attendees agreed that “the white violence in South Africa was regretted, but a mention of possible black violence created pandemonium” among representatives from the WCC member-churches.134 While the WCC should express “regret” at the white violence of South Africa, which resulted in 25,933 strokes of corporal punishment and 84 executions of non-white protestors in 1968–1969 alone, some member-churches argued that the condemnation of non-white revolutionary violence should be unequivocal.135 Indeed, as Albert van den Heuvel, director of the Department of Communication at the WCC at the time, recalled, Rhodesian politician Dennis Fawcett Phillips suggested that the WCC be renamed “Murder Incorporated” for its support of black liberationist movements.136 This reaction was a near-reversal of the distinction between types of violence offered by Dr. Ernest Payne, president of the WCC, and Pauline Webb, Vice-Chairwoman of the Central Committee of the WCC, who claimed that “there are two kinds of violence in the world: violence exercised from above by those in power, and violence resorted to from below by those who see no other way of securing the redress of their grievances.”137 A similar contrast between “the violence that represses” and “the violence that liberates”138 can be found in the Black Leadership Conference on Southern Africa’s manifesto. Referring to “the continuing violence of Europeans to sustain institutions of racism and exploitation” as one of the “root causes” of the conflict in South Africa, the authors compare the revolutionary violence of South Africans to the violence of the American Revolution of 1776, distinguishing both from the violence of tyranny and oppression.139 Acknowledging both American complicity with apartheid and Black American solidarity with the oppressed, the authors demand that the US government, in addition to declaring arms and trade embargoes against South Africa, call upon the UN Security Council to militarily assist liberation movements in Africa because of South Africa’s “act[s] of aggression.”140 The authors go on to offer unqualified support of liberation movements, even if violent, and the intervention of foreign militaries at the request of such movements, provided such intervention does not

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“thwart the inevitable extension of African freedom to the southern tip of Africa.”141 Far from being a minority position within the African American community, the manifesto was the result of the collective efforts of representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), Africare Black Economic Research Council, and National Council of Negro Women, as well as members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who organized the conference that produced the document.142 By the 1970s, the gradualism of Diggs was as dissatisfying to the African American public and leadership as the “middle road” of Eisenhower, Dulles, and Nixon. With apartheid-era South Africa, we find a clear call for military intervention on behalf of human rights among African Americans. An interesting point to make here (and one to which I will return later) is that support for American and international intervention was not framed by African Americans in terms of humanitarian rescue of an oppressed people. The primary lens through which African American interventionists viewed intervention was support for justified rebellion. What is notable in this regard is neither the manifesto of Diggs, the statements by the WCC (shaped substantially by engagement with blacks in Africa and the diaspora), nor the statement issued by the CBC-led conference of 1976 begins with questions of “great power” responsibility but rather with the question of armed revolution by oppressed groups. This flips the frame, as it were; rather than begin with the perspective of powerful nations, they start with the perspective of oppressed peoples struggling for self-determination and human rights. Intervention, then, was not viewed as a heroic rescue of an otherwise immobilized, inactive people; it was understood as support of groups who were active in their own defense and in their pursuit of a more just society. This change in perspective substantially alters the questions asked by those with the power and opportunity to intervene, from questions about what powerful nations can do for oppressed peoples to questions about what powerful nations can help oppressed peoples do for themselves. This perspective assumes the subjectivity of oppressed peoples in their struggle for liberation, rather than the passivity of oppressed peoples as objects for the (even altruistic) designs of other groups. As the Black Leadership Council’s statement makes clear, this portrait of oppressed, yet struggling, peoples as subjects of their own destinies must continue throughout any interventions. If intervention is to be successful and helpful, it must have as its aim the full independence of the oppressed, as determined by the oppressed

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themselves. The question for powerful nations in this regard is not, “Where can we lead?” but rather “Where can we help?” If we are to accept the distinction offered by Payne and Webb, namely that repressive violence is violent power exercised “from above,” then liberating violence must mean something more than an order imposed “from above” by another powerful nation disunited from solidarity with the oppressed.143

African Americans on Law and Order A similar reversal of perspective can be found in relation to the justification of violence by African Americans. While some just war theorists, such as Elshtain, Weigel, and O’Donovan, seem to view war as justified when it is used to (re-)establish law and order, a perspective that places a certain premium on the status quo of ordered society, many African Americans are more likely to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to law and order itself. Put another way, while “law and order” is fundamental to the task of governments in some versions of just war theory, “law and order” has been more of a problem than a solution for African Americans. It is not easy to forget that appreciation for “law and order” prompted notable clergymen from Alabama to urge Alabamans and others “to withdraw support” from civil rights protests in Birmingham in 1963.144 The letter, which praised law enforcement efforts against Martin Luther King, Jr., and his colleagues, prompted King to write his now-famous “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” in response. In his “Letter,” King expressed his hope that “the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”145 King chastises the clergymen for praising the Birmingham police force who had upheld “law and order” by releasing “angry violent dogs” to attack the protestors, “push[ing] and curs[ing] old Negro women and young Negro girls [and] slap[ping] and kick[ing] old Negro men and young Negro boys.”146 King was vociferous in his insistence that some forms of order are neither lawful nor orderly; orders that oppress minorities and legalize inequality are unjust and must be opposed. Yet, despite King’s analysis of the differences between unjust laws that one must disobey and just laws that one must honor and uphold, the charge of “disturbing the peace” was continually levied against him and the Civil Rights Movement participants who were often labeled “agitators.” Even among prominent Christian ethicists, this was the

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case. Paul Ramsey, for example, felt obliged to inform participants in the sit-in movement of the 1950s and 1960s of “proper respect for law and order” and to remind them that “simple and not so simple injustice alone has never been a sufficient justification for revolutionary change.”147 In American history, “law and order” has often meant little more to African Americans than institutionalization of white supremacy and privilege. Indeed, the very notion of order, domestically or internationally, has been used frequently to maintain racial inequality. The entire field of international relations, Errol A. Henderson contends, began as an attempt by “ ‘superior peoples’ to impose order on the anarchic domains of ‘inferior’ peoples in order to prevent the chaos endemic in the tropics from spilling over into the superior peoples’ territories, possessions, or spheres of influence.”148 Indeed, the earliest theorists of international relations (which emerged as a distinct field of study in the early twentieth century), including Philip Kerr, Paul Reinsch, and Benjamin Kidd, displayed a great concern for racial hierarchies in their foundational texts. Even “the most venerable international relations journal in the US” today, Foreign Affairs, reflected this concern with racial ordering in its original title: the Journal of Race Development. The earliest attempts to establish a “rightly ordered” international community hinged on the subjugation of non-white races by white nations, especially through colonialism, imperialism, and trusteeship. From its start, the question of order in international relations was both implicitly and explicitly rooted in a concern for the preservation of a white-dominated hierarchy. As anticolonial movements spread through Asia and Africa in the midtwentieth century, these rebellions “were recast as hysterical epidemics of anti-white resentment expressed in ‘pathological ideologies’ of anticolonial nationalism,” rather than legitimate grievances against unjust structures of social order.149 Some authors argue that it was a concern for maintaining racist, oppressive legal orders that has led to the current international conundrum over the legality of interventions. The standard piece of UN legislation that is used to deny individual states the right to intervene in domestic affairs around the globe is Article 2 of the UN Charter, cited above. The clause contained therein is referred to as the “domestic jurisdiction clause,” and it prevents any authority, short of the Security Council, from intervening in essentially domestic disputes. It has been used nefariously, at times, by dictators like Milosevic, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin to deny the legitimacy of intervention by other nations, and, more recently, it was levied against the

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Bush administration to demonstrate the illegality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In fact, as it is the most likely candidate to intervene in other nations, the “domestic jurisdiction clause” has created (and likely will continue to create) a number of headaches for American heads of state. The chafing of Bush’s administration and those of previous presidents, like Johnson, Kennedy, and Clinton, against the restraint imposed by the domestic jurisdiction clause is ironic, given the history of that particular piece of the UN Charter. The irony lies in the fact that, as some American officials have depicted the domestic jurisdiction clause as hampering efforts to root out dictators and correct situations of genocide and injustice, it was the United States that was the vanguard for inclusion of the clause in the Charter in the first place. As Carol Anderson notes, it was John Foster Dulles, Edward Stettinius, Jr. (chairman of the US delegation to the UN and the first ambassador of the United States to the UN), and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt who insisted that neither the Charter nor the UN Declaration on Human Rights contain “viable implementation mechanisms” for ensuring protection of human rights.150 In the face of mounting support, spearheaded by China, Egypt, India, Uruguay, and prominent African Americans such as W. E. B. DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune, for inclusion of “provisions about racial equality and nondiscrimination,” Dulles, Stettinius, Roosevelt, and others became concerned that the international agreements would either bring into question the Jim Crow policies of the American South or, heaven forbid, authorize members of the UN to respond to grievances of African Americans. Senator Eugene Millikin (R-CO, 1947–1956) voiced the concern of many colleagues when he asked the US delegation, “Would the investigation of racial discrimination be within the jurisdiction of this body (the UN)?”151 Even Dulles, during a May 1945 meeting with the US delegation, “wondered aloud among his US colleagues in the delegation whether the human rights and nondiscrimination provisions might not create difficulties ‘for the Negro problem in the South.’ ” He was reassured “that the inclusion of a domestic jurisdiction provision would preclude this possibility.”152 Dulles and Stettinius were especially concerned that the United States might “be put in a position of having matters of domestic concern interfered with by the Security Council, and Dulles wanted to make sure that the UN could not ‘requir[e]’ a state to ‘change [its] immigration policy of legislation.’ ”153 When he saw that support for the domestic jurisdiction clause was lukewarm among many delegates to the UN, Dulles warned, “If it is rejected, we shall be forced to

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reexamine our attitude toward increases in the economic and social activities of this Organization.”154 With the threat of losing US support, the delegates passed the amendment stipulating protection of domestic jurisdiction. This enabled Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and delegate to the UN General Assembly, to reassure Sen. Millikin “that the domestic jurisdiction clause would prohibit such an action, would prevent any compulsion or enforcement whatever, and would retain for the various states the right either to accept or reject even recommendations for a change in behavior.”155 When it came time to craft the Declaration of Human Rights in 1947 and 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt took the uncharacteristic position of defending segregationist interests in order to prevent US rejection of the Declaration as a whole. At a December 1947 meeting with delegates in Geneva, she argued “forcefully against an article to eliminate discrimination committed by individual states [and] challenged the clause prohibiting government-sanctioned discrimination.”156 As Anderson notes, Roosevelt “made sure that the proposed Declaration and, especially the Covenant, contained no viable implementation mechanisms. In addition, Roosevelt worked to ensure that neither individuals nor nongovernmental organizations would have any authority to petition the UN for redress of human rights violations.”157 The US Department of State, through representatives like Dulles, Stettinius, Roosevelt, and Vandenberg “worked diligently to ‘preserve the integrity of domestic jurisdiction,’ and discourage African Americans from appealing to the UN ‘until all available local remedies [had] been exhausted.’ In reality, that meant never.”158 The resulting declarations issued by the UN confirmed DuBois’ fears that non-whites would be excluded from the new international arrangements and left with “no voice in the proposed world forum.”159 The bitter irony of all this is that the ineffectiveness and restrictiveness of the UN, highlighted so well by many observers within just-war studies, may be due significantly to the desire to maintain racist, white supremacist policies within the United States, the very political actor these same theorists believe should not now be bound by the domestic jurisdiction clause it helped create. It was a concern for maintenance of the disordered order of Jim Crow that contributed to the difficulties we face now in articulating a legal right or duty to intervene for the sake of human rights. The result is that, while many among us desire the right to discharge an assumed duty of humanitarian intervention or a responsibility to protect, the problematic understandings of order handed down

