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RADIO 4

CURRENT AFFAIRS

ANALYSIS

JUST WARS OR JUST MORE WARS?

TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED

DOCUMENTARY

Presenter: Felipe Fernndez-Armesto

Producer: Simon Coates

Editor: Nicola Meyrick

BBC

White City

201 Wood Lane

London

W12 7TS

020 8752 7279

Broadcast date:

19.08.04

Repeat date:

22.08.04

CD number:

PLN432/04VT1033

Duration:

27.40

Taking part in order of appearance:

Field Marshal The Lord Bramall of Bushfield, K.G.,

G.C.B., M.C.

Chief of General Staff, 1979-82 & Chief of Defence Staff,

1982-85

General Sir Michael Rose, K.C.B., D.S.O., Q.G.M.

Former Commander of the United Nations Protection

Force in Bosnia & Adjutant-General responsible for

values and ethics within the British Army

Michael Walzer

UPS Foundation Professor of Social Science,

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Pioneer of modern study of just war theory

Oliver ODonovan

Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology &

Canon of Christ Church, Oxford

Vaughan Lowe

Chichele Professor of Public International Law &

Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford

Jean Bethke Elshtain

Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social &

Political Ethics, University of Chicago Divinity School

Sohail H. Hashmi

Associate Professor of International Relations,

Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts

The Lord Hannay of Chiswick, G.C.M.G., C.H.

UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations,

1990-95 &

Member, UN Secretary Generals High Level Panel on

Threats, Challenges and Change

The Rt. Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Q.C.

Former Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for

Defence

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

When our leaders start wars,

they dont say, These wars will be good for you. Or

cheapen your oil. Or kill off your enemies. They say,

These wars are just. We may question their sincerity but

not their political skill. If they profess to care about the

justice of wars, its a sure sign that their voters and soldiers

do, too. Yet former standards were different, werent they?

More practical, perhaps. Field Marshal Lord Bramall was

Chief of the General Staff during the Falklands War.

BRAMALL:

Up until recently, when

warfare has become considerably more complicated, I

would have thought that people went to war not on the

question of justice; they went to war on purely the question

of self-interest. I mean, the Second World War was initiated

not so much for justice but because the Germans were

doing things we thought were improper and were getting

too big for their boots and had to be stopped. It was

about power, balance of power and hegemony. The

trouble with the word justice is it means quite different

things to different people, and I dont think that people go

round in the barrack room and say, Are we on a just war?

ROSE:

I think it is terribly important

that soldiers do think about these issuesfirst of all, not only

how they perform and behave during a conflict, but

actually whether the conflict per se is just.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

General Sir Michael Rose,

former United Nations Commander in Bosnia and Adjutant-

general responsible for values and ethics within the British

Army.

ROSE:

I happened to be the

Commandant of the Staff College in the early Nineties and

we started to not do war games there, we started to do

peace games. And we did have people coming to talk to

the students there to try and challenge them with some of

the ideas that they were going to have to cope with when

they went on operations, and I think that was immensely

valuable.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

When you listen to General

Rose after Field Marshal Bramall, you can hear the thinking

of a new generation crashing through long-disused gears.

But if just war thinking can sound unfamiliar, its hardly new.

One of the problems with it is that its very old. In the early

fifth century, St. Augustine said war must respond to

aggression, as a last resort, without covert motives or

innocent deaths. For over a thousand years, the theory

commanded respect, even when it failed to deliver its

goals. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century states

discarded it altogether: they didnt want to be weakened

by tenderness of conscience. Can just war theory adapt to

the novelties of war today? And what difference might it

make? Will we have just wars or will we just have wars?

When you ask the statesmen, soldiers and diplomats who

actually decide on warand the intellectuals who advise

themyou get worryingly unresolved answers. The

disagreements begin when you ask what just war is.

Michael Walzer is Professor of Social Science at the Institute

for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a pioneer of the

modern study of just war theory.

WALZER:

A just war isnt just in the

usual sense of the word justice. It means a war that we can

justify; a war that we think is defensible; even perhaps a

war that ought to be fought. In fact, I think justice is under

a cloud as soon as the fighting begins. The theory of just

war is an accommodation to the deep criminality of war as

a human activity. It recognises its necessity; it tries to set

limits on its conduct. It doesnt make it just in the usual

sense of the word.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Justice in a special sense.

Does Oliver ODonovan, Regius Professor of Moral and

Pastoral Theology at Oxford, agree with that?

