![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
According to Brian Orend’s binary political model, minimally just states possess a robust set of moral rights, while other states essentially exist in a moral vacuum in which they possess no moral rights. I argue that a more plausible comparative model would allow for a state to acquire (or lose) discrete moral rights as it improves (or damages) its moral record. This would generate a more accurate portrayal of both domestic policy within states and military conflict between states; including, in particular, the role of the Allied forces during World War Two.
Acknowledgements
I thank Henrik Syse and a number of anonymous referees for helpful and encouraging comments on various drafts of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Mark Vorobej is a retired philosophy professor, with research interests in logical theory, moral philosophy, and the philosophy of war and peace. He is the author of A Theory of Argument (2006) and The Concept of Violence (2016).
Notes
1 Orend (Citation2013, 64); see also 33. This is the second edition of the book. Obviously, Orend is concentrating on ad bellum considerations within the passages in question, and he is not denying that the Allies were guilty of specific in bello violations during the execution of this war. It is nonetheless important to assess critically the value of Orend’s work, more than ten years after its initial publication, given the extremely high praise that is frequently bestowed upon it. In his Parameters (Cook Citation2007) review, for example, Martin Cook praises The Morality of War as “the best single volume in English on Just War” (111). In a review in Journal of Military Ethics (Lucas Citation2007), George Lucas writes that Orend has had “a revolutionary impact on just war theory, comparable to that of [Michael] Walzer himself” (249). And in his Millennium (Neu Citation2008) review, Michael Neu describes Orend’s work as not only “deep” and “subtle” but “inspirational” (663) as well.
2 Orend frequently alludes to Stalin’s appalling record of trampling upon human rights, see Orend (Citation2013, 56, 92, 230 and 239).
3 Bess (Citation2006, 166 and 168).
4 Orend traces the origin of the view that “states failing minimal justice forfeit rights of existence” (225) back to Kant.
5 The death toll from Stalin’s collectivization program in the 1930s is probably somewhere in the order of at least 10 million people. In Ukraine alone, over 3 million people died by starvation and hunger-related disease during just the Holodomor of 1932–1933. And approximately 80 percent of Germany’s military losses during World War Two – numbering over 13 million – were either killed or taken prisoner on the Eastern Front. For more details, see Snyder (Citation2010, 53), and Glantz and House (Citation1995, 284).
6 Orend does not discuss Nazi aggression explicitly in these terms. But this analysis parallels his account of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Orend hesitates over whether Iraq committed aggression against the state of Kuwait “the very second when it crossed Kuwait’s borders” (Orend Citation2013, 45) – since arguably that state was not minimally just. But he insists that in “attacking the Kuwaiti people, Saddam’s Iraq committed aggression” (45, my italics).
7 That is, no wrong was done simply in resisting Nazi aggression. Whether rights were violated in the manner by which the Soviets resisted Nazi aggression is, of course, a separate question.
8 Orend’s case study of World War Two, later in the same chapter, explicitly focuses “mostly on the United States as the relevant actor” (Orend Citation2013, 64).
9 Even if we restrict Orend’s claim to the British and American decisions to enter the war in 1939 and 1941 respectively, we still need some sort of positive account of their ongoing relationship with the Soviet Union. The Americans, for example, effectively repealed the various Neutrality Acts of the 1930s and began selling arms to the Soviet Union in October of 1941 – prior to Pearl Harbor, in other words. And so, this seems to be a relevant ad bellum consideration since the Americans clearly knew in advance that their military conflict with Germany would involve some sort of partnership with the Soviet Union.
10 This is surprising since a parallel question plays a central role within Orend’s theory of just warfare. It is not possible to go to war and fully satisfy the human rights of all affected persons. This does not render war impermissible, however. According to Orend, what is required, in a just war, is only that the human rights of persons are fulfilled “to the maximum extent that they can be fulfilled during warfare” (Orend Citation2013, 42, my italics). See also pages 33 and 148.
11 Even so, it is worth pointing out that the Koran does not address specific issues of political governance in any great detail. According to Esposito and Voll (Citation1996, 28), “there are no explicit formulations of state structure” within that text. And so, illustrating their argument with examples drawn from the Republic of Iran, Esposito and Voll go on to explain how an “Islamic theocracy” can indeed embody democratic egalitarian principles (23–32).