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to us from previous generations are, at times, deleterious to the very goals we hope to achieve with intervention. This is especially the case when we don’t have a shared understanding of what type of “order” we want to create through the “just war.” As we have seen, for Weigel, order has little to do with economic justice. As long as individuals can vote and participate in a free-market, it makes little difference if devastatingly wide gaps between rich and poor are present. For Elshtain, the order pursued through the War on Terrorism must include greater freedom for women and strides toward gender equality.160 This “civic peace,” as she calls it, referring to the end of government sought through just war, need not include answers to African American complaints about racism, however, since these are largely, in her words, a “pile of garbage.”161 Bush and his staff believed a “rightly ordered” international society was defined by maintenance of US hegemony. This included, according to NSS 2002, not only dissuasion of potential rivals but also inauguration of “a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade” since “[t]his is real freedom, the freedom for a person—or a nation—to make a living.”162 It would be too simple to claim that Weigel, Elshtain, and the Bush Administration are comfortable with an order marked by racial inequality, so long as capitalists and women are protected. The issue is more complex than that, for the root of their claims is the assumption that the issues raised by the Civil Rights Movements and its progenitors in the nineteenth and early twentieth century have already been corrected and are no longer a dominant concern. The larger problem here is a failure to listen to the voices of non-whites in their research.163 The same can be said of those who uplift the “legalist paradigm” of nonintervention, like Walzer. and those who argue for a presumption against war, like the USCCB. Both run the risk, according to James Cone, of dictating, from the position of privilege, to the victims of injustice the moral rules of addressing their oppression. Cone’s analysis of the use of violent force is a sharp critique of both those who argue that force must be used to maintain law and order and those who believe it necessary to proffer a presumption against war. The core of the problem with both camps is that their representatives rarely come from oppressed groups. Cone was especially harsh with those, like Ramsey, who emphasized the state’s authority to preserve law and order in the face, especially, of revolutionary violence. He argued, “The problem of violence is not the problem of a few black revolutionaries but the problem of a whole social structure which outwardly appears to be ordered and respectable but inwardly is ‘ridden by psychopathic obsessions and delusions.’ ”164 He argued

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against those, like Ramsey (who emphasized “the priority of the rule of law” over against the “revolutionary” action of African American demonstrators165 ) and the clerical authors of “A Call for Unity” (who chastised the disruptiveness and potential violence of King’s activities in Birmingham in 1963), that “there is a more deadly form of violence [than revolution], and it is camouflaged in such slogans as ‘law and order,’ ‘freedom and democracy,’ and ‘the American way of life.’ ”166 Cone holds white theologians to account for preaching an “ethic of the status quo,” which is dependent on an equation of the gospel of Jesus “with the established power of the state.”167 Cone’s discussion of violence is somewhat reminiscent of H. Richard Niebuhr’s analysis of the Manchurian crisis in the 1930s, based as it was on the question, “Where is God in the crisis?”168 For Cone, the answer is clear: God is on the side of the oppressed. Understanding whether violence is justified or not requires listening to the oppressed. “The only people who can answer the problem [of justified and unjustified use of force] are the victims of injustice.”169 How do we determine the content of the tranquilitas ordinis? By listening to those most immediately affected when the tranquility of order becomes the false peace of disorder. How do we determine whether intervention is justified? By listening to the oppressed who are struggling for liberation. In this sense, it is not merely the questions that must be changed; the whole perspective of just war theory must undergo a conversion of sorts, from the perspective of the hero to the perspective of the struggling victim, from the intervener to the revolutionary.

African Americans on Prevention Some African Americans had hoped that 9/11, with all its tragedy, might be a catalyst for this conversion of perspectives. In a sermon reflecting on the devastation of 9/11, Baptist preacher James Alexander Forbes, Jr., described for his audience at Riverside Church in New York the scene of “people [walking]—black and white and rich and poor and immigrants and longtime inhabitants of the land . . . covered with ash [and] leaving New York City across the Brooklyn Bridge.”170 Stressing the unity of the mass exodus, Forbes noted that “in that context, they were all poor.”171 Forbes expressed regret that the shared sense of “total impoverishment for everybody” was so swiftly lost. He lamented the “rush to war,” which inhibited reflection on our shared vulnerability, not only with other Americans, but also with “citizens around the world [who] have

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grown accustomed to [suffering].”172 Proclaiming that “poverty is a weapon of mass destruction,” Forbes invited his audience to consider exactly what Americans after 9/11 wanted to forget: our mutual vulnerability, our fear, and the uncertainty of existence in a sinful world.173 These experiences are familiar to African Americans and other groups who have faced the tyranny of oppression throughout history: the threat of attack at any time, the constricting fear of going about one’s daily business, and the powerlessness to prevent either. Cornel West agrees with Forbes that 9/11 should have been an opportunity for Americans to gain insight into the experience and perspective of the oppressed, in as much as the experience of vulnerability, fear, and deadly authoritarianism contributed to what he calls the “niggerization of America,” the collective sense of living with the threat of violence and repressive antiterrorist countermeasures.174 As Bush and his “coalition of the willing” invited Americans to imagine a world held ransom by terrorists armed with WMDs or nuclear weapons, they offered an implicit, countervailing vision of a world rid of evil and freed from fear by the might of the military. Forbes and West offered a different vision. Rather than encourage their audiences to hide from the threat of violence behind a strong military presence acting unhampered by the necessity of multilateralism and willing to act to prevent our worst fears from being realized, Forbes and West invite us to enter into this vulnerability, to deal with the fear felt by the oppressed, and to shape our action and thought accordingly. For West, 9/11 plunged the whole country into the blues . . . [W]e as a blues nation must learn from a blues people how to keep alive our deep democratic energies in dark times rather than resort to the tempting and easier response of militarism and authoritarianism.175

Rather than resorting to preventive warfare that aims at “ridding the world of evil,” West encourages his readers to develop a “tragicomic hope” that understands both the impossibility of such a task and yet remains open to the possibilities of authentic and liberating existence within a sinful world. If the rhetoric of pacifism is too idealistic for just war theorists, the rhetoric of just war theorists who advocate preventive war to rid the world (or at least the United States) of vulnerability is equally too idealistic for West. Preventive war, according to him, is much more likely to continue the process of repressive and oppressive

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Hermeneutical Principles of Just Cause (1) Problematizing “Heroes” Perhaps Cone is right. Perhaps many of the difficulties that make humanitarian intervention such a thorny problem arise from theorists and policymakers believing it sufficient or morally praiseworthy to act for the oppressed rather than with the oppressed. Perhaps Elshtain, Weigel, and Bush were correct, too; the United States, given its relatively superior power, bears a responsibility to the rest of the world to protect the innocent from oppression and violence. Certainly, in the face of atrocities and conflicts within nations, it is difficult to defend isolationism. What is lost in many analyses of humanitarian intervention and R2P, however, is the thrust of Cone’s argument: just because we have power does not mean we know how to use it rightly. By framing the argument as humanitarian intervention, by painting powerful nations as the heroes and protectors of the weak and powerless, we lose a sense of the oppressed as capable (and deserving) of self-determination and struggling for liberation. This type of war to protect rights and lives can easily slip into a sort of blind paternalism when great powers act on behalf of the oppressed. This seems to have been at least partially the case with the misadventures of Vietnam. As McNamara suggested in his reflection (cited in Chapter 3), the “tragedy” of Vietnam was that “[we] discounted their nationalism and completely missed the point of the war, as they saw it . . . ”178 These are provocative words from one of the architects of the war. In the context of McNamara’s 2001 book with James G. Blight, they underscore the authors’ principal argument, viz. if we are to avoid similar mistakes in the future, we had better start listening to each other. The same can be said when we reflect on situations like apartheid South Africa, when the United States and other great powers fail to act. Perhaps we could say, given Francis Wilcox’s equivocating on the Sharpeville massacre, US officials were doing just this, striving to listen to everyone in the situation, to find a via media that avoided war

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“niggerization” than it is to achieve its idealistic claims of freedom from fear and protection from every vulnerability. Learning to live within that vulnerability “without innocent sentimentalism or coldhearted cynicism”176 requires listening to “a blues people,” to the marginalized groups who, as Forbes notes “have grown accustomed to,” and yet not resigned to, vulnerability.177

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and satisfied all parties. It is hard to believe, however, that some of the same politicians, like Dulles for example, who helped protect Jim Crow segregation through Article 2 of the UN Charter were really concerned with listening to and supporting blacks in South Africa. Rather, what we find from Eisenhower’s “middle road” to Reagan’s “constructive engagement” is a reluctance to take the complaints of blacks seriously. Indeed, a failure to see the conflict through the eyes of the oppressed of South Africa contributed to a failure to distinguish between types of violence in the region. Bellamy points out, for example, that while the violence of the apartheid government was viewed as regrettable, the sporadic violence of the antiapartheid African National Congress was labeled “terroristic.”179 Perhaps we can say that the failure to support antiapartheid movements was a failure to see the revolution against apartheid as justifiable and necessary. A possible way out of the morass of humanitarian intervention is to stop thinking of it as humanitarian intervention altogether. Humanitarian intervention tends to imply the picture of great powers as “heroes,” as the saviors of suffering humanity. This is a recipe, as McNamara saw with Vietnam, for grave miscalculations. For Cone, it is a recipe for continued oppression, inasmuch as it exemplifies the basic problem that leads to oppression in the first place, namely the failure to see the full, active humanity and freedom of the oppressed. Perhaps we must change our perspective, from that of the powerful nation looking for ways to use (or avoid using) its power to the perspective of the oppressed seeking liberation from the violence of disordered politics. For practical purposes, this may mean spending less time delineating a “responsibility to protect” and more time determining criteria for when the oppressed can act for themselves in the context of revolution. This allows the oppressed to have a voice, to express their subjectivity without becoming the “objects” of others’ actions. Instead of asking, “When is humanitarian intervention justified?” perhaps we need to start asking, “When is revolution justified?” Taking Cone seriously, and taking much of the African American thought seriously, means looking for answers to our questions about war among the oppressed. It means asking not, “What can we do for the oppressed?” but rather “What can we help the oppressed do for themselves?”180 In order to justify any sort of military involvement by outsiders, it is not unreasonable, and in fact, may be the most prudential decision, to wait until an oppressed people has moved beyond protest to actual armed rebellion before intervening on their behalf. Contrary to

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paternalistic criticisms that may assume this to be too much to ask of the oppressed, I believe that this requirement represents an attempt to see the oppressed as active, as willing to struggle for their own liberation. This recontextualizes the military of powerful intervening nations, from the principal leaders of regime change or revolt to participants in a battle led by someone else. Moreover, this does justice by soldiers who are asked to fight in such wars. It is not unreasonable to require that oppressed peoples shoulder some of the risks that soldiers of intervening militaries are asked to face. At the very least, recasting humanitarian intervention as support for, and defense of, popular rebellion may help us avoid some of the errors of “mixed motives” and paternalism from past wars. The recent engagement of the United States and NATO in Libya may be a good example of this recasting and may provide a glimmer of hope for the emerging R2P framework. Neither the United States nor NATO incited the revolution; it grew organically among large swaths of the Libyan population. Rather than enter immediately and secure for itself the right to establish a provisional government, as it did in Iraq, the forces deferred to the native revolutionaries, who demonstrated their willingness to risk their lives for liberation by engaging in violent conflict with Moammar Qaddafi’s army. It was only upon learning of Qaddafi’s terror tactics—attacking civilian areas to demoralize and discourage support for the revolutionaries—that the United States and NATO entered the conflict. By framing the intervention as defense of a popular revolution, rather than as a humanitarian-motivated invasion, the Obama administration faced much less criticism than it might otherwise have.181 As just war theorists attempt to articulate the ways in which American power should be used, they would be good to pay attention to this incident and to the need to reframe the relationship between American power and the struggle of the oppressed. It is insufficient to say that American power can never be used for good; it is equally insufficient and naïve to say that American power can be used for good without a radical reorientation of our perspective. Looking to the oppressed, listening to their understanding of politics and revolution and liberation may offer us insight into when rebellion, and thus intervening support for rebellion, is justified. Obviously, the criteria developed in this regard must themselves come from the oppressed. If the criteria of revolution are articulated solely by those already in power, we will run into the same shortcomings that make unilateral humanitarian intervention problematic in the first place, that is, its overreliance on the paternalistic theorizing and decision-making of the powerful.

