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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Right Principles, Wrong Application

by Tony M.

I must say that I am amazed at the notions sometimes ringing and dinging around in the heads of clerics, even those at the very top of the food chain.

Back in August, Pope Francis, upon being asked about waging war against ISIS, rightly mentioned the Catholic basis for just war theory: it is in principle morally correct to use force to defend against unjust aggression.

“In these cases where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” Pope Francis told reporters.

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Parolin also came out in favor of using force on ISIS. He also reiterated what has become what I call the “Vatican Diplomatique Trope” on waging war. As framed by Pope Francis in August:

“I underscore the verb 'stop.' I don't say 'to bomb' or 'make war,' (but) 'stop it,'” he said in response to the question, posed by CNA and EWTN News Rome bureau chief Alan Holdren.

And to extend Cardinal Parolin’s framing of the issue:

In paragraph 2309, the catechism lays out the “strict conditions” under which military force is a legitimate response for self-defense, and which constitute part of the Church’s “just war” doctrine:

- The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain;
- All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- There must be serious prospects of success;
- The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

Cardinal Parolin said that these conditions also correspond “to the legitimate defense of a State within its borders to protect its citizens and repel terrorists.”

“In occasion of a foreign intervention, it is necessary to seek out legitimacy through the organizations which the international community has given itself,” he said, clarifying that the role of the Holy See “is to remember these conditions, not to specify means to stop the aggressor.”
In his August 2014 comments,

Pope Francis also stressed the catechism’s point that the means of stopping violence must be evaluated and that the violence cannot be used as a pretext for other goals.

“To stop the unjust aggressor is licit,” he said, yet lamented that “many times under this excuse of stopping the unjust aggressor the powers have taken control of nations.”

“One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor,” the Pope said.

In his interview with La Croix, Cardinal Parolin said that “there is no justification for what happened” in Paris, and that a global mobilization of forces is needed in response.

“A mobilization of all means of security, of police forces and of information, to root out this evil of terrorism,” he said, and noted that this would also include spiritual resources, in order to provide “a positive response to evil.”

This response will come about through educating people on the importance of refuting hatred,
and offering answers to youth that leave home to join jihad activities.

How many ways can you “get it wrong” in just a few comments? It amazes me. Let me see if I can tackle some of them.

In paragraph 2309, the catechism lays out the “strict conditions” under which military force is a legitimate response for self-defense,

The 4 bullet point principles on just war are NOT to be characterized as “strict conditions for using military force as self-defense.” The first point makes it clear that they are about ALL just war, not just those of self-defense:

- The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain;

This clearly allows for the possibility of OTHER nations to involve themselves when a victim nation is attacked unjustly by an aggressor. There are not special rules for just wars where you are not doing self-defense but are doing other-defense of a victim neighbor. The standard just war rules are adequate.

“In occasion of a foreign intervention, it is necessary to seek out legitimacy through the organizations which the international community has given itself,”
“One single nation cannot judge how you stop this, how you stop an unjust aggressor,” the Pope said.

Well, yes, it is ideal to involve the international community, if you can. But NOTHING makes that an absolute moral imperative. And, where international bodies like the UN have chosen to make themselves nearly irrelevant by blocking vetos from nay-saying states who stand to lose (or even merely not to gain) prestige by an internationally approved war, nations have the legitimate authority to defend victim nations from unjust aggressors WITHOUT the UN. If my neighbor’s daughter is being raped, yes I should call the police. But I don’t have to wait for the police to take action, and if (as in Rotherham) the police refuse to act, I retain the moral right to stop a rape.

If we really had an international arrangement that corresponded to a unified, competent authority with the legitimacy and might of a super-state, then it might be correct to say that “one single nation cannot judge how you stop this”. Maybe. One presumes that a true super-state would, by its real existence, have the moral legitimacy and capacity to arrogate to itself alone certain uses of force in quelling unjust violence. BUT WE DON’T HAVE THAT. We have NEVER had that. The UN that we actually have is a far, far cry from any body that could exercise that kind of moral, authoritative constraint. Nor will we (God willing) any time soon have such a body. Nor should we (or the Vatican) push for the enactment of any such entity until the principle of subsidiarity is much more fully understood and exercised in the world.

clarifying that the role of the Holy See “is to remember these conditions, not to specify means to stop the aggressor.”

