Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations

“The morality I shall expound is in its philosophical form a doctrine of human rights, […]. Considerations of utility play into the structure at many points, but they cannot account for it as a whole. Their part is subsidiary to that of rights; it is constrained by rights.”

Walzer’s theory of just and unjust conduct in war is grounded in the human rights of noncombatants. Military strategies must be devised so as to minimize civilian deaths. It is not sufficient to justify the killing of civilians solely on grounds of military usefulness and good intention. The gross violation of human rights in wartime is the underlying basis for common moral perceptions about wartime behavior.

“Even when world views and high ideals have been abandoned – as the glorification of aristocratic chivalry was abandoned in early modern times – notions about right conduct are remarkably persistent.”

Walzer emphasizes the historical longevity of the war convention. Even though there is general agreement on morals, there are heated disputes about their application to historical events and military strategies. The persistence of notions of rightful conduct speak to a common sense of morality.

“It’s not what people do, the physical motions they go through, that are crucial, but the institutions, practices, conventions that they make. Hence the social and historical conditions that ‘modify’ war are not to be considered as accidental or external to war itself, for war is a social creation.”

The rules of war, such as the status of prisoners of war, are part of that social creation. War is not limitless but conforms to certain rules and principles, formed over the centuries. Walzer distinguishes these practices and morals from legal rules, which are deficient and incomplete in the area of warfare.

“War is so awful that it makes us cynical about the possibility of restraint, and then it is so much worse that it makes us indignant at the absence of restraint. Our cynicism testifies to the defectiveness of the war convention, and our indignation to its reality and strength.”

There are some acts so cruel and barbaric that they shock the conscience. The common recognition of such acts is proof of a moral code even in wartime. However, that code, as it is, allows for too much suffering to be tolerated.

“But once an invasion has been threatened or actually begun, it may be necessary to defend a bad border simply because there is no other.”

For peace in the international order, the rights of states to political sovereignty and territorial integrity must be recognized. When a state commits an act of aggression, it invades the borders of another state; regardless of their origins in historical injustice, a state’s boundaries must be respected.

“The line between legitimate and illegitimate first strikes is not going to be drawn at the point of imminent attack but at the point of sufficient threat. That phrase is necessarily vague.”

A state does not have to wait to be attacked if there is a reasonably certain threat of that eventuality. In such circumstances, a state can defend itself against the threat and is justified in doing so. Yet the determination of what constitutes a sufficient threat is bound to be disputed and is indicative of the necessary flexibility in these moral standards.

“We need to establish a kind of a priori respect for state boundaries; […]. And that is why intervention is always justified as if it were an exception to a general rule, made necessary by the urgency or extremity of a particular case.”

Walzer again emphasizes the sacrosanct nature of the territorial integrity of states. He sets a very high bar for humanitarian intervention in the domestic affairs of another state. Human rights abuses must rise to the level of massacres and enslavement before it would be justifiable.

“Unless the activities of that regime are a standing affront to the conscience of mankind, its destruction is not a legitimate military goal.”

Wars are not limitless. If the goal in the Korean War was to restore the border between North and South, then there was no justification for continuing the war in North Korea after the border was restored. Unconditional surrender is not typically required in war, and there is an obligation to bring hostilities to a conclusion when reasonable goals are met.

“The war convention rests first on a certain view of combatants, which stipulates their battlefield equality. But it rests more deeply on a certain view of noncombatants, which holds that they are men and women with rights and that they cannot be used for some military purpose, even if it is a legitimate purpose.”

The distinction between combatants and noncombatants is essential to Walzer’s theory. All soldiers, whether fighting for a just or unjust cause, are responsible for respecting the rights of civilians. Soldiers must be willing to assume some risk to themselves in order to minimize civilian deaths.

“The same tale appears again and again in war memoirs and in letters from the front. It has this general form: a soldier on patrol or on sniper duty catches an enemy soldier unaware, holds him in his gunsight, easy to kill, and then must decide whether to shoot him or let the opportunity pass. There is at such moments great reluctance to shoot […].”

There is no war convention about shooting enemy soldiers in such circumstances. Yet Walzer highlights the significance of the reluctance to shoot someone who is not threatening and engaged in ordinary activities, such as bathing. In these moments, soldiers see the enemy as human with rights and relate to them.

“More civilians died in the siege of Leningrad than in the modernist infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, taken together.”

Walzer cites this statistic to criticize siege warfare for its targeting of civilians. When an army uses a siege, they not only starve the civilian population but typically execute those trying to escape. Walzer proposes revisions to the war convention to ensure that civilians be granted safe passage in the event of a siege.

“They attack stealthily, deviously, without warning, and in disguise. They violate the implicit trust upon which the war convention rests: soldiers must feel safe among civilians if civilians are ever to be safe from soldiers.”

Walzer describes the threat that guerrilla warfare presents to the war convention. While guerrilla warfare conflates combatants and noncombatants, Walzer seeks to retain the distinction. He evaluates the legitimacy of guerrilla campaigns on the basis of their popular support. Without it, they are criminals, and with full support, they are the legitimate rulers. The difficulty arises in the middle of those extremes.

