The Prism of Just War

Asian and Western Perspectives on the Legitimate Use of Military Force

Howard M. Hensel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754675105
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317019084
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Through a careful examination of religious and philosophical literature, the contributors to the volume analyze, compare and assess diverse Western, Islamic, Hindu and East Asian perspectives concerning the appropriate criteria that should govern the decision to resort to the use of armed force and, once that decision is made, what constraints should govern the actual conduct of military operations. In doing so, the volume promotes a better understanding of the various ways in which diverse peoples and societies within the global community approach the question of what constitutes the legitimate use of military force as an instrument of policy in the resolution of conflicts.

PART I
The Western Just War Tradition

Chapter 1
The Greco-Roman Roots of the Western Just War Tradition

Gregory A. Raymond

When one stands to gain, scruples are out of place.

Odysseus

I’d rather have defeat with fair means than success with foul.

Neoptolemus

Justice and Statecraft

According to one of the legends about the Trojan War, a Greek (Achaian) fleet sailing to avenge the abduction of Queen Helen from Sparta stopped briefly en route to offer sacrifice on the isle of Chrysè. Philoctetes, a master archer and member of the landing party, sustained a snakebite while ashore, causing a wound so putrid that the other Greeks abandoned him on the nearby island of Lemnos.1 Forced to live alone in a desolate cave, Philoctetes suffered over the years as much from the lack of human companionship as he did from his festering wound.

Meanwhile, the Greeks who had sailed on to Troy floundered militarily. None of their assaults breeched the city’s walls. Eventually they learned from an oracle that victory would be impossible without the miraculous bow given to Philoctetes years earlier by Heracles. As told by the playwright Sophocles, Odysseus, the king of Ithaca and one of the commanders responsible for leaving Philoctetes behind, responded to the prophecy by returning to Lemnos with some men in order to retrieve the bow. Realizing that years of loneliness would have fueled Philoctetes’ hatred for those who had marooned him, Odysseus devised a strategy to obtain the bow by deceit. His plan called for the young Neoptolemus to make contact with Philoctetes and exploit the trust that would arise once he discovered that Neoptolemus was the son of Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors. Neoptolemus understood the importance of the bow for his comrades fighting at Troy, and he craved the glory that would come if he succeeded in his mission, yet he remained troubled by the plan’s treachery. “I know that you are not built to utter lies, to plan another’s harm,” counseled Odysseus. “But—there is something sweet about success. So dare it! We will shine as honest men another time.”2

Embedded within Sophocles’ tale of adversity and intrigue are timeless questions about ethical choice that have implications for the conduct of foreign policy. Whereas Odysseus cites expediency as the primary criterion for making crucial decisions, Neoptolemus expresses a concern for justice. In the practice of statecraft, considerations of expediency often come into conflict with considerations of justice. Perhaps nowhere is this more striking than in decisions about when to wage war and how it should be conducted. In contrast to latter-day Odysseans who contend that scruples are out of place in warfare, those belonging to the just war tradition in Western civilization insist that there are right and wrong uses of armed force. As they see it, force acquires its moral character from how it is justified and exercised.

The Western Just War Tradition

Most scholars trace the origins of the just war tradition in the West to the ethical theories of early Christian theologians, notably Saints Ambrose (circa 339–397 CE) and Augustine (354–430 CE). Building on their foundation, a welter of canonists, philosophers, and publicists over the succeeding centuries crafted two sets of rules about warfare: jus ad bellum (the justice of war) and jus in bello (justice in war).3 The former set standards for determining when it was just to wage war. The latter described how to fight a just war in a morally permissible way. Viewing military force as a tool that can work for good, classical just war theory did not commence with a presumption against war; the morality or immorality of war hinged on when and how it was used by responsible political authority to protect a peaceful, rightly ordered community.4

Although early Christian theologians made important contributions to the development of just war theory, older currents of thought also shaped Western attitudes about when and how to use military force. Long before Church fathers crafted a doctrine of bellum justum to reconcile the prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount with the use of military force to safeguard peaceful, rightly ordered political communities,5 various polities in the ancient Mediterranean world had adopted constraints on warfare. Indeed, contrary to those who have claimed that war among these states was conducted without restraint,6 informal, socially sanctioned rules governing interstate relations can be traced back to the late Bronze Age. Archeologists, for instance, have found nearly 400 cuneiform tablets in Amarna, a city on the east bank of the Nile River constructed by Amenhotep IV (reign, 1367–1350 BCE, later known as Akhenaten) to replace Thebes as Egypt’s capital. They reveal that polities throughout the eastern Mediterranean had a code of international conduct known by the Akkadian term parsu.7 According to the norms of this code, the so-called Great Kings of Egypt and neighboring empires were members of an extended family: they possessed rights and duties based on rank, they followed elaborate protocol when interacting, and they held common expectations about what constituted proper behavior. When the Great Kings quarreled, they used the idiom of prevailing norms to articulate their positions on the scope of each state’s entitlements, the extent of its obligations, and the range of its jurisdiction.

