The broken tradition - just-war doctrine

In the ongoing argument between foreign policy realists and idealists, the just-war tradition of moral reasoning about the use of force has played a crucial mediating role for centuries. Rooted in the conviction that all human action - even in the distinctive field of international affairs, and even in the extremity of war - is susceptible to moral scrutiny and judgment, the just-war tradition has insisted that moralists take a realistic account of politics as an arena of conflict in which the quest for justice and peace is inevitably fraught with ambiguity and disagreement. Its mediation has also enabled statesmen to maintain an accepted role for moral judgment in the very domain - that of war - farthest from the regular application of human compassion, law, and comity. Just-war theory has, in short, been a civilized and civilizing agent in the darkest corners of the human social endeavor, and it has kept the church from straying too far from the realm of this world.

The ancient question - How can the use of force serve just ends? - that has been the centerpiece of Christian reflection on just war from the fifth century has lost none of its urgency today. Indeed, post-Cold War international politics offers a fertile field for reflection by moral philosophers and statesmen alike, as the world stands on the edge of the third millennium of the common era. With the fear of and focus on superpower nuclear tensions now subsided, world politics Offers situation after situation in which one can imagine the use of proportionate and discriminate force serving just and prudential ends.

Yet, as in other disciplines and sub-disciplines that treat such matters, just-war theorists often find themselves at sea today. The reason, however, has less to do with the confusions of the post-Cold War world or the classic canons of just-war thinking than with the intellectual deterioration of that theory itself in influential quarters. Precisely when statesmen might well look to just-war theory for guidance on the always-tangled questions of relating appropriate means to desirable ends, many contemporary just-war theorists are engaged in a process of self-marginalization. Pressed by the experience of two world wars and the special circumstances of the nuclear age, and tempted by secular ideological notions, these theorists have altered the very ground on which the theory itself has stood for more than a thousand years. While the core of just-war tradition is based on opposition to injustice, the recent metathesis is based instead on a "presumption against war" - a very different matter indeed.

The burden of this essay is to trace briefly the essential elements and philosophical bedrock of just-war theory, and to show how it has changed over the last century - and especially over the past three decades. I argue that recent changes reflect contingent judgments on the nature of modern war that do not match the character of contemporary armed conflicts. I conclude by suggesting that, in its original form, just-war theory remains relevant to the challenges faced by statesmen today. I illustrate this relevance by identifying several contemporary policy implications that follow from understanding the just-war idea as aimed against injustice rather than against the use of force itself.

The Classic Just-War Idea

The just-war tradition addresses two issues regarding the morality of the use of force: when it is right to resort to armed force, and what it is right to do when using force - jus ad bellum and jus in bello, respectively. While these two issues are related, the question of permissibility has priority, for absent the determination that a use of force is morally justified, even the most strictly delimited means are, in terms of the just-war tradition, unjust.

The requirements of jus ad bellum are clear in the theory, especially as developed by Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century. Above all, the resort to force must have a just cause. It must also be authorized by a competent authority, and it must be motivated by the right intention. And it must pass four prudential tests: that it be expected to produce a preponderance of good over evil; that it have a reasonable chance of success; that it be a last resort; and that its expected outcome establish peace. Some commentators add that a just war must also be formally declared, but most agree that the first three requirements subsume this one as well.

The requirements of jus in bello are also clear. The use of force must be discriminate (it must distinguish the guilty from the innocent), and it must be proportional (it must distinguish necessary force from gratuitous force).

A study of the just-war tradition suggests that, above all, the first requirement of jus ad bellum - that it have a just cause as a response to injustice - is the font of the entire tradition. This becomes obvious if we examine several benchmark figures in the evolution of just-war theory.

The origins of a specifically Christian tradition on just war are to be found in the thought of Augustine and his mentor, Ambrose of Milan, in the fourth and fifth centuries. They inherited - and did not challenge - a Christian consensus that the example and teaching of Jesus required that Christians not defend themselves when attacked but should instead turn the other cheek when confronted with violence. But first Ambrose and then Augustine reasoned that the prohibition of self-defense did not imply that a Christian might not defend his neighbor when attacked. On the contrary, they argued, it is a duty of Christian love to defend the innocent in such circumstances. Not providing such defense is itself morally wrong: as Ambrose wrote in first advancing his insight, "He who does not keep harm off a friend, if he can, is as much in fault as he who causes it." Augustine concurred and expanded the point.

