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Abstract
I argue that the criterion of just cause is not independent of proportionality and other valid jus ad bellum criteria. One cannot know whether there is a just cause without knowing whether the other (valid) criteria (apart from ‘right intention’) are satisfied. The advantage of this account is that it is applicable to all wars, even to wars where nobody will be killed or where the enemy has not committed a rights violation but can be justifiably warred against anyway. This account also avoids the inefficiency of having proportionality considerations come up at two different points: in a separate criterion of just cause and in the criterion of proportionality proper. ‘Right intention’, the subjective element of the justification of a war, on the other hand, is not to be subsumed under the criterion of just cause: there can be a just cause without anybody knowing it. Conversely, however, the subjective element requires that those responsible for waging the war do know that the justifying objective conditions are fulfilled. This is in one sense more demanding than traditional just war theory; in another sense, however, it is less demanding: nobody needs to intend to fight for a ‘just aim’. I conclude the article by summing up the practical implications of my account.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research presented in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No. HKU 749413). I am very grateful for this support. I thank Bernhard Koch, Andrés Rosler, William H. Shaw and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on previous drafts of this paper.
Notes
1. This also affects Steven P. Lee's (Citation2012: 73) account, according to which a ‘just cause is a justifying reason, that is, a reason for an action, such as going to war, that morally justifies (or helps to justify) it. A state goes to war for a reason or reasons, which may be just or unjust’. However, although Lee clearly conceives of a reason here as something that people are actually acting on, his position could be modified (and saved from said objection) by insisting that there can be a reason to do something without anybody knowing that there is such a reason (see Steinhoff Citation2000: 87–88). Yet, it should be pointed out that Lee's own official account of a just cause as a reason that helps to justify a war is incompatible with his neat separation between just cause and the other jus ad bellum criteria. Proportionality, prospects of success and even right intention also help to justify a war. Yet, while I argue below that just cause is indeed not independent of proportionality and its sub-criteria, I also argue that it is independent of right intention. Therefore, my more precise two formulations of ‘just cause’ below are preferable to Lee's account of just cause as justifying reason.
2. For a related example, see McMahan (Citation2005: 15–16).
3. I do not regard last resort and prospects of success as necessary conditions for the justification of a war, though; still, they need to be taken into account. I need not go into this any further for present purposes, but see Steinhoff (Citation2007: 23–25, 28–30), where I further discuss these two criteria and their relation to proportionality.
4. See the US Department of Defense Non-Lethal Weapons Program at http://jnlwp.defense.gov
5. Moreover, the idea is also – quite rightly, as we just saw – accepted by one of the authors I am criticizing here, namely McMahan. We will return to this below.
6. Not, as I pointed out, necessarily in absolutely all wars, and not necessarily forever.
7. Michael Neu (Citation2012) argues convincingly (as McMahan admits) that McMahan's way of using terms like ‘just’, ‘unjust’ and ‘justified’ in different contexts is, to use McMahan's (Citation2012: 258) own words, ‘confused and confusing’. In particular, contrary to McMahan's use of the term, ‘just wars’ that kill and maim innocent people cannot be just at all, but at best justified.
8. The idea of a (justified) consensual war will seem absurd to many people. However, see Steinhoff (Citation2007: 23–25).
9. This I had not yet made clear in Steinhoff (Citation2007: 27–28).
10. These are sometimes not even mentioned anymore or at best in passing (an example is Lee Citation2012: 69, 73–78), although recently there has been a renewed interest in the punishment justification, mostly by way of rejecting it (see e.g. Gould Citation2009, Luban Citation2012). Kaplan (Citation2013), however, provides a qualified defence of punitive warfare.
11. Admittedly, I, in the past, also listed it only under jus ad bellum, but at least I discussed it also with respect to the individual soldier (see Steinhoff Citation2007: 2–3, 25–28).
12. See, for example, Aquinas (Citation1948: II-II.66.8): Nevertheless even they who are engaged in a just war may sin in taking spoils through cupidity arising from an evil intention, if, to wit, they fight chiefly not for justice but for spoil. For Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. xix; Serm. lxxxii) that “it is a sin to fight for booty”. I thank Gerhard Beestermöller for steering me to this passage.
13. I submit that the fact that this construal of the subjective element is popular in the legal scholarship provides it with additional credibility.
14. Kamm (Citation2011: 119–130) has recently made essentially the same point, making no reference to my previous work on this topic. Her argument that right intention – understood as aiming at a just aim – is not necessary, for the permissibility of war is not supplemented with an analysis of what is necessary for the subjective element of the justification of a war to be satisfied.
15. See in this context also Victor Tadros's (Citation2011: 159–160) ‘Poisoned Pipe’ example, which nicely shows that dropping what I here called the ‘caveat’ leads to unacceptable results. However, Tadros seriously overstates his case. His example merely shows that, as I claim, in order to legally or justifiably kill others, agents must respect law or morality, respectively, and in this sense be ‘motivated’ by them, to use Tadros's terminology. However, this does not imply that, as he claims, one may not also be motivated by personal glory (163) or, I assume, hatred, bloodlust or greed.
16. My position does not imply, however, that soldiers can justifiably participate in all wars as long as they, the soldiers, abide by jus in bello restrictions.
17. This is compatible with an individual being its own legitimate authority for its own individual war. That is, I reject (Steinhoff Citation2007: ch. 1) the criterion of legitimate authority as it is usually understood. For recent criticisms of the criterion of legitimate authority along similar lines, see Fabre (Citation2012: sec. 4.3) and Reitberger (Citation2013).
18. One might object here that the war then is at best justified, but not just. I agree, but wars in which innocent bystanders are killed (‘collateral damage’) are also at best justified, but not just: after all, they violate the right to life of innocent bystanders, and that is unjust. The term ‘just war theory’ is a misnomer; it should rather be ‘justified war theory’. Yet, the former term is used for reasons of tradition, and I use the term ‘just cause’ in the same spirit: with an understanding that it refers to something that is necessary for the justification of the war. Necessity justifications, however, are justifications too.
19. The first option is McMahan's, as we saw above.
20. McMahan does certainly not spell out any advantages that such a deviation from the tradition might have.
21. See Brunstetter and Braun (Citation2013). These two authors overlook the fact that we can, as I did here, ‘recalibrate’ (to use their term) our understanding of the moral use of force also by recalibrating jus ad bellum instead of coming up with an additional theory of jus ad vim. In that context, it is also entirely unnecessary, pace Moellendorf (Citation2008) or Rodin (Citation2011), to ‘complement’ jus ad bellum with a category like ‘jus terminatio’ or ‘jus ex bello’. Jus ad bellum concerns the justification for entering and continuing a war (see Steinhoff Citation2007: 2), which should be quite obvious: if you cease to have a just cause, you cannot be justified in continuing the war anyway. For a critique of Moellendorf and Rodin, see Schulzke (Citation2013).
22. ‘The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war’ (Augustine Citation1887: 301 [Contra Faustum, xxii, 74]).
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Uwe Steinhoff
Uwe Steinhoff is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration of the University of Hong Kong and Senior Research Associate in the Oxford University Programme on the Changing Character of War. He received his PhD from the University of Würzburg, Germany. His current research focuses on the ethics of violence and on different issues in political philosophy. He is the author of On the Ethics of War and Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas (Oxford University Press, 2009) and On the Ethics of Torture (State University of New York Press, 2013).