TFP Viewpoint
Just War and the Pacifist Offensive
on Sovereignty
The nation’s attention is
rightly focused on the war in Iraq, where American and
allied armed forces are bravely engaged in battle. At
the same time, however, America is locked in a second
war, one that is equally important for victory: the psychological
battle for public opinion.
Both are difficult. Both are decisive.
Even as our troops fight courageously in Iraq, the polemics
on the issue of just war and America’s “unilateralism”
continue. The debate is all the more important because
there is the danger that while winning the ground war,
we lose the battle of ideas in public opinion.
Indeed, in their impassioned quest for
peace at any cost, some opponents of the war lose sight
of important prerequisites for peace. They create an emotional
climate that tends to obstruct clear thinking and warp
the debate. They admit the possibility of just war in
theory, but seem to deny there can ever be sufficient
reason to wage it in practice. They argue that America
cannot wage war without United Nations approval and condemn
America for being “unilateral.”
Such arguments appear to be based on
the blurring of the concept of sovereignty in general
while attributing some of sovereignty’s prerogatives
to an international organization.
In light of the fundamental importance
of the ongoing war of ideas, the American Society
for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property –
TFP presents some of the important issues surrounding
just war and sovereignty. This is done in accordance with
the principles of natural law1
as understood in traditional Catholic philosophy, accepted
by authors of the various schools and found in the classical
treatises on the subject.2
Of course, peace is preferable to war, and one must do
everything reasonable to preserve it. War is an extreme
measure to be used only when these reasonable alternatives
are exhausted and, in waging war, all of the stipulations
for just war must be observed.3
The American TFP presents these considerations
in the hope that they will help our Nation reach a consensus
on fundamental principles undergirding the very concept
of the sovereignty of civilized states.
* * *
1.
The state, being a perfect society, is also the authority
of last resort. There is no other political authority
above it.
The state is a “perfect society,”
that is, a society that possesses within itself all the
powers necessary for lawfully and effectively attaining
the end for which it was established and a correlative
right to be obeyed by those subject to it. The state,
therefore, has “self-sufficiency.” It has
“the completeness of a comprehensive order, essentially
independent from any other order of the same kind.”4
A state has international obligations
as a member of the community of nations, but “the
international order is an order of coordination and not
of subordination.”5
International courts and organizations
of nations are legitimate and useful so long as they are
freely accepted by and respect the full sovereignty of
member states.6 Such international
organizations, however, depend on member states for their
existence and not the other way around.
Indeed, as “natural societies,”7
states are antecedent to international organizations,
which are “artificial” or “conventional”
societies. These do not derive directly and necessarily
from natural law because their existence is not required
by man’s social nature, as happens with states.8
As artificial or conventional societies, international
organizations are freely set up by states, which join
or leave them in the measure that they help or hinder
the states in fulfilling their ends.
2. A sovereign state is entitled
to enforce its corporate rights and those of its citizens,
which may be violated or threatened by other states. Hence,
a sovereign state can wage war independent of any authorization
from international organizations when recourse to international
arbitration proves insufficient or inadequate to safeguard
these rights.
This conclusion stems from the previous
one. In joining international organizations, a sovereign
state cannot renounce those obligations that are its raison
d'être, including the defense of its legitimate
interests as a sovereign political entity and the legitimate
rights and interests of its citizens. If a state could
not resort to war when international arbitration proves
insufficient to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,
or if war depended on authorization from some international
organization, the state would lack all the powers necessary
for lawfully and effectively attaining the end for which
it was established.
Lacking this power, the state would actually
cease to exist as a sovereign state, since it would lack
an attribute of sovereignty: the power to make its own
decisions as to the means needed to attain its ends. This
decision-making power necessarily includes the right of
coercion, that is, the right to impose its decisions by
force. Without the right of coercion, sovereignty becomes
an empty word. On the international level, this right
of coercion translates into the right to wage war, which
is but “an instance of the general moral power of
coercion, i.e. to make use of physical force to conserve
its rights inviolable.”9
3. Under natural law, a nation
need not wait for an unjust attack to exercise its right
to self-defense; a serious and well-founded threat is
sufficient for the threatened country to defend itself
from the potential aggressor with a preemptive attack.
A nation’s right to self-defense
encompasses not only the response to an attack on its
rights and those of its citizens, but also the forestalling
of probable aggression by means of a preemptive attack.
Such preemptive action is offensive only in appearance.10
If it were unlawful for a prudent government
to thwart the aggression which reliable sources permit
it to foresee, the nation’s legitimate right to
self-defense would be truncated. Experience shows that
being able to strike first is sometimes the only way to
survive an aggression. Hence, it is legitimate, according
to natural law, for a government to forestall a probable
attack, neutralizing the probable aggressor by force when
there is no other alternative.