Clearly, Ambrose and Augustine began with the duty of love to protect the innocent, not with a presumption against doing harm, even to an enemy. They reasoned that the duty to protect the innocent permitted use of force against the wrongful attacker up to the level needed to prevent the attack from succeeding, though it must not exceed this level, since the evildoer is himself considered to be someone for whom Christ died. Thus the consideration of restraint in the use of force arises only after the duty to use force is recognized, and restraint follows not from a presumption against harm but from the same duty of love directed toward the evildoer.

The logic of this position was in turn developed by the medieval heirs of these early figures, beginning with Gratian and other canonists in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. But in retrospect, the position of Thomas Aquinas looms as especially important, both because of his general influence on later Catholic thought and because of his dependence on Augustine himself in the matter of just-war theory.

In order for a war to be just, Thomas Aquinas wrote, three things are necessary, namely: sovereign authority, just cause, and right intention. Since we are particularly interested in the conditions that justify resort to force, it is useful to look first at how Thomas (citing Augustine) defined just cause:

[J]ust cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says: A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what has been seized unjustly.

This focus is also clear in Thomas' discussion of the requirement of sovereign authority for a just war. Defining this requirement he cites a text frequently quoted in medieval writing on the ethics of war, Romans 13:4: "The sovereign beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil." Thomas continues, "so too, it is [a sovereign's] business to have recourse to the sword in defending the common weal against external enemies."

That the resort to force in itself is not the moral problem here is all the more clear when Thomas turns to the requirement of right intention for a just war, again quoting Augustine:

True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good.

What is morally condemnable in war, Thomas continues, is not force itself but the use of force with the wrong intention, namely "[t]he passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things." As for the argument that prudential considerations may overrule the presence of just cause, Thomas leaves judgment to the sovereign; it is not a matter for the Church to determine, and certainly not to determine in advance for all war.

Moving forward from the medieval base into the modern period, two other benchmark figures, Francisco de Vitoria (1492-1546) and Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), illustrate the essential continuity of this conception of just war. They did, however, introduce two changes made necessary by the modern period. In medieval times, the just-war tradition applied only to wars between Christians, not between Christians and non-Christians (notably Muslims), and, theologically speaking, Western Christianity was still monolithic. With the Spanish expansion into the new world there arose the question of the propriety of colonial wars against non-Christian peoples, and then came the dilemmas occasioned by the Protestant Reformation. The first change introduced by Vitoria and solidified by Grotius was to locate the justifying causes for war squarely within natural law and the law of nations, thereby ruling out appeals to religion (or other ideological causes) as justifying resort to war. The second was the recognition that in a given conflict both sides might appear to have just cause.

In the context of the first development, these theorists regarded war as provided for by both nature and the law of nations as a means of settling otherwise intractable disputes. As to the second issue, one might guess, on the face of it, that if both sides in a conflict appear to have just cause, then the tradition would enjoin them not to fight; that is, it would see ambiguity itself as a restriction on jus ad bellum, the very right to go to war. Certainly, if there were a presumption against war within the core of the tradition, it would have been most likely to present itself here. But neither Vitoria nor Grotius reasoned this way. Rather, accepting war as a last-resort means of settling disputes, they focused instead on the idea of simultaneous ostensible justice - the perception of justice on both sides at once - as the base for more attention to restraint in war, thus feeding the development of the jus in bello, the rules limiting the conduct of war. Also, both of these early modern just-war theorists give explicit attention to the purpose of just use of force to right injustices, as for example Vitoria's contemporary-sounding argument for the use of force to oppose pillage, rape, and indiscriminate killing.

Clearly, the development of Christian just-war tradition follows a line of reasoning focused on the rightness of the resort to force to combat the evil of injustice, and that development did not construe at any point the use of force to be a moral problem in itself. In classic just-war theory the use of force is morally problematical only when it is the source of injustice. But even then, wrong uses of force do not call force itself into question, but instead justify the resort to force to set matters right. What Christian just-war doctrine is about, as classically defined, is the use of the authority and force of the rightly ordered political community (and its sovereign authority as minister of God) to prevent, punish, and rectify injustice. There is, simply put, no presumption against war in it at all.