ODONOVAN:

It is a special sense, but it is a

clearly analogous sense. Somebody is guilty ifand only

ifthey are actively engaged in doing real harm and real

wrong. The Christian conception of war, I think, of the just

war, was based very much on this analogy, and that the

tests were recognisably about justice.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

So what are those tests?

ODONOVAN:

Its a use of force against

and to punish and in response to an activity of military

wrong of some kind. And, second, that its constrained by

the conditions of doing justice on Earth, which is that you

can get some real foundation for peaceful, just, ordered

co-existence out of it.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

For Michael Walzer, just war

theory is about making injustice a little less unjust. For Oliver

ODonovan its about righting wrong, achieving peace.

One thing they agree about is that its there to guide

conscience. Why is that necessary?

ODONOVAN:

That is because we have a

history thats been shaped by the moral preoccupations of

Christianity and those moral preoccupations have included

deep, conscientious concerns about whether its right to

go to warconscientious concerns that sometimes rest

with the princes, the policy-makers, the powers that dispose

of armies and sometimes rest with the people who have to

fight in them.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

It sounds a bit as if the

function of just war theory, then, is to make war easier

rather than to make peace more prevalent because its

function is to dissolve the conscientious scruples that

people have about war.

ODONOVAN:

It sometimes operates that

way and it sometimes reinforces them. As with all moral

theories, its aim is to bring you to the point when you can

make a discrimination and you can ask about this case.

There are wrong scruples, but there are equally good

scruples, and there are moments at which you have to say,

No, I cant go down that route.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Without just war theory,

conscience is a hostage to tyrants. Nowadays, we surely

have an alternative: international law. But that depends

on just war theory, doesnt it? Vaughan Lowe, Chichele

Professor of Public International Law and Fellow of All Souls.

LOWE:

It has emerged from that,

theres not the slightest doubt, and if you go back to the

early texts on international law, in the fifteenth and

sixteenth century, that is exactly what they are about. They

are concerned with the treatment of ambassadors and just

wars and the rightness of the conduct of war. The

principles in the UN Charter and everything else are all that

is necessary for the legal system to operate. But the people

who use the system, the states that make the system of

international law, are obviously going to be guided by

political and moral thoughts, and they mould international

law in order to serve the political and moral objectives

which they think are right.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

In practice, we have heard

political leaders and government spokesmen use the

rhetoric of just war and particularly use the phrase just

cause. Why do they do that?

LOWE:

I think the general

population is quite rightly concerned not simply with the

question whether its lawful or not, but whether its right.

And its certainly not the case that every lawful action is

morally defensible. And I think thats what theyre trying to

get at when they talk about just war. Theyre saying more

than that its technically lawful. Theyre saying its a good

idea. And I think that people think that answering the legal

question excuses them from answering the moral question

and that they think its enough to concentrate on that.

And I absolutely agreethe ultimately critical issue is the

moral one: is it justified to use force or not?

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Vaughan Lowes

professorship at Oxford is named after Archbishop Chichele

who, in Shakespeares Henry V, drew up the documents

justifying the kings campaign against Francethe original

dodgy dossier.

It seems that in todays world, as in medival times, we

cant do without a theory of just war. But the just war

theory weve inherited grew out of peculiarly Christian

thinking, whereas ours is a culturally plural world. Consensus

depends on finding values that mutually wary civilisations

can share.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, author of Just War against Terror,

teaches ethics at the University of Chicago. Hers is one of

the most respected academic voices in defence of the

justice of Americas present wars. Does she think just war

theory is essentially Christian?

ELSHTAIN:

The just war tradition

historically emerged as an obligation of Christian caritas or

neighbour love and included the use of force in order to

spare the innocent. So it seems to me that theres a way in

which this obligation of caritas is now talked about as a

duty to protect or attempt to preserve life that has been

wantonly destroyed.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

But isnt there also an Islamic

tradition of just war which one could appeal to equally well

perhaps?

ELSHTAIN:

Certainly in its inception

within the Islamic tradition, the notion of a war to extend

the boundaries of Islam was, in fact, a righteous or a

justifiable thing to do. Now, I know that historically in the

Islamic tradition various schools of legal thought worked to

modify that, but that is an issue of course thats of some

exigent concern for us because of the way in which Islamist

radicals have picked up on aspects of that earlier tradition

and are arguing, I think quite illegitimately, that they are

representing the true voice of Islam on these matters.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

The potential for conflict is

clearly there. Thats why we need a just war theory that

transcends cultural boundaries. Especially, we need one

on which Muslims and Christians can unite. So how do we

deal with the historic differences Jean Bethke Elshtain

points out? Sohail Hashmi, a professor of international

relations at Mount Holyoke College, specialises in the study

of the Islamic ethics of war.

