Domesticating War

Joining the continuing debate over whether pacifism and just war doctrine share a prima facie “presumption against war” are Helmut David Baer of the University of Texas and Joseph Capizzi of the Catholic University of America. Writing in the Journal of Religious Ethics, they make clear enough, as it used to be said, where they are coming from: “Just war theory is properly understood as an expression of a tradition in Christian political thought that can broadly be described as Augustinian. Central to this tradition are a number of convictions. First, political authority is essential to social life. Social action depends upon ordered social relations, and ordered social relations depend partly upon the exercise of organizing power, or authority. Thus, within any community, there are competing interests that political authority must order and adjudicate. Second, force is an essential element of the exercise of political power. Because the ordering of social life encounters resistance from parties pursuing private interests, who if left unopposed would jeopardize the social order, political authority must preserve order and convince private interests to act for common goods they would not typically pursue. Third, the exercise of political power should be placed in the service of genuine goods, such as order, justice, liberty, and community. That is, the forceful power of government must itself be ordered by being brought into conformity with the requirements of morality.”

They address the argument of ethicists who say that war is an extreme phenomenon that is beyond the boundaries of political reason. “Just war theory, precisely by bringing moral considerations to bear, seeks to politicize war, and to politicize war is to civilize it. If war were truly discontinuous with politics, then the aims in war would be different from the aims of politics in peacetime, and recourse to war would entail an abandonment of the goods of politics. Far from relegating war to the twilight of our moral and political imagination (where war would necessarily assume a logic of its own) just war theory seeks to domesticate war by relating it to politics.”

Yes, but what is specifically Christian in this understanding? Baer and Capizzi write: “Contemporary pacifists have also failed to provide a full account of political power and the place of government in God’s providential care for creation. At least one pacifist has even denied the need to give an account of political authority at all. Thus, Stanley Hauerwas has boldly asserted, ‘I simply do not believe that Christians need any theory of the state to inform or guide their witness in whatever society they happen to find themselves.’ Surely, however, providing some account of the state is a necessary implication of providing an account of the victory of Christ over the powers of this world. If, as Hauerwas has eloquently argued, Christians place their hope in the Kingdom of God, and seek to embody that Kingdom by living faithfully as church, then they need to have some understanding of the relationship of God’s Kingdom to political power. Is the power of the sword now superfluous? Is the sword a manifestation of the Devil’s remaining power, a form of the Antichrist? Or has the sword been subjected to Christ’s rule and placed in the service of Christ’s Kingdom? To fail to provide a theological account of political power is to set premature boundaries around Christ’s Kingdom. Thus when Hauerwas asserts that ‘the sword of the state is outside the perfection of Christ,’ the question we want to ask from the standpoint of the just war tradition is, how can Christians allow the sword to remain outside the perfection of Christ? Has not the sword, too, been claimed by Christ and brought under his reign?”

The “presumption against war” is sometimes expressed as a presumption against violence, with violence defined as any use of lethal force. One may suggest, however, that the difference between violence and force is that the former is unrestrained by political and moral reason. A just war is a morally justified use of lethal power on behalf of political goods, it being understood that “goods” is itself a moral category. In that respect, a just war is not morally different from the just use of force or power in the domestic police function. Please note that Baer, Capizzi, and other proponents of just war doctrine are not making a case for any specific use of lethal power. Such proponents can and do disagree about, for instance, U.S. policy in the Middle East. The great virtue of just war teaching is that it provides the moral framework within which such disagreements can be reasonably engaged. It is not helpful to confuse that necessary conversation and debate by injecting a formula such as the prima facie presumption against war. If it means no more than that we ought to prefer that there not be war, the formula is utterly jejune. If, however, it is proposed not as a preference but as a principle, it gravely distorts moral deliberation about the use of force in the service of justice.