Why Just War Theory is a Bad Idea for Episcopalians
Sunday Forum St Mark’s Cathedral, Seattle
2 March 2003
The Rev'd Dr. Bruce Kaye
General Secretary
The Anglican Church of Australia, General Synod
I am very conscious that I speak to you as a visitor
to your country and a guest of your church on a subject which
is the subject of intense and vital public debate for you. It
is of course also a matter of intense public debate in Australia.
Australians are deeply divided on the issue and on our government’s
strong support for President Bush and his Administration. Our
Prime Minister has been an outspoken supporter of Mr Bush and
he has pre-deployed Australian service personnel and ships to
the Gulf area already. Both because of long ties associated
with the Alliance between our two countries and the ties between
our two churches I think it is fair to say that the questions
you face are also faced by Australians except in this respect;
that you are citizens of the most powerful nation on earth and
I am the citizen of a small nation on the far side of the Pacific
Ocean. We have a population of 19 million people compared with
your population of 290 million, and you have an economy significantly
greater than that proportion represents.
I speak to you however as a fellow Anglican out
of our shared Christian faith in order to suggest to you that
the Just war theory is not adequate for the present circumstances
and is not a good idea for Episcopalians.
The Just War Theory was developed over many years
and it has had a variety of formulations. It was most extensively
developed by Thomas Aquinas a Christian theologian in order
to try to put down some Christianly inspired principles to temper
and moderate the conduct of wars.
Just war theory has appeared in the media in relation
to the proposal to invade Iraq. It has appeared regularly on
the pages of the New York Times and gains significant notice
in the current issue of Time Magazine. The impression given
by these treatments is that when you tick through the points
in Just war theory in relation to the statements of our governments
then the proposed invasion of Iraq can be declared to be a just
war.
Assessing each of the principles of the Just War
Theory calls for judgement about the particular case. The principles
presume a clear understanding of and commitment to a Christina
moral tradition. The full force of this tradition is not always
apparent in the public use of Just War Theory language, and
that is one of our problems.
THE CONTEXT OF JUST WAR THEORY
Just War Theory is concerned with why and how wars are fought.
It was developed to temper and to restrain. One of the objects
of restraint in these considerations was restraint against some
of the extremities of the Crusades in which Christians fought
violent battles with the Muslim occupiers of parts of the Holy
Lands.
The terms of the Just War Theory principles fit
in a context of war between more or less balanced opponents
in a multi national or group of nations context. Even two balanced
super powers could be thought to provide something of this context.
One of the very great difficulties is that at the present time
we do not have such a situation of a degree of balance between
nations. Furthermore we are not likely to have such a situation
for the next twenty or thirty years. Our situation is that there
is only one super power and no effective power balance to provide
the means of restraint when the force of moral language has
been evaporated. That is a crucial problem for us.
However let me set out in the simplest terms the
point in Just War Theory.
THE TERMS OF JUST WAR THEORY
Why Wars Are Fought [Jus Ad Bellem]
These are good principles in themselves. Howe
far the present situation of an invasion of Iraq meets these
principles is not easy to say. That would probably require more
information than has so far been made publicly available, at
least in Australia and I suspect here as well. It seems to me
difficult to see how these principles could all be met on the
basis of public information at this present time.
However, that is not my point. My point is that
the Just War Theory is not adequate for Episcopalians because
it does not go far enough to meet tour Christian obligations
and its terms are too susceptible to manipulation in the present
circumstances.
THE CONTEXT FOR TODAY
There are a number aspects in our present situation which make
for a very different context from that which these principles
essentially presuppose.
The loss of a constraining balance.
There is no really effective military power which
can provide the physical or imagined balance to restrain the
military power of the United States of America. At the present
time the Uniter Nations is being used as the vehicle for some
restraint but this in the end will have to be moral constraint.
It is beyond imagination to think that the United Nations could
put together a military force which could be a restraint on
the actions of the United States. I am not an expert in this
field but a friend who does know about these things responded
to my enquiry as to just how powerful was the United States
military than other nations. His response, which startled me,
was that the United States could take on the rest of the world
and win by half time.
It is clear that in the present circumstances
we do not have the kind of balancing forces which are necessary
to give the principles of the Just War Theory real bite where
the Christian moral imperatives do not have overwhelming persuasion.
We have not in my view found a way of dealing
with this new phenomenon of a world with just one unstoppable
super power. That is a challenge for someone from a small country
like Australia. We can very easily be trodden underfoot without
much notice, and it dramatically affects all sorts of relations,
especially trade. But it is also a challenge for you as citizens
of that power. Indeed at one level as citizens of this great
power and as Episcopalian Christians it is more your responsibility
that anyone else. How do you as citizens vitalise the resources
from within your own liberal democratic traditions to secure
a role for your country that adequately meets this challenge
for all our sakes. Make no mistake. This challenge if not met
from within your own traditions and processes will affect you
as well as the rest of us and will affect you in ways which
will be profound and corroding of your national life and values.