HASHMI:

When were talking about

jihad as an expansionist war, this is not something that is

unambiguously embraced by the basic sources of Islamic

ethicsthe Koran and the hdith of the Prophet. The world

has changed dramatically, and thats why this idea of

expansionist jihad or expansionist war is so problematic to

modern Muslimsthe vast majority of whom, I would say,

have at this point rejected the idea that jihad can properly

be interpreted as a war to expand the hold of Islamic law.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Although in Islam and the

West just war theory developed from different starting-

points, the traditions converge. Thats thanks to the

pressures of history and values of natural law and classical

philosophy which are part of the common heritage of Islam

and the West. We have to face the fact, though, that

there are important constituencies outside the consensus.

For some Muslims, jihad is more than just, its holy. And

Christianity doesnt have a concept of holy war, does it?

Oliver ODonovan.

ODONOVAN:

Can war be holy? No or

maybe I should say, yes! [laughter] That is, the holy war is a

paradigm within the Old Testament, and one of the points

at which the Christian self-definition distinguishes itself

because the role of Israel in the history of Gods dealings

with humanity is, as it were, completenot irrelevant but

completed.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Were talking about the

biblical Israel?

ODONOVAN:

The biblical Israel. Yes, thats

right. And then holy war becomes an anachronism to think

of. So the Christian answer is, I suppose, yes there could be

a holy war and no there cant be holy war.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

So from the perspective of

Christian theology you cant have genuine Christian holy

wars, but you could have them in the biblical Israel. And

you can have them in Islam. This is important because if

you think your war is holy, you can ignore just war

constraints. Innocence vanishes. No one is a non-

combatant. On the other side, there are only enemies.

Can Sohail Hashmi, who is a Muslim, reconcile Islamic and

Western traditions on this point?

HASHMI:

I make the distinction

between holy war and jihad because no matter how

exalted the ends, the means must always be restricted. So

jihad can never be a war of unlimited ends or unlimited

means.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

I suppose I understand holy

war to mean a war which confers spiritual rewards on those

who take part in it, its actually a meritorious act which

helps you get to heaven. Is that how a Muslim would

ordinarily understand jihad?

HASHMI:

Well, certainly many Muslims

would. But if a fighter, a Muslim mujahed, one who is

waging jihad, goes to war for perfectly sound and

legitimate reasons and yet pursues his jihad in illegitimate

waysfor example, by killing innocent peoplethen that

fighter can no longer be considered a mujahed, he cannot

be considered as waging jihad.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

There is a significant overlap,

then, in mainstream Western and Islamic thinking. Even so,

having common principles of just war doesnt mean we

can agree about whether particular wars conform to those

principles. We havent got an agreed arbiter. What we

have got are the United Nations and the United States. The

first has legal standing, the second real power. Does Jean

Bethke Elshtain, the professor of ethics, think either has

enough moral authority to pronounce on whether wars are

just?

ELSHTAIN:

As far as the United Nations

and its status is concerned, alas its track record in this

regard is not particularly good. That may, in fact, place an

even larger burden on some of its member states who are

themselves committed to the very rights that are being

systematically violated somewhere in the world to perhaps

assume some special responsibility in order to prevent

egregious systematic and continuing abuses.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Well, this could be a

Jesuitical strategy to persuade us that you could equally

well dispense with a doctrine of just war and defend

American policy on grounds of realism.

ELSHTAIN:

If we simply advance the

notion that considerations of realpolitik, of military necessity

must dominate, that thats the only honest and credible

way to do it and we should have done with all this

nonsense about ethics and justice and human rightsthen

what one will get, rather than just war or an attempt at

advancing justice through use of force, you will just have

war.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

That warning is salutary. To

heed it, we need a just-war doctrine that addresses threats

to peace St. Augustine never thought of. The multiplying

terror; the proliferating weapons; the ever-more exigent

humanitarian horrorsall these might seem to demand

pre-emption. But no right to launch pre-emptive war exists

in traditional theorywhich means its hard to

accommodate in international law. Lord Hannay was

British Ambassador to the United Nations during the first Gulf

War, and now serves on Kofi Annans High Level Panel on

Threats, Challenges and Change.

HANNAY:

This is a very difficult one,

but I do start from the point of analysis that the world has

changed as a result of the willingness of terrorists to use

suicide bombing methodsi.e. methods which make

deterrents completely pointless or inoperableand also

the risk, though it hasnt yet gone further than that except

in the case of the sect in Japan, that they will get their

hands on some chemical, biological or nuclear or

radiological weapon and deploy it against innocent

civilians. This is a measurable risk. Now does it change all

the rules? I dont think it changes all the rules, but I think it

does make you look rather carefully at some of the rules.

