![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article examines how scholars of the just war tradition think about the ethical dilemmas that arise in the endgame phase of modern warfare. In particular, it focuses upon their reticence to engage the idiom of ‘victory’. Why, it asks, have scholars been so reluctant to talk about what it means to ‘win’ a just war? It contends that, while just war scholars may have good reason to be sceptical about ‘victory’, engaging it would grant them a more direct view of the critical potentialities, but also the limitations, of just war reasoning.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following people for their help with this paper: Sophia Dingli, Anders Engberg Pederson, Chiara de Franco, Naomi Head, Andrew Hom, Phil O’Brien and Ty Solomon.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The key statement of this position is arguably: Dominic Tierney, The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts (New York: Little, Brown and Company 2015).
2 For example: Robert Mandel, ‘Defining Postwar Victory’, in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duvesteyn (eds.), Understanding Victory and Defeat in Contemporary War (Abingdon: Routledge 2007), 18.
3 See: Gideon Rose, How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle (New York: Simon & Schuster 2011).
4 On the current ubiquity of victory talk in international relations: Cian O’Driscoll and Andrew R. Hom, ‘Introduction’, in Andrew R. Hom, Cian O’Driscoll, and Kurt Mills (eds.), Moral Victories: The Ethics of Winning Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017), 2–3.
5 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations – 5th edition (New York: Basic Books 2015).
6 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 3.
7 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 21.
8 The origins of the tradition are disputed. Rory Cox, ‘Expanding the History of the Just War: The Ethics of War in Ancient Egypt’, International Studies Quarterly 61/2 (2017), 371–84. On the development of the tradition: Daniel Brunstetter and Cian O’Driscoll (eds.), Just War Thinkers: From Cicero to the 21st Century (Abingdon: Routledge 2017).
9 Michael Walzer, ‘The Triumph of Just War Theory (and the Dangers of Success)’, in Arguing About War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2003), 3–22.
10 Paul Robinson, Nigel de Lee, and Don Carrick (eds.), Ethics Education in the Military (Burlington, VT: Ashgate 2008).
11 See: Mark Totten, First Strike: America, Terrorism, and Moral Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press 2010), 80–83.
12 Some notable recent publications include: Michael L. Gross and Tamar Meisels (eds.), Soft War: The Ethics of Unarmed Conflict (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); George Lucas, Ethics and Cyber Warfare: The Quest for Responsible Security in the Age of Digital Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017); James Pattison, Just and Unjust Alternatives to War (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018); and Amy Eckert, Outsourcing War: The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization (New York: Cornell University Press 2015). This list is indicative rather than exhaustive. It is intended to offer a sense of the wide range of topics just war scholars have tackled in recent years.
13 Colin Gray and Keith Payne present it as ‘one of the six guidelines for the use of force provided by the “just war” doctrine’. Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne, ‘Victory is Possible’, Foreign Policy 39 (1980), 16.
14 James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare (New Haven: Yale University Press 1999), 34.
15 Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare, 29.
16 Michael J. Schuck, ‘When the Shooting Stops: Missing Elements in Just War Theory’, Christian Century (26 October 1994), 982–83.
17 Alex J. Bellamy, ‘The Responsibilities of Victory: Jus Post Bellum and the Just War’, Review of International Studies 34 (2008), 601–25; Gary Bass, ‘Jus Post Bellum’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 32/4 (2004), 384–412; Brian Orend, ‘Jus Post Bellum’, Journal of Social Philosophy 31/1 (2000), 117–37; Larry May, After War Ends: A Philosophical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2012); Eric D. Patterson (ed.), Ethics Beyond War’s End (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2012); and Mark J. Allman and Tobias L. Winwright, After the Smoke Clears: The Just War Tradition and Post War Justice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 2010).
18 May, After War Ends, 1.
19 Bellamy, ‘The Responsibilities of Victory’, 602.
20 Cian O’Driscoll, ‘At All Costs and in Spite of All Terror? The Victory of Just War’, Review of International Studies 41 (2015), 805–08. Also: Mona Fixdal, Just Peace: How Wars Should End (New York: Palgrave 2012), 17.
21 Michael Walzer, ‘The Aftermath of War: Reflections on Jus Post Bellum’, in Eric D. Patterson (ed.), Ethics Beyond War’s End (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press 2012), 37. Emphasis added.