12 See Filali-Ansary (Citation2003, 200).
13 The situation of the Baha’is within Iran is, of course, far worse.
14 Of course, given his cosmopolitan leanings, Orend does have a general interest in promoting human rights throughout the entire globe, and an interest therefore in facilitating the transformation of illegitimate states into legitimate states. My focus in this paper, however, is on the moral appraisal of particular military conflicts, at particular moments in time.
15 Not to mention doing a better or worse job of respecting the rights of other countries.
16 I say “presumably” because, curiously, the evidence is mixed. On the one hand, Orend states explicitly that “All governments are duty-bound not to violate human rights, regardless of the nationality of the rights-holder” (Orend Citation2013, 265). On the other hand, however, Orend does not include this constraint as a separate necessary condition for minimal justice. Perhaps he believes that it is covered by one or more of the three necessary conditions that he does articulate. But, if so, it is not at all clear how this could be accomplished. Suppose that a certain group of people lives within an illegitimate state – a state that has no state rights and no effective voice within the international community. Then if some other minimally just state S violates the human rights of those people, and if both the international community and S’s own population turn a blind eye to this infraction, then there is nothing to disqualify S from remaining a legitimate state.
17 For more details, see McCutcheon (Citation2009). I am also indebted to Rick McCutcheon for drawing my attention to the statements by Pilger and Smith that are cited earlier in this section.
18 At one point in the text, Orend makes the surprising claim that
a minimally just political community … makes every reasonable effort to: 1) avoid violating the rights of other minimally just communities; 2) gain recognition as being legitimate in the eyes of the international community and its own people; and 3) realize the human rights of all its individual members. (Orend Citation2013, 221)
19 These findings are cited by Hedges and Sacco (Citation2012, xiv–xv).
20 Although it should be crucial to his account, Orend has little to say about domestic issues within the US. But here is one noteworthy example, involving military history, that fits the pattern I have in mind. In illustrating the “real and quite remarkable” recent commitment of military forces, “at least in developed nations” (Orend Citation2013, 195), to prosecute their own members who have been charged with the commission of war crimes, Orend states that “[Lt. William] Calley and his comrades were arrested, tried, and convicted” (200) for their involvement in the 1968 My Lai massacre. Having the resolve to punish human rights violations is, of course, one way of demonstrating one’s sincere commitment to upholding those rights. But this comment distorts the truth as Calley was in fact “the only man ever found guilty of any offense committed” at My Lai (see Bilton and Sim Citation1992, 2). Furthermore, although Calley was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1971, within three days President Nixon ordered his release from jail pending appeal, and in 1974 he was freed on parole.
21 Although it is interesting that Orend himself occasionally structures his discussion within a comparative framework. In his treatment of jus post bellum, for example, he writes that “the less just your start of war, the fewer your rights in the post-war phase” (Orend Citation2013, 219).
22 Orend himself uses the terms in quotation marks on page 45 of his text.
23 It is clear from his discussion on pages 43 and 44 that Orend is offering these “reasons” not as legitimate moral claims, but as explanations of why the invasion of Kuwait was seized upon as a strategy for solving Saddam Hussein’s own personal, political and economic challenges.
24 Orend attempts to downplay the significance of this territorial dispute by referring to “the ancient Ottoman Empire [that] used to administer both Iraq and Kuwait together” (Orend Citation2013, 43, my italics). Not only does Orend not mention the relevant dates – dates that certainly do not take us back to “ancient” times – he also fails to note that no such discrete political entities as “Kuwait” or “Iraq” existed within the Ottoman Empire.
25 For further details, see Khalidi (Citation1991), and the first chapter of Smith (Citation1992).
26 Notice that both versions still allow for the possibility that a state can act with nil or non-existent justice.
27 Lee (Citation2012, 106). Here Lee is discussing, without endorsing, the idea of comparative justice.
28 Following Walzer, Orend argues that we do not need the notion of comparative justice to rein in “especially ferocious” states, since even a state acting from a completely just cause “must still confront and satisfy the rules of jus in bello” (Orend Citation2013, 45). This is true. Notoriously, however, those rules are subject to wide interpretation, and a state that is self-consciously acting from a merely partially just cause will likely interpret those rules in a more temperate and less self-serving fashion.
29 This is seen most clearly, I think, in the case of what David Rodin calls “political” (as opposed to “genocidal”) aggression. According to Rodin, instead of threatening the “vital interests” (such as the lives) of a group of people, “political aggression is primarily directed towards obtaining a political or material advantage for the attackers” (Rodin Citation2014, 81). Other things being equal, it will be more difficult for a state to justify the use of military force against an aggressor that poses an economic rather than, say, an existential threat to its people.