James F. Childress
The John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics
Director, The Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life
University of Virginia
Conference on Ethical Issues Raised by Pre-Emptive War
The Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2003

A word about my own perspective may set the stage for my reflections on the just-war tradition and the invasion of Iraq. My religious tradition is the Society of Friends (Quakers), but only in college did I really begin to appreciate Quaker pacifism. And yet its initial temptation was soon quashed by exposure to Reinhold Niebuhr's devastating critique of the Quaker claim that nonviolence is both right and effective in resisting injustice. Niebuhr's realism itself proved to be problematic because it lacked adequate moral restraints and at times wandered in what Paul Ramsey called "the wastelands of consequentialism." Subsequently I found an intellectual and moral home in the just-war tradition (JWT), which I have tried to interpret and reinterpret, as well as use in reflection on armed conflicts.

The Just-War tradition

There is no single just-war theory. Rather there is a living tradition, with many sources and roots. This tradition provides a framework for moral deliberation and justification, but it is more than a historical deposit on which we can draw as needed. Instead, as Michael Walzer reminds us, we participate in and thus shape and reshape the JWT, for better or worse, through the judgments and arguments we make about war.

The JWT's function is to justify and limit - to legitimate and restrain -- both resort to war and ways to conduct war. The state's use of armed force in particular circumstances requires justification and it can sometimes be justified. In its important November 2002 statement on Iraq, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops quoted The Challenge of Peace: "Just war teaching has evolved …as an effort to prevent war…." In my judgment, that is an overstatement. Properly understood, the just-war tradition restrains or constrains war in the sense of recognizing moral limits on the resort to and the conduct of war. In the process, it should prevent some wars-the ones that are unjustified.
The just-war tradition embodies an on-going argument, in Alasdair MacIntyre's language, and debates occur about that tradition's boundaries. Rather than trying to resolve the debate about boundaries - about who is in the tradition and who is not - I will only offer two observations: If the tradition always says "no" to war, it is a pacifist tradition rather than a just-war tradition. If it always says "yes" to war, it lacks integrity and those appealing to it lack moral seriousness.

A major task for communities of moral discourse, including Christian and other religious communities, that embody the JWT is to make it viable and credible in the 21st century. This task includes examining the tradition's presuppositions and implications in an on-going process of appropriation and re-appropriation in light of new historical, technological, and other realities. Fidelity to the tradition permits and even requires new formulations and sometimes revisions under changing circumstances.

Renewed inquiry into the JWT's presuppositions requires attention to the theological and philosophical convictions that support and sustain it. One example is the illuminating theological perspective provided by the Churches' Center for Theology and Public Policy. In addition to such theological reflections, it is important to determine whether an overlapping consensus can be developed and maintained about the JWT in a pluralistic society and world.

Another part of the task for communities of moral discourse is to explicate with as much clarity and precision as possible the JWT's main criteria and conditions. Difficult questions remain and demand attention. For example, how do the different criteria or conditions of the just-war tradition relate to each other? How many must be satisfied to have a "just" war or "justified" war?

Finally, communities of moral discourse also need to cultivate the virtues that are indispensable for individual and societal fidelity to the JWT, with fidelity including both interpretation and adherence but also reinterpretation. I will return to this point in my conclusion.

The Just-War Tradition and the Justification for the Invasion of Iraq

When President George W. Bush "declared" war on terrorism, and
moved toward a war with Iraq, he did not explicitly and concretely appeal to the just-war tradition as his father had done a decade earlier. In 1991, then President Bush invoked the JWT in considerable detail. For instance, in his address (on January 28, 1991) to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, he stressed that the "war in the Gulf is not a Christian war, a Jewish war, or a Moslem war-it is a just war." He attributed the just-war principles to ancient philosophers followed by "such Christian theologians as Ambrose, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas." And he appealed specifically to the principles of just cause; legitimate authority - with special reference to the importance of international support; right reasons (intentions); last resort; proportionality and, less clearly but nonetheless significantly, not "hurting the innocent." He also invoked a reasonable chance of success, even arguing that a war "is only justified when victory can be achieved." The extensive debate in Congress at the time also attended to just-war principles.