“Whereas soldiers are supposed to protect the civilians who stand behind them, guerrillas are protected by the civilians among whom they stand.”

There is an intimate relationship between guerrillas and the populace, as they rely upon it directly for supplies and protection. If the populace voluntarily supports the guerrillas, these soldiers are entitled to war rights as the servants of their community. If the popular support is overwhelming, it is wrong to wage war against the guerrillas. The war would then be waged on a people, not an army.

“The mark of a revolutionary struggle against oppression, however, is not this incapacitating rage and random violence, but restraint and self-control. The revolutionary reveals his freedom in the same way as he earns it, by directly confronting his enemies and refraining from attacks on anyone else.”

Terrorism, which targets innocent civilians, is criminal. In its current form, terrorism destroys the war convention. Walzer argues that revolutionaries have alternatives and can target military bases or supplies, rather than targeting unarmed civilians. The ends do not justify the means, and revolutionaries too must conform to the moral rules of war.

“At the same time, we are uneasy about reprisals precisely because there is a convention, and one that categorically rules out the acts that reprisal usually requires.”

Because reprisals allow for criminal action if done in response to previously committed crimes by the enemy, they generate uneasiness. Walzer requires that reprisals not target innocent people and be proportional to the prior crime. If those conditions are met, they can be a limited use of force that prevents a war.

“[D]o justice unless the heavens are (really) about to fall. This is the utilitarianism of extremity, for it concedes that in certain very special cases, though never as a matter of course even in just wars, the only restraints upon military action are those of usefulness and proportionality.”

Walzer acknowledges that there are instances when the justice of war clashes with justice in war. The Nazis, for example, had to be defeated, and if unjust means were the only way to prevent their victory, such means could be employed as an exception. However, such exceptions, Walzer emphasizes, are extremely rare.

“This argument, however, rests uneasily on ‘imaginings’ about which there is no general agreement and which often look painfully implausible after the fact.” 

Walzer refers to the argument that neutral states can be morally coerced into a war if the danger is one shared by all states, even if not yet present to them. He then notes the problem with this principle, as dangers are often exaggerated in times of war. He provides examples of states that had their neutrality rights violated wrongly.

“If people have a right not to be forced to fight, they also have a right not to be forced to continue fighting beyond the point when the war might justly be concluded.”

Walzer criticizes the American decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan to obtain its unconditional surrender. Japan was distinct from Germany, and the war could have ended with its defeat rather than the overthrow of its rulers. Instead of continuing to fight or bomb population centers, the Americans could have negotiated a conditional surrender with the Japanese government: When a satisfactory conclusion to a war is available that saves lives, it should be taken.

“It is designed to kill whole populations, and its deterrent value depends upon that fact (whether the killing is direct or indirect). It serves the purpose of preventing war only by virtue of the implicit threat it poses, and we possess it for the sake of that purpose. And men and women are responsible for the threats they live by, even if they don’t speak them out loud.”

Walzer is referring to nuclear weapons, which are a frontal assault on just war theory. Any use of them or threat of their use violates the war convention, given that noncombatants would be killed in large numbers. Yet he acknowledges that the deterrence that the threat of their use provides is probably justified as a supreme emergency. However, the situation is not stable.

“Acts of state are also acts of particular persons, and when they take the form of aggressive war, particular persons are criminally responsible.”

People must be held morally accountable for war crimes, and in Chapter 18, Walzer explores how far down the chain of command to go. He casts a fairly wide net, holding not only leaders responsible for aggressive wars but those who vote for them: There is a moral obligation in a democracy to take positive steps to prevent or end such wars.

“[I]ndeed, it suggests once again that heatedness isn’t the issue, but murderousness; and for their own murderousness individuals are always responsible, even when under conditions of military discipline they are not exclusively so.”

Soldiers are responsible for their actions and cannot excuse the murder of civilians by a temporary insanity caused by the heat of battle: Most soldiers do not murder. Walzer argues that more than one person can bear moral responsibility for such murders, those officers ordering soldiers to kill, the soldiers themselves, and possibly military planners not on the scene.

“The world of necessity is generated by a conflict between collective survival and human rights. We find ourselves in that world less often than we think, certainly less often than we say; but whenever we are there, we experience the ultimate tyranny of war – and also, it might be argued, the ultimate incoherence of the theory of war.”

Walzer describes the nightmare scenario when a supreme emergency requires that the rights of noncombatants be disregarded for the sake of survival. Again, he emphasizes the rarity of such moments and the need to be stringent in determining when those circumstances exist. In such a case, however, the theory of war collapses: The just end justifies unjust means.

“The success of the defense is entirely dependent upon the moral convictions and sensibilities of the enemy soldiers.”

The success of non-violent resistance to an aggressor requires that the aggressor observe the war convention. If instead the aggressor chooses to kill and imprison noncombatants engaged in non-violent resistance, the strategy will fail. To transform a war into a political struggle requires adherence to the war convention.