It has been a remarkable feature of our present circumstances,
both here and in Australia, that there has been so little serious
and effective analysis and criticism of government policy and
it has been so late coming. A consequence of this has been that
the possibility of effective political pressure and restraint
on governments has been much diminished.
Language in this area has been devalued.
We have grown accustomed to the use of the term war to describe
what are properly campaigns. We have been taught to speak of
a war on poverty, a war on drugs, a war on crime. Part of the
reason for this is that our means of communication through instant
television and to a lesser extent radio, requires attention
grabbing language, language which must be continually escalated
in order to capture the viewer. The more technically smart presentations
have become, the more language has escalated. We have come to
think of war not as the bloody killing and maiming of mostly
young people, but as a kind of video game in which smart bombs
are guided to selected targets from safe distances and viewed
by distant spectators in the comfort of our lounge rooms. As
yet another Star ship vaporises, not a plastic model or a video
image, but real people in a real land who have children and
aunts and uncles just like us.
War is not a video game. It is a horrible brutal
dehumanising thing. War is not a campaign against some currently
serious social issue. It is a matter of the killing and maiming
of human beings. We live at a time when the language of war
trips too easily off our lips and we have lost the sense of
what it is.
Terrorist are not soldiers they are criminals.
The right response to terrorist attacks is a sustained internationally
coordinated and determined police action so that murderers are
brought to justice. I do not doubt that such activity is going
on, but the invasion of Iraq and the declaration of war on terror
mis-describes and mis-directs the reality of the events.
We in Australia were greatly shocked and affected
by the horrendous terrorist attack on September 11. I was here
at the time and shared in that horror. We in Australia have
also been deeply affected by the bombing in Bali when hundreds
of Australians were brutally murdered. What has happened in
Indonesia is that a sustained and internationally supported
police action has led to the arrest of the ring leaders and
the main perpetrators of the bombing and they are being treated
as common criminals and are being brought to justice through
the legal system.
In a situation where the language of war has been
debased and where there is now possible physical external constraint
on the one super power Just War Theory is not tough enough to
deal with the issues and because of the devaluation of language
it is too open to manipulation.
EPISCOPALIANS
Like Anglicans in Australia Episcopalians in the
United States are not the chaplains to the government but are
players in a plural conversation. In that context we need to
be able to deploy as advocates and activists the whole of our
Christian responsibilities and resources. Those responsibilities
include but are not comprehended by addressing the precise question
of invasion as a way to deal with these issues.
If it is possible for members of the United States
Congress to go to Iraq as part of their political action, then
it is certainly possible for Episcopalians to be going to Iraq
to use their religious relationships to inform the rest of us
and to serve the Iraqi people and their fellow Americans. If
we focus solely on the invasion and on Just War Theory as the
only thing that we concern ourselves with, then we will have
failed. In that sense Just War Theory is not a good idea for
Episcopalians. It has limitations in the present circumstances
and by occupying centre stage in the argument it narrows our
vision of what we should be considering as Christians.
I want to suggest as well that we should be advocating
not just no war in Iraq, nor just advocating for peace. I think
our circumstances in this century are such that we need to rehabilitate
the horror of war. One way to do that would be to embark on
a campaign to outlaw war, a campaign like that which was conducted
in the nineteenth century against slavery.
A group of Theologians are sponsoring an appeal
which has originated in Ireland for such a campaign. In their
appeal they say amongst other things;
To many theologians this call for the abolition
of war will appear presumptuous on our part (who are these people
anyhow?). To others it may seem theologically flawed and practically
futile. Yet with John Paul II's phrase from Centesimus Annus
"War Never Again," ringing in our ears and Tertullian's
succinct summary of early Church teaching before our eyes, "The
Lord in disarming Peter henceforth disarms every soldier,"
we are driven back to that basic conviction that in the death,
resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, the destructive
powers of this world, prominent among them, War, were radically
overcome.
The anti slavery campaign did not remove slavery
from the world, but it radically changed our perception of its
acceptability. If a sustained anti war campaign had a similar
result then we would all be a lot better off.
I believe and hope that in each of our countries
we have the resources of values and culture and commitment to
deal with the new and deeply dangerous political challenges
we face. Whether we shall rise to that challenge has yet to
be seen.
I also believe that our common Christian faith
has the resources to enable us to venture with imagination and
courage the broader and deeper problems of our present circumstances
so that we are able to fulfil our Christian responsibilities
in their fullness.