Then it leads you on, of course, then to the issue of pre-

emption. If you look at the United Nations Charter, drawn

up in 1945, its perfectly clear that the founding fathers

envisaged the possibility of pre-emption because they talk

about action to deal with a threat to international peace

and security. Well, thats pre-emption in my understanding

of the English language.

RIFKIND:

It seems to me that both for

reasons of practicality and reasons of principle, a doctrine

of pre-emption should not exist.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former

Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence.

RIFKIND:

Firstly, if we are to see as a

new principle of international law that pre-emptive action is

justified, then that cannot just be a right that applies to the

United States. It must be a right which is available to every

single international state, and therefore it would become a

very unstable world with individual countries having the

right to determine when they believe the doctrine of pre-

emption ought to be invoked. The second point about a

doctrine of pre-emption, which is equally important, is that

if there are exceptional circumstances when a country

believes that it is so likely to be attacked or have its rights

severely damaged by another state as to justify pre-

emptive action, then the evidence on which it takes such a

decision must be so clear, so unmistakeable, that that

information can be made available to the wider

international community to explain why you took such

action in the first place. Now that is the significance of the

controversy about WMD: the failure to find them and the

manifest failings in the intelligence that has now become

clear demonstrates the danger of having such a doctrine

in the first place.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Between them, Malcolm

Rifkind and David Hannay have comparable experience,

congruent qualifications and unanswerable authority; but

they cant agree on the case for pre-emption. The

debates echoed in real controversies over policy and

grand strategy in Washington. Can Vaughan Lowe, our

international lawyer, arbitrate?

LOWE:

It is an interesting question

because the United States National Security Strategy in

2002 did suggest that the United States would take pre-

emptive action even before threats were imminent. But I

think that a more elastic right of self-defence meets the

need that is addressed by the claim to pre-emptive force in

the American strategy.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Although isnt pre-emption

an illogical doctrine anyway because if you have one side

that has the right to launch a pre-emptive war, then that in

itself becomes a threat to the other side who then have a

right of pre-emption of their own?

LOWE:

Well, absolutely right! It

always troubled me, as I watched the B52s flying over my

house, that the British government hadnt explained that

those B52s were legitimate military targets which could be

brought down over Oxford by the Iraqi military if they chose

to do so!

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

So far nothing in just war

theory seems able to deliver the justice we demand. But

one theme thats always been there, and has always

commanded wide assent is the doctrine of last resort: the

obligation to use war only when other remedies fail. This is,

in a sense, the opposite of pre-emption. If pre-emption is

frayed, could last resort be a strong enough strand to cling

to? Lord Hannay recalls just how much of a part it played

in the decision to launch the First Gulf War.

HANNAY:

We did address the last

resort argument in 1990 and 91. I remember quite clearly,

because the main opposition to going to war at the time

we went to war then was a school of thoughtstrangely

enough, I suspect most of them would not stick to it now

who said, We must give sanctions longer to work. And

we pointed out why it was that the time scale in which

sanctions were likely to work was too long to enable

there to be something worth saving by the end of it. There

wouldnt have been any Kuwaitis or any Kuwait there to

save by the time it was over because of the demographic

activities of the Iraqis and all the other viciousness which

they were unleashing.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Last resort licences delay

and costs lives. When the world faces massacressuch as

those in Rwanda in 1994the doctrine of last resort can be

more of a hindrance to justice than a help. The

philosopher, Michael Walzer.

WALZER:

Last resort is a metaphysical

term. You never reach lastness, theres always something

you could do. If there is a massacre going on in Rwanda,

the crucial thing is to stop it. As we saw, there were lots of

things to door to pretend to doin the face of the

Rwandan massacre, but the use of force was, I think, the

just response; and just because if we were interested in

stopping the murders, there was no alternative.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

And just to make this clear in

a concrete case; in the case of the Iraq War you do think

thats an instance of a war initiated before wed got to the

point where we could reasonably say it was unavoidable?

WALZER:

Right. We were successfully

containing Saddams regime. We now know how

successfully!

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

We need the doctrine of last

resort when we face a situation like that of Iraq. And we

need to be able to shelve it to save lives from slaughter.

Just war theory is riven with contradictions. Even the

principle at stake in humanitarian emergencies, like that in

Kosovo in the late 1990s, is fraught with problems. Sir

Malcolm Rifkind.

