Morality and War: Can War be Just in the Twenty-first Century?

314 Pages·2011·1.103 MB·English

by  David Fisher

MORALITY AND WAR
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MORALITY
AND WAR
CAN WAR BE JUST IN THE
- ?
TWENTY FIRST CENTURY
DAVID FISHER
1
3
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To Sophia
Foreword
The philosopher Immanuel Kant, in discussing the prevention of war and
the preservation of peace, distinguished between the philosophers who
proposed solutions to the world’s problems and the bureaucrats who in
practice had to deal with them. The bureaucrats, he said, should listen
carefully to the philosophers, but the philosophers should respect the
responsibilities of the bureaucrats.
DavidFisherhastheadvantageofbeingboth.Hegainedadoublefirstin
ModsandGreatsatOxford,perhapsthemostdemandingacademicdiscip-
line in the United Kingdom if not the world, and there he learned the
Aristotelian rigour and lucidity in argument so evident in the following
pages.Hadhesowished,hecouldhavehadanoutstandingacademiccareer.
As it is, he has spent his life as a civil servant in the Ministry of Defence,
eventually becoming senior defence adviser to the Cabinet Office and
Defence Counsellor at NATO—roles in which he helped shape the com-
plex political decisions involved in the ending of the Cold War and the
Balkancrisesofthe1990s.Hehasbeenadoeraswellasathinker,andthat
experience is reflected in every line of this book.
Fisher’sthesisisassimpleasitisimportant.Therehasbeenmuchdiscussion
duringthelastdecadeaboutthemoralityofwaringeneralandtheIraqWar
inparticular,butithasbeenverylargelybasedonconclusionsthatmedieval
theologians derived from a universally accepted moral framework that has
nowverylargelydisappeared.Todayitisnotenoughtosetoutcriteriaofjus
ad bellum and jus in bello formulated by Augustine or Aquinas and then just
‘ticktheboxes’forwhateverwarwemaybecontemplatingorwaging.Both
societyandwarfarehavechangedtoomuch.Decisionsforwarandpeaceare
nolongermadebyprincesbutbydemocraticassembliesresponsibletopublic
opinion.Responsibilityforactionswithinwarmustrestwiththosewhocarry
themout,notjustthosewhoorderedthem.Theapplicablemoralcriteriaare
notconjuredupbyaspecificmilitarysituation:theyhavetobederivedfrom
foreword vii
universal social norms. Once, they were those of Christendom as a whole.
Butwherecanweseekthemtoday?
ThatisthehugequestionthatFishersetshimselftoanswer,andhedoes
so lucidly and comprehensively. He explores the roots of individual and
socialmoralityin ordertoprovidethenecessary frameworkforhisspecific
prescriptions. In doing so he reaches back beyond the familiar doctrines of
Aquinas to the almost forgotten Aristotelian concept of ‘virtues’ as the
ground for personal and social behaviour. He emphasizes the need, in war
as in peace, not simply to obey the rules, but to internalize the moral
obligations from which the rules are derived. Morality, he makes clear, is
not just a constraint on the conduct of war, any more than it is on social
behaviour in general. It is an entire dimension of the world in which war,
like any other social activity, exists.
ItisperhapsnoaccidentthatDavidFisherrateschiefamongthosevirtues
that of ‘practical wisdom’—‘the habit of sound judgement about practical
situations’. The bureaucrat in Fisher knows that the moral choices he may
propose as a philosopher will be judged by their consequences in the real
worldratherthanbytheirethicalpurity.Onlysuchavirtuecanguideboth
soldiers and statesmen through the moral dilemmas that will beset them
witheverydecisiontheyhavetomake,andenablethem,asheneatlyputsit,
‘to make war just, and to make only just war’.
Reading this book will do both philosophers and bureaucrats a world of
good.
Michael Howard
PROFESSORSIRMICHAELHOWARDOMCHCBEMCisco-founder
and President Emeritus of the International Institute for Strategic Studies; formerly
Regius Professor of Modern History, Oxford University; Professor of Military and
Naval History, Yale University; and Professor and founder of the Department of
War Studies at King’s College, London.
Acknowledgments
The book was written as a Ph.D. thesis undertaken in the Department of
War Studies at Kings College, London, and so I should like to record my
especial thanks to my supervisor, Dr Barrie Paskins. My thanks go also to
Professor Mervyn Frost and my examiners, Professor Sir Lawrence Freed-
man and Professor Nigel Biggar, particularly the latter for his help and
encouragement in turning the thesis into a book. Such was the proximate
origin of the book. But it is also the product of a lifetime’s reflection on
the ethics of war and peace, drawing on my experience as a senior official
in the UK Ministry of Defence and discussion with many friends and
colleagues, not least in the amicable forum of the Council on Christian
Approaches to Defence and Disarmament. I should like to record especial
gratitude to Hugh Beach, Tony Colclough, Paul Cornish, Michael Ho-
ward, Keith Maslin, Frank Roberts, and Brian Wicker. I should also like
to record my debt to the late Sir Michael Quinlan, who encouraged me
to embark on this project and from whose help and encouragement over
many years I have profited enormously. Above all, my thanks go to my
wife, Sophia, for her wise and patient support of my labours.
Contents
Introduction: A New Look at an Old Tradition 1
PART ONE: MORALITY
1. War without Morality 11
2. ‘Whose Justice? Which Rationality?’ 28
3.Virtues and Consequences 43
4. The Just War Tradition 64
5. Is Non-Combatant Immunity Absolute? 85
6. Virtues 108
7. Virtuous Consequentialism 134
PARTTWO: WAR
8. The Protean Nature of War 151
9. Extreme Times, Extreme Measures 166
10. Gulf Wars 191
11. Humanitarian Intervention 221
12. Making War Just 243
Notes 259
Bibliography 284
Index 297