From Likelihood of Success to Likely Consequences

Abstract

The trouble with Likelihood of Success is that it appears to be little more than a rehash of what seems obvious: do not go to war if you do not have much of a chance to win. Is this a distinctive or helpful contribution to contemporary just war thinking? I argue in this essay that while it might be better to simply jettison the term, some considerations of success are not just prudential in that narrow sense of the term. How we think of “success” and the likelihood of achieving it matters significantly to how we think about other elements of jus ad bellum. Success is not just about winning. It is about winning in the right way for the right end. Still, I suggest that it is not clear what “Likelihood of Success” does for those in political authority already inclined to think about war in any sort of rational and even moral way. I suggest we consider discarding Likelihood of Success and instead consider what I am calling “Likely Consequences.”

Keywords:

• just war
• likelihood of success
• likely consequences
• philosophy of war
• ethics of war

Notes

1 The exceptions are (Bell 2009; Harbour 2011).

2 I do not mean this as an argument that indeed they would be correct, but as I hope I make clear below, that if all we mean by “success” is “winning,” then there is a case to be made.

3 See the discussion in (Walzer 2015, 111–116).

4 For an argument that gets to this broad conclusion by somewhat different means, see (Harbour 2011).

5 That, or it is simply in thrall to Dana Carvey’s rather brilliant Saturday Night Live sendup of President George H.W. Bush and, in particular, his “wouldn’t be prudent” declamation.

6 No doubt, this is something of a controversial claim, but nothing about my argument here much hangs on it. Readers who think differently about the first Gulf War are free to insert another possible war instead.

7 Again, I do not mean to suggest that this is actually what drove the U.S. and its allies to make the decisions it did, nor to suggest that they were the right ones. All I mean to do is to illustrate how right intent can and should incorporate some consideration of what would be required for success into its deliberations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bryan T. McGraw

Bryan T. McGraw is Professor of Politics and Dean of Social Sciences at Wheaton College. He is the author of Faith in Politics: Religion and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and currently working on a book on pluralism, law and religion, and political theology.