It is interesting to contrast this speech with President George W. Bush's speech to the same group, the National Religious Broadcasters, in February 10, 2003. Despite the President's invocation of religious rhetoric and piety - and in other contexts an emphasis on prayer - the just-war tradition received no explicit attention. Hence, the question arises: why didn't George W. Bush explicitly, publicly, and concretely test and justify his proposed invasion of Iraq by the just-war criteria? Several possible explanations come to mind.

Perhaps President George W. Bush is convinced of the moral authority, as well as the moral clarity, of his "instincts." In Bush at War (2002), reporter Bob Woodward focuses on the President's language of "instincts" and "instinctive judgments" in discussing war. For example, on August 20, 2002, Woodward met with President Bush in Crawford, TX, in an effort "to understand the president's overall approach or philosophy to foreign affairs and war policy."

During the interview, the president spoke a dozen times about his 'instincts' or his 'instinctive' reactions, including his statement, 'I'm not a textbook player, I'm a gut player.'
Woodward continues: "It's pretty clear that Bush's role as politician, president and commander in chief is driven by a secular faith in his instincts - his natural and spontaneous conclusions and judgments. His instincts are almost his second religion." Furthermore, as Woodward notes, "The real gut calls in the presidency get down to when and where and how to use force…"

Consistently with such "instinctive judgments," the Bush administration seems to make up much of what it does along the way. As Thomas Powers observes in a review of Woodward's book, "perhaps the most important parts of the debate [among the Bush team] were the things on which 'the principals' in the war cabinet had little to say. As you might guess, these are mainly questions with soft edges: In the war on terror, who, exactly, is the enemy? What is the source of the anger that prompted Al Qaeda to such bloody attacks? Why does the administration assume that 'any serious, full-scale war against terrorism would have to make Iraq a target'? Will victory over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein be the end of it? What is going on in the collective mind of the Islamic world as it watches America crush one Muslim regime after another? Answers to these questions would help us to understand where we can expect to find ourselves in 10 or 20 years' time, but about them, in Woodward's book, President Bush and his team rarely speak."

A second possible reason for the president's lack of appeal to the just-war tradition is that such an appeal is deemed unnecessary. On the one hand, the administration may affirm a realpolitik position that views the sort of moral justification required by the just-war tradition as irrelevant other than as a concern of public relations.

On the other hand, President Bush may have considered an appeal to the just-war tradition to be unnecessary because the widely-accepted, but metaphorical, war on terrorism, which had already extended to action in Afghanistan, also warranted intervention in Iraq. In The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (2002), Kenneth Pollack noted "we need to keep in mind that what makes any of this discussion [of an invasion of Iraq] possible is the shock to the American populace as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the public's willingness to make sacrifices and take forceful action to eliminate other such threats."

War as Metaphor and Reality

In reality, the line between peace and war became blurry over the last century. Generally, at the beginning of the 20th century, as Eric Hobsbawn notes, "War was supposed to be sharply distinguished from peace, by a declaration of war at one end and a treaty of peace at the other." But that clear distinction became "obscure" over the century. Hence, it was necessary to coin a phrase like the "Cold War." Furthermore, over the last decade, since the apparent end of the Gulf War, our interactions with Iraq hardly counted as peace-- at times bombs were dropped on Iraq almost daily-- but did these actions count as war? And how should we characterize the relations between the Palestinians and Israelis?

The Bush administration's immediate "declaration" of a "war on terrorism" after 9/11 invoked a metaphor that has probably obscured more than it has illuminated. And this metaphor has made it easier to justify a possible invasion of Iraq by creating the psychosocial conditions for a real war - the shift from metaphor to reality has been easy and perhaps even inevitable.

The metaphor of war in "war on terrorism" highlights the mobilization of massive societal resources for an important cause - as in the war on cancer or war on drugs. But the metaphor also has other implications. Declaring a metaphorical war on terrorism is problematic for several reasons. As Michael Howard observes, it accords the terrorists "a status and dignity that they seek and which they do not deserve," as legitimate belligerents. And it "has deeper and more dangerous consequences," particularly in creating a psychosocial drive toward a real war.