Based on research into the workings of other ancient multistate systems, it appears that international interaction as depicted on the Amarna tablets was not unique to this time period or geographic region. All independent political entities with regular intercourse have developed conventions defining appropriate behavior for certain situations, including the practice of warfare. Whether these conventions took the form of tacit understandings, informal assurances, or written agreements, they guided state behavior by delineating when deadly force was legitimate, how it should be used, and against whom it could be applied. As Hedley Bull summarizes the historical record, “In any actual hostilities to which we can give the name ‘war,’ norms or rules, whether legal or otherwise, invariably play a part.”8 Adam Watson concurs: “No system has existed without rules and conventions of some kind, and it is difficult to see how one could.”9 Every social system creates rules, adds Robert Gilpin. “This is as true for international systems as for domestic systems.”10

Despite the tendency of militarized conflict among ancient states to be constrained by common codes of warfare, these limitations did not necessarily arise out of a concern with justice or moral rightness. Limitations on armed force often grow out of expediency or instrumental prudence rather than from moral principles.11 Sometimes these fragile rules of prudence reflect convention equilibria, where autonomous, self-regarding actors with common aversions follow a code of behavior because they cannot better their positions by behaving differently. Rules may also originate around what Thomas Schelling calls “focal points;” that is, simple, qualitatively prominent areas of converging expectations.12 Although expediency and morality occasionally recommend the same conduct, the grounds for their injunctions differ: the former stem from considerations of utility, where calculations of advantage and liability trump everything else; the latter, from obligations binding on anyone similarly situated, regardless of his or her egoistic self-interest.

Documentary evidence on those moral norms that restrained warfare in the Mediterranean world during the late Bronze Age is sparse. Only fragments of the historical record survive, with most of the information suggesting that instrumental prudence rather than a nascent just war doctrine led to limitations on the use of force.13 Evidence on moral restraints in the first millennium BCE is more abundant, particularly among the states scattered along the eastern Mediterranean littoral. Jewish religious thought, for example, drew a distinction between obligatory war (mitzvah), which God commanded for the defense of Israel, and permitted war (reshut), which was fought at the discretion of a ruler. Yet, as Michael Walzer observes, this obligatory/permitted dichotomy “does not translate into just/unjust.”14 Whereas various restrictions were imposed on permitted war,15 scant attention was given to the concept of an unjust, prohibited war.

The code of conduct that encouraged Egypt and the Levantine states to place limited restraints on the use of force grew out of a diplomatic culture that had originated in Mesopotamia, where some two-dozen Sumerian city-states had vied with one another for control over resources on the flood plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. A second diplomatic culture influencing the ancient Mediterranean arose in Greece and was added by the Romans to their own indigenous practices of statecraft.16 Beyond imposing constraints on warfare, this diplomatic culture also developed a rudimentary conception of just war. Indeed, Greek and Roman assertions about the role of justice (dikê/justitia) in statecraft foreshadow many of the moral arguments articulated by Ambrose, Augustine, and subsequent just war theorists. The aim of this chapter is to examine the Greco-Roman roots of the Western just war tradition, focusing on the period extending from the Lyric Age to the demise of the Roman Republic.17 Although neither the Greeks nor the Romans spoke with a single voice on the topics of jus ad bellum or jus in bello, their discourse was informed by a common stock of ideas and convictions. To explore these precursors to later just war theorizing, we shall begin by investigating Greco-Roman beliefs about when it is morally right to initiate war, and then turn to how they thought a just war should be fought once it had begun.

Jus ad Bellum

Medieval and modern just war theorists in the West tend to list various preconditions that they believe must exist in order for the use of armed force to be just. Just cause, right intention, legitimate authority, and last resort were among those discussed centuries earlier by ancient Greeks and Romans. Let us briefly examine their interpretation of these preconditions.

Just Cause

According to Western just war theorists, a state contemplating the use of military force must have a morally good reason. Among Greeks and Romans, self-defense frequently was cited as a just cause for using military force. Cicero, the first Western writer to make a systematic effort to articulate a theory of just war, insisted that violence was justifiable “in order to repel violence.” “If our lives are endangered by enemies,” he argued, “any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right.”18 Helping friends and allies who were the victims of aggression was closely associated with self-defense. For Cicero, neglecting to defend others whom one ought to protect was an injustice.19

Occasionally other grounds were considered sufficient to proclaim a just cause for war. Reneging on treaties, deserting allies, violating the sanctity of ambassadors, desecrating religious sites, infringing on neighboring territory, breaching neutrality, and refusing requests for the extradition of the perpetrators of heinous crimes were among the further grounds that Greek and Roman officials asserted were just for declaring war.20

Right Intention

In addition to having a just cause, Western just war the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• PART I THE WESTERN JUST WAR TRADITION
• PART II THE CONCEPT OF JUST WAR IN SOUTHWEST AND SOUTH ASIAN THOUGHT
• PART III THE CONCEPT OF JUST WAR IN EAST ASIAN THOUGHT
• Conclusion
• Index