Kant and the End of War: A Critique of Just War Theory

211 Pages·2012·3.578 MB·English

by  Howard Williams

Kant and the End of War
10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
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GLOBAL THEORY FROM KANT TO HARDT AND NEGRI
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Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment
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INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL THEORY AFTER HOBBES
Analysis, Interpretation and Orientation
Howard Williams
KANT AND THE END OF WAR
A Critique of Just War Theory
Huw Lloyd Williams
ON RAWLS, DEVELOPMENT AND GLOBAL JUSTICE
The Freedom of Peoples
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10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
Kant and the End of War
A Critique of Just War Theory
Howard Williams
Professor in Political Theory, Department of International Politics,
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
© Howard Williams 2012
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10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 The Motif of War in Kant’s Critical Philosophy 10
2 Kant and Just War Theory: The Problem Outlined 40
3 Perpetual Peace and the Case against Just War Theory 56
4 The Metaphysics of Morals and the Case for Just War Theory 72
5 Bringing the Argument Together 91
6 Kantian Perspectives on Foreign Intervention 113
7 The Hegelian Premises of Contemporary Just War Theory
and Their Kantian Critique 141
8 Conclusion: The Kantian Critique of Just War Theory 166
Notes 172
Bibliography 194
Index 199
v
10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks here to the British Academy for a grant
of £2,000 which considerably eased the process of gathering material
from German libraries in the final stages of the research. Colleagues
in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth, provided
exceptionally valuable advice and criticism in constructing and pre-
senting the argument. My profound thanks also go to my family, in
particular to my wife Jennifer, for the support they have given me in
completing this book.
The book is dedicated to our two grandchildren, Aoife and Oisin.
They have provided a wonderful distraction from the military problems
of our age.
vi
10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams
Introduction
Kant, politics and international theory
Kant stands almost unchallenged as one of the major thinkers of the
European Enlightenment who influenced directly and indirectly all the
subsequent major figures in philosophy from Hegel to Wittgenstein and
modernists (such as Habermas) and post- modernists (such as Lyotard)
alike. He is best known as an ethical theorist and, above all, as the theo-
rist of knowledge who composed the extraordinarily impressive Critique
of Pure Reason (1781). Kant has also developed a standing as a politi-
cal philosopher of some note, now sufficient to join the canon in the
history of political thought alongside figures like Hobbes and Locke,
and Rousseau. Articles on Kant’s political theory nowadays proliferate
in political science journals and he is increasingly seen as a political
thinker who addresses the central problems of our age. His work is par-
ticularly highlighted for the way in which it draws together considera-
tions of traditional political theory, focused on the internal functioning
of the state, and considerations of international political theory, focused
on the relations among independent sovereign states.1 This interest was
given a tremendous impetus at the turn of the century by the ‘demo-
cratic peace thesis’ put forward by Michael Doyle2 and further developed
by writers like Francis Fukuyama3 and Bruce Russett.4 Kant was widely
cited as an inspiration for this thesis which brought out in an impressive
way the relevance of his thinking for international politics. The impor-
tant contribution that Kantian thinking might make to international
law has been illuminated, albeit with less recognition, by the publica-
tions of authors such as Fernando Teson and Leslie Mulholland.
The beginning of the twenty first century saw Kant’s political and
international theory enter the Zeitgeist in an unprecedented and often
1
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2 Kant and the End of War
controversial way. Largely Kantian thought has had a quiet and unseen
influence on political developments in the western world. Kant has
had his enthusiasts amongst academics, lawyers and political leaders,
but this has not led very many wishing to identify themselves openly
with Kantian ideas. However, the end of the Cold War brought with
it an enthusiasm for democratic ideals and their supposedly pacifying
effects, which openly and directly connected itself with Kant’s political
thinking – particularly his tract on Perpetual Peace. Attention centred
on the republican mode of government which Kant advocated in the
first preliminary article of that book, and also in a secondary way on
the federation of free states that Kant hoped would develop from the