Indeed, no country has an obligation
to expose its soldiers, people, and resources to unnecessary
peril. Waiting for an attack to occur usually results
in greater loss in lives and resources than a first strike
aimed at preventing it. Thus, the threatened country has
the right and, depending on the circumstances, the duty
to prevent such damage to itself by preemption. Such forceful
action is required by the virtues of prudence, justice,
and even charity, which governments must exercise in pursuing
the common good of their people. Hence it is not only
licit but, in certain cases, imperative, to wage preemptive-defensive
war which, as mentioned above, is offensive in appearance
only.
This principle is all the more valid
in modern warfare. Given the existence of weapons of mass
destruction, a government that waits for an attack to
occur would be remiss in its natural duty to protect its
people.11
4. Nations can use force not just
in self-defense, but to seek redress for violated physical
or moral goods, such as honor, or to help unjustly attacked
allied or weaker nations. In so doing, nations reestablish
international order and true peace.
Whereas individuals can appeal to public
authority to enforce or recover their rights, the state
has no such recourse because it is the highest political
authority. Thus, when the rights of a state and those
of its people cannot be sufficiently assured otherwise,
it can use force.12
History shows that war is at times the
only means a state can use to assure its own security
and survival against the unjust attacks or claims of other
states or to enforce fundamental rights that it cannot
renounce without grave damage or dishonor.
This right to wage war, which can be
a duty at times, encompasses more than strictly defensive
military actions. It includes offensive actions as well.
The reasons for offensive war are generally
related to grave harm suffered by states. Some of the
examples given by Catholic philosophers are: forcing rebels
into submission; recovering provinces or cities from an
enemy; avenging a grave offense to the head of state or
to the nation; punishing another nation for helping an
unjust enemy; aiding an ally; punishing nations for the
violation of treaties; seeking redress for the violation
of rights assured by international law.
As stated above, these wars are only
offensive in appearance; in fact, they are defensive.13
These wars seek to reestablish international order in
true peace. “Peace is not disturbed by the declaration
of war but through the violation of rights in the juridical
order, which actually makes a declaration of war necessary.”14
5. The distinction between defensive
and offensive wars is totally secondary. What matters
is whether a war is just or not.
Offensive wars can be just and defensive
wars can be unjust. At times, the attacked nation is the
actual cause of the war, not the nation initiating the
attack. When this happens, the attacked nation fights
back with a defensive war that is unjust in causa,
because the nation should have avoided the provocation
that led to the original attack. Hence, the nation initiating
the attack is only a material aggressor, not a formal
one. It would not have attacked but for the fact that
its rights were unjustly violated. The attacking nation
is not responsible for a war made necessary by the actions
of another.
Consequently, the distinction between
just and unjust war is not identical with the distinction
between offensive and defensive war.15
6. Just war is not opposed to charity;
it is an act of charity to wage war to liberate a people
oppressed by a tyrant.
Just war is not contrary to the virtue
of charity. All virtues are harmoniously interrelated,
so there can be no clash between the virtues of justice
and charity.16 Indeed,
one cannot suppose that God, the supreme Author and Legislator
of nature, would grant individuals the right of self-defense
and to societies the right to wage war while forbidding
them the exercise of these rights by an imperative of
charity. If that were so, the right to self-defense would
be useless and absurd. Such a contradiction would not
stand to reason and is repugnant to divine wisdom.17
Moreover, just war aims to reestablish
peace, which Saint Augustine defines as “the tranquility
of order.”18 In this
sense, a just war can be seen both as an act of justice
and as an act of social charity, performed on a grand
scale, among the family of nations.
It is also an act of charity to come
to the aid of unjustly oppressed peoples,19
for “the innocent have the right to resist, charity
calls for assistance, and the intervening state may justly
assume the communication of the right of the innocent
to exercise extreme coercion in their behalf.”20
7. The principle that all peaceful
means must be exhausted before resorting to war should
not be understood in a way that would cause endless paralysis.
That would be tantamount to denying, in practice, what
is accepted in theory, namely, the legitimacy of war.
One can discuss ad infinitum
if all possible peaceful means for avoiding war have been
exhausted, because there exists no authority with the
power to make infallible decisions in these matters. Such
authority is not established in natural law, nor does
it exist by divine institution. Hence, in principle, it
is incumbent upon the political authorities responsible
for declaring war to judge, according to prudence and
the means at their disposal, whether or not all peaceful
solutions are exhausted and recourse to war is warranted.
Also, the requirement that all
peaceful means must be exhausted before the waging of
war must not be understood so strictly that it leads to
complete inaction. When immersed in doubt, man cannot
act. Misapplied, this requirement could bring about a
complete separation between principles and action, denying
in practice the legitimacy of what is accepted in theory.