The war metaphor engendered the expectation of military action against some identifiable enemy. However, within this metaphorical framework, as Howard emphasizes, "the use of force is no longer seen as a last resort, to be avoided if humanly possible, but as the first, and the sooner it is used the better." The question of the use of force now faces a different presumption. If we are already in a war, there is no presumption against the use of military force-after all, that's what war includes. Writing in the fall of 2001, Howard noted that once the "w" word was used, it couldn't be withdrawn. Rather it creates "a demand that can be satisfied only by military action-if possible rapid and decisive military action."

Other usable metaphors were available. One alternative conceptualization was police action in pursuit of criminals. This approach could have invoked "a peacetime framework of civil authority," even if exceptional powers were also recognized. As commentators have observed, such an approach, and its accompanying rhetorical strategy, did not fit the Bush administration's overall agenda. And some wondered whether the Bush administration preferred the "war on terrorism" as rhetorical cover for more familiar military action, for instance, against Iraq. As Tony Judt put it, "We are seeking a fight we can win instead of concentrating on the war that we must win."

The War Against Iraq: Last Resort and Preemptive Strikes

I have mentioned several possible reasons for President's George W. Bush's vague and non-specific appeals to categories in the just-war tradition in his justification of the invasion of Iraq - especially the prominence of morally clear "instinctive judgments" that do not require full public justification and the psychological conditions created by the metaphor of the war on terrorism. Yet another possibility is that the Bush administration recognized that a public justification of the invasion of Iraq, along the lines of the JWT, would fail or at least exacerbate controversy by directing a moral spotlight on the proposed invasion.

Several critics of the invasion of Iraq invoked the JWT. For instance, after examining the proposed invasion of Iraq in light of several just-war criteria, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded: "Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature."

Rather than considering the whole set of just-war criteria, I want to focus on the criterion of last resort because the Bush administration has articulated an approach to preemptive strikes and preventive warfare that raises major moral questions.

One of the most controversial aspects of the Bush administration's discourse on war, as noted by the Churches' Center document, is the administration's claim of a unilateral right to undertake preemptive strikes. As David Hackett Fischer observes, preemptive strikes, at first glance, are at odds with the American tradition of not firing first, a tradition that is represented in gun battles in Western films. President John F. Kennedy, early in his presidency, proclaimed: "Our arms will never be used to strike the first blow in any attack. It is our national tradition." We have generally, though not always, honored this tradition.

More importantly, is this claim of a right of preemptive strike also at odds with the just-war tradition? As generally understood, the JWT has held that war must be necessary; that it must be a last resort; that we must have no reasonable prospect of effective alternatives. One of the foremost historians of the JWT, James Turner Johnson, summarized a major strand of this tradition on last resort in his book Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War (1975): "For Gratian and Thomas, as well as for Augustine, war is something to be excused, something to be permitted Christians only as a final resort, when all peaceful means have failed." And yet there are debates about the interpretation and application of this criterion. Do all non-military means have to have been tried and failed? Or is it sufficient that there is no reasonable prospect that non-military measures would succeed? In short, how stringent is this standard?

In some of his other writings, for example, Can Modern War Be Just? (1984), Johnson has downplayed the criterion of "last resort" in part because it tends to condemn the first use of force in line with international law, which tends to use an aggressor/defender paradigm. According to Johnson, this criterion does not adequately represent the morality embedded in the JWT or fit the realities presented by third-party terrorism. Indeed, he believes that last resort is more a prudential condition than moral requirement. Because of the importance of stability in the world, a nation that contemplates a "major war" should be guided by "counsels of caution and prudence."