growth of republican states. Because Kant’s republican ideal rested upon
governments elected by citizens and a separation of powers between
legislature and executive and executive, legislature and judiciary it
was identified as fundamentally similar to the form of rule enjoyed by
the leading western democracies. Thus through the popularization of
Kant’s political theory western societies were able to indulge themselves
in a form of self- congratulation which appeared to vindicate the mode
of government established by their founders and forerunners. This
celebration was not entirely empty because those central and eastern
European peoples who freed themselves from one- party communist
rule turned to the western model of representative government with a
division of powers in establishing their own post- communist systems
of government. Also the evidence is fairly overwhelming that such rep-
resentative governments, i.e. those that come nearest to meeting the
requirements of a Kantian republic, almost without exception have not
gone to war with one another.
By the time of the bi-c entenary of Kant’s death (which took place in
2004) Kant’s name was ineradicably associated with what has become
known as the democratic peace thesis. The event was marked by the
appearance of the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
in Kant’s birthplace Kaliningrad (formerly the East Prussian city of
Königsberg, but ceded to the Soviet Union in 1945 as a warm water port)
and his placing flowers at the tomb of the philosopher, which lies out on
the outside wall of the now partially restored cathedral. By 2004 Kant
had impinged upon the popular consciousness – not only as the princi-
pal source of the democratic peace thesis, but also amongst some critics
and sceptics as a source of western hubris and imperial overreach in
trying to put the world to rights in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Kant
has simultaneously earned the reputation of both being an advocate of
peace and a source of universalistic political ambitions that inevitably
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Introduction 3
lead to war between the west and ‘the rest’. This study situates itself at
the heart of this controversy between the Kantian disposition that aims
in a consistent and principled way towards eternal peace and the sup-
posed contrary Kantian disposition that leads to excessive interference
in the affairs of non-d emocratic states (and so to eternal war). I shall
attempt to steer a course between the Scylla of Kant as the unquestion-
ing supporter of western democratic rule and the Charybdis of Kant as
the dogmatic universalist who has no feel for national and cultural dif-
ferences. Indeed, I shall try to demonstrate that looking closely at what
Kant has to say about politics and the permissibility of war detaches
him from both caricatures (of rigid democratic peace theorist on the
one hand and blind, insensitive universalist on the other). Kant has a
progressive political theory which is sensitive to historical and cultural
differences that has yet fully to be understood and reckoned with.
Thus Kant’s influence as an Enlightenment thinker is extending
beyond the traditional fields of ethics and epistemology. He is not now
primarily seen as the moral philosopher who coined the phrase ‘the
categorical imperative’, nor simply as the philosopher of mind who
brought about a ‘Copernican Revolution’ in the theory of knowledge.
Kant’s philosophical thinking on politics has become central to the
understanding of contemporary international relations. Kant has an
important contribution to make to the debate on just war thinking.
The ethics of war is a major concern in Kant’s political philosophy – just
as it is in the writings of one of the founders of modern international
law Hugo Grotius – and has already been the subject of one full length
study by Brian Orend in his War and International Justice: A Kantian per-
spective (2000). Deeply influenced by the writings of Michael Walzer
on just war, Orend makes a bold effort to establish that Kant also can
be counted amongst those theorists who belong to the just war tra-
dition. However, I believe there is a need to challenge the approach
taken to Kant in this work and the literature on ‘Kant’s just war theory’
that has flowed from it. Although the book and the response to it have
served to draw attention to Kant’s contribution to international rela-
tions thinking, they have in my view taken the understanding of Kant’s
political philosophy in a false direction. One of my major concerns is to
re-e stablish Kant’s reputation as a critic of just war thinking.
This new study is intended not only to present a different point of
view from Orend, but also to bring the ideas of Kant’s critical philoso-
phy as a whole to bear on one of the leading political and legal ques-
tions of our age: under what circumstances, if any, is recourse to war
legally and morally justifiable? This issue was strikingly brought to the
10.1057/9780230360228 - Kant and the End of War, Howard Williams