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(2) Recognize Law and Order as Problematic Perhaps the reason few just war theorists actively and systematically engage the question of revolution has to do with the a priori validity that established orders enjoy. Luther’s limitation of war to defense should not signal hope to those who believe in a presumption against war, for, as Cone points out, it comes in the context of a rather vile critique of the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany. Luther’s praise of the established order, argues Cone, ignores “the truth of God’s liberating presence in history for those who are oppressed by unjust social structures.”182 The a priori praise for order in Luther and his modernday heirs makes it difficult to articulate within just war theory exactly when an established order becomes a legitimate target for just war. The same could be said of modern Thomists who interpret Aquinas with a bias toward law and order disunited from his robust sense of the common good. For both Catholics and Protestants, this may contribute to the inability of just war theorists to flesh out what is meant by the tranquilitas ordinis. This, too, might be a result of the failure of some just war theorists to engage the voices of people who are familiar with life in profoundly disordered orders. Johnson offers us some help here. Unlike Weigel and Elshtain, who rely principally on Augustinian threads in just war theory, Johnson turns to Aquinas and relates a Thomistic conception of the common good to just war theory. This allows him to critique the assumption of the rightness of order (what Cone calls the “status quo”) by demonstrating the distinction between power being justified by its possession and power being justified by its use. Johnson’s insistence that war be directed to the common good may allow us to articulate a substantive and acceptable conception of order by drawing on articulations of the common good, a more expansive frame than Augustinian order. (3) Living in Tension That is not to say that Augustine offers us little assistance in understanding just cause, in articulating when and how to use limited force to pursue just aims. As noted in Chapter 2, Augustine may have been appreciative of the paternalistic order of the Roman Empire, but he was far from naïve about the reality of sin in every empire, including his own. As Smith notes, Augustine was well aware that human life this side of the eschaton is fraught with danger. It is simply not possible to remove every threat to our safety and security. Smith observes that understanding Augustine’s perspective on war requires standing within “the palpable tension created in City of God between a sense of duty to oppose the chaotic forces of injustice with the sole aim of promoting a just peace and a sense of humility that recognizes that no

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W h at I s t h e G o a l ? R e t h i n k i n g J u s t C au s e

T h e C h a l l e n g e t o J u s t Wa r T h e o r y

peace brokered by human efforts . . . can grant permanent security and true justice.”183 It was in this spirit of Augustinianism that Elshtain critiqued George H. W. Bush’s portrayal of the just cause for the Persian Gulf War as a “noble cause,” as a conflict between “good and evil.” Just war principles, she argued, “should never soothe, should always vex and trouble.”184 The grandiose claims made by the first Bush, and echoed by his son a decade later, are inconsistent with the Christian tradition of just war, which assumes that justifiable causes are limited by the possible aims that humans can pursue apart from God. Despite a desire to engage in preventive war aimed at combating evil everywhere, at every time—and thus reducing our vulnerability to nil—Christian just-war thinking requires the pursuit of limited aims, the removal of specific threats, not vague fears and insecurities. This is not acquiescence to the danger posed by terrorism. This is not a way of throwing up our hands and doing nothing in the face of danger, as some might claim. Rather, it is a call to live within Augustinian tension, to face the reality of shared vulnerability (Forbes) and the blues (West). There are possibilities within this sort of existence that are absent from the possibilities present when we prescribe preventive war to counter every vague threat in the name of a “noble cause.” On this point, the tradition is clear: “ridding the world of evil” may be “noble,” but it is neither realizable nor justifiable as Christian just-war theorists have understood it. Perhaps this is the “vexing” and “troubling” part of just war theory, the recognition that war may sometimes be necessary but it won’t solve the problem of sin in an ultimate way. Grotius, Vattel, Vitoria, and Suarez understood that the risk we face when we try to prevent every bad thing from happening, when our justification for war is shaped more by our collective imagination than our shared reason, is the risk of endless violence. Perhaps by listening to the voices of the oppressed, to the transformative potential of reflection on shared vulnerability and the realistic resistance made possible by a tragicomic hope, we can develop a richer understanding of when war is justified and when other alternatives are necessary.

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Introduction 1. Robert W. Brimlow, What about Hitler? Wrestling with Jesus’s Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2006), 11. 2. Paul Ramsey, The Just war: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), 142–143.

Chapter 1 1. See J. Bryan Hehir, “The Just War Ethic and Catholic Theology: Dynamics of Change and Continuity,” in Thomas A. Shannon, ed., War or Peace? The Search for New Answers (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980), 17; and Richard B. Miller, ed., War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), xvi. 2. James F. Childress, “Just-War Criteria,” in Richard B. Miller, ed., War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 355. 3. Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1968), 5. 4. See Ralph Potter, War and Moral Discourse (Richmond: John Knox, 1969). 5. See James F. Childress, Civil Disobedience and Political Obligation: A Study in Christian Social Ethics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971). 6. Ralph Potter, “The Moral Logic of War,” in Richard B. Miller, ed., War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 201. 7. Childress, 352. This chapter in Miller’s 1992 book is a slight re-working of Childress’ earlier article in Theological Studies— “Just-War Theories: The Bases, Interrelations, Priorities, and Functions of Their Criteria,” Theological Studies 39,3 (September 1978): 427–445. 8. Ibid., 351. 9. Ibid., 370. 10. Childress, 369.

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N ot e s 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

Potter, 200, 202. Childress, 353. Childress, quoting A. C. Ewing, 354. Potter, 204. Hehir, War or Peace, 18–19. See especially, J. Bryan Hehir, “Just War Theory in a Post-Cold War World,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 20,2 (Fall 1992): 237–257. Hehir, War or Peace, 24. Ibid., 45. Cf. Ibid., 55. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, May 3, 1983), §120. Ibid., §A.1. Ibid., §70. Ibid., §83. Ibid., §60. Ibid., §86. Ibid., §97. Ibid., §219. United Methodist Council of Bishops, In Defense of Creation: The Nuclear Crisis and a Just Peace (1986), 74, in Miller, ed. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, For Peace in God’s World (1995), 11, http://www.elca.org/What-We-Believe/Social-Issues/ Social-Statements/Peace.aspx. Ibid., 11–12. General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, Resolution 2003-A033. Full-text available at http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution. pl?resolution= 2003-A033. James M. Childs, Jr., The Way of Peace: Christian Life in Face of Discord (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 132. Andrew Fiala, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 32 and 35. Ibid., 6. Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), 189. For Brimlow’s important, but less than impressive treatment, see Robert Brimlow, What about Hitler? Wrestling with Jesus’ Call to Nonviolence in an Evil World (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2006), 56. Holmes, 14. cf. J. Daryl Charles, “Presumption against War or Presumption against Injustice? The Just War Tradition Reconsidered,” Journal of Church and State 47,2 (Spring 2005): 335–369; and Helmut David Baer and Joseph E. Capizzi, “Just War Theories Reconsidered:

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38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

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Problems with Prima Facie Duties and the Need for a Political Ethic,” Journal of Religious Ethics 33,1 (March 2005): 119–137. James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), x. James Turner Johnson and George Weigel, Just War and the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1991), 12. James Turner Johnson, “Just War, as It Was and Is,” First Things 149 (January 2005): 19. Johnson and Weigel, 12. Johnson, “Just War, as It Was and Is,” 20. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 19. George Weigel, “Moral Clarity in a Time of War,” First Things 129 (January 2003): 22. Rowan Williams and George Weigel, “War & Statecraft: An Exchange,” First Things 141 (March 2004): 19. George Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (New York: Oxford Press, 1987), 31. Ibid., 358. Paul J. Griffiths and George Weigel, “Just War: An Exchange,” First Things 122 (April 2002): 34. Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 347 and 252–253. Ibid., 73, 370, and 379. Williams and Weigel, 18. George Weigel, Against the Grain: Christianity and Democracy, War and Peace (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroads, 2008), 208. Weigel, Tranquilits Ordinis, 386. Ibid., 211, 391. Ibid., 145. Weigel, “Moral Clarity,” 27. cf. George Weigel, “The Development of Just War Thinking in the Post-Cold War World: An American Perspective,” in Charles Reed and David Ryall, eds., The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29. Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 9. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 25 and 132. Jean Bethke Elshtain ed., Just War Theory (Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 1992), 265, 325. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Just War and American Politics,” The Christian Century 109,2 (January 15, 1992): 42. Ibid.

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N ot e s 65. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World, 2nd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 56. 66. Ibid., 50. 67. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Terrorism,” in Reed and Ryall, eds., 118; Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 152. 68. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 48. 69. Cf. Ibid., 108. 70. Cian O’Driscoll, Renegotiation of the Just War Tradition and the Right to War in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 100. 71. Ibid., 101. 72. Roland Bainton, Christian Attitudes toward War and Peace: A Historical Survey and Critical Re-evaluation (New York: Abingdon, 1960). 73. Leroy B. Walters, Jr., “Five Classic Just War Theories: A Study in the Thought of Thomas Aquinas, Vitoria, Suarez, Gentili, and Grotius” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1971). 74. James F. Childress, “The Just-War Tradition and the Invasion of Iraq,” (paper presented at the Conference of Ethical Issues Raised by Pre-Emptive War, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2003). 75. O’Driscoll, 109. 76. Ibid., 105 and 108. 77. See Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 155 and Weigel, Against the Grain. 78. Institute for American Values, “What We’re Fighting for: A Letter from America,” Institute for American Values, accessed October 1, 2010, http://www.americanvalues.org/html/wwff.html. This letter was reprinted as an appendix in Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 214. 79. Deepak Lal, “Will Terrorism Defeat Globalization?” in Richard N. Rosencrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., No More States? Globalization, National Self-determination, and Terrorism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 43. 80. Thomas L. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, rev. ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 2000), 13. 81. Quoted in Simon Lee, “Building Institutions for Freedom: The Economic Dimension of the ‘War on Terror,’ ” in Maurice Mullard and Bankole A. Cole, eds., Globalization, Citizenship, and the War on Terror (Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2007), 186. 82. Simeon O. Ilesanmi has attempted this in his recent work on jus ad bellum from an African perspective. See Simeon O. Ilesanmi, “The Promise and Limits of Jus ad bellum in Non-International Armed Conflicts: A Comparative Study from an African Perspective” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Christian Ethics, Chicago, Illinois, January 3–6, 2013).

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83. Childress, “The Just War Tradition.” 84. See Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Reflections on War and Political Discourse: Realism, Just War, and Feminism in a Nuclear Age,” in Elshtain, ed., 260–279. 85. W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1903). 86. Friedman, 9 and xvi. 87. Quoted in Colin Tyler, “History’s Actors: Insights in the ‘War on Terror’ from International Relations Theory,” in Maurice Mullard and Bankole A. Cole, eds., Globalization, Citizenship, and the War on Terror (Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2007), 39. 88. Friedman, 13. 89. See ibid., 39. 90. Ibid., 8 and 227. 91. Ibid., 240. 92. See also ibid., 261. 93. See Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Random House, 1993), 130. 94. Richard N. Rosencrance, Etel Solingen, and Arthur A. Stein, “Globalization and Its Effects: Introduction and Overview,” in Richard N. Rosencrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., No More States? Globalization, National Self-determination, and Terrorism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 10. 95. In following an emerging language that challenges previous designations, I will use “1/3 World” to describe what was previously known as the “First World” and “2/3 World” to designate what used to be called the “Third World.” 96. See Su-ming Khoo, “Globalisation, Terror and the Future of ‘Development’: Citizenship beyond Bare Life?,” in Maurice Mullard and Bankole A. Cole, eds., Globalization, Citizenship, and the War on Terror (Northhampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2007), 189–211. 97. Rosencrance et al., 10. 98. Friedman, 12. 99. Ibid., 34. 100. Ibid., 42. 101. Kennedy, 133. 102. Rosencrance et al., 6. 103. Ibid., 18. 104. Tyler, 44. 105. Max W. Stackhouse, “The Common Good, Our Common Goods, and the Uncommon Good in a Globalizing Era,” in Patrick D. Miller and Dennis P. McCann, eds., In Search of the Common Good (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 281. 106. James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 8.