Thus, while legitimate in theory, war would never be legitimate
in practice.
Saying that a nation cannot resort to
arms until all possible peaceful solutions have been pursued
means all reasonable and practical possibilities. It does
not mean all theoretical possibilities, whose number is
infinite.
8. The fact that war is not an
inevitable phenomenon like natural disasters does not
mean that war can always be avoided.
Peace is a most precious good and every
effort must be made to preserve it. “Order, peace,
and harmony,” writes Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira,
“are essential characteristics of every well-formed
soul and of every well-constituted society… Order
generates tranquility, and ‘the tranquility of order
is peace.’”21
However, to affirm that every war can
be avoided is to ignore the history of men and human nature
itself. It is pacifist utopianism.22
Even the creation of a super-state or
a supra-national organization endowed with some attributes
of sovereignty would not eliminate war but only transform
the use of force into civil war when between member states,
or punitive police action when exercised against individuals
or social groups.23
9. Although individuals must participate
in public life and prudently express their opinions, the
final word as to war and peace belongs to government.
There are several reasons why the right
to decide about war and peace is the prerogative of government:
10. Divine Providence uses wars
among men to execute the decrees of justice. Despite its
tragic nature, war is an occasion for practicing virtues
such as fortitude, prudence, charity, self-detachment,
heroism, and patriotism.
Nations declare war on each other for
one reason or another. Yet, wars invariably contribute
towards the designs of Divine Providence. Indeed, without
infringing in any way on human liberty, Divine Wisdom
infallibly reaches its goals with strength and suavity.24
When God allows the terrible calamities that come with
war, He is pursuing in the supernatural order His Divine
plan for men.
Nations, unlike individuals, have no
eternal life, so they are rewarded or punished in this
life.25 Providence makes
use of the wars waged by men to execute the decrees of
its justice, since wars have consequences for both individuals
and nations, considered as human groups. At times, God
punishes some nations through the action of others.26
On the individual level, God manifests
His divine justice and mercy in numerous ways, including
wars. Though not all sinners convert with the terrible
sufferings and privations caused by war, many do repent,
confess their faults, and atone for them. On the other
hand, virtuous people often become better. In spite of
its tragic nature, war is an occasion for practicing virtues
such as fortitude, prudence, charity, self-detachment,
heroism, and patriotism. Death on the battlefield, accepted
with supernatural conformity, can have great weight before
Divine Justice to expiate not only one’s individual
sins but also the collective sins of nations.27
This supernatural aspect of war must
not be ignored if the reality of war is to be understood
in its entirety.
* * *
Modern warfare has such
a capacity for destruction that one can ask if war itself
has not become illicit, or at least if the classic doctrine
on just war needs to be reviewed.
One must avoid the false
dilemmas well presented by Father John Courtney Murray,
S.J.: “The false dilemmas are: “(a) a soft
pacifism versus a cynical hard realism; (b) universal
atomic death versus complete surrender… These pernicious
dilemmas represent a casting up of desperate alternatives
beneath which is abdication of moral reason and submission
to technological determinism.”28
This abdication would result
in the death of the moral and juridical order, including
the negation of the natural right of self-defense and
“the natural law requirement that crime be punished
and the rule of law upheld.”29
The problem of modern weapons
of mass destruction does not bear on the justice of the
war itself, but rather on the prudence of going to war.
It is necessary that the reasons for war be of such gravity
that they be proportional to the destruction feared. “[T]here
are rights and goods, such as liberty or national freedom,
which in the judgment of good and honest persons and according
to the common sense of the people are worth defending
at the cost of enduring the horrors and destruction of
a modern war.”30
As Pope Pius XII states:
“Among these goods some are so important for man’s
living in society that their defense against unjust aggression
is undoubtedly fully legitimate. By solidarity, all nations
are obligated to participate in this defense and must
not abandon the attacked nation. The assurance that this
collective duty will not be neglected serves as a deterrent
to the aggressor, and therefore, helps prevent war, or
at least, in the worst scenario, to shorten the sufferings.”31
If this were not true, both
national and international order would disappear and,
with it, peace, for a state would be barred from defending
its rights and those of its people, and would become hostage
to the blackmail of unscrupulous powers.
* * *
Peace, as such, is an invaluable good
that must be acquired and maintained by all honest means,
since peace is “the tranquility of order.”
It is the greatest good of nations in the natural order.
All nations are obligated to strive for
true peace, even if this means, at times, going to war.
This is the peace we desire for America. We pray that
Mary Most Holy, the Immaculate Conception as Patroness
of our Country, may obtain it for us from her Divine Son,
the Prince of Peace.32
May God grant America courage amid danger,
constancy amid adversity, and magnanimity in victory.
March 25, 2003
The American TFP
Footnotes
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