The Evolution of an Idea

If the idea of a "presumption against war" cannot be traced to the theorists who gave Christian just-war theory its classical form, then where does it come from? The answer, I suggest, is that it has developed out of a particular response to the phenomenon of modern war, a response that understands the nature of war today necessarily to threaten human values, not to provide a means of protecting them. This understanding depicts war in its contemporary form as inherently suspect. A widely known rendering of this view is in Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory: Modern war is senseless, out of control, massively destructive of human values and life values, leaving behind harmful consequences that linger long after the shooting is done.(1)

Since the idea of a "presumption against war" as informing just-war theory has been explicitly adopted by the American Catholic bishops in their 1983 pastoral, The Challenge of Peace, it is instructive to follow the evolution in Catholic thought of the perception of modern war as inherently destructive of value. Here, as in other religious criticism of modern war, we encounter additional themes: negative judgments on the purposes of modern secular states, references to the growth of "militarism", and a conception of modern weapons as inherently too destructive to serve value. It is important to note that this negative perception of war is not simply a reaction to the age of nuclear weapons. It was well established long before the nuclear age. Fussell traces this conception of war to the terrible experience in the trenches of 1914-18, but for Catholic thought it begins at least as early as 1870, when a formal position paper, or Postulatum, was presented to Vatican Council I, challenging the justice of the form of war practiced by modern states.

Reflecting the experience of the Franco-Prussian War of that same year, and perhaps also the American Civil War that had ended five years earlier, this Postulatum explicitly cited the venal motivations of states and the danger of large standing national armies as a special evil. It argued that such armies fostered a spirit of militarism, tended to foment wars in order to finance themselves through conquest, and led to conflicts so destructive as to be "hideous massacres" that the church could not regard as just. So far as the jus ad bellum was concerned, the argument of the Postulatum precluded the possibility of a first use of force being just, no matter what its aim - and after the grotesque slaughter of the First World War some forty-five years later, the argument could only have seemed more self-evident than ever. The document did, however, admit the right of second use of force in defense against attack. Together, this undercutting of the first use of force along with the acceptance of second use (defined as defense) was to become an element not only for later Catholic thought but also for twentieth-century international law.

Following the Great War and reflecting the experience of that conflict, a gathering of prominent theologians at the 1931 Conventus of Fribourg thus distinguished between defense, which they regarded as lawful, and the argument for war from national "necessity", which they declared not lawful. In the context of the provisions for arbitration of disputes established by the League of Nations, and the renunciation of first use of force established for the signatories to the Pact of Paris, the Conventus took the position that it was wrong to initiate any resort to arms to settle a dispute without first recourse to arbitration.

These two documents set the terms for a critique of war that ends as a "presumption against war." Since the Second World War various official and nonofficial statements have called into question whether, given the nature of modern war, even the just cause of defense can legitimize resort to armed force. Statements of the various popes to this effect are especially interesting because of their authoritative force, even though they represent only a fraction of the full range of recent Catholic thought on war.

Pope Pius XII, whose papacy (1939-58) extended through the Second World War and the beginning of the nuclear age, in effect forbade "all wars of aggression, whether just or unjust", as John Courtney Murray put it.(2) For this pope a "war of aggression", Murray notes, was identified with any offensive use of force, whatever the justifying reason. Defensive war, on the other hand, was acceptable - though Pius hedged this allowance more tightly than earlier just-war writers. His reasoning on first and second resort to force came together in his 1956 Christmas message, which reflected the context of the Hungarian revolution and its repression by Soviet military power. This statement is interesting as an example of the refashioning of traditional just-war concepts into a somewhat different doctrine from that defined by the classic theorists. In a particularly vivid passage Pius wrote:

There is no further room for doubt about the purposes and methods that lie behind tanks when they crash resoundingly across frontiers. . . . When all the possible stages of negotiation and mediation are by-passed, and when the threat is made to use atomic arms to obtain concrete demands, whether these are justified or not, it becomes clear that . . . there may come into existence in a nation a situation in which all hope of averting war becomes vain. In this situation a war of efficacious self-defense against unjust attacks, which is undertaken with hope of success, cannot be considered illicit. [emphasis added]

In context, this was a pointed condemnation of the Soviet invasion alongside a somewhat lukewarm acceptance of the Hungarian resistance. Pius used just-war language, but his priorities were importantly different from those of classic just-war theory. There, as we have seen, the classical focus was on three concerns: the justice of the cause for resort to force, the existence of authority to do so, and the intention with which it would be used. Pius, however, focused elsewhere: on the evil of first resort to force itself (tanks crashing "resoundingly across frontiers") and the requirement of last resort (the threat of further force without making use of "negotiation" and "mediation"). While he allowed defensive use of force, he subjected it to further limits: only self-defense against "unjust attacks" is allowed; "reasonable hope of success" (the classic criterion) has been refashioned into "efficacious self-defense . . . undertaken with hope of success" (emphasis added in both cases); and the defensive resort to force is not explicitly just, but only "cannot be considered illicit."

