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Abstract
This paper first argues that a state can justifiably fight a hopeless war of self-defense when its enemy determines to massacre its people after it surrenders or is defeated. The main reason is that, in this situation, even if the victim state surrenders, it still has to suffer from harms that are similar to or worse than the harms involved in fighting a hopeless war. This paper then discusses some complicated issues raised by applying this argument to various situations in which the victims of war and the victims of massacre are not identical. I argue that, when the victims of massacre are randomly chosen, the victim state can justifiably fight such a war. When the victims of massacre belong to a specific group of people, the victim state should not fight such a war, even though the victims of massacre can defend themselves. This paper finally comments on an alternative approach to addressing the same issue.
Acknowledgements
The author was prompted to write this paper by Laura Valentini’s and M. Dee Beutel’s response to his other paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented in the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Taiwanese Political Science Association. The author is indebted to Gillian Brock, Brian Chen, P. Digeser, Chia-Ming Chen, Hsin-Wei Tang, Chu-Yang Wei, and the anonymous reviewer and the Editors of this journal for constructive and challenging feedback on earlier versions of this article. The author would like to thank Chia-Ming Chen for the generous help with his post-doc research.
Funding
This work was supported by the Ministry of Technology and Science, Taiwan [grant number NSC 103-2811-H-001-001].
Notes on contributor
Yuchun Kuo is a Postdoctoral Fellow funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology in the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on moral issues associated with pursuing global justice under international anarchy.
Notes
1. Throughout this paper, I will stipulate that the aggressor is unjust by lacking a just cause for its attack on the victim state. If the aggressor has a just cause, such as humanitarian intervention, the invaded state cannot morally justify its resistance.
2. Two remarks on the terms used here. First, ‘a hopeless war’ refers to a war with a low probability of success, not a war without any chance of success. Second, concerning the legitimate authority to fight a war, I focus on the self-defense of states, in order to facilitate the following discussion. The success requirement does not take a specific stance on which political entity possesses the legitimate authority to wage a war. Later I will show that the issue of legitimate authority raises difficult questions for the success requirement.
3. The US policy toward Taiwan is governed by the Taiwan Relations Act (Citation1979). Section 3(3) of this act stipulates that the US President and Congress will determine ‘appropriate action’ to respond to any threat to the Taiwanese people's security and their social or economic system. This ambiguous term ‘appropriate action’ leaves the possibility that the US may take non-military actions in response to such threats. In this situation, Taiwan has to rely on its own military power to confront China. Hence, this example is relevant for the topic of this paper.
4. To be sure, weak belligerents can fight along with their allies. Moreover, the literature on asymmetric warfare offers several explanations of why and how weaker belligerents can win a war against stronger ones (Berkowitz Citation1997; Arreguin-Toft Citation2005; Thornton Citation2007, 53–77). All these measures can increase their probability of success in war.
5. Other factors such as the aggressor's attitude toward surrender are relevant as well. Some aggressors might decide to massacre people in the victim state if they refuse to surrender, while other aggressors might belittle the act of surrender and admire the victim state's resistance.
6. Here I assume that, once the aggressor occupies the victim state, the latter is less likely to succeed in resisting the former's plan of massacre because the former controls the latter's government and police and military force, absorbs the latter's resources, and can take several measures to coerce, manipulate, and allure the local people's collaboration. For the various measures an aggressor can employ to gain from conquest, see Liberman (Citation1996).
7. Imperfect duties such as calling the police for assistance may still exist. I thank the reviewer for reminding me of this possibility.
8. One relevant issue concerns the number of the victims of massacre. Suppose that 80% of the total population will belong to the victim group. I would argue that the Victim State is still permitted to fight this hopeless war of self-defense for the same reason presented here. How about 70%? It is difficult to find a precise threshold. One general principle is that, if the number of the victims of massacre is very high to the extent that a self-defensive war waged by the victims of massacre is virtually the same as a war waged by the whole state, then the Victim State is permitted to fight this war. I thank the reviewer for raising this issue.
9. In response, critics can argue that maintaining the ability to keep engaging in fighting constitutes a just cause of war, if it ultimately contributes to self-defense broadly construed. This response is reasonable, but it needs to be subject to some limitations. See my discussion in the end of this paragraph and the next two paragraphs.
10. Daniel Statman has critically considered the issue of hopeless national defense, in response to the problem that the success requirement is biased against weak belligerents (2008). He first looks at individual self-defense and argues that an attack on a victim involves two kinds of threat: a threat to both the victim's physical security and honor. Statman emphasizes the threat to honor. The aggressor threatens the victim's honor because the former treats the latter merely as an object to be used (Statman Citation2008, 668). When the victim is weaker than the aggressor, the victim can still fight to defend his honor even though he cannot succeed in defending his physical security. This is what Statman calls ‘The Honor Solution’ (2008, 669).
However, the Honor Solution nearly amounts to eliminating the success requirement. Can victims fail to defend their honor? This is unlikely. As Statman notes, ‘the actions [of self-defense] under discussion are unlikely to fail in achieving their goal’ (2008, 679). By re-defining the goal of self-defense as defending the victim's honor, Statman makes every act of self-defense satisfy the success requirement. Whenever the victims fight back, they succeed. The problem of weak belligerents will never emerge. The Honor Solution solves the problem by removing the problem.
11. Harbour does mention that ‘[o]ther ends for fighting have existed empirically and are morally legitimate, even in the face of knowledge of the state's inability to expel its adversary’ (2011, 233). However, it is not clear whether moral legitimacy here refers to moral legitimacy in general or the just cause requirement specifically.
12. We can instead consider these intermediate goals as a kind of just cause in an indirect way. This suggestion is plausible, and, more importantly, it is consistent with the main arguments in this section. These intermediate goals cannot constitute just causes unless they satisfy the various conditions presented in this section. I thank the reviewer for this suggestion.