RIFKIND:

What Mr. Blair and people

like him have added to this debate is the argument that

somehow there is a moral obligation to intervene to

prevent injustice and that sometimes legitimises a war that

would not otherwise be contemplated. And that, I think,

opens up a whole new dimension where I for one am very

uncomfortable with the claims that are being made by

some of the protagonists.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Why are you uncomfortable

with that because surely its consistent with what most

people would say is a basic principle of justice, which is the

defence of the weak against oppression by the strong to

intervene?

RIFKIND:

If one could always be

satisfied that these were indeed objective criteria

objectively being applied, then there might be a case that

could be made. If you create a war by your own

discretion, then you sometimes create more problems for

the people youre trying to help or the issue youre trying to

resolve than if that war had never taken place. For

example, in the case of Kosovo the ethnic cleansing that

was supposed to be what the argument was all about,

most of that ethnic cleansing happened after the war had

begun.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

To do nothing might be an

even greater injustice. Malcolm Rifkinds logic would leave

everyone to get on with their own massacres. But he does

have a point. Every time we intervene to save the victims

of one massacre, we commit an injustice against others we

ignore. All too often, redemption from massacre is a

pretext rather than a project. Where it did apply, in

Rwanda, the world failed to act; where it didnt apply, in

the Iraq of 2003, Britain and America invaded. Five

hundred years ago, monarchs delayed or halted wars

while theologians pronounced on their justice. Now we do

much the same, deferring action in Darfur while our sages

debate.

Whether or not you intervene for humanitarian reasons, you

cant avoid problems caused by your own forces once

conflict is joined. Michael Roses job in the British Army, and

as Commander of the United Nations Protection Force in

Bosnia, was to sort out the moral muddle.

ROSE:

If you stray across a

particular line, you would have been better not going to

war in the first place if youre going to start carrying out

inhuman acts and behave in an uncivilised way yourself.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

In the Kosovo conflict, I had

the impression that a lot of quite innocent Serbs who had

nothing to do with the conflict were being tyrannised by

the bombing of Serbia.

ROSE:

They most certainly were,

and I think in a way the NATO forces ran out of what I call

legitimate military targets and started to go for ones which

were less easy to justify. The moral issues that are more

difficult to define, I think, are in peacekeeping and post-

conflict situations where youre supposed to be standing on

high moral ground, youre supposed to be making the

world a better place and making other peoples lives

better, but often youre being forced, through outside

pressure or from your own reactions, to do things which are

not helpful to your ultimate goals.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

Failures in the conduct of

war vitiate the justice of the noblest cause. Unjust peace-

keeping can undo just war. But even if we could avoid

those failures, wed still have to solve the problem of

justifying intervention in some humanitarian emergencies

and not others. Michael Walzer has devoted thirty years to

thinking about this. Whats his solution?

WALZER:

The crucial just cause of

intervention has to be this is a phrase from the law books

of the nineteenth century crimes that shock the

conscience of humankind.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

But how do you calibrate

that?

WALZER:

You mean, how many

murders make a massacre? I dont know.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

How can we find

formulations of just war theory which are proof against

these deficiencies?

WALZER:

There is no such thing. The

same thing is true for all theories of politics and morality.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

But in that case, if we had a

just war theory, it wouldnt bring us peace.

WALZER:

No. It might persuade some

people to limit the occasions on which they fight and to

limit the means they use once they are fighting. Thats the

goal of the theory.

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

As far as we can tell, wars

are as frequent and evil as ever. The just war theory weve

got doesnt work. Politicians can abuse it, discarding

justifications like playing-cards, claiming the outcome

makes everything all right. Field Marshal Lord Bramall has

heard them do it.

BRAMALL:

Justice is an accolade you

only win as a result of what youve done being successful,

the end justifying the means, your conduct being all right,

as best it could be. And when all those things click into

place, you then preen yourself and say, Well, that was a

just war if ever there was one!

FERNNDEZ-ARMESTO:

What can we do? We

might revert to realpolitik, and perpetuate its dangers and

depravities. Or we might shelve justice and admit that we

fight wars because we have to, not because we ought to.

The terrorists would be happy with that: necessity hath no

law; it bites through moral reins.

Or we might try revising the theory. Idealistically-inspired

improvements can make things worse. Maybe just war

theory has been so unsatisfactory, for so long, precisely

because it cant be improved. But it seems too

preoccupied with traditions and texts, instead of satisfying

the passions of justicehunger for equality, thirst for

retribution. Justice is tough. It may carry a cost: more wars

rather than fewer, while we cowe the tyrants and

aggressors. But now that just war is back in political

discourse, we should be clamouring to get justice back,

too.

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