The War System

An Interdisciplinary Approach

Richard Falk, Samuel S Kim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000306958
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An interdisciplinary study of this nature and scope reflects contributions of many scholars in divene disciplines and fields concerned with human conflict behavior in general and with human war-prone behavior in particular. They are too numerous to enumerate here. Still, our deep gratitude goes to those scholars whose writings have been incorporated in this volume as "sample representatives" of what their particular disciplines can contribute to the study of war.

Part 1
Moral and Philosophical Inquiries

Introduction

Moralists and philosophers have long been fascinated by war. War reveals the behavior of social groups at the extremity. The willingness of societies to pursue their collective goals by recourse to war tells us a lot about the human species.

The status of war has been and remains morally ambiguous for most people. No major society has committed itself to a pacifist ethic. Every government claims at least the right to use force in self-defense, as well as to define what constitutes a situation of self-defense. More than this, in some circumstances war as an instrument of change enjoys popular backing. There continue to be "holy wars" and "just wars" in the modern world. Prominent moral philosophers, undaunted by the destructiveness of modern war, affirm the possibility of appropriate warfare under certain circumstances (Ramsey 1968; Walzer 1977).

In the West there is a very rich literature concerning the idea of just war, a concept whose endorsement implies the prohibition of unjust wars. Moral controversy has been centered on the definition of acceptable causes for just war, although the significance of the controversy is uncertain. Is it about the proper form of words to be used in a given historic epoch to justify recourse to war? That is, is it an insistence that justifications for war in the contemporary world rely on an argument of self-defense or "liberation" from colonialism or racist oppression?

Or, more substantively, does the content of the just war doctrine have an impact on what the decisionmaker of a government is likely to do in a situation where recourse to war is contemplated in a serious way? In any event, we note that moralists are concerned with clarifying the occasions on which it is permissible, according to rules of international law and prevailing ideas of justice, for a polity to make war.

But as Part 1 explores, moralists are also concerned with the means used to wage war. There is a classic distinction that goes back at least to Roman times between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In the first instance, concern is about regulation of recourse to war and, in the latter instance, its conduct. Increasingly, philosophers have despaired of cutting effectively into the geopolitical discretion claimed by leaders of sovereign states to employ war as an instrument of statecraft. Instead, more serious attention is paid to the excesses of war, and to the role of law and morality in limiting the means of its conduct that inflict deliberate harm on the innocent, or rely on cruel tactics and weaponry that run beyond the claims of military necessity, or employ methods that so offend moral sensibilities that they should be forbidden even in situations where a belief in their effectiveness exists (e.g., torture).

In the first selection, a moral philosopher, Thomas Nagel, seeks to provide a rational case for relying on absolutist reasoning to condemn certain tactics of warfare. His concern is more with the structure of the argument than with its application to concrete cases. He seeks, above all, to combat the modern cult of efficiency that would relinquish moral concern if a reasonable defense of the challenged tactic or weapon could be made by way of its effectiveness. To argue that certain acts are wrong in war, even if they apparently contribute to victory, is to allow individuals to have some grounds to oppose under all circumstances the absolutist claims of the state. Granting that war involves deliberate, large-scale killing, it remains morally significant to prohibit and condemn "massacre," that is, the killing of the innocent. War amounts to massacre unless its goals are pursued in a discriminating manner that is associated with the defeating of the enemy on the battlefield.

The ground of violence and war in human experience has also engaged the moral and philosophical imagination. The biblical murder of Abel by his brother Cain suggests that violence and struggle existed from the beginning in Western civilization. Some have argued that the adoption of settled agriculture 5,000 or so years ago more than anything else led to the formation of coercive political arrangements and intergroup warfare. In any event, one approach to the elimination of war has centered on a critique of the modern state. Philosophical anarchism has, in a variety of forms, emphasized the necessarily exploitative and violent character of the state, with its class divisions and centralized bureaucracy exercising control over violent capabilities. Such analysis applies both to the political life of particular states and to the political conditions associated with systems of states. From this anarchist perspective the elimination of war can be achieved only as an incidental by-product of political decentralization at the state level. The selection by Richard Falk examines the anarchist orientation toward global reform.

Underneath such a focus is the wider conviction that it is not enough to confine the means by which wars are waged. Given the march of modern weaponry, and the use, development, and spread of nuclear weapons in particular, it seems necessary also to consider the morality of war per se. Such an appraisal may take inspiration either from an insistence that nonviolence forms an essential attribute of any real political breakthrough on every level of social organization or from the realization that the war system as related to current and future technology threatens the human species with a tragic, if not apocalyptic, destiny. Already there are many specialists who believe it likely that World War III will occur well before the end of the century. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that a renewed interest in anarchism is evident.

In effect, people are sensing that governance structures as we know them are locked into the war system, and that no decoupling can occur. To challenge these structures, then, will require a popular movement from below that promises more fundamental shifts than the elevation of enlightened leaders to power or the adoption of a progressive ideology and program. The anarchists promise new structures that are inherently antagonistic to the outlook and organization of the war system. To consider anarchism as a global strategy extends the therapy of decentralization to the world as a whole. It contrasts, also, with conventional wisdom on global reform that associates taming the war system with establishing some kind of world government, most likely a federalist polity that combines sufficient central guidance with the reassurance that sovereignty at the state level can persist. Anarchist thought is generally dialectical, breaking down the structure of the state as we know it but building up the cooperative and coordinating activities and roles of groups situated throughout the world, generally through a network of international institutions, resembling in role the specialized agencies of the United Nations, but augmented in function.

