Moral Certitude and the Iran War

The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition. The following five points are important in this respect, especially the fourth, which regards the ius ad bellum—the justice of going to war.

First, we are repeatedly told that the Catholic just war tradition permits only defensive war. There is some sense in which this may be true, but strictly speaking, it is not. Both Augustine and Aquinas taught that punishment for wrongdoing is a central element requisite to just war. That is, just war is necessarily retributive, “avenging wrongs” (Augustine) and attacking those whose actions merit rebuke at arms “because of some fault” (Aquinas). Whereas the U.N. Charter condemns punitive war—perhaps referring only to those wars that use an excuse of former wrongdoing to expand influence or impose disproportionate harm—nonetheless, on the Catholic view of the matter, justice has always played a critical role. In short, Catholic just war theory has never been purely defensive—it has always reserved a place for the use of force as an act of justice in vindication of the common good, since justice is not effectuated through courts alone.

Second, the impermissibility of “preventative war” in just war theory regards instances of “pure prevention.” In other words, it concerns cases where the country or other entity has not already undertaken a pattern of aggressive military action, conventional or unconventional. By contrast, in the case where there is a clear de facto pattern of lethal action by an adversary (such as killing a country’s citizens and military personnel, launching assassination efforts on officials, training and arming proxy forces for these purposes, and so forth), prevention is assessed in light of that ongoing adversary relation. This is true whether the facts of the case have been juridically acknowledged or not. Real war being waged against a country (as distinct from a state’s declaration of war) is not exclusively a juridical pronouncement: It is first and in reality a factual condition. And such a factual condition will enter into moral assessment of likely future harm and of what does, and does not, constitute a real threat. In this light, several U.S. presidents have held the judgment that Iran with nuclear weapons constitutes an intolerable threat to the U.S. precisely because of its projection of military power and proxy terror toward the U.S. and its allies. This may be a bad judgment. But it is the public judgment of the last several presidencies.  

Third, the aspiration expressed in the phrase “war never again” is noble—as it is noble to aspire never again to sin, since it is principally moral disorder that brings with it the need for coercively imposed justice. Yet so long as there is evil in the world, states will have an obligation to vindicate the common good of their societies, if need be by the use of military force. 

Pope Leo XIV’s claim that God “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war” presumably refers to those who wage war unjustly, without compassion or a moral compass. Yet some have taken the proposition at face value, reading it as a blanket condemnation that leaves even those who risk their lives to suppress violent injustice—serving the common good of their countries—unheard when they pray to God. This would require rewriting Scripture, forgetting the teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and indeed forgetting that Our Lord performed one of his most remarkable miracles for a Roman centurion. Surely that is not what the pontiff intended to convey. 

The Church’s traditional understanding of the common good is important here. Too few contemporary theologians or politicians—both of whom use the language of “common good”—evince awareness that common good is a metaphysical and moral principle prior to being a political one. It transcends “private” or “individual” good. Nor is the common good merely a common instrumentality or collective good. Men don’t die for lower phone rates, but for justice, truth, and the good of family and country. The common good is of intrinsic moral significance. To serve it is not to be absorbed into the collective, but to answer the noblest demands and promises of one’s own humanity.

The ultimate common good transcends political community. As Aquinas writes in the Summa Contra Gentiles, “God is the common good.” For there is no good that is not an effect of God, or ordered to God, in some way. War is destructive—in itself, it does the opposite of building up friendship or the common good. But by removing evils that afflict and impede the common good, a just war may vindicate common goods that otherwise would be maimed, destroyed, threatened, or paralyzed.

Fourth, the justice of a war has two senses: whether a just cause for war has been given, and the move toward war has occurred justly (and legally) for the sake of the common good; and whether actual circumstances render war likely to be effective in bringing about morally good effects in a morally acceptable manner, such that the post-bellum state is better than the pre-war circumstance. For an integrally just cause for war—ius ad bellum—both elements are required.

But here I wish to consider the disparity between the certitude of a just cause for war having been given by an adversary, and the certitude that a war will not bring about a worse circumstance than that which it is attempting to remedy. The second consideration is unlikely to be “certain” in the same sense and to the same degree as the first. Consider Britain’s commitment to guarantee Polish territorial integrity against the Nazis. Some believe that this guarantee was imprudent and accelerated the Nazi aggression, resulting in a less favorable outcome and giving Britain less time to pursue rapid armament production and general preparation for the war that, at that point, surely was coming. Regardless of one’s opinion on the matter, the fact is that there is a difference between the judgment that some purpose is good (trying to aid Poland) and the judgment that the purpose is reasonably accomplishable at a certain moment or through certain means, or not likely to bring about a worse state of affairs. A comprehensive judgment of the justice of going to war always or for the most part requires a judgment not merely of the nature of the war aims but their prudential feasibility in bringing about a morally good outcome.

