How Can a War be Just?
By Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin

Beginning on Monday, 17 May 2004, and continuing through the evening of Thursday, 20 May, a group of fewer than two dozen Arab and Western intellectuals met just outside the walls of the city of Valletta, on the Mediterranean island of Malta, in an attempt to find common ground amidst what has been called a worldwide “clash of civilizations.”  Sponsored by the Institute for American Values, based in New York City, the meetings—intended to launch a series of gatherings of the “Islam/West Council”—grew out of a dialogue that began in February 2002, when the Institute issued a document, signed by sixty American scholars and public intellectuals, entitled “What We're Fighting For: A Letter from America.”

Among the Western participants in Malta were such prominent authors and academics as Jean Bethke Elshtain, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago; James Davison Hunter, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies at the University of Virginia; James Turner Johnson, a professor of religion in the Graduate Department of Political Science at Rutgers University; Glenn Loury, the distinguished University Professor, Professor of Economics, and director of the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University; and Michael Novak, who holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute.  The Arab participants were an equally distinguished group of academics and writers hailing from Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Syria, and Tunisia.

The principal aim of the meetings in Malta was to explore whether such gatherings were feasible and could be helpful.  The initial discussions centered on what is called in the West “just war theory,” in an attempt to determine whether the two “sides” could find a common moral vocabulary in which to discuss divisive issues.  Unfortunately, the results were somewhat mixed.

The theory of “just war” has its roots in the thought of St. Augustine (d. A.D. 430), but is generally associated with the illustrious Dutch poet, classicist, historian, jurist, and theologian Hugo Grotius (d. 1645), who is often termed “the Father of International Law.”  The just war tradition condemns wars of aggression, whether they are launched for territorial expansion, national glory, to avenge past wrongs, or for any other non-defensive purpose.  A just war, says the theory, can be fought only by a legitimately constituted authority with responsibility for public order.  Freelance, opportunistic, and—excepting cases where defense of oneself or others is clearly involved—individual violence is never countenanced, and the primary moral justification for war is the protection of innocent persons from certain harm.

Moreover, a just war, even if legitimately launched for valid reasons, cannot deliberately target non-combatants.  Thus, for example, threatening or killing civilians in order to deter attack from others or for revenge (as is often done with hostages) is rejected by just war doctrine as morally wrong.  Also condemned in the disproportionate use of force.  The problem of the rebel Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, for example, could be definitively solved by simply dropping a hydrogen bomb on any city in which he has taken refuge.  But just war theory—consistent, in so extreme a case, with sheer normal human decency—would condemn such an action as grossly disproportionate and immoral.

On the surface, the doctrine of just war seems reasonable and unexceptional.  There have long been competing theories, however.  One view, often called realism, regards the application of moral principles and restraints to so transparently bad a thing as war as mere sentimentality, and, at least in principle or potentially, authorizes any and all means that will lead to victory.  But few, if any, feel entirely comfortable with such an approach.  Not altogether different from realism—in some minds—is the notion of “holy war” in which, under specific circumstances, God himself is seen as authorizing the use of force.  “Deus lo volt!” cried Pope Urban II in 1095, when he launched the First Crusade.  “God wills it!”  Some practitioners and theorists of “holy war” have believed that the declaration of such a war authorizes virtually any action, however extreme and destructive, to ensure victory for the holy cause. (The campaigns of Moses and Joshua, and the prophet Samuel’s instructions to King Saul, provide apparent justification for such an approach.  Osama bin Laden and his followers provide a contemporary example.)  Other thinkers—in the Muslim tradition of jihad, for example—have sought to limit and define what is permissible even within “holy war.”

The conversation in Malta bogged down, however, because the very term just war frightened, and perhaps even offended, the Arab participants.  Discussing the specific details of just war theory proved essentially impossible, at least in these first meetings, though the Arab intellectuals would very likely have agreed with all or most of the separate basic principles from which the general theory has been constructed.  They had seen too many would-be tyrants and overzealous jihadists claim “justice” for abhorrent acts, and this had plainly traumatized them to the point where they were deeply reluctant to apply the term just to any war at all.

The gulf between the United States and the Arab world was also illustrated in repeated claims, on the part of the Arabs, that it was hypocritical of Americans to speak of “just war” while the United States remains so deeply implicated, from their point of view, in Israeli oppression, injustice, and violence toward the Palestinians.  Surprisingly, the prison abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was not mentioned a single time during the discussions in Malta.  But the issue of Palestine continues to transfix and divide.

Nonetheless, talking is better than not talking.  As Sir Winston Churchill put it during a speech in Washington, in June 1954—in what surely has to rank as one of his less magnificently eloquent statements—“to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.”  The atmosphere on Malta was cordial, even friendly.  Several good personal relationships have emerged.  None of the Arab participants endorsed Osama bin Laden.  (Quite the contrary, in fact.)  And much remains to be discussed.  The topic of just war theory was by no means exhausted during the May meetings, and a tantalizing and vital second topic, broached toward the end of the gathering—“Is Islam compatible with democracy?”—remains yet to be examined.

Information about the Institute for American Values (including the text of “What We're Fighting For: A Letter from America,” various critical responses from intellectuals in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East, and a reply from Osama bin Laden) can be found on its Website, at http://www.americanvalues.org/index.html.

A good presentation of just war theory as it can be applied to the war on terrorism, written by a participant in the Malta meetings, is Jean Bethke Elshtain, Just War against Terror (New York: Basic Books, 2004).

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.