In addition to restructuring power is the issue of conflict strategy. There is no serious way to work for change unless it is accompanied by a willingness to engage in conflict. The fundamental moral dilemma here, as with war itself, is whether such conflict should be viewed as a test of wills and capabilities, or whether, in addition, it is a test of values. Margaret Fisher creatively explores this basic alternative in the third selection. She argues that an approach to conflict oriented around conventional approaches to risk and security is incapable of generating the political will required to challenge and transform existing patterns of reliance on violence. In the end, Fisher invokes a Gandhian example to contend that a dedication to truth and a reliance on nonviolence is an absolute precondition for avoiding catastrophe and building a positive, revolutionary process: "Is not the true 'power of the people' to be defined in terms of the building up of moral courage to the point where the majority of the people become immune both to threats of violence and to the temptation to indulge in violent acts?"

To overcome the war system, then, tests the limits of human potential, individually and collectively. It disregards reformist efforts to moderate or civilize war, or even to restrict its occurrence to permissible instances ("just causes"). The abolitionist quest, if not entirely sentimental, anticipates struggle: war against war, so to speak. It also grounds the struggle on a sublime stance: the total repudiation of violence as a means of combat despite the violence of current power wielders. And it envisions a new world order founded on truth and justice as the outcome of destroying the war system. It is not a serious position to condemn war but leave patterns of social, cultural, economic, and political oppression intact. To eliminate war is tantamount to the achievement of liberation. Such a goal seems distant, unrealizable, and yet the failure to pursue it appears to condemn human society to a process of decay and eventual disaster.

These are themes initiated in Part 1 and pursued further in Part 9 of the book.

1
War and Massacre¹

Thomas Nagel

From the apathetic reaction to atrocities committed in Vietnam by the United States and its allies, one may conclude that moral restrictions on the conduct of war command almost as little sympathy among the general public as they do among those charged with the formation of U.S. military policy. Even when restrictions on the conduct of warfare are defended, it is usually on legal grounds alone: their moral basis is often poorly understood. I wish to argue that certain restrictions are neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression.

I

No elaborate moral theory is required to account for what is wrong in cases like the Mylai massacre, since it did not serve, and was not intended to serve, any strategic purpose. Moreover, if the participation of the United States in the Indochinese war is entirely wrong to begin with, then that engagement is incapable of providing a justification for any measures taken in its pursuit — not only for the measures which are atrocities in every war, however just its aims.

But this war has revealed attitudes of a more general kind that influenced the conduct of earlier wars as well. After it has ended, we shall be faced with the problem of how warfare may be conducted, and the attitudes that have resulted in the specific conduct of this war will not have disappeared. Moreover, similar problems can arise in wars or rebellions fought for very different reasons, and against very different opponents. It is not easy to keep a firm grip on the idea of what is not permissible in warfare, because while some military actions are obvious atrocities, other cases are more difficult to assess, and the general principles underlying these judgments remain obscure. Such obscurity can lead to the abandonment of sound intuitions in favor of criteria whose rationale may be more obvious. If such a tendency is to be resisted, it will require a better understanding of the restrictions than we now have.

I propose to discuss the most general moral problem raised by the conduct of warfare: the problem of means and ends. In one view, there are limits on what may be done even in the service of an end worth pursuing—and even when adherence to the restriction may be very costly. A person who acknowledges the force of such restrictions can find himself in acute moral dilemmas. He may believe, for example, that by torturing a prisoner he can obtain information necessary to prevent a disaster, or that by obliterating one village with bombs he can halt a campaign of terrorism. If he believes that the gains from a certain measure will clearly outweigh its costs, yet still suspects that he ought not to adopt it, then he is in a dilemma produced by the conflict between two disparate categories of moral reason: categories that may be called utilitarian and absolutist.

Utilitarianism gives primacy to a concern with what will happen. Absolutism gives primacy to a concern with what one is doing. The conflict between them arises because the alternatives we face are rarely just choices between total outcomes: they are also choices between alternative pathways or measures to be taken. When one of the choices is to do terrible things to another person, the problem is altered fundamentally; it is no longer merely a question of which outcome would be worse.

Few of us are completely immune to either of these types of moral intuition, though in some people, either naturally or for doctrinal reasons, one type will be dominant and the other suppressed or weak. But it is perfectly possible to feel the force of both types of reason very strongly; in that case the moral dilemma in certain situations of crisis will be acute, and it may appear that every possible course of action or inaction is unacceptable for one reason or another.

II

Although it is this dilemma that I propose to explore, most of the discussion will be devoted to its absolutist component. The utilitarian component is straightforward by comparison and has a natural appeal to anyone who is not a complete skeptic about ethics. Utilitarianism says that one should try, either individually or through institutions, to maximize good and minimize evil (the definition of these categories need not enter into the schematic formulation of the view), and that if faced with the possibility of preventing a great evil by producing a lesser, one should choose the lesser evil. There are certainly problems about the formulation of utilitarianism, and much has been w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• General Introduction
• Part 1 Moral and Philosophical Inquiries
• Part 2 Ethological and Psychological Inquiries
• Part 3 Cultural and Anthropological Inquiries
• Part 4 Sociopsychological Inquiries
• Part 5 Sociological Inquiries
• Part 6 Socioeconomic Inquiries
• Part 7 Decisionmaking Inquiries
• Part 8 International Systemic Inquiries
• Part 9 Normative Inquiries
• Selected Bibliography
• Books Written Under the Auspices of the Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1952-1979