The Vatican’s professional diplomat corp, as well as the Church’s professional clerical core, seem to have a deep-seated revulsion for using force, SIMPLY – not only for “unjust violence”. As a consequence, they have for 5 decades pursued a course of “not specifying the means to stop the aggressor” in a special way: by not giving ANY kind of nod of approval to any kind of force that actually would stand a chance of stopping military aggressors. They seem to think that “stopping the aggressor” is some sort of notional category of action that can (always) subsist apart from violence on a military scale.

“I underscore the verb 'stop.' I don't say 'to bomb' or 'make war,' (but) 'stop it,'”

A couple months ago, I recalled that in spite of John Paul II being against the US going to war in Gulf War I, he was in favor of intervention in former Yugoslavia.

European countries and the United Nations have the duty and the right to intervene, to disarm those who want to kill…”.
“when all the options offered by diplomatic negotiations… have been carried out and, despite this, entire populations are on the point of succumbing to the blows of an unjust aggressor, states have no right to indifference any longer. It appears to be their duty to disarm this aggressor”.

So I looked up the references, and found to my dismay that he had the same Vatican Diplomatique Trope, (VDT for short):

The following year, in January 1994, John Paul II explained to the diplomats that “the Holy See does not cease to recall the principle of humanitarian intervention, that is not necessarily a military intervention, but every other kind of action aimed at “disarming” the aggressor”.

These are the four main characteristics of humanitarian intervention that we learn from John Paul II’s speeches. Firstly, such an intervention did not necessarily mean military action. Secondly, it was a defensive operation, that was aimed at protecting populations and humanitarian aids, as well as disarming the aggressor. Thirdly, even if the intervention turned to military action, it must not cause more ills than those provoked by the war in progress. Lastly, the intervention would have to be carried out by the UN, which is the organization that represents all nations of the world.

And

Both during the war in the Balkans and during the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the NATO intervened, instead of the United Nations, through bomb attacks from the sky; military actions that resulted in more civilian victims. In 1999, when the bombs started falling, Pope John Paul II did not hesitate in condemning the violence of the Serbs against the Kosovans as much as the violence of the Americans against the Serbs: “in the face of violence, more violence is never a sustainable way out of a crisis”

What, I ask you, can a human being possibly mean by the words “not, primarily a military intervention but all forms of action aimed at disarming the aggressor” that actually has CONTENT?

Sure, there are economic and diplomatic sanctions. In the face of actual, hot war (as opposed to tensions and “confrontations” short of war) these have been proven, repeatedly, to be either entirely ineffectual, or require such strictures as result in the mass starvation of civilian populations before they have the desired “disarming” effect.

What else? This notional category of “stopping” the aggressor, but “not by war” represents a null set. The notion is empty. Some naïve simpleton might try to imagine something “short of war”, like police standing in lines of defense, but that is pure dreamery and hogwash: military aggressors would like nothing better than for a country to line up its police to be shot down all in one fell swoop rather than piecemeal in house-to-house action. And the trope that "in the face of violence, more violence can't solve your problem" is a stance against just war as such.

The empty notion springs from an irrational disgust of violence, as if violence as such represents a moral evil:

Recourse to the use of force is always a defeat for humanity. One cannot help but think of the eventual victims and the feelings of hatred that will inevitably arise. It makes one think of Pius XII's words on August 24, 1939: 'Nothing is lost with peace. All can be lost with war'."

Once war is engaged by one party (and it only takes one to start the violence), saying that the intervention of military force in order to stop unjust aggression is “a defeat for humanity” is just wrong. Dialogue is NOT always possible, if the other side closes up their ears and fires bullets and bombs at your words. Dialogue has the prefix “di”, which means 2. You cannot force someone to listen. When a bullet is headed for your head, that’s not the time to “di”, unless you just want to die. Dead people win few negotiations.

It also springs from a nutty notion of the art and place of negotiation. Words are great in a war of words. Don't be so stupid as to bring only words to a gunfight.

"Finally, all those responsible for national and international life must be reminded that the path of dialogue is always possible and that such a way can always lead to honorable solutions among the various parties,

Diplomacy, words, negotiations, cannot solve the riddle of an unjust aggressor who has concluded (sometimes rightly) that they can best achieve THEIR goals by violence. If their goals are, inherently, violent or unjust, words aren’t always capable of stopping them. Sometimes you can use words like this: “and we will call on the Americans to bomb you to smithereens”, but that to be backed up by an actual willingness to use the bombs, or those words are useless too.

