War in a New Era

If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. That appears to be the operative maxim in some quarters where folks have been gleefully burying under an ever-growing mountain of ridicule some of the more reckless opponents of U.S. action in Iraq. Not that there isn’t a great deal to ridicule. Leading up to the invasion and even after its rapid military success, critics were predicting a quagmire, a Somalia-like debacle, a rising of the Arab “street” that would be “a storm from hell,” and, of course, another Vietnam. With reference to civilian casualties, some protestors spoke about a “Middle East holocaust.” None of that happened. In view of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed by Saddam’s murderous regime, the war probably saved innumerable lives. So the critics were abysmally wrong on almost every point. That must be clearly established on the public record.

On the question of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD), one of the several justifications offered for military action, all the returns are not yet in. Over the past decade, the Security Council of the UN, supported by the intelligence services of all the major nations, said he had WMDs. Maybe he did destroy them but refused to say so lest he lose face by appearing to buckle under UN demands. Maybe they are still hidden and will yet be found. More troubling, maybe all the intelligence services were wrong. That is troubling not because it raises questions about the liberation of Iraq but because it raises questions about our intelligence capacities in dealing with similar problems in the future.

The aftermath of the Iraqi intervention is a time for all of us to think anew about conventional wisdoms regarding war, peace, and global security. To take but one instance, for decades, ever since the first use of the atom bomb against Japan, it has been a staple in arguments about “just war” that weapons of ever more destructive power have made obsolete the traditional criterion of “proportionality” between a just cause and the cost of vindicating that cause by military means. In his speech announcing victory in Iraq, President Bush made an observation that deserves the careful attention of serious students of the ethics of war and peace.

[We] have witnessed the arrival of a new era. For a hundred years of war, culminating in the nuclear age, military technology was designed and deployed to inflict casualties on an ever-growing scale. In defeating Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, Allied forces destroyed entire cities, while enemy leaders who started the conflict were safe until the final days. Military power was used to end a regime by breaking a nation. Today, we have the greater power to free a nation by breaking a dangerous and aggressive regime. With new tactics and precision weapons, we can achieve military objectives without directing violence against civilians. No device of man can remove the tragedy from war. Yet it is a great advance when the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.

This is indeed a great advance. Without entering into the much-disputed question of whether the World War II obliteration bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki was morally justifiable, everyone can agree that it is a very good thing that the U.S. did not, to use Churchill’s phrase, “bounce the rubble” of Baghdad. Those who predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq should have known better. The strategy made possible by precision weaponry was already on display in the Gulf War of 1991 and in Afghanistan in 2001-02. The claim that modern weaponry has made obsolete the proportionality criterion in evaluating the justice of war should now be permanently retired. It is true that terrorists and rogue nations may possess and use nuclear and biochemical weapons of massive and indiscriminate destruction, but they operate outside of and in defiance of the tradition of just war reflection. Not only in the context of the last hundred years, but in the context of human history, it is a genuinely new thing that “the guilty have far more to fear from war than the innocent.”

This certainly does not make warfare morally unproblematic. Some predicted that even the most discriminate and precise military action in Iraq would trigger the use of biochemical weapons by Saddam, resulting in the death of countless Iraqis and coalition forces. That did not happen, but it was not unreasonable to fear that it might happen. This was among the many calculated risks in which the judgment of those leading the coalition was vindicated, for which we should be deeply grateful. Also morally problematic is the possibility that pinpoint accuracy in warfare may make military action seem too easy. As he has many times before, in the above-mentioned speech President Bush again declared that military action is the “last resort” in addressing threats to the U.S. and world security.

He also said, “Yet all can know, friend and foe alike, that our nation has a mission: we will answer threats to our security and we will defend the peace.” In accomplishing that mission, last resort has never meant the very last thing that can be done in order to avoid conflict. After all, one can always surrender. The “resort” in question refers to available means for countering aggression and securing a more just peace. In view of the changes in technology and strategy, applying the criterion of proportionality may, in some prescribed circumstances, move us toward thinking about military action in terms not of the last resort but of the best resort. If the question is how to achieve a just goal while inflicting minimal damage, especially to innocents, the answer may sometimes be military action. That, too, is not morally unproblematic. But, for both waging war and thinking about war, it is a prospect entailed in understanding that “we have witnessed the arrival of a new era.”