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107. Ibid., 3. 108. See Ibid., 64–65. 109. Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004), 30. 110. See O’Donovan, 23. 111. West, 31. 112. Hartley S. Spatt, “Faith, Force, or Fellowship: The Future of Right Authority,” in Michael W. Brough, John W. Lango, and Harry van der Linden, eds., Rethinking the Just War Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007), 208–209. 113. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 49. 114. See Ibid., 165, and Weigel, “The Development of Just War Thinking,” 29. 115. See Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 26–40 and Weigel, “The Development of Just War Thinking,” 32. 116. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 173 and 177. 117. West, 77 and 45. 118. See David Fisher, “Humanitarian Intervention,” in Reed and Ryall, 12. 119. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 45 and 154. 120. See Chapter 4 of West. 121. West, 137. See also, Samantha Powers, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Collins, 2002). 122. James Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1975), 14. 123. Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures (London: Zed Books, 1998). 124. Tyler, 45. 125. Ibid., 49.

Chapter 2 1. Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather than the State (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2009), 101. 2. Eric Patterson, Just War Thinking: Morality and Pragmatism in the Struggle against Contemporary Threats (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 23. 3. Davis Brown, The Sword, the Cross, and the Eagle: The American Christian Just War Tradition (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). While Brown insists that the terms disclose “significant differences,” I am unconvinced, especially since the documents to which he refers (denominational statements from Christian churches) typically offer little substantive explanation for the choice of terminology.

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4. cf. Robert McAfee Brown, Religion and Violence, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 19; Bell, 187; and Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 215. 5. Arthur F. Holmes, ed. War and Christian Ethics: Classic and Contemporary Readings 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 40–41. 6. Ibid., 41. 7. Ibid., 49. 8. Thomas H. Tobin, SJ, Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 397. 9. Wilfrid Parsons, SJ, “The Influence of Romans XIII on Christian Political Thought, II: Augustine to Hincmar,” Theological Studies 2,3 (Summer 1941): 325. 10. Tobin, 398. 11. Ibid., 398. 12. Parsons, 326. 13. Augustine of Hippo, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, 3rd ed., trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003), bk V.21. 14. Parsons, 330. 15. John Langan, SJ, “The Elements of St. Augustine’s Just War Theory,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 12,1 (Spring 1984): 24. 16. cf. Augustine, City of God, V.21, especially Augustine’s reference to Domitian, “the most ruthless tyrant.” 17. For a good discussion of the importance of God’s freedom in Augustine’s thought, see Philip J. Rossi, SJ, “Models of God and Just War Theory,” in Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher, eds., Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities (London: Springer Verlag, 2013). 18. Augustine, City of God, V.21. 19. Augustine of Hippo, “Reply to Faustus the Manichaean,” bk. XXII, 76, cited in Albert Marrin ed., War and the Christian Conscience: From Augustine to Martin Luther King, Jr. (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1971), 61. 20. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 91, a.1. Hereafter, ST. 21. Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, in Paul E. Sigmund, trans. and ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: WW Norton, 1988), 14. 22. Ibid., 15. 23. ST I-II, q.92, a.1 and q.93, a.3. 24. Aquinas, On Kingship, 24. 25. ST I-II, q.42, a.2. 26. See Paul E. Sigmund, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: WW Norton, 1988), 24fn.2, and 65fn.8. 27. Aquinas, On Kingship, 24. 28. Sigmund, 108.

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N ot e s 29. Katherine Archibald, “The Concept of Social Hierarchy in the Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Paul E. Sigmund, ed., St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics (New York: WW Norton, 1988), 142. 30. ST, I-I, q.108, a.2. 31. Archibald, 140. 32. Francisco de Vitoria, Political Writings, trans. and eds. Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Laurance (Avon, UK: Bath Press, 1991), 14. 33. Ibid., xx. 34. Ibid., xvii. 35. Ibid., 18. 36. Ibid., 11. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 7. 39. ST, I-II, q.105, a.1. 40. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk. III, Chapter 81; Archibald, 139. 41. Sigmund, 148. 42. Ibid., 149. 43. Ibid. 44. Francisco Suarez, “On War,” in Arthur F. Holmes, ed. War and Christian Ethics: Classic and Contemporary Readings 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 203. 45. Ibid., 224. 46. Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 239. 47. Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, Encyclical Letter on Establishing Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity, and Liberty (April 11, 1963), §46. 48. Ibid., §26 and §52. 49. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 164–165. 50. John D. Carlson and Erik C. Owens, eds. The Sacred and the Sovereign: Religion and International Politics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 2003), 13. 51. Paul J. Griffiths and George Weigel, “Who Wants War? An Exchange,” First Things 152 (April 2005): 12. 52. Ibid., 12. Both David DeCosse and Jean Elshtain have taken exception to Weigel’s claims. See David DeCosse, “Authority, Lies, and War: Democracy and the Development of Just War Theory,” Theological Studies 67 (2006): 388; and Elshtain, Just War Theory, 327. 53. J. Daryl Charles, “Presumption against War or Presumption against Injustice?: The Just War Tradition Reconsidered,” Journal of Church and State 47,2 (Spring 2005): 368. 54. Stephen Strehle, “Saddam Hussein, Islam, and Just War Theory: The Case for a Pre-emptive Strike,” Political Theology 5,1 (January 2004): 100.

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55. For a helpful distinction between these two “levels” of criteria, see James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 41–42. See also Harry van der Linden, “Just War Theory and US Military Hegemony,” in Michael Brough, John Lango, and Harry van der Linden, eds., Rethinking the Just War Tradition (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2007), 57. 56. Bell, 108. 57. Oliver O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited (New York: Cambridge, 2003), 23. 58. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 173. 59. Ibid., 177. 60. Richard Cheney, “Remarks Before the Council on Foreign Relations,” New York Times, February 16, 2002, available online at www. mtholyoke.edu/acad/interl/bush/cheneyiraq.htm. Accessed June 2010. 61. George Weigel, “The Development of Just War Thinking in the Post-Cold War World: An American Perspective,” in Charles Reed and David Ryall, eds., The Price of Peace: Just War in the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Cambridge University, 2007), 29. See also, in the same edited volume, David Fisher, “Humanitarian Intervention,” ibid., 101–117. 62. van der Linden, 68. 63. Hartley S. Spatt, “Faith, Force, or Fellowship: The Future of Right Authority,” in Brough et al., 208–209. 64. James Turner Johnson, “Aquinas and Luther on War and Peace: Sovereign Authority and the Use of Armed Force,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31,1 (Spring 2003): 17–18fn.1. See also Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Caesar, Sovereignty, and Bonhoeffer, in Michael Cromartie, ed., Caesar’s Coin Revisited: Christians and the Limits of Government (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 50. 65. Quoted in Spatt, 210. 66. See, for example, David Ryan, Frustrated Empire: US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007), 123; Chris J. Dolan, In War We Trust: The Bush Doctrine and the Pursuit of Just War (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 93–99; Mohammed Taghi Karoubi, Just or Unjust War: International Law and Unilateral Use of Armed Force by States at the Turn of the 20th Century (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005); and Dale T. Snauewaert, “The Bush Doctrine and Just War Theory,” The Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution 6,1 (Fall 2004): 121–135, accessed January 1, 2010, www. trinstitute.org/ojpcr/6_1snau.pdf. Albert L. Weeks takes a slightly different tack in The Choice of War: The Iraq War and the Just War Tradition (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010). He argues that the War in Iraq was unjust because it violated the 1973 War Powers Act.

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N ot e s

67.

68.

69.

70.

71. 72. 73.

74. 75.

76.

77.

While this is an appeal to American, rather than international, law, it is nonetheless still an attempt to interrogate the war through the lens of law, rather than the lens of morality. See, especially, Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000) and James Turner Johnson, “Thinking Morally about War in the Middle Ages and Today,” in Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg, eds., Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2007),4–5. Herbert Deane has noted that, for Augustine, “even death is to be accepted without any effort to resist or subvert the political authority,” quoted in Langan, 31. Augustine, City of God, IV.4; cited in John Mark Mattox, Saint Augustine and the Theory of Just War (London: Continuum, 2006), 25. We should note, however, that Augustine believed God’s foreknowledge of humanity’s sin in the Garden of Eden necessitated that the formal elements of political authority were already in place from the moment humans populated the Earth. Augustine, City of God, XIX. Marrin, 53. See also Henrik Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virtues and Duties,” in Syse and Reichberg, eds. 40. This is a thread which permeates much of Ramsey’s work. The simplest statement on this can be found in Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1950), esp. 153–191. For Johnson’s comments on this same cause, see his Can Modern War Be Just? (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 3. Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1989), 119–120. I do not mean to imply that Ramsey and Johnson are themselves guilty of this error. Both seem conscious that this case is not mentioned as a just cause by Augustine. Their audiences, however, have not been quite as careful. See, for example, J. Daryl Charles, Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and Christian Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,2005), 41. See Albert Marrin, War and the Christian Conscience: From Augustine to Martin Luther King, Jr. (Chicago: Regnery, 1971), 62. I omit here the true “first cause” of war for Augustine, i.e. the direct command of God, because it does not concern his discussion of the purpose of authority, and even for Augustine himself, it was a rare enough possibility that it warranted little attention. See Holmes, On War and Morality, 120ff. Aquinas, On Kingship, 28–29.

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78. Ibid., 29. 79. While a perennial concern for Johnson, communicating this link to his audience has become more urgent since the turn of the twentyfirst century and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. See James Turner Johnson, “Thinking Morally about War in the Middle Ages and Today,” in Syse and Reichberg, 3–10; and Johnson, “Aquinas and Luther.” 80. James Turner Johnson, “Maintaining the Protection of Noncombatants,” in Syse and Reichberg, 151–189. 81. Johnson, “Thinking Morally about War,” 5. 82. Ibid., 5–6. 83. ST II-II, q. 42, a.2, ad.3. 84. Francisco de Vitoria, “On Civil Power,” 1.2, in Vitoria, Political Writings, 7. 85. Vitoria, “The Rights of the Indians,” in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 125. 86. Suarez, “On War,” in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 203. 87. See Elshtain, Just War Theory, 267. 88. Weigel, Tranqulitas Ordinis, 31. 89. Ibid., 252–253. 90. Ibid., 347. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid., 370. 93. This is certainly the case with his opposition to Latin American revolutions of the mid- to late twentieth century. See Ibid., 472; 310. 94. Langan, 30. 95. Mattox, 57. 96. Ibid., 59. 97. Archibald, 139. 98. Joan D. Tooke, The Just War in Aquinas and Grotius (London: SPCK, 1965), 173. 99. Ibid., 173. 100. Pagden and Laurance attribute this conservatism to Vitoria’s criticism of the Reformation, which had inspired resistance to both secular and ecclesial authority. See Anthony Pagden and Jeremy Laurance, introduction to Political Writings, by Francisco Vitoria (Avon, UK: Bath Press, 1991), xvii. 101. Vitoria, “On the Law of War,” in Vitoria, Political Writings, 2.1, 306. 102. Ibid., 2.2.2, 308. 103. Vitoria, “Letter to Pedro Fernández de Velasco,” November 19, 1536, in Vitoria, Political Writings, 338. 104. Vitoria, “Letter to fray Bernadino de Vique, OP,” March 18, 1546(?), in Vitoria, Political Writings, 335. 105. Suarez, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 203.