22 David Rodin, ‘Two Emerging Issues of Jus Post Bellum: War Termination and the Liabilities of Soldiers for Crimes of Aggression’, in Carsten Stahn and Jan K. Kleffner (eds.), Jus Post Bellum: Towards a Law of Transition from Conflict to Peace (The Hague: TMC Asser Press 2008), 53–77.
23 Four contributions stand out: Janina Dill (ed.), ‘Symposium on Ending Wars’, Ethics 125/3 (2015), 627–780; Beatrice Heuser, ‘Victory, Peace, and Justice: The Neglected Trinity’, Joint Forces Quarterly 69 (2013), 1–7; Gabriella Blum, ‘The Fog of Victory’, European Journal of International Law 24/1 (2013), 391–421; and Hom, O’Driscoll, and Mills, Moral Victories.
24 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 48; also 31–32.
25 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 110.
26 Fixdal, Just Peace, 1. Fixdal (fn.1) attributes the phrase ‘better state of peace’ to Basil Liddell Hart and Michael Walzer.
27 Eric D. Patterson, Ending Wars Well: Order, Justice, and Conciliation in Contemporary Post-Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 2012).
28 See fn. 17.
29 Robert Mandel, The Meaning of Military Victory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2006), 13; and Richard Hobbs, The Myth of Victory: What is Victory in War? (Boulder, CO: Westview 1979), xvi, 2.
30 This impression is supported by the fact that attempts to define victory frequently descend into typologies that distinguish different kinds or levels of victory (e.g., tactical, strategic, political, military, etc.). See: William C. Martel, Victory in War: Foundations of Modern Military Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007); and Brian Bond, The Pursuit of Victory: From Napoleon to Saddam Hussein (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996).
31 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989), 1.
32 Jeffrey Record, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (Washington, DC: Brassey’s 1993).
33 President George W. Bush, ‘President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended, 1 May 2003’. Available at: https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030501–15.html. Accessed: 16 July 2017.
34 Phil Klay, Redeployment (New York: Penguin, 2014), p. 77.
35 On this: Dominic P. Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Jan Angstrom, ‘The United States Perspective on Victory in the War on Terrorism’, in Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duvesteyn (eds.), Understanding Victory and Defeat in Contemporary War (Abingdon, Routledge, 2007): 94–113; and General Tommy Franks, ‘The Meaning of Victory: A Conversation with Tommy Franks’, The National Interest 86 (November 2006): 8.
36 On this point: Leo J. Blanken, Hy Rothstein, and Jason J. Lepore (eds.), Assessing War: The Challenge of Measuring Success and Failure (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015).
37 Tierney, The Right Way to Lose a War; Michael Mandelbaum, Mission Failure: America and the World in the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
38 Russell F. Weigley, The Age of Battles: The Quest for Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo (London: Pimlico, 1991).
39 As General David Petraues remarked of the global war against Al Qaeda, ‘this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag, and go home with a victory parade.’ Mark Tran, ‘General David Petraeus Warns of Long Struggle Ahead for US in Iraq’, Guardian, 11 September 2008. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/11/iraq.usa. Accessed: 16 July 2017.
40 Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir, ‘“Mowing the Grass”: Israel’s Strategy for Protracted Intractable Conflict’, Journal of Strategic Studies 37/1 (2014), 65–90.
41 On this point: Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 47–48; also: Augustine, City of God against the Pagans, ed. by R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), 109–13; 118–23. For analysis: Philip Wynn, Augustine on War and Military Service (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2013), 265–77.
42 Quoted in: Bond, The Pursuit of Victory, 142.
43 Andrew Fiala has expressed this idea in very simple terms: ‘There is an irresolvable tension between the demands of morality and the need to win.’ Andrew Fiala, The Just War Myth: The Moral Illusions of War (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2008), 6.
44 Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press 2001), 1.
45 Quoted in: Hobbs, The Myth of Victory, 477.
46 Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, Volume V: The Unknown War (London: Bloomsbury 2015), 1.
47 There is an interview with Bao Ninh, a veteran of the North Vietnamese Army, in the 2017 Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, that bears reference here. ‘People sing about victory … They’re wrong. Who won and who lost is not a question. In war, no one wins or loses. There is only destruction.’ Quoted in: Christopher J. Finlay, Is Just War Possible? (Cambridge: Polity 2018), 55.