In his August 2014 comments, Pope Francis also stressed the catechism’s point that the means of stopping violence must be evaluated and that the violence cannot be used as a pretext for other goals.

“To stop the unjust aggressor is licit,” he said, yet lamented that “many times under this excuse of stopping the unjust aggressor the powers have taken control of nations.”

OK, so how does that work again? The third point on the bullet list for just war theory was

"- There must be serious prospects of success;"

For George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq war, the application of this point was insistently taken to mean “how are we going to re-arrange the Middle East, or at least Iraq, so that we don’t have to come back here 5 or 10 years later and do this all over again?” That was the measure of “success” required. And yet in other communiqués, the Vatican Diplomatique Tropers (with their anti-military cohort in state departments around the world) make it clear that that very picture of taking control and of imposing on the defeated country an alignment of ways of doing business that YOU choose for them, violates that tenet of war that “violence cannot be used as a pretext for other goals.” Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Paging Joe Heller….

No. Violence and war can be used to impose sanctions and other constraints on the loser as to promote a long-lasting peace, and if that includes re-arranging the internal politics of the loser, who had been the unjust aggressor to start, so as to eradicate the CAUSES by which it came to be an unjust aggressor, that’s the logic of just war. Winning a war means eradicating the opponent’s will to continue fighting (cf. Sun Tzu). In modern terms, this often does not occur until opponent’s government’s major organs are wrecked. Which means that if the victor does NOT “take control”, a humanitarian disaster plays out. In those circumstances, taking control is precisely what is called for by good will for the opponent’s people. And if THAT is not reasonably foreseen, merely unraveling the aggressor’s ability to wage war effectively can constitute “success” for purposes of point three on the list, for it is precisely the “unjust aggression” that justifies the responder going to war.

“A mobilization of all means of security, of police forces and of information, to root out this evil of terrorism,” he said, and noted that this would also include spiritual resources, in order to provide “a positive response to evil.”

This response will come about through educating people on the importance of refuting hatred, and offering answers to youth that leave home to join jihad activities.

How is it that a “mobilization of all means of security” does not include ALL means of security? Police and information sources are important, but dang it all, the police of France, Britain, and the Vatican Swiss Guard are not going to be adequate to “root out” terrorism fomented as an explicit and formal tenet of a state-like entity such as ISIS. The military is part of ALL means of security.

And “educating people” on refuting hatred is part of the Christian message, but when genocide is occurring we cannot wait for that glacially slow process. Christ started us down the road of educating people out of hatred, and 2000 years later we still have quite a ways to go. If we eschew the military option because we are employing “education” we will leave the victim populations with the same results as the Rwanda genocide, the Sudan genocide, the Cambodian genocide. The ISIS genocide. Need we continue to pretend that EDUCATION is the main concern of the government of the defender against unjust aggression? Well, yes: “let me educate you on the futility of continued aggression, in the face of my superior might”. That kind of education, sure.

You have to ask the right questions to get the right answers. The question “how can we put a stop to this ongoing unjust aggression without warfare?” is the wrong first question. The better question is “how can we best put a stop to this unjust aggression?” That question includes the cases where violence is the best option, and the cases where violence is not. Don’t take violence off the table until you have concluded that it belongs off the table. Starting with an assumption that it is not on the table is the wrong way to apply just war principles.

Comments (5)

I wish I had time for a substantive response here, but as I'm on my way to class I will just say -- thank you, Tony!

Tony,

I'm just getting around to this masterpiece now -- this is a classic!

I get the sense that the folks promoting the "VDT" (love the term!) are really way to caught up in thinking about war in terms of the great world wars (which were indeed horrific for civilians in many ways even if the Allied cause was just) and not wanting to see a repeat of the horrors of Dresden's or Tokyo's firebombing or the too awful to contemplate atomic bombs dropped on Japan. But if so, then the just war doctrine loses all of its meaning and as you so rightfully point out, even appeals to end unjust aggression in places like the Balkans won't work unless bombs start dropping (although I suppose one could argue that the VDT might be pushing for more and more boots on the ground to save innocent lives from aerial bombardment -- although I bet you can dig up some great VDT quotes condemning the Israelis for going into the West Bank during Operation Defensive Shield with troops to avoid excessive civilian casualties, as opposed to bombing the Palestinian -- so who knows what exactly the Vatican really wants, which is the point of your post!!!)

