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ABSTRACT
This article engages with the critique of just war that lies at the heart of Maja Zehfuss’s War & the Politics of Ethics. It argues that while Zehfuss’s critique misses the mark in several important respects, it nevertheless does us a tremendous service by laying bare the irony of just war. In doing so, it reminds us not only of the limits and dangers of just war thinking, but also of why it deserves our grudging respect.
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Nisha Shah, Dirk Nabers, and Maja Zehfuss for the generous invitation to take part in this symposium. I am also grateful to my fellow participants and to the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their helpful advice on the drafting of this article.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. I prefer the term ‘just war tradition’ to ‘just war theory’ for reasons I set out elsewhere (O’Driscoll Citation2013).
2. I will drop the use of scare-quotes for all further references to ‘ethical war’.
3. For a more detailed discussion of the empirical claims: Kaempf (Citation2018).
4. Zehfuss (185–86; 3)makes use of a series of binary oppositions to emphasise this point: enhances/reduces, ameliorates/aggravates, and constraining/enabling.
5. It is worth noting that this is very different from how scholars of the just war tradition frame it. For example, Walzer (Citation2015, xxvi) described the purpose of his seminal text, Just and Unjust Wars, in terms of ‘recapturing just war for political and moral theory.’ Italics added. Elshtain (Citation1995, 111), who is a foil for many of Zehfuss’s arguments, pitched her account of just war theorising in similar terms. I am very grateful to the anonymous reviewer for this journal who reminded me of this important point.
6. Also see: O’Driscoll and Brunstetter (Citation2017, 5).
7. The anthology of just war thinking edited by Gregory M. Reichbreg, Henrik Syse, and Endre Begby (Citation2006) furnishes proof of this. For more on this idea: Johnson (Citation1999, 39–40); also Johnson (Citation1975) and Clark (Citation2015).
8. This charge is often levelled at revisionist approaches to just war theory. For an example of this: Brown (Citation2017, 94–97).
9. On the writings of Augustine: Markus (Citation2010). For more on just war thinking as a reflexive practice: Kelsay (Citation2013).
10. There is much that could be said about what is meant by irony in this context. I use it in a very simple sense to denote the process whereby, to paraphrase Niebuhr (Citation2008, 158), strength often leads to weakness and wisdom issues in foolishness. For a treatment of the role that irony plays in disciplinary thinking about international relations: Steele (Citation2010); Brassett (Citation2009); and also Carlson (Citation2008).
11. Booth goes on to argue that just war discourse is ‘best seen as a continuation of war by other rhetoric’. Also: Fiala (Citation2008).
12. It is not, however, an especially original critique. It recalls the earlier arguments of Carl Schmitt (Citation2006). For an excellent discussion of Schmitt’s critique of just war: Slomp (Citation2006).
13. There is a parallel here to Wilfred Owen’s response to the idea that it is a noble thing to die for one’s country (Citation2015, 2–3).
14. This line of critique has a storied history. It can be traced back to Erasmus (Citation1997, 97–110) and beyond. The Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau also made good use of it. As one scholar has observed: ‘In Rousseau’s fiction the pristine order of legal books and political treatises concocted in the calmness of the writer’s study meets the brutal realities of war. For Rousseau the state of war as a political concept promotes another state of war, one conceived as butchery and suffering (Engberg-Pederson Citation2015, 2–3).’ It is seldom acknowledged, however, that so many of the principal figures associated with the just war tradition also remarked upon this paradox. They were not unaware of the problematic ways in which their own discourse smoothed over the awfulness of war and thus lent it a sheen of respectability. The issue was that, short of surrendering the idea that war can be made subject to moral evaluation and restraint, they saw no escape from this dynamic. The classic example of this is of course Book III of Augustine’s City of God (Citation1998), but it can also be observed in the writings of de Vitoria (Citation1991, 304) and Hugo Grotius (Citation2005, 78).
15. For an excellent general account of Greek tragedy: Hall (Citation2010).
16. This point may be more contentious than I initially assumed. When I shared an earlier draft of this paper with Professor Zehfuss, she joked to the effect that the just war tradition is less interesting than I make it out to be. Whatever about how interesting it is, it may well be that my account of just war is out of step with the rest of the tradition. As the anonymous reviewers for this journal correctly pointed out to me, neither the revisionist camp nor the mainline of the historical approach, as represented by James Turner Johnson, would recognise just war as an inherently tragic pursuit. Where the revisionists frame just war within a theory of rights, Johnson situates it within a moral theory of good government. I set out an argument in support of my reading elsewhere: O’Driscoll (Citation2019).
17. I will not pretend to have any deep understanding of this approach, but the evidence before me suggests that it is a direction well worth pursuing. The sophistication of (relatively) recent works along these or related lines by O’Callaghan (Citation2016) and Lee (Citation2013), as well as by Zehfuss, indicate its rich promise. More tangentially: Bulley (Citation2009).
18. For an excellent if oblique discussion of this general proposition: Rengger (Citation2013).
19. In doing so, I follow Paul Fussell’s lead (Citation1988, 42) in associating the ironic sensibility with a willingness to confront rather than elide the ambiguities we encounter in the political sphere.
20. This approach resonates with the views of Pope John Paul II, who argued that while war could be justified in certain circumstances, it is always a disaster (Simpson Citation2011).
21. I discuss some of the ideas treated in this paragraph elsewhere: O’Driscoll (Citation2018, Citation2019).
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Cian O’Driscoll
Cian O’Driscoll is a Professor of International Politics at the University of Glasgow. His primary area of research is the ethics of war, with a particular focus on the just war tradition. His most recent monograph, Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Just War, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Cian is the Chair of the International Ethics section of the ISA.