Appeasement and Just War Reasoning

On the last day of February, President Zelensky of Ukraine was ambushed and sent packing from a White House meeting with President Trump. Their disagreement is, in a way, simple, yet also complicated. Ukraine has been invaded by Russia, has struggled to resist, but needs help especially from the United States government if it is to continue that resistance with some hope for success. The Trump administration, believing that Ukraine cannot succeed, wants the fighting to stop, even if, as a result, Russia has thereby succeeded in effectively annexing part of Ukraine.

What would it mean for Ukraine to succeed? That was the question on which the White House discussion ran aground. For the Ukrainians, success would mean halting and ending the Russian offensive and regaining territory they had lost during the several years of Russian aggression. To many people that seems like a reasonable description of success. 

But, of course, that may in the end not be possible, and it probably is not possible if the U.S. curtails its assistance, which is precisely what the Trump administration appears to be intent on doing. What would success then mean in Trump’s eyes? Call a truce, cut your losses, stop fighting, and trust that Russia will be satisfied with the territory it has thus far taken over several years of warfare. Pretend (evidently) that Russia’s crime of aggression never happened, that its bombardment of civilian targets never occurred. Bet on the idea that its imperial aims will be satisfied with the chunk of Ukraine it has thus far taken.

Is that what success means here? Maybe so. Maybe that is what a realistic, hardheaded stance would recommend. It might just be too costly to U.S. interests (though not, perhaps, to U.S. ideals) to continue support for the Ukrainian people. If so, however, we should not cloak such an assessment in the language of just war reasoning as it has been shaped by Christian understanding. Thus, for example, I think it is mistaken to write, as R. R. Reno has done: “It may be gallant to fight what one knows is a losing battle, but according to just war teaching, doing so reflects pagan vanity, not Christian moral judgment.”

Let’s take “pagan vanity” first. It requires more than a little chutzpah for a defender of the Trump approach to Ukraine to deplore pagan vanity. No doubt Donald Trump is a bundle of virtues and vices. We might support his approach to the war in Ukraine. We might vote for him as the best of a bad lot. But we lose credibility if we seem to forget that “pagan vanity” is a rather apt description of him. So let us set aside from the start the notion that it is pagan vanity to fight in what one fears will be a losing battle. The pagan vanity in this contretemps is not on the side of the Ukrainians. Moreover, we might remind ourselves that there are worse things than pagan vanity. It is worth recalling how, even in the midst of his critique of pagan Rome’s desire for glory, St. Augustine could not refrain from admiring the virtuous courage of Marcus Regulus, who kept his promise to return to the Carthaginians, knowing full well the torture that awaited him. Far from describing this as pagan vanity, Augustine writes: “Our enemies are certainly right to praise a courage which rose superior to so dreadful a fate.” 

We need, then, a much more serious examination of just war thinking than an easy dismissal of pagan vanity. What do we mean if we say that we should not wage war (or continue a war already underway) unless we have a reasonable hope of success in achieving our war aims? Everything depends on what those aims are and what we mean by success. In pondering this I have returned to what is surely one of the best books written on just war thinking, Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars. There are always, Walzer notes, inviting reasons to appease an aggressor: “Aggression most often takes the form of an attack by a powerful state upon a weak one. . . . Resistance seems imprudent, even hopeless. Many lives will be lost, and to what end?” That is the realist argument for appeasement, and we recognize its force, even as we may feel shame at simply surrendering to power.

Perhaps it is too easy to respond by calling to mind the shameful appeasement of Hitler at Munich, appeasement which in the end proved futile. A more useful case for us to consider is one to which Walzer directs our attention: the case of Finland, not long after Munich. In this case the aggressor was not Germany but Stalin’s Russia. What Russia feared was not the Finns but the Germans. They wanted to annex some Finnish territory in order to gain a buffer against a possible German advance on Leningrad. The Finns had to decide whether to defend what was justly theirs or yield territory in order to avoid war. In the end they did not yield, and “it is important,” Walzer writes, “to try to understand the moral satisfaction with which their decision to fight was greeted throughout the world.” Greeted in much the same way, in fact, that much of the world has greeted the Ukrainian decision to resist the recent Russian aggression.

“Our common values are confirmed and enhanced by the struggle, whereas appeasement, even when it is the better part of wisdom, diminishes those values and leaves us all impoverished.” That, I think, is the crucial point. Suppose for a moment that the Trump administration is right that continued Ukrainian resistance is a mistake and that an end to Ukrainian resistance is “the better part of wisdom.” Grant all that for a moment and ask what is missing. What is missing is any sense that pressing the Ukrainian people to give up their struggle “diminishes” our values and leaves us “impoverished.” To be sure, pagan vanity would be bad. But this sort of impoverishment, which thinks of the world solely in terms of power and deals between great powers, is worse.

There are different ways to measure success, as just war reasoning has always understood. In the end, Walzer notes, the borders that Finland eventually accepted in 1940 were worse than the borders that had been offered them earlier. And, of course, thousands of Finnish soldiers had died in the effort to defend Finnish territory. “But against all this must be set the vindication of Finnish independence. . . . If the Finnish war is commonly thought to have been worthwhile, it is because independence is not a value that can easily be traded off.” Refusing to trade it off is not pagan vanity. It is commitment to being a people with a shared history, culture, and way of life. We might, with a caution such as Walzer exhibits, honor such commitment. It seems to me right to hope that, if we are committed to sustaining (or, perhaps in the minds of some, regaining) the greatness of America, we would appreciate how important similar sentiments are to other peoples. If the Ukrainians continue to resist, as the Finns did, perhaps if we will not support them, we might at least honor them.

This is why, whatever we may think the better part of wisdom is for the Ukrainians in their current difficult circumstances, our shared life as Americans has been “impoverished” by that February 28 ambush.