Anyway, a belated well done.

I get the sense that the folks promoting the "VDT" (love the term!) are really way to caught up in thinking about war in terms of the great world wars (which were indeed horrific for civilians in many ways even if the Allied cause was just) and not wanting to see a repeat of the horrors of Dresden's or Tokyo's firebombing or the too awful to contemplate atomic bombs dropped on Japan.

I think that's right, Jeff. Actually, my impression is that the VDT people are confusing and conflating 2 distinct problems, and treating them as if they constituted one issue.

There has long been a debate on using bombing in such a way that civilians might be harmed or killed, as whether this fell under the absolute prohibition against "killing innocent non-combatants". We have had part of that debate here at WWWtW, so I am not going to go into it right here. But I will just note one thing: that in modern warfare of developed nations - for instance Britain's Spitfire defense of London during the Blitz - you are going to get civilians killed merely from the falling wreckage of your own shot-down defense fighters. The theory that using bombs anywhere but above the Arctic Circle or on a fleet at sea is under an absolute moral prohibition because you mustn't hit civilians EVER, would also prohibit modern defense of your own cities (and would have prohibited much of clerically approved war in medieval times).

Anyway, they seem to be conflating that concern with the "inflation" concern: if you start using modern weapons, it will snowball out of control and you'll end up with Dresden and Tokyo and then Hiroshima. These are 2 completely different moral concerns, but my sense is that they are attempting to get mileage (as a serious moral issue) out of the second by attaching it to the first. And then get an extra jolt of moral horror for the first by attaching it to the second, which really is horrendous on a mass scale. But they are not the same, they don't even have the same standing: the second wholly revolves around the prudential prior judgment of your own probable future acts, over which you have control. In any case, with the inflation problem, when you set it off on its own, it is easy to refute: in over 50 conflicts since Hiroshima, no major power has firebombed a city or used nuclear bombs on people.

Frankly, I suspect that the whole college of bishops needs to be put through a semester of war-games to have a better idea of what they are actually condemning, and what they are inviting in response by those condemnations.

- I have regretfully come to the conclusion that our current Church leaders are naive about many things, but particularly about Gov'ts inevitable tendency to become corrupt. (Abortion alone should be proof enough in spades.)
- Regarding ISIS and the ongoing crisis in the Middle East: I think that this is foremost a Middle Eastern and European problem and always has been. It seems to me that currently they are walking backward with eyes closed into the 3rd World War. And no I don't think we can stop it.
- Maybe the only way we are ever going to get Europe to carry their own weight (which they haven't been doing for 70 years) is to let them suffer the hard consequences of their own indulgent, lazy, foolishness. Frankly, I think that we are watching Western Europe die for the third time in just a bit over 100 years, and I'm not sure we should try to save them from themselves again.
- One thing is for certain; I am not willing to sacrifice my son (19) to fix the stupid decisions of Europe and the Middle East.
- My intuition is that this is a time of hard decisions with terrible consequences. It's a time for us in the US to prepare, to husband our strength, to decide who our true friends are, and to help only those true friends, without doing their job for them.
- The only thing I learned in the Boy Scouts worth knowing is to "Be prepared." It's not nearly as easy as it sounds, at least on a limited budget.

Floyd, what is the chance that Russia, some descendant of ISIS, or some other force, comes out the other end with control over both Europe and ME and is inimical to the US.

Or, what is the chance that whoever ends up in control, ME oil ceases to be available to the world at large and we undergo a global economic depression as a result?

These might happen EVEN IF we try to interject our preferences with force, but I would have to think that if we take the RIGHT approach to interjecting our preferences, we have a better chance of avoiding the worst of such results than if we don't attempt at all.

It seems to me that currently they are walking backward with eyes closed into the 3rd World War. And no I don't think we can stop it.

Maybe, but it doesn't seem to me that the conditions are right for a WWIII. There is no clear and positive confluence of ME regional players' needs / desires that fits in as a major motivator to any world power's desires - other than "suppress terrorism", which isn't going to start a world war. Oil could be a motivator, but a war that destroys the oil, fought in pursuit of more of that oil, might slow down even American politicians' thirst for a war that large.

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