A country may indeed have been given a just cause for war in the sense that the offenses and harm done, pursued, and predictable in the future from some adversary merit just rebuke—even in cases wherein it is unclear whether the nation so harmed is truly in a sufficient position to carry out such rebuke without undue harm to itself, to the rest of the world, and so forth. It may be that the impediments to success in war are so great that a country ought to withhold response. Alternatively, it may be that other measures remain promising enough so that even a country that could, with justice, act more directly and forcibly, may honor a reasoned reluctance immediately to turn to war as a remedy, seeking other means first. But the true availability of these peaceful means is every bit as much a prudential matter as is the likelihood that military action will bring about a better rather than worse composite result. Supposing that peaceful means must in all cases always be availing is a historically groundless presumption.

A just cause for war may be found in actions that do not immediately threaten the existence of a country that nonetheless has a moral warrant for war and ought to pursue it. The kidnapping of U.S. citizens from U.S. ships by the Barbary pirates did not threaten the very existence of the U.S.—but the pirates were rightly rebuked with armed force, and a regime was forced to change its tune at bayonet-point because of it. The targeting of citizens of one’s country by a foreign power as objects of reprisal, death, torture, or slavery; attacks on public representatives of one’s country; attacks on its military; kidnappings; extortions; acts of terror; or the arming, financing, training, and directing of forces to do these things—all these may merit forcible reprisal and war.   

Even when there seems to be a just cause for war—because an evil merits rebuke, and the common good requires its removal—it is not vain to seek other means of redress. But it should be noted: For all these reasons and more, often it is the case that a just cause for war has been given long before war is prosecuted by an aggrieved country. The suggestion that a just war must be a “last resort,” placing it last in a series of other prudent steps (although, nota bene, not every step to avoid war is prudent, any more than every step toward war is prudent), makes clear that war may occur after a span when other means have been tried and failed, precisely in cases where just war criteria have otherwise been met. For the same persons to say that a long train of military, proxy, and terrorist provocations of Iran over the past forty-seven years is irrelevant because it’s “all in the past,” while simultaneously using “last resort” language, seems inconsistent. Of course, by “last resort” one might only mean that war may only justly be waged if the alternative is a country’s complete destruction. But this falls far short of what a just government owes the common good of its country. “Last resort” may also mean that everything to end a grave injustice has been attempted short of major military action, and those attempts have failed. This is a more reasonable sense of the phrase.

The justice of the causes for war and its legal pursuit should be certain. But further, prudential reasonability is required for the integral justice of the action, and this is not a matter susceptible of the same degree of certainty. The certitude possible to prudential judgment, like the contingent singular events it regards, embraces some degree of uncertainty. Those who believe the present war is just—in the sense that Iran is thought to have given just cause for war by its actions of the past forty-seven years—but that it is nonetheless questionable whether it should be pursued now and in this manner, or with these costs and dangers, clearly are reasoning with these distinctions in view. 

The claim that reasonable prudential certitude can be, as it were, judged from the outside to be certain, rather than simply conscientious, objective, and reasonable, is a mirage. I mean by this not that it cannot be achieved, but that it is often very difficult to achieve even by those in possession of all the requisite facts. 

First, private citizens do not, and for the most part cannot, know what chief executives—who receive intelligence briefings each day—know regarding prudential factors. This renders it difficult for one fully to assess the prudence of actions that have been taken. This is made worse by the conditions of distrust that political antagonism has brought to political life in the United States. This is a problem regarding self-government, in many senses. But real conditions require chief executives to have the capacity to undertake military actions. The proposition that the war is unjust because there must first be a declaration of war does not correspond to the manner in which the U.S. legal system has viewed the prerogatives of the president, all the way back to the Marine-led change of regime in Tripoli in 1805.   