The point is that the moment of last resort may come before the enemy fires its first shot across one's borders. … the first use of force [may] be a moral one…. Whatever contemporary international law may say or be interpreted to say, the weight of Western moral tradition on war does not rule out that in some cases first use of force may appropriately be a response of last resort. (Can Modern War Be Just? p. 25)
I do not drive a wedge between moral principles and consequences or place the latter outside the moral domain. Furthermore, I believe that last resort and necessity are moral requirements, not merely prudential ones in Johnson's sense, and that they should guide decisions about any use of force, first or second or other strike.

Surely, in some contexts, for example, the massing of troops at the border coupled with other aggressive actions and statements could be construed as aggression, and could warrant a first strike from the other side. The boundaries between peace and war are not always clear, as I noted earlier, and it is not preemption if war is already under way. Indeed, as Secretary of State Colin Powell stated: "When we see something coming at use, we should take action to stop it." But the evidentiary conditions for preemptive strikes are important: the threat must be real and credible, imminent, and otherwise unavoidable.

Properly understood, preemptive strikes should be guided by rigorous analysis and strong evidence, just as any other decisions to undertake war. In effect, the preemptive strike should satisfy the requirement of necessity and meet the condition of last resort. As Neta Crawford and others have noted, the restatement of U.S. National Security Strategy moves from a focus on an adversary's intent, as expressed in concrete actions, to the adversary's capacity. For instance, it includes this point: "We must adapte the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today's adversaries." The focus on "capabilities and objectives" thus attends to capacities and to broad, general objectives, rather than concrete intentions as expressed in particular aggressive actions.
It is difficult to determine when we have reached last resort short of armed force and thus when, if we satisfy the other conditions, we can justify resort to war (even a first strike). Debates about the conditions and evidence for last resort and when preemptive strikes can be justified are very different from claims of a general right of preemptive strike and from claims of a general right to engage in preventive warfare. Despite the Bush administration's rhetoric, which helped to create a sense of urgency about invading Iraq, the war was really a preventive war rather than a preemptive attack.

The U.S. Department of Defense draws the distinction between a preemptive attack and a preventive war in the following way: A preemptive attack is "an attack initiated on the basis of incontrovertible evidence that an enemy attack is imminent." By contrast, a preventive war is one "initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve greater risk." A preventive war is closer to what the evidence supported regarding Iraq, but a preventive war is also more difficult to justify.

In moral discourse, the principle of universalizability has significant implications for any justification of war, whether preemptive strike or preventive war. If a justification exists for the U.S. to undertake military action in certain cases, it also exists for other countries in relevantly similar circumstances. Of course, disputes will emerge about what will count as relevantly similar circumstances. Nevertheless, we cannot claim an exception or exemption for the U.S. and demand that other countries meet a higher standard. Two possible consequences could flow from U.S. claims for a special exception or exemption.
On the one hand, other countries could invoke U.S. actions as a precedent for their own first strikes. According to one commentator, "The long-term effects of this go-it-alone, shoot-first policy will be to lose the high moral ground we have exercised in the past to deter other nations from attacking military when they felt their security was at stake." And what can the U.S. say, with a moral straight face, to Pakistan or to India, when each feels severely threatened by the other?

On the other hand, countries fearing the prospect of a preemptive strike - or preventive war -- would reasonably seek stronger deterrent weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. For example, North Korea has justified its nuclear weapons policy as a way to protect against imperialists and has asked the U.S. to sign a non-aggression pact - after all the U.S. placed North Korea in the "axis of evil" and has already attacked one member of that axis. Hence, it is important to consider what it means for the U.S. to assert a right of preemptive strike in a world in which it is not trusted and there is no effective counterbalancing power.

Henry Kissinger makes a similar point, in a careful and thoughtful, but sometimes unclear, article, in which he praised President Bush's speech at the United Nations for not asserting a universal right of preemption or a general American right to engage in regime change. Nevertheless, Kissinger conceded that it probably would not be possible to implement the UN resolutions with Saddam Hussein in power. He further defended some "preemptive action - including military action" in the case of "a serious prospect of a terrorist threat from the soil of a sovereign country."