48 Brian van Reet, Spoils (London: Jonathan Cape 2017), 199.
49 General Douglas MacArthur, ‘Farewell Address to Congress, 19 April 1951’. Available at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/douglasmacarthurfarewelladdress.htm. Accessed: 16 July 2017.
50 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. by Harris Rackham (London: Wordsworth Classics 1996), 3; Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Republic and The Laws, trans. by Niall Rudd (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998), 83; Sun Tzu is quoted in: Mark R. McNeilly, Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2015), 16; Bush is quoted in: Angstrom, ‘The United States Perspective on Victory’, 98; and Trump is quoted in: Andrew R. Hom and Cian O’Driscoll, ‘Can’t Lose for Winning: Victory in the Trump Presidency’, The Disorder of Things Blogspot, 24 January 2017. Available at: https://thedisorderofthings.com/2017/01/24/cant-lose-for-winning-victory-in-the-trump-presidency/. Accessed: 16 July 2017.
51 Caspar Weinberger, ‘The Uses of Military Power’. Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/military/force/weinberger.html. Accessed: 28 May 2015.
52 John I. Alger, The Quest for Victory: The History of the Principles of War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1982), 173. The remarks of Sebastian Junger, a journalist who spent 15 months embedded with a US platoon at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, are also worth noting: ‘Much of modern military tactics is geared toward maneuvering the enemy into a position where they can essentially be massacred from safety. It sounds dishonourable only if you imagine that modern war is about honour; it’s not. It’s about winning’. Sebastian Junger, War (New York: Twelve 2011), 140.
53 Van Reet, Spoils, 42.
54 Ken Booth, ‘Ten Flaws of Just Wars’, The International Journal of Human Rights 4/3 (2000), 316–17.
55 As Walzer has remarked, some just war scholars seem to have forgotten that the object of their inquiry is war. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 335–36.
56 Clausewitz, On War, 579.
57 Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince, ed. by Lisa Jardine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997), 103.
58 James A. Brundage, ‘Holy War and Medieval Lawyers’, in Thomas Patrick Murphy (ed.), The Holy War (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press 1976), 109.
59 See: Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations: A General History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005), 137–40. Also: Sharon Korman, The Right of Conquest (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1996).
60 John Howard Yoder, When War is Unjust: Being Honest in Just War Thinking – Revised Edition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis 1996).
61 The literature on proportionality mostly ignores the issue of victory. For example, the key paper in the field does not make a single reference to the notion of victory or winning. Thomas Hurka, ‘Proportionality in the Morality of War’, Philosophy & Public Affairs 33/1 (2005), 34–46. A later paper by Gary Brown only notes that ‘Proportionality does not preclude waging war to win.’ Gary D. Brown, ‘Proportionality and Just War’, Journal of Military Ethics 2/3 (2003), 173. There are of course exceptions. Michael Walzer’s statement on proportionality as it applied to the 2008–09 Gaza War is a case in point. Michael Walzer, ‘The Gaza War and Proportionality’, Dissent Magazine, 8 January 2009. Available at: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-gaza-war-and-proportionality. Accessed: 16 July 2017.
62 Wilfred Owen, ‘Smile, Smile’ Smile’, in Anthem for Doomed Youth (London: Penguin 2015), 17.
63 James Turner Johnson, ‘The Broken Tradition’, The National Interest 45 (1996), 28. Also: Serena K. Sharma, ‘The Legacy of Jus Contra Bellum: Echoes of Pacifism in Contemporary Just War Thought’, Journal of Military Ethics 8/3 (2009), 217–30.
64 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2008), 133.
65 This is indeed how Booth (fn. 54) invokes it.
66 Beatrice Heuser has already proposed something of this character, but the work remains to be done. Heuser, ‘The Neglected Trinity’.
67 John Emery, ‘“Victory” in Mosul: Fighting Well and the Horrors of “Winning”’. At: https://www.ethicsandinternationalaffairs.org/2017/victory-mosul-fighting-well-horrors-winning/. Accessed: 20 August 2017.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Cian O’Driscoll
Cian O’Driscoll is a senior lecturer in Politics at the University of Glasgow. He is interested in the ethics of war, and in particular the just war tradition, and has published widely in this area. He currently has a monograph entitled "Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War" forthcoming with Oxford University Press. He is the Chair of the International Ethics section of the International Studies Association.