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106. On this, see Sigmund, 65fn.8; and Gregory M. Reichberg, “Is There a ‘Presumption against War’ in Aquinas’s Ethics?” in Syse and Reichberg, 87–88. 107. See Suarez, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 203, 206–207, and 224. 108. Weigel has noted this shift, though his later work tends to favor the earlier injunctions against disobedience. As the tradition was amended by Aquinas, Vitoria, and Suarez, Weigel notes that the “burden of proof” placed on rulers when making decisions about war became “considerable” in the hands of the Salamanca theologians. See Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 35–40. 109. Following Cajetan and Suarez, I do not believe that this represents a difficulty for self-defense, properly understood. Self-defense is a natural right and requires much less attention to moral character than aggressive war. However, character is not wholly irrelevant; a tyrant may not have a right to defend his tyranny with armed force. However, this would not be due to his character per se but, more likely, to his failure to fulfill the purposes of his office, e.g. securing citizens’ rights, protecting his subjects, or pursuing the public good. 110. Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 234. 111. Ibid., 386 and 389. 112. Ibid., 391. 113. Johnson and Weigel, 64. 114. Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 234. 115. Ibid., 310. 116. Johnson and Weigel, 70. 117. Weigel, “Moral Clarity,” 26. 118. Stanley Hauerwas and Paul J. Griffiths, “War, Peace & Jean Bethke Elshtain: An Exchange,” First Things 136 (October 2003): 42. 119. cf. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 85. 120. Ibid., 26–40. 121. Ibid., 28. She is here referring to slavery. Of course, it took nearly 200 years for that impending “doom” to work itself out. 122. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Just War and American Politics,” The Christian Century 109,2 (January 15, 1992): 42. 123. Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Terrorism,” in Reed and Ryall, 120. 124. Fisher, “Humanitarian Intervention,” in Reed and Ryall, 110–111. 125. O’Donovan, 25–27. 126. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 288. 127. Ibid., 288. 128. Bell, 109. 129. Vitoria, “On the Law of War,” in Vitoria, Political Writings, 2.1.2, 307. 130. Ibid., 2.2.2, 308. 131. Bell, 110.

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132. Kimberly Hudson is a notable exception. See Kimberly Hudson, Justice, Intervention, and Force in International Relations: Reassessing Just War Theory in the 21st Century (New York: Routledge, 2009).

1. See her numerous works on feminism and war, including “Reflections on War and Political Discourse: Realism, Just War, and Feminism in a Nuclear Age,” in Richard B. Miller, ed. War in the Twentieth Century: Sources in Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1992), 395–416; her book Women and War (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987); and her essay “Is There a Feminist Tradition on War and Peace?” in Terry Nardin, ed. The Ethics of War and Peace (Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), 214–227. 2. LeRoy Brandt Walters, Jr’s dissertation argues a similar point. Walters contends that the social location of various just war theorists significantly impacted their understanding of a “just war.” See Walters, “Five Classic Just-War Theories.” 3. Johnson makes precisely this point in his Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 1999). 4. This is a quite common view, though O’Donovan’s discussion is perhaps the clearest in recent years. See O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited. 5. The emergence of the “Responsibility to Protect” framework in the early-twenty-first century has solidified the locus of authority, but its lasting influence remains to be seen. On the problem of revolution and the objectification of marginalized peoples by just war theory, see Robert McAfee Brown, Religion and Violence, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987), 58–61. 6. The problem of terrorism today is not the problem of political assassination. Terrorism, especially of the fundamentalist sort common in the last decade, is less likely to be directed at high-ranking government officials and much more likely to be directed at transit stations, houses of worship, businesses, and civic centers, namely those places inhabited by the working-class citizens of a community. This is not to say assassinations do not occur; however, they are not the principal threat of terrorism today. 7. See Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro’s God as Reflected in His Literature (New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), esp. 76–77. 8. Ibid., 33. 9. Ronald C. Potter, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in Process and Black Theologies,” Journal of the Interdenominational Theological Center 12(1–2), Fall–Spring 1984–1985: 57. 10. Reprinted in Mays, 238. 11. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 29.

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12. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon, 1976), 13. 13. See, especially, his Deep River: Reflections on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (New York: Harper, 1955), 59–60. 14. Ibid., 60. 15. Potter, 51. See also Robert A. Bennett, “Black Experience and the Bible,” Theology Today 27,4 (January 1971): 422–433. 16. Mays, 46, quoting Henry Highland Garnet; and Peter Paris, The Spirituality of African Peoples: The Search for a Common Moral Discourse (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), 40. 17. Michael G. Long, Against Us But for Us: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the State (Atlanta: Mercer University, 2002), 20. 18. James Kenneth Echols, “The Two Kingdoms: A Black American Lutheran Perspective,” in Albert Pero and Ambrose Moyo, eds. Theology and Black Experience: The Lutheran Heritage Interpreted by African and African-American Theologians (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1988), 131. 19. Ibid., 119. 20. Cone, 184. 21. Ibid., 186. 22. For a particularly compelling analysis of the relationship between obedience, legitimacy, and faith, see James H. Cone, “Christian Faith and Political Praxis,” Encounter 43,2 (Spring 1982): 129–141. 23. See Michael Dwayne Blackwell, “The Problem of Sacrifice in AfricanAmerican Religious Thought on Issues of War and Peace in the Twentieth Century,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 23,1 (Spring 1996): 45. 24. Long, 20. 25. Karin L. Stanford, ed. If We Must Die: African American Voices on War and Peace (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 1. 26. George P. Marks, III. The Black Press Views American Imperialism (1898–1900) (New York: Arno Press, 1971), x. 27. Willard B. Gatewood, Jr. Black Americans and the White Man’s Burden 1898–1903 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1975), 115. 28. Marks, 51. 29. “Negroes and Cuba,” Richmond Planet, March 12, 1898, in Marks, 14. 30. Untitled editorial, April 30, 1898, in Marks, 332. 31. “Letter to the Editor,” Kansas State Ledger, June 4, 1898, in Marks, 65–66. 32. Untitled editorial, Freeman, March 19, 1898, in Marks, 15. 33. Untitled editorial, Kansas City American Citizen, February 24, 1898, in Marks, 10–11. 34. Untitled editorial, Washington Bee, February 4, 1899, in Marks, 112.

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35. Untitled editorial, Washington Bee, August 11, 1900, in Marks, 177–178. 36. Herbert Aptheker, “U.S. Imperialism and Racism: A History” (keynote address at Symposium on Racism, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, April 1973). In Herbert Aptheker, Racism, Imperialism, and Peace: Selected Essays by Herbert Aptheker, ed. Marvin J. Berlowitz and Carol E. Morgan (Minneapolis: MEP Publications, 1987), 134. 37. Quoted in Stanford, 84–85. 38. Quoted in Aptheker, 1973, 139. 39. Untitled editorial, Richmond Planet, August 27, 1898, in Marks, 87. 40. Untitled editorial, Afro-American Sentinel, July 9, 1898, in Marks, 70. 41. See Albert J. Breveridge, “In Support of an American Empire” (speech before Congress, 1900). Available at http://www.mtholyoke. edu/acad/intrel/ajb72.htm. Accessed April 20, 2011. 42. cf. Rev. H. C. C. Astwood, Supervisor of Missions (AME), “Letter to the Editor,” in Gazette (Cleveland), October 8, 1898, in Marks, 89. 43. Gatewood, 175–176. 44. Ibid., 182. 45. Jean L. A. Linard, American Expeditionary Forces, “A French Directive,” The Crisis 18, May 1919: 16–18. Available at “A French Directive,” The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance & Abolition, accessed April 1, 2011, http://www.yale. edu/glc/archive/1135.htm. 46. This was a widespread concern, especially among the black press from 1898–1900. See Marks, 56, 77, 87–89, 98, and 162. 47. Stanford, 85. 48. Untitled editorial, July 16, 1898, in Marks, 71. 49. Aptheker, 136. 50. Cited in untitled editorial, Afro-American Sentinel, June 25, 1898, in Marks, 68–69. 51. “Fighting in the Philippines,” The Literary Digest 18(14), April 8, 1899: 387. 52. Breveridge, 1900. 53. Quoted in Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of IndianHating and Empire-Building (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1980); 298. 54. Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People, ed. William L. Patterson. (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951), 7. 55. Ibid. 56. Huey P. Newton, “Letter to the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,” Aug 29, 1970, in Stanford, 250–252.

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57. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Time to Break the Silence” (speech delivered at Riverside Church, New York, NY, April 4, 1967) in Stanford, 237. 58. Quoted in Long, 207. 59. Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, Wilson’s Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), 68–70. 60. King, 241. 61. Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 28. 62. Ibid., 72–73. 63. Ibid., 304. 64. Quoted in Marable, 305. 65. Ryan, 41. 66. See Juan Cole, “Islamophobia and American Foreign Policy Rhetoric: The Bush Years and After,” in Islamophobia: The Challenge of Pluralism in the 21st Century, ed. John L. Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin (New York: Oxford, 2011), 128–130. 67. Elshtain in Reed, 120. 68. Vitoria, “On Law of War,” 307. 69. Ibid., 308. 70. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008), 5. 71. Ibid., 37. 72. Ibid., 136. 73. Ibid., 137. 74. cf. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 99–111. 75. Niebuhr, 137. 76. West, 208. 77. Ibid., 213–214. 78. Ibid., 216. 79. Marable, 96. 80. Ibid., 90–91. 81. Ibid., 96. 82. Ibid., 222. 83. Ibid., 284–285. 84. Maulana Karenga, “Statement on Peace, Justice and Resistance to War,” in Stanford ed., 336. 85. Ibid., 335.

Chapter 4 1. Quoted in Irving Bernstein, Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University, 1996), 526. 2. Quoted in Ibid.

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3. I use the term “war-readiness” in reference to expenditures made during peacetime that contribute to the ability to respond to threats with military force. This includes the nondiscretionary funding of the Department of Defense, that is paid out regardless of the presence of particular threats as well as discretionary spending that is set aside for intelligence, personnel, and foreign aid in order to prevent potential conflicts or threats from emerging. Other authors may use the term “peacetime” spending, but this term ignores the fact that we are never totally at peace; the military and defense apparatus still serve a purpose even if no “war” is actually occurring. 4. Henrik Syse, “Augustine and Just War: Between Virtue and Duties,” in Syse and Reichberg, 42. 5. See Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, including the Law of Nature and of Nations, trans. Archibald Colin Campbell (London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 281. Exactly why this shift has occurred is difficult to determine. It may be due to a general modern tendency in the ethics of war and peace to critique consequentialism in favor of a more deontological approach, such as evidenced in some pacifist and pseudo-pacifist literature. 6. The realist tradition from Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr to their modern heirs like Elshtain has been rooted in this substantive understanding of sin as pervasive and inescapable yet, nevertheless, not paralyzing in its effect on human moral action. 7. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 192. 8. See J. Daryl Charles and Timothy J. Demy, War, Peace, and Christianity: Questions and Answers from a Just-War Perspective (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 174. 9. James Turner Johnson, Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1981), 205; and A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War (New York: Manchester University, 1997), 172. 10. John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (Lanham, MD: Sheed & Ward, 1960), 237. 11. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 120. 12. See Syse and Reichberg, 39. 13. Cicero, De Officiis, in Holmes, 2005, 28. 14. Johnson, Just War Tradition, 225. 15. Ibid., 220. 16. Francisco de Vitoria, De Indiis et de Iure Belli, Relectiones, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 118. 17. Francisco Suarez, “On War,” in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 202. 18. Ibid., 210. 19. Desiderius Erasmus, “War and the Christian Prince,” in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 178. 20. Ibid., 181.

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N ot e s 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

40.

41. 42.