However, he goes on to distinguish the United States' "unilateral capacity" to implement its convictions from the justification of its use of that capacity: "As the world's most powerful nation, the United States has a unilateral capacity to implement its convictions. But it also has an obligation to justify its actions by principles that transcend the assertions of preponderant power. It cannot be in either the American national interest or the world's interest to develop principles that grant every nation an unfettered right of preemption against its own definition of threats to its security." (italics added)

Although I have focused on the debates about preemptive strikes or preventive wars, these debates necessarily raise questions about just cause. It is also unclear that the military invasion of Iraq satisfied other just-war criteria, particularly reasonable chance of success and proportionality. Of course, there was little doubt that the United States and its few allies would quickly win the military campaign and defeat the Iraqi army. However, the criterion of success cannot be satisfied merely by an anticipated military victory. After all, what happens after a military victory is also very important, and it too must be brought into a moral calculus that includes a balance of probable benefits and risks and probable costs. For many, including myself, the war with Iraq did not in advance satisfy the criteria of reasonable chance of success (broadly understood) and proportionality (balance of probable good consequences over probable bad ones).

The Moral Ambiguity of War

It is easy to understand the appeal of President Bush's and others' calls for "moral clarity" in the face of hostile actions. However, even if it is easy to view terrorism and terrorists as "evil," this may not be the most illuminating characterization, as Michael Kinsley suggests, especially if we then refuse to consider the larger context of the terrorist acts, including our own prior action or inaction. Once we characterize some act or person or regime as evil, then further inquiry into their reasons for action appears to be unnecessary - after all we know their "true nature" to be evil (as President Bush noted in his State of the Union address). Such an inquiry may even appear to be an effort to explain and possibly excuse their conduct.

But even if such a judgment of evil is defensible, it usually does not dictate a particular conclusion about possible responses since effective resistance to evil can take many different forms. In short, "moral clarity" does not necessarily support a judgment that it was justifiable to invade Iraq in 2003 for purposes of "regime change." Other factors were relevant, especially factors identified by the JWT.

Another problem accompanies the language of "evil." That language tends to transform a just war into a holy war or crusade because it demonizes and thus dehumanizes the enemy. The rhetoric of a holy war has erupted from time to time over the last several months, for instance, in the call for a "crusade against evil" and a campaign of "infinite justice." It has also been implicit in the assumptions about eradicating terrorism through some decisive military action (even though this has been tempered by other rhetoric about a long and difficult war).

What then is the potential contribution of the JWT in our context? Some realists say the JWT is as idealistic as the pacifist tradition, and, in practice, it really serves only as a cloak for our national interest. After all, we are hardly objective judges who can interpret and apply the relevant criteria in an impersonal, impartial and independent manner. Every nation is its own judge.

Despite evidence of rationalization/bad faith, the JWT still offers an important framework for reflection on, direction of, and criticism of war. It can provide a common language or coin of the realm. However, to use this framework seriously, to make it credible, as John Howard Yoder reminded us, we really have to be able to say "no" when the evidence fails to support a particular war - otherwise, we are deceiving ourselves and others. And we are acting out of bad faith, rationalizing our actions by the just-war criteria.
Hence, within the JWT, as Scott Davis has emphasized, we need to cultivate several virtues and avoid several vices. A couple of examples will suffice. As St. Augustine stressed, we need to avoid hatred, which often correlates with demonization of the enemy. Furthermore, we need to avoid self-righteousness by cultivating the virtue of humility. This virtue requires recognizing ethical fallibility on all sides as well as imperfect information.

In short, in using the just-war framework, we need to recognize the ambiguity of warfare and of particular wars -- even when we are convinced we have a just cause, satisfy the other conditions of the just-war tradition, and should fight. As Jean Bethke Elshtain suggests, the JWT should vex us, even when its legitimates our actions - "Just War principles should never soothe, should always vex and trouble [us]." (Unfortunately, this important point is not as evident as it should be in Elshtain's own recent Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World (2003).) At its best, the JWT should prevent, rather than support a crusade or holy war -- there is virtually always too much ambiguity to warrant a holy war, and holy wars virtually always neglect moral limits and constraints in the conduct of war.