The only just war is total war. I’ll defend this proposition by defining just
war and total war.
Augustine (354-430) was the first to formulate the just war theory. It was refined by Thomas Aquinas and
Francisco de Vitoria and developed into its present
form by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), the father of
international law. The presumption of
the just war theory is against the use of military force. It erects an obstacle of moral testing to
prevent an unjust resort to war:
- The war must be a last resort.
- The cause itself must be just, aimed at deterring or
repelling aggression, or righting a grievous wrong. States cannot participate in aggressive
wars, only in wars of self-defense.
- The war must be undertaken by legitimate authority. In
the case of the United States, this would mean that there must be no compromising of
our constitutional process.
- There must be right intention, such as defending
against great injury.
- There must be probability of success in achieving the
purpose.
- There must be proportionality of goals and means. Goals must be commensurate with the
probable costs of war, and the means employed must be commensurate with
the goals.
- As much as possible, the immunity of noncombatants must
be respected.
Some of the criteria, such as last
resort, probability of success, and proportionate means, depend on the
prudential judgment that resides with our elected officials. This begs the question as to whether we can
place reasonable trust in the prudential judgment of our leaders.
General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famously stated that “war is
hell.” But under notions of the just
war, war still remains a rule-governed activity, a moral world of permissions
and prohibitions. In looking at wars throughout
history, it is clear that the idea that war can be moral is mask for politics
or religion. The Old Testament describes
with bloodthirsty relish a succession of massacres, deceptions, trickeries, and
assassinations that were considered praiseworthy as they forwarded the purposes
of God. The utilitarianism of the
fire-bombing of Dresden and the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima that killed hundreds of thousands of non-combatants contradicted just
war principles. And
why not? If the ends are
justified, then the means must be justified.
The distinction between means and ends is an illusion. Military planners for the invasion of Japan were anticipating casualty rates of 100 percent for many units and
heavy artillery emplacements and mazes of tunnels infested Tokyo Bay’s harbor. While I support
Truman’s decision to save countless Japanese and American lives by dropping the
atomic bombs, would my perspective be different if the Japanese had dropped
atomic bombs over Boston and Miami in 1945? Does the morality of
the act ultimately reside with the victor?
Nor can I reconcile modern-day theories of collective defense,
intervention, and pre-emptive war with the just war. International law allows for preemptive
strikes only in the overwhelming likelihood of an imminent attack from the
adversary. Thus, decision-makers must
move from facts about capabilities to perceptions of intentions. Is this subjectivity a sufficient moral basis
for committing troops to war? Finally,
has the just war theory stopped a single war?
If, as I believe, the answer is no, what is the point of even theorizing
about the morality of conflict, since the rationale for war must be
elsewhere. The American intervention
into Viet Nam and the second Iraqi war, the German attack on Belgium in 1914,
the Japanese attack on China, and the Russian invasion of Finland and Hungry
failed some or all of the just war standards.
And it’s clear to me that there is not a single war executed by the United States in the last two hundred years that has met all conditions of the
criteria. In summary, I would say that
any appeals to classical just war theories are ultimately incoherent and
useless as a strategic doctrine.
For this reason, I want to shift the
word “just” from meaning “moral” to meaning “defensible.” On what general grounds should the United States engage in warfare? America’s military failures are more often a failure of imagination rather than
resources. The evidence of a threat on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and Manhattan in 2001 was plainly evident to our leaders—in hindsight. I don’t think it is reasonable that we can
anticipate all threats. But an offensive
doctrine that is fifty percent accurate is a success whereas a defensive
doctrine that is fifty percent accurate is an unacceptable failure. The threats of tomorrow will require more
than squadrons of missile-armed jet fighters and flocks of Bomarc,
Hawk and Nike-Hercules ground-to-air and intercontinental Titans rising from
blast-hardened pits or nuclear submarines gliding under the pole. What will be needed is a quantum leap in
conceptualizing on the grounds for deploying military resources throughout the
world. The polarization of power from
the Cold War has now mutated into a diffusion of power, in which illegitimate
powers are sometimes more power than the legitimate states within which they
reside. So, by total war, I do not mean
that we should assume that we can either have all out peace or all out war. This would lead to a Maginot
Line rigidity that would prepares us for yesterday’s wars. The 1950s doctrine of Mutually Assured
Destruction, while ominous in its implications, created an essentially stable
bi-polar world order that allowed for gradients of responses behind a shield of
massive retaliation. But even MAD
allowed for grades of response, as we see from Herman’s Khan’s escalation
ladder:
- Ostensible crisis
- Political, economic, and diplomatic gestures
- Congressional resolution of solemn declaration
- Hardening of positions—confrontation of wills
- Show of force
- Significant mobilization
- Legal harassment
- Harassing acts of violence
- Dramatic military confrontations
- Super-ready status
- Conventional war-like acts
- Declaration of limited conventional war
- Barely nuclear war
- Nuclear ultimatums
- Limited evacuation (~20%)
- Spectacular demonstration of force
- Justifiable counterforce attack
- Local nuclear war - exemplary
- Declaration of limited nuclear war
- Local nuclear war—military
- Unusual, provocative and significant countermeasures
- Evacuation (~70$)
- Demonstration attack on zone of interior
- Exemplary attack on military
- Exemplary attack against property
- Exemplary attack on population
- Complete evaluation (~95%)
- Reciprocal reprisals
- Formal; declaration of war
- Force reduction salvo
- Slow-motion counterforce war
- Constrained disarming attack
- Counterforce-with-avoidance attack
- Slow-motion counter value war
- Counter value salvo
- Spasm war
- Some other kind of general war
The Manichean conflicts of a half
century ago, ringing clashes between good and evil with no doubt about the identity
and nature of the aggressors, has now given way to ambiguity and paradox. The ambiguity is that enemies are no longer
states and the paradox is that the elimination of those enemies will only
create more enemies. Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan stated that man in a state
of nature is a state of war. ”In the
nature of man, we find three principle causes of quarrel. First, competition;
secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory.”