Grotius, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 235–236. Grotius, 282. Johnson, Just War Tradition, 204. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. J. J. Graham (London: Wordsworth, 1997), 22. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 28. Interestingly, this seems to reverse the arguments examined in Chapter1, where it seemed as if those who viewed just war theory as political thought were more likely to allow war than those who viewed just war theory as casuistry, viz. as beginning with a presumption against war. National Council of Catholic Bishops, §161. Ibid., §270. Thomas Hurka, “Proportionality in the Morality of War,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 33,1 (2005): 38. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 46. See Johnson, Just War Tradition, 220. Kateri Carmola, “The Concept of Proportionality: Old Questions and New Ambiguities,” in Just War Theory: A Reappraisal, ed. Mark Evans (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 95–96. Coates, 177. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006), 81–83. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace” (speech delivered to American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953). Excerpt available at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/11/ hbc-90001660. accessed June 21, 2011. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address to the Nation” (speech delivered from White House, Washington, DC, January 17, 1961). Available at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ike.htm. accessed June 21, 2011. Frida Berrigan, “Defense Budget Shell Game,” In These Times 33,6, (June 2009): 20–21; and “A Theft from Those Who Hunger,” Sojourners 37,6 (June 7, 2008): 7. Frida Berrigan, “America’s Global Weapons Monopoly: Don’t Call It ‘the Global Arms Trade,’ ” Huffington Post, February 16, 2010, accessed June 1, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ frida-berrigan/americas-global-weapons-m_b_464543.html. Jeff Atkinson, “How the Arms Trade Affects the Third World,” Social Alternatives 10,4 (December 1991): 13. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict (New York: WW Norton, 2008), xiii.

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43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

56. 57.

58. 59. 60.

61.

62. 63. 64. 65.

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Ibid., 7. Ibid., xv. Ibid., 121. Stephen Moore, “Misplaced Budget Priorities Contribute to Our Vulnerability,” Human Events 57,37 (October 8, 2001): 4. Ibid. Jeff Huber, “Sticker Shock and Awe,” American Conservative 8,7 (April 6, 2009): 25. Mike Franc, “National Security Requires Healthy Defense Budget,” Human Events 63,6 (February 12, 2007): 7. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” (sermon delivered at Riverside Church, New York City, New York, April 30, 1967). Available at http://www.lib.berkeley. edu/MRC/pacificaviet/riversidetranscript.html. accessed August 15, 2009. Ibid. Adam Fairclough, “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War in Vietnam,” Phylon 45, 1 (1984): 27. Quoted in Ibid., 27–28. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution” (sermon at National Cathedral, Washington, DC, March 31, 1968). Reprinted in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. ed. James M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 275. Fairclough, 27 and Peter B. Levy, “Blacks and the Vietnam War,” in The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination, ed. D. Michael Shafer (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 209–232. Quoted in Fairclough, 27–28. Martin Luther King, Jr. “The Trumpet of Conscience,” in Washington ed., 641. See also Dwight N. Hopkins, “The Last Testament of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Theology Today 65, 1 (April 2008): 71. See Long, 209. Stanford, 268. Ibid., and “Guns vs. Butter: Many Blacks Oppose Role in War, Citing Domestic Needs,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 1991, A1 (hereafter WSJ ). Rep. Ronald Vernie Dellums, “Shedding the Mentality of War: Brinkmanship Got Us into This, but We Could Still Step Back from the Edge of Ground Fighting,” in Stanford, 284. Ibid., 285. Andrea Young and A Knighton Stanley, “Race and War in the Persian Gulf,” in Stanford, 283. WSJ, A1. Ibid.

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N ot e s 66. See James L. Clayton, On the Brink: Defense, Deficits, and Welfare Spending (New York: Ramapo Press, 1984), esp. 4–5. Means-tested entitlements are those benefits that are based on the income or wealth (the “means”) of recipients. Non-means-tested entitlements would include benefits such as Social Security or Medicare. 67. Stanford, 262. 68. Jesse Jackson, “Paying for Our Dreams: A Budget Plan for Jobs, Peace, and Justice” (presidential campaign position paper), in Keep Hope Alive: Jesse Jackson’s 1988 Presidential Campaign, ed. Frank Clemente and Frank Watkins (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 88 and 191. 69. Jesse Jackson, “The Message, the Mission, and the Messenger: An Economic Program to Make America Better and to Keep America Strong” (speech delivered to Cleveland City Club, Cleveland, Ohio, May 2, 1988) in Clemente and Watkins, 61. 70. Thomas L. Friedman, “More Poetry, Please,” New York Times, October 31, 2009, accessed December 1, 2011, http://www. nytimes.com/2009/11/01/opinion/01friedman.html. 71. Jackson, “Paying for Our Dreams,” 73. 72. Clayton, 63–64. 73. See also Jim Whyo Mok and Robert D. Duval, “Guns, Butter, and Debt: Balancing Spending Tradeoffs between Defense, Social Programs, and Budget Deficits,” in The Political Economy of Military Spending in the United States, ed. Alex Mintz (New York: Routledge, 1992), 196–216. 74. Manning Marable, “Nuclear War and Black America,” in Manning Marable, Speaking Truth to Power: Essays on Race, Resistance, and Radicalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 169. 75. Ibid., 170. 76. Ibid., 169. 77. J. Deotis Roberts, The Prophethood of Black Believers: An African American Political Theology for Ministry (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1994), 104. 78. Ibid., 105. 79. Ibid., 91. 80. Ibid., 97. 81. Errol Anthony Henderson, “Military Spending and Poverty,” The Journal of Politics 60, 2 (May 1998): 514–515. 82. See Meredith A. Kleykamp, “College, Jobs or Military? Enlistment During a Time of War” (paper presented at American Sociological Association meeting, San Francisco, CA, 2004), and Robert F. Hale, “CBO Testimony” (testimony given before the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Education, Training, and Employment, Washington, DC, October 17, 1991), Congressional Budget Office, accessed May 5, 2011, http:// www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/79xx/doc7939/91doc60.pdf.

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83. See Henderson (1998) and John D. Abell, “Military Spending and Income Inequality,” Journal of Peace Research 31, 1 (February 1994): 35–43. 84. Bruce Russett, “Defense Expenditures and National Well-Being,” The American Political Science Review 76, 4 (December 1982): 767–777. 85. Alex Mintz and Chi Huang, “Guns versus Butter: The Indirect Link,” American Journal of Political Science 35,3 (Aug 1991): 752. See also Chi Hunag and Alex Mintz, “ ‘Guns’ vs. ‘Butter’: Conceptual and Methodological Issues,” Policy Studies Review 11, 3/4 (Autumn/Winter 1992): 347–358. 86. Stiglitz and Bilmes, 123–124; Uk Heo, “The Relationship between Defense Spending and Economic Growth in the United States,” Political Research Quarterly 63, 4 (December 2010): 760–770; and Michael D. Ward and David R. Davis, “Sizing Up the Peace Dividend: Economic Growth and Military Spending in the United States, 1948–1996,” The American Political Science Review 86, 3 (September 1992): 748–755. 87. Stiglitz and Bilmes, 123–124. 88. Quoted in Ward and Davis, 748. 89. Clayton, 63. 90. Jackson, “Paying for Our Dreams,” 88. 91. Kenneth R. Mayer, “Elections, Business Cycles, and the Timing of Defense Contract Awards in the United States,” in Mintz ed., 16. 92. Ibid., 28. 93. See, for example, Bruce Russett and Gad Barzilai, “The Political Economy of Military Actions: The United States and Israel,” in Mintz, ed., 55–81; and Thomas R. Cusack, “On the Domestic Political-Economic Sources of American Military Spending,” in Mintz ed., 103–131. 94. Phillip Arthur Au Claire, “Public Attitudes toward Social Welfare Expenditures,” Social Work 29, 2 (March/April 1984): 139–144. 95. Mok and Duval, 197 and 207. 96. Alex Mintz, “ ‘Guns’ vs. ‘Butter’: A Disaggregated Analysis,” in Mintz ed., 189. 97. See for example Ibid., 193; Clayton, 63; and Mok and Duval, 198–200. 98. James C. Garand and Rebecca M. Hendrick, “Expenditure Tradeoffs in the American States: A Longitudinal Test, 1948–1984,” The Western Political Quarterly 44, 4 (December 1991): 927. 99. Ibid., 938. 100. Ibid., 934. 101. Russett, 770. 102. Clayton, 64. 103. Ibid., 89–90.

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104. Alan Geyer, “Old World Order Rules Defense Budget,” Christian Century 109, 14 (April 22, 1992): 421. 105. Huber, 25. 106. Moore, 4. 107. Stiglitz and Bilmes, xii. 108. Charles Peña, “A Reality Check on Military Spending,” Issues in Science and Technology 21, 4 (Summer 2005): 46. See also William D. Hartung, “Ready for What? The New Politics of Pentagon Spending,” World Policy Journal 16, 1 (Spring 1999): 19–24. 109. Peña, 41. 110. Ibid., 43. 111. Ibid., 42. 112. Berrigan “A Theft from Those Who Hunger,” 7. 113. Huber, 25. 114. “Tax Cuts They Can Agree On,” Readers’ Digest, December 2011/January 2012, 80. See National Taxpayers’ Union and US Public Interest Research Group, “Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide with Deficit Reduction Recommendations for the Super Committee” (September 2011), accessed December 1, 2011, http://www.uspirg.org/uploads/36/0b/ 360bb0b273d1f00654dc341993f5c251/USPIRG_Toward_ Common_Ground.pdf. 115. Congressional Budget Office, “Estimated Funding for Iraq and Afghanistan Wars” (letter to Hon. Kent Conrad, February 7, 2007), 1. 116. Peña, 46–47. 117. Paul Collier, “War and Military Expenditure in Developing Countries and Their Consequences for Development,” The Economics of Peace and Security Journal 1,1 (2006): 9–13. 118. Frank Shann, “Warfare and Children,” Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 46, 5 (May 2010): 219. 119. Ibid., 219. 120. Collier, 9–10. See also Atkinson, 13. 121. See Suarez, 210, and Vitoria, 118. 122. Congressional Budget Office, “Estimated Costs of a Potential Conflict with Iraq” (Washington, DC, September 30, 2002), 1. Available at http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/38xx/doc3822/09-30-Iraq.pdf. 123. Congressional Budget Office, “Estimated Costs for the Occupation of Iraq” (Washington, DC, October 28, 2003), 1–2. Available at http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/46xx/doc4683/10-28-Spratt.pdf. 124. Congressional Budget Office, “Long-Term Implications of the Fiscal Year 2010 Defense Budget” (Washington, DC, January 2010), 4. Available at http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/108xx/doc10852/01-25FYDP.pdf. 125. Congressional Budget Office, “Withdrawal of U.S. Forces from Iraq: Possible Timelines and Estimated Costs” (Washington, DC,

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October 7, 2009), 2. Available at http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/ doc10523/10-07-TierneyTroopWithdrawal.pdf. Stiglitz and Bilmes, 57–59. “The World Only Needs 30 Billion Dollars a Year to Eradicate the Scourge of Hunger,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.fao.org/ Newsroom/en/news/2008/1000853/index.html. Guy Hutton and Laurence Haller, “Evaluation of Costs and Benefits of Water and Sanitation Improvements at the Global Level,” World Health Organization, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.who.int/ water_sanitation_health/wsh0404.pdf. “The Costs of Attaining the Millennium Development Goals,” World Bank, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.worldbank.org/ html/extdr/mdgassessment.pdf. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, for example, dismissed House Budget Committee estimates of $95 billion for the total cost of the war and occupation in Iraq. Andrew Natsios, director of US Agency for International Development declared in an interview on Nightline that reconstruction of Iraq would cost less than $1.7 billion. See Craig M. White, Iraq: the Moral Reckoning (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010), 167. Coates, 176. Johnson, in Elshtain, 69. Ibid., 71. Brian Orend, “Is There a Supreme Emergency Exemption?” in Just War Theory: A Reappraisal, ed. Mark Evans (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 138. White, 149ff. See also Ricks, Fiasco, 83–90. Perhaps the most dangerous realistic threat terrorists might pose is the use of biological weapons. However, the threat of biological agents by terrorist cells is currently very low. This is due to several factors, including the difficulty of diffusing pathogens sufficiently to cause widespread deaths, international regulations on biological agents, and the historical ineffectiveness of biological attacks. The attempt by Aum Shinrikyo to release sarin gas into Tokyo subways in 1995, for example, resulted in only 13 deaths, despite the fact that the group was well-financed and counted scientific experts among its members. See Congressional Research Service, Small-scale Terrorist Attacks Using Chemical and Biological Agents: An Assessment Framework and Preliminary Comparisons (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2004), esp. 5–12. James Turner Johnson, The War to Oust Saddam Hussein: Just War and the New Face of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 63–64. Quoted in White, 171. This is the estimate of members in both Afghanistan and Pakistan as of June 2010, according to CIA director Leon Panetta and Michael

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139. 140.