Second, if history teaches anything, it is that the “reasonable certitude” of governments regarding military matters—conscientiously sought—is often incorrect. History is littered with unreasonable, needless, unjust wars, and also with the unreasonable refusal of polities to provide for their own survival, clinging to imaginary prospects for peace when it is no longer feasible without grave injustice and worse composite harm. Prudential reasoning implies neither reflexive refusal to use military force nor reflexive bellicosity. Sometimes it may be necessary to fight for justice even where the outcome is uncertain. Removing prudence from the equation entirely—whether by adopting a blanket pacifism or a virilized propensity for military action—is unreasonable.

Thus, what are called “wars of choice” is an unfortunate appellation. Owing to the prudential element, going to war always, to some degree, implies choice. One purpose of a foreign policy is, among other things, to achieve security such that there is more than one option for dealing with adversaries. One is not obliged to go to war every time a grave reason for war may be given. 

For forty-seven years, the United States has attempted to negotiate with, and frankly to bribe, Iran. Iran has continued to deploy its assets to attack the U.S. and its citizens. It has sponsored murder crusades against private individuals in the West (and hired assassins to kill the president and others). It has allied itself with de facto adversaries of the U.S. such as China and Russia, and continued to export, fund, arm, and direct military operations against the U.S.

The effort to weaken the regime, so that it can less effectively cause mayhem and destruction against the U.S. and its allies, and to impede its attainment of nuclear weapons, is not in itself unreasonable. One might think that reasonable persons could disagree whether the present war is the most prudent means. There have been good results: Iran’s ability to project military power and terror has diminished, and U.S. casualties have been few. But there is a persistent hazard. Perhaps Iran would be less bellicose and stop exporting terror if it did possess nuclear weapons. Minimally construed, however, it seems far more reasonable to think that the Iranian regime is striving to develop nuclear missiles in order to be insulated from any external military penalty to its exportation of terror. Maximally construed, the regime may be striving to develop nuclear weapons as a means to amplify that terror. In either case, Iran has been involved in low-intensity warfare and terror campaigns against the U.S. and its allies for many decades. The present war is not purely a “preventive war” regarding a peaceful government that has yet to sponsor hostilities against the United States. For many, President Trump’s rhetoric clouds the issues. But it is conspicuous that some are more concerned with Trump’s bombast than with the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror acquiring nuclear weapons.

It is hard to avoid all ambivalence regarding the present conflict, not least because for a peaceable people, the default setting is—peace. But at the level of just cause for war having been given, it is difficult to see why, with respect to this distinct aspect of ius ad bellum, war should be viewed as unjust against a power that has so expressly identified America as its foe and acted to attack the U.S. in so many ways.

For some of us the question can only be whether the war is prudent. Is removing the Strait of Hormuz from Iranian control, frustrating its appetite for nuclear missiles, and curbing its ability to project military power and terror a sufficiently weighty reason for war? What of the suffering in countries that now cannot access oil because of the war? The accidental sufferings of the Iranian people? The cost in lives and treasure? The deferred but perhaps real cost of hazards in the future from recidivist hatred? Yet what of the incessant exporting of terrorism by Iran, its warring against the U.S. and its allies? Is it really not important whether it develops nuclear weapons? It is very hard to know how to gauge the prudence of the operation. Yet this cannot be grounds for a president not to keep his oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, or for subordinate officials not to “support and defend the Constitution . . . against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” It is understandable that the volatility and the oft-unsettling rhetoric of Trump distract the intelligence. But, in practice, we have effective military operations with no deliberate striking of exclusively civilian targets. This, of course, is something that is not true of the Iranian regime. 

It is disturbing to see Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea seemingly forming an axis of powers that threaten the West. What we are witnessing is something beyond the Middle East—a circumstance in which an alliance of non-Western despotic powers threatens the West, and in which the only Western power still constituted so as to act effectually in the world appears to be the United States. Europe cannot even act to achieve the oil imports required for its own physical survival. This poses something at least as concerning as the very poignant questions about ius ad bellum and ius in bello. It poses the question whether any of us is prepared for the world marching toward us, in which both non-action and action may prove disastrous. Historians may look back and see the Trump venture as the last practical effort to prevent terrorist states from developing nuclear weapons before we gave up the ghost and dug in for a new world order of incessant instability and nuclear (or germ warfare) threat.  

Christians are aware of the grave evils of contemporary Western moral disorder—of the unrealism of our own political culture—and this does not buttress confidence in practical rectitude. Yet polities must act in the world as it exists, with all its sad defects and limits. In this life, the elixir of power is all too rarely governed by the sweet rule of reason and grace. History, it appears, has inconsiderately refused to end.

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AP Photo/Vahid Salemi