To that we must now add the fanaticism that arises not from what we have
done but because we are—liberal constitutional democracies. War is fundamentally a psychological act,
with nations acting much as individuals do under conditions of stress or
delusion. Dr. Heinz Kohut
wrote that nations can have a group sense just as individuals have an individual
self. When this group loses it self-esteem, it will compensate for feelings of
insecurity by establishing a grandiose self, based on mythological belief of
primitive greatness. Thus, it is not
economic disparities or institutional collapse that leads to war. Rather, it is a mutual psychosis that finds
its cure in mass death. Henry
Kissinger, in A World Restored, saw
war as a consequence of conflict
between legitimate and revolutionary states.
For him “a
legitimate state ensured limited objectives, generally through diplomacy, and
accepted as axiomatic the survival or an adversary. A revolutionary state based it policies on
ideological assumptions, pursued unlimited objectives, welcomed war, and
threatened the survival of other states within the system.” A doctrine of a war of total stakes may have
unnecessarily prolonged WWII by compelling the Reichwehr to fight to the bitter end. The task of diplomacy is to make clear
that we do not require the unconditional
surrender of any enemy but rather create a framework for diplomacy in
which the which the question of national
survival is not at stake.
The concept that underlies the whole of
Prussia’s Carl von Clauswitz’s theory of the nature
of war was that “war is an act of social life.”
It is not an act performed just be military men, but an expression of
the conflict of ideas, objectives, and ways of life of an entire society in
collision with another society. War is
not therefore a failure of diplomacy, but the extension of diplomacy—“war by
other means.” In advocating total war,
I do not mean the means should be total—all weapons—or the goals should be
total—the utter defeat of the enemy. I
believe that if there is a national emergency that rises to the level where
Congress must authorize war, the execution of that war will not be successful
unless it is a war by total populations against total populations. There will always be people who are apathetic
or disloyal. But there must be a broad
consensus that such action is warranted, of, at least, I would say, seventy
percent or higher. I am fully aware that
foolish leaders have launched foolish wars with the cheers of the war-mad
crowds ringing in their ears, so this approach is no guarantee that leaders
will act with reservation and prudence.
But it does introduce a higher hurdle than the moralistic just war
doctrine. Our leaders must make the
case—communicate the facts, options, risks, goals, and consequences so that
citizens can make an informed decision.
The merit of a draft is that it forced political accountability. The unfairness of the draft diluted that
accountability, but the principle is still valid. The prospect of sons and daughters of CEOs
and Senators fighting and dying will sharpens the mind to the point that they
will ask the right questions and get all the facts they need to support that
decision. A total war, in the sense that
there is total participation, will bring total results—not total victor or total
defeat—but political results in harmony with the ideals of America that are
necessary for creating the preconditions for stability and security. Thus, I would favor a universal draft in
times of national emergency. By
universal, I mean that all non-high school people irrespective or age, sex, or position are subject to conscription. I’m not saying that soccer moms should be
carrying M-16s and nor am I in favor of ending the exemptions from military
service for conscious objectors. But
they would all surrender their freedom to support national war policy in some
way. And this in no wise implies an
abridgement of the rules of law and constitutional protections under the Bill
of Rights. I would consider, for example,
the deportation of Japanese Americans during World II as a perversion of this
doctrine. The advantage of this is that
it eliminates the need to put the burden of war on the backs of a small group
of martyrs and the rewards of war to an even smaller group of profiteers by
spreading the pain through all classes of society. If the broad mass of America cannot support a military goal, that goal is on the face of it unwise
and will most likely fail.