141.

142. 143.

144. 145. 146. 147.

E. Leiter, director of the United States’ National Counterterrorism Center. See David E. Sanger and Mark Mazzetti, “New Estimate of Strength of Al Qaeda Is Offered,” New York Times, June 30, 2010, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/ world/asia/01qaeda.html?_r= 2. Stiglitz and Bilmes, 197–198. Support for action in Afghanistan was above 65 percent in 2001 and did not fall below 50 percent until 2009. See “Support for War in Afghanistan—Trends 2001,” Ipsos MORI, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/ researcharchive/2399/Support-for-War-in-Afghanistan-Trends2001.aspx?view= wide. See also “Poll: Support for Afghan War at All-time Low,” CNN, Sept 15, 2009, accessed July 12, 2011, http://articles.cnn.com/2009-09-15/politics/afghan.war.poll_1_ afghanistan-national-poll-afghan-war?_s= PM:POLITICS. Support for American action in World War II remained at about 73 percent throughout 1944 and 1945. See Al Kamen, “World War II and Iraq: Polls Apart?” Washington Post, June 23, 2006, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2006/06/22/AR2006062201589.html. “Summary Tables,” Office of Management and Budget, accessed July 12, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/ omb/budget/fy2011/assets/tables.pdf. Murray, 244. See Barry Commoner, Making Peace with the Planet (New York: New Press, 1992) and Lester Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, rev. ed. (New York: WW Norton, 2009) Garand and Hendrick, 934. Clayton, 106. United States Catholic Conference, Economic Justice for All: Pastoral Letter on Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy (1986), §16. Bryan N. Massingale, “The Scandal of Poverty: ‘Cultured Indifference’ and the Option for the Poor Post-Katrina,” Journal of Religion & Society, Supplement Series 4 (2008): 63.

Chapter 5 1. See Paul Ramsey, Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), 19–41 and 143–144. 2. J. Daryl Charles, “Presumption against War or Presumption against Injustice? The Just War Tradition Reconsidered,” Journal of Church and State 47, 2 (Spring 2005): 335–369. 3. Robert L. Holmes, On War and Morality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1989), 119–120. See also Chapter 2 of this book.

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4. J. Warren Smith, “Augustine and the Limits of Preemptive and Preventive War,” Journal of Religious Ethics 35, 1 (March 2007): 154, referring especially to Augustine’s letter to Marcellinus, Epistle 138, 2.14. 5. Peter Heinegg, trans., “Modern War and the Christian Conscience,” in But Was It Just? Reflections on the Morality of the Persian Gulf War, ed. David DeCosse (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 114. 6. Augustine, Reply to Faustus the Manichean, 22.74, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 64. 7. Smith, 158. 8. Ibid., 147. 9. Ibid., 154. 10. Augustine, City of God, I.30, cited By Smith, 149. 11. Smith, 150. 12. Ibid., 151 and 159. 13. James Turner Johnson, “The Idea of Defense in Historical and Contemporary Thinking about Just War,” Journal of Religious Ethics 36,4 (December 2008): 548–549. 14. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, XVIII.i, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Branch, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2006): 359. 15. Ibid., XVIII.i. 16. See Johnson, “The Idea of Defense,” 546. 17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, 40.1, in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 107–108. 18. Ibid., 107. 19. J. Daryl Charles, Between Pacifism and Jihad: Just War and the Christian Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 45–46. 20. Martin Luther, “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved,” in Holmes, 2005, 155. 21. Ibid., 149. 22. Ibid., 151. 23. Francisco de Vitoria, On the Law of War, III.v.44, 319. 24. Francisco de Vitoria, On the American Indians, 3.1–3, 3.5, and 3.7, 319. 25. Vitoria, On the Law of War, I.iii.13, 303. 26. Ibid., I.iii.10, 302–303. 27. Ibid., III.i.38, 316. 28. Vitoria, On the American Indians, III.v.15, 288. 29. Ibid., 287fn.82. 30. Francisco Suarez, The Three Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity: On Charity, Disputation 13, War, in From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought, ed. Oliver O’Donovan and Jean Lockwood O’Donovan (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B. Eerdmans, 1999), 737.

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N ot e s 31. See Ibid., 738. 32. Ibid., 738. Vitoria notes that if the opposing party is willing to make restitution or “give satisfaction . . . the offensive war would be unjust.” 33. Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace; Including the Law of Nature and of Nations, II.xxii.6–II.xxii.17, trans. Archibald Colin Campbell (London: M. Walter Dunne, 1901), 269–273. 34. Ibid., II.i.2, 75. 35. Ibid., II.i.5, 77. 36. Ibid., II.i.5, 77. 37. See Johnson, “The Idea of Defense,” 549. 38. Grotius, II.xx.40, 247. The difference may be attributed to the different grounds each theorist provided for punishment. For Vitoria and Molina, punishment was a matter of violation of positive law, and thus was the responsibility of the appropriate sovereign. For Grotius, the right to punish arose from natural law and thus redounded to anyone capable of executing just punishment. 39. Ibid., II.xx.39, 247. 40. Ibid., II.xxv.1, 285. 41. Ibid., II.xxv.8, 288. 42. Ibid., II.xxv.8, 289. 43. Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, Or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury, trans. Jospeh Chitty (Philadelphia: T. & J.W. Johnson & Co., 1883), Bk. III.iii.26, 302. 44. Ibid., III.iii.33,304. 45. Ibid., III.iii.41,306. 46. Ibid., III.iii.44,309. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., III.iii.46, 310–311. 49. Ibid., III.iii.50, 313–314. 50. Ibid., III.iii.45, 310. 51. “Kellogg-Briand Pact 1928,” The Avalon Project of Yale Law School, accessed October 31, 2011, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ 20th_century/kbpact.asp. 52. “Charter of the United Nations,” United Nations, accessed October 29, 2011, http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/ index.shtml. 53. O’Driscoll, 11. 54. Johnson, “The Idea of Defense,” 551. 55. Walzer, 72. 56. Ibid., 107. 57. National Council of Catholic Bishops, §86. 58. Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (April 11, 1963), §127.

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59. Brian Orend, The Morality of War (Petersborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2006), 40. Orend goes on in the same place to note two other criteria for a just war, i.e. proper authority and what might be called lawful means. 60. Coates, 158–160. 61. Jeff McMahan, “Just Cause for War,” Ethics and International Affairs 19, 3 (Fall 2005): 1–2. 62. Charles and Demy, 201. 63. See for example Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accommodation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1996). 64. Charles and Demy, 197. 65. Ibid., 197–199. 66. O’Donovan, The Just War Revisited, 29. 67. United States Catholic Conference, The Harvest of Justice Is Sown in Peace. November 17, 1993. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/the-harvest-of-justice-issown-in-peace.cfm, sec. A. 68. Ibid., §B. 69. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 57. 70. Ibid., 40. 71. Ibid., 166–169. 72. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa, ON: International Development Research Centre, 2001). 73. Martin Luther, “Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved,” in Holmes, War and Christian Ethics, 149. 74. Alex J. Bellamy, Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006), 163. 75. Quoted in Bellamy, 162. 76. Ibid. For a summary of the Caroline situation, see Ibid., 161–163. 77. Walzer, 81. The summary which follows is based on Walzer’s account in Ibid., 81–84. 78. Quoted in “1967: Israel Launches Attack on Egypt,” BBC, accessed November 1, 2011, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/ stories/june/5/newsid_2654000/2654251.stm. 79. Walzer, 81. 80. Ibid. 81. See, for example, Bellamy, 163–165; Crawford (2003), 10–12. 82. White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC, September 17, 2002), 1. (Hereafter NSS 2002).

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83. “Text of Bush’s Speech at West Point,” New York Times (June 1, 2002), accessed November 1, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/ 2002/06/01/international/02PTEX-WEB.html?pagewanted= all. 84. Quoted in O’Driscoll, 44. 85. Ibid., 45. 86. Ibid. 87. Quoted in Ibid., 42. 88. Weigel, in Reed and Ryall, 27. 89. Quoted in Ryan, 153. 90. Dolan, 17. 91. Neta C. Crawford, “Just War Theory and the US Counterterror War,” Perspectives on Politics 1, 1 (March 2003): 14–15. 92. Charles and Demy, 213. 93. Ibid., 215. 94. Grotius, II.I.3, 76. 95. Ibid., II.I.17, 83. 96. Smith, 159. 97. Grotius, II.I.17, 83. 98. Vattel, III.iii.46, 310. 99. Ibid., III.iii.44, 309. 100. Charles and Demy, 216. 101. Ibid., 218. 102. John W. Lango, “Preventive Wars, Just War Principles, and the United Nations,” The Journal of Ethics 9, 1/2 (2005): 257. 103. O’Driscoll, 52–58. 104. Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 29–73. 105. Ibid., 73. 106. Ibid., 252 and 370. 107. Ibid., 252. 108. See, for example, Weigel, “Moral Clarity in a Time of War.” 109. Weigel, Tranquilitas Ordinis, 341. 110. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 47 and 49. 111. Ibid., 56. 112. Ibid., 96 and 59–61. 113. Ibid., 106–109. 114. “Text of Bush Iraq Speech to U.N. (September 13, 2002)” CBS News. accessed November 1, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/ stories/2002/09/12/national/main521781.shtml. 115. “Azores Summit Statement (March 16, 2003)” BBC News UK. accessed November 1, 2011, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_ east/2855567.stm. 116. “Full Text: Tony Blair’s Speech (to House of Commons, March 18, 2003)” The Guardia., accessed November 1, 2011, http://www. guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/mar/18/foreignpolicy.iraq1.

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117. Wojtek Mackiewicz Wolfe, Winning the War of Words: Selling the War on Terror from Afghanistan to Iraq (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2008), 94. 118. Linda J. Skitka, Christopher W. Bauman, Nichola P. Aramovich, and G. Scott Morgan, “Confrontational and Preventative Policy Responses to Terrorism: Anger Wants a fight and Fear Wants ‘Them’ to Go Away,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 28, 4 (December 2006): 375–384. 119. “President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address,” Washington Post. accessed November 1, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost. com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/sou012902.htm. 120. Ibid. 121. “Transcript of President Bush’s Prayer Service Remarks (September 14, 2001),” US Office of Personnel Management. accessed November 2, 2011, http://www.opm.gov/guidance/0914-01gwb.htm. 122. See O’Driscoll, 57, and Ryan, 13. 123. O’Driscoll, 57–59. 124. Podhoretz, “The War against World War IV,” 42; Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 3 and 132–135. 125. Fisher, 110. 126. Thomas J. Noer, “Truman, Eisenhower, and South Africa: The ‘Middle Road’ and Apartheid,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 11, 1 (1983): 90. Reprinted in Krenn, Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War, 146. 127. Quoted in Ibid., 98–99 (154–155). 128. Ibid., 75 (131). 129. Ibid., 100 (156). 130. “Charles Cole Diggs, Jr.” Black Americans in Congress, Office of the Clerk, US Capitol. accessed November 10, 2011, http://baic. house.gov/member-profiles/profile.html?intID= 29. 131. Steven Metz, “Congress, the Antiapartheid Movement and Nixon,” Diplomatic History 12 (1988): 176. (reprinted in Krenn, Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War, 312), quoting George Shepherd. 132. Charles C. Diggs, Jr., “Action Manifesto,” Issue: A Journal of Opinion 2, 1 (Spring 1972): 52. 133. See Ibid., 53 and 58. 134. Albert van den Heuvel, “An Open Letter to a Friend in South Africa” (National Council of Churches in New Zealand, October 1970), 5. 135. Ibid., 2. 136. Ibid., 8. 137. Quoted in Ibid., 11. 138. Regis Debray, quoted in Ibid., 11.

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139. Black Leadership Conference on Southern Africa, “The AfricanAmerican Manifesto,” Ebony (December 1976): 88. 140. Ibid., 89. 141. Ibid. 142. Esther Cooper Jackson and Constance Pohl, eds. Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000), 191. 143. This is, quite obviously, a rejection of the paternalistic attitude expressed by folks like Norman Podhoretz, who insisted that liberation of the Middle East from “Islamist radicalism” would bring “greater security and greater prosperity” to the people of the US, Europe, and the Middle East “in spite of the sorry fact that so many of them do not wish to know it yet.” (Podhoretz, “The War against World War IV,” 42). 144. “A Call for Unity” (April 12, 1963), The Estate of Martin Luther King. accessed November 9, 2011, http://www.stanford. edu/group/King//frequentdocs/clergy.pdf. 145. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail,” in Readings in Christian Ethics: A Historical Sourcebook, eds. J. Philip Wogaman and Douglas M. Strong. (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 351. 146. Ibid., 356–357. 147. Paul Ramsey, Christian Ethics and the Sit-in (New York: Association Press, 1961), 48–49. Cited in James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, rev. ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 184. 148. Errol A. Henderson, “Navigating the Muddy Waters of the Mainstream: Tracing the Mystification of Racism in International Relations,” in African American Perspectives on Political Science, ed. Wilbur C. Rich (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2007), 328–329. 149. Ibid., 338. 150. Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003), 133. 151. Quoted in Paul Gordon Lauren, Power and Prejudice: The Politics and Diplomacy of Racial Discrimination (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), 157. 152. Ibid., 156, citing the minutes of the 51st meeting of the US delegation (May 23, 1945). 153. Anderson, 49, quoting Dulles. 154. Ibid., 50, quoting Dulles. 155. Lauren, 157. 156. Anderson, 131–132. 157. Ibid., 133. 158. Ibid.

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159. Robert L. Harris, “Racial Equality and the United Nations Charter,” in New Directions in Civil Rights Studies, ed. Armstead L. Robinson and Patricia Sullivan (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991), 131. Reprinted in Krenn, Race and US Foreign Policy during the Cold War, 7. 160. Elshtain, Just War against Terror, 40. 161. Ibid., 13. 162. NSS 2002, 18. 163. Elshtain does cite Stephen Carter, an African American Harvard professor, in her Just War against Terror. Interestingly, she cites him to bolster her above claim about African American assessments of white racism. His work does not function in the prescriptive portion of her work. For some, especially given her many rejections of African American complaints elsewhere, this might raise the specter of tokenism. I won’t argue. On Elshtain’s appraisal of the “victim card,” see Jean Bethke Elshtain, “Judge Not?” First Things 46 (October 1994): 36–40. 164. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 200. 165. Stanley Hauerwas and D. Stephen Long, “Foreword,” in Paul Ramsey, Basic Christian Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), xxii. 166. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 200. 167. Ibid., 181. 168. See H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Grace of Doing Nothing,” in Miller, War in the Twentieth Century, 6–11. 169. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 201. 170. James Alexander Forbes, Jr., “Spiritual Renewal: Good news for the Poor,” in Preaching with Sacred Fire: An Anthology of African American Sermons, 1750 to the Present, ed. Martha A. Simmons and Frank A. Thomas (New York: WW Norton, 2010), 670. 171. Ibid., 670. 172. Ibid. 173. Ibid., 674. 174. West, 21. 175. Ibid., 20–21. 176. Ibid., 216. 177. Forbes, 670. 178. Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, Wilson’s Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 69. 179. Bellamy, 154. 180. There are exceptions to every rule, including this one. As Samantha Powers has observed, American foreign policy mistakes can be attributed equally to failures to act during emergency situations of genocide such as the Hutu and Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. See

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N ot e s Samantha Powers, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York: Harper Collins, 2002). This was, for example, how Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton framed the United States’ involvement. See Joby Warrick, “Hillary Rodham Clinton Pledges US Support in Visit to Libya,” The Denver Post, October 19, 2011, accessed February 6, 2012, http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_19143697. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 184. Smith, 157. Elshtain, “Just War and American Politics,” 45.

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Afghanistan War (2001), 28, 67, 90–1, 118, 137, 162 apartheid, 90, 174–8, 186–7 Aptheker, Herbert, 84–5 Aquinas, Thomas, 47–9, 50–1, 53, 57, 58–9, 61, 65, 66, 74, 78, 79, 83, 85, 100, 107, 123, 138, 150, 151–2, 153, 157, 189 Article 2 of UN Charter, see domestic jurisdiction clause Augustine, 11, 17, 20, 22, 26, 45–7, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56–8, 62, 64–5, 66, 72, 74, 78, 79, 98, 101, 106–7, 123, 142, 147–50, 154, 157, 167–8, 189 Bell, Daniel, 54, 70 Berrigan, Frida, 118, 119, 132 “Black Press,” 81–4, 85 Breveridge, Senator Albert, 85, 88 Bush, George H.W., 22, 94, 122, 125, 126, 190 Bush, George W., 31, 36, 91, 115–16, 138, 139, 163, 165–73, 181, 183, 185, 186 Charles, J. Daryl, 53, 107, 108, 116, 148, 151, 160, 161, 168 Childress, James, 10–13, 14, 15, 20, 24 Civil Rights Congress, 89 Clausewitz, Carl von, 110–11 Clayton, James L., 128, 133–4, 145

Coates, A.J., 105, 115–16 common good, 34, 36, 38, 48, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 70, 72, 83, 85, 96, 100, 101, 108, 109, 122, 123, 129, 144, 189 Cone, James, 38, 39, 77, 79, 97, 183–4, 186, 187, 189 deficit spending, 119, 133–4, 143, 145 domestic jurisdiction clause, 159, 180–3, 187 DuBois, W.E.B., 28–9, 181, 182 Echols, James, 78–9 Eisenhower, Dwight, 117–18, 122, 143, 175, 178, 187 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 18, 21–3, 24, 25, 26, 28, 36–7, 52, 54–5, 63, 68–70, 72, 83, 91, 92, 94, 98, 116, 122, 139, 140, 162, 171, 173, 179, 183, 186, 189, 190 Erasmus, 108–9, 119, 142 Friedman, Thomas, 25, 30, 31, 32–3, 127 global arms trade, 118–19, 136 globalization, 4, 30–5, 39, 63, 74, 161 Grotius, Hugo, 2, 37, 49, 101, 104, 109–10, 114, 116, 119, 137, 142, 155–6, 157, 167, 168, 169, 190

10.1057/9781137350329 - The African American Challenge to Just War Theory, Ryan P. Cumming

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Index

Index

Hehir, J. Bryan, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 71 historical consciousness, 30, 35–40 imperialism, 26, 29, 37, 51, 55, 67, 68, 81, 83–4, 91, 125, 155, 157, 162, 168, 180 intervention, 37, 38, 67, 71, 75, 81, 82, 83, 87, 90, 94–5, 100, 126, 148, 150, 151–2, 154, 155–6, 157, 159, 160–3, 173, 174–9, 180, 182–3, 186–8 Isidore of Seville, 150–1, 157 Jackson, Jesse, 127–8, 131–2 “Jim Crow,” 82, 88, 159, 181, 182, 187 Johnson, James Turner, 18–19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 34–5, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 85, 86, 98, 105, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 113, 122, 139, 141, 148, 150, 154, 155–6, 159, 169, 189 Karenga, Maulana, 96, 97, 99 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 80, 89–90, 124–5, 179 Luther, Martin, 123, 152–3 lynching, 81, 82–3, 84, 86–7, 89 Marable, Manning, 90–1, 94, 96–7, 99, 128–9, 130 Mays, Benjamin E., 76, 79 McNamara, Robert, 90, 186, 187 military Keynesianism, 128, 130, 132, 144 Newton, Huey P., 89–90 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 12, 93–7, 99, 101, 139 nuclear weapons, 13–14, 17, 18, 32, 35, 89, 101, 104, 111, 113, 135, 158–9, 161, 163, 165, 185

Obama, Barack, 127, 138, 188 Persian Gulf War (1991), 22, 68, 69, 94, 116, 122, 125–6, 190 Philippine American War, 80, 81, 83, 84–8, 91, 174 Potter, Ralph, 10–12, 15, 16 preemption, 99, 148–9, 155, 157, 163–9, 173–4 preventive war, 148, 150, 156, 163–9, 173–4, 184–6 punitive war, 58, 60–1, 107, 148, 149–50, 154–5, 156, 169–74 racism and foreign policy (U.S.), 87–91 Ramsey, Paul, 57, 61, 107, 112–14, 147, 159, 180, 183–4 Reagan, Ronald, 13–14, 90, 123, 125, 127–8, 133, 135, 175, 187 rebellion, see revolution “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), 162, 173, 182, 186, 187, 188 revolution, 3, 10, 11, 45, 48, 50, 52, 75, 76, 88, 94, 150, 152, 156, 157, 174, 176–7, 178, 180, 183, 187, 188, 189 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 181–2 South Africa, see apartheid sovereignty, 4, 26, 27, 33–4, 36, 39, 50, 53–6, 60, 61, 63, 70, 71, 74, 80, 98, 101, 159–62 Spanish-American War, 81–8, 91, 174 Stiglitz, Joseph, and Linda Bilmes, 119–20, 128, 131, 134, 138, 143 Suarez, Francisco, 49–51, 53, 60–1, 62, 66–7, 71, 79, 99, 101, 108, 114, 137, 154–5, 190 “supreme emergency,” 136–41

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United Nations, 13, 14, 15, 21, 24–6, 33, 37, 52, 54, 55–6, 63, 71–2, 89, 93, 95, 98–9, 137, 158, 161, 162, 171–2, 176, 181–3 value-relative cost analysis, 121–3, 126–31 Vattel, Emmerich de, 156–7, 167, 168, 169, 190 Vietnam War, 10, 18, 67–8, 89–90, 123–5, 166, 186–7

Vitoria, Francisco de, 49–51, 53, 60–1, 62, 66–7, 71, 79, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 101, 108, 114, 153–4, 155, 156, 157, 167, 190 Walzer, Michael, 56, 70, 85, 86, 104, 106, 107, 139, 142, 159, 164, 165, 166, 168, 169, 183 War in Iraq (2003), 22, 27, 31, 68, 71, 94, 116, 119–20, 136, 140 war surtax, 143, 146 War on Terrorism, 22, 24, 93–4, 98, 116, 121, 127, 131, 135, 136, 139, 162, 166, 169–70, 172–3, 183 Weigel, George, 18, 19–20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 28, 36–7, 53–4, 61–3, 67–8, 70, 75, 79, 92, 96–7, 98, 139, 166, 169, 170, 179, 183, 186, 189 West, Cornel, 35–6, 38, 93–5, 99, 185–6, 190 World War II, 4, 17, 19, 25, 118, 122, 134, 139, 140, 143, 158, 159, 161

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terrorism, 4, 18, 23, 30, 33, 34, 68, 69, 71, 75, 121, 134, 135, 137, 140, 163, 172, 190 threat-specific cost analysis, 121–6, 141 Thurman, Howard, 77–8, 79 tranquilitas ordinis, 11, 20, 22, 23, 38, 57, 61, 62, 170–1, 184, 189 Turner, Henry McNeal, 77, 82

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The African American Challenge to Just War Theory A Christian Approach Ryan P. Cumming ISBN: 9781137350329 DOI: 10.1057/9781137350329 Palgrave Macmillan Please respect intellectual property rights This material is copyright and its use is restricted by our standard site license terms and conditions (see palgraveconnect.com/pc/connect/info/terms_conditions.html). If you plan to copy, distribute or share in any format including, for the avoidance of doubt, posting on websites, you need the express prior permission of Palgrave Macmillan. To request permission please contact [email protected].