Pius' reasoning here expressed a "presumption against war" without employing the term. While his reference to atomic arms introduced a new element in the context of resort to force, Pius' focus in this passage was clearly not that these particular weapons are especially evil and to be avoided but that the use of force is especially evil and to be avoided. His negative attitude toward resort to force was thus not a particular result of the atomic age; rather it was of a piece with the distrust of arms, armies, and the use of force expressed earlier in Catholic thought, in the denunciation of large standing armies and militarism in 1870, and the emphasis on arbitration in 1931.

Giving his own weight to this new emphasis, Pope John XXIII, in the Pacem in Terris encyclical of 1963, called for the banning of nuclear weapons, a general reduction of other arms, and the development of an international regime based on common consent that would resolve disputes short of war. In a widely discussed passage he wrote:

[I]n this age which boasts of its atomic power, it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice.

Catholic pacifists of our day have argued that this statement not only condemned all war in the nuclear age, but rejected just-war theory as well.(3) By contrast, Protestant theologian Paul Ramsey understood John XXIII as working within the just-war framework, but ruling out two of the three classical just causes for resort to force - recovery of something wrongly taken and punishment of evil - while leaving only defense as justified.(4) Even if Ramsey's less radical interpretation is correct, much has been given up in this statement for, after all, to repair the violation of justice was precisely what classic just-war doctrine was about.

As these examples show, twenty years into the nuclear age it was clear that Catholic (and not only Catholic) thought on just war had shifted focus to a concern that the first resort to force under any circumstances held great potential for injustice and that, accordingly, such resort must be avoided. The defensive use of arms remained a moral possibility, although an increasingly questioned one. In Pope Paul VI's 1965 address to the United Nations General Assembly, this evolving line of reasoning about just war reached for a new resolution. While issuing the ringing challenge, "[N]ever again war, war never again!", Paul also admitted that so long as man remains "weak, changeable, and wicked", "defensive arms will, alas! be necessary." But he stopped short of explicitly saying that it is morally allowable to use such arms. In the context of prevailing Cold War strategies, this statement suggested support for deterrence but not for active defense should deterrence fail. Hence, his point was to draw a double distinction: between the possession of offensive arms, which he regarded as morally evil, and defensive ones, whose possession he permitted; and between the possession of and use of the latter.

It was no great distance from these distinctions to what amounted to a position of nearly unconditional pacifism - the basic rejection of just-war logic altogether with the new understanding that, for Catholics at least, religion mandates a "presumption against war." The logic of the paradigm was spelled out vividly in the 1983 pastoral letter of the American Catholic bishops, The Challenge of Peace. Its starting point is not the problem of preventing injustice, but its insistence that:

Catholic teaching begins in every case with a presumption against war and for peaceful settlement of disputes. In exceptional cases, determined by the moral principles of the just-war tradition, some uses of force are permitted.(5) [emphasis added]

The definition of exceptional cases is suggested by two statements that follow the above. The first defines self-defense against aggression as a right and duty of every nation, and the second rejects offensive war as morally unjustifiable whatever the circumstances. Later, in the text of the letter itself, these themes are elaborated and linked to earlier Catholic tradition, as well as to the effort in international law to outlaw wars of aggression and, ultimately, to eliminate war altogether by international common consent. The right to resort to force, however, as defined in the bishops' letter, is more stringent than that understood in international law because it imposes further limitations: that resort to force must be subject to prudential tests, including the requirements of last resort, probability of success, and overall proportionality.

Defined thusly, the implication of the presumption against war is to push just-war theory close to outright rejection of any resort to force. While The Challenge of Peace focused specifically on nuclear weapons, it clearly nurtured the more general inclination that, in the present age, the use of any military force is morally questionable because it could escalate into nuclear force. Hence, the words of John XXIII - that in the present age war may no longer be employed to remedy the violation of justice - and hence the trajectory of recent Catholic teaching on war, which seems to leave no doubt that the intent is to avoid all resort to force.

The idea that just-war tradition is rooted in a "presumption against war" is clearly an innovation; the question is whether it is a justified innovation. I think not. Indeed, this sort of thinking should be a cause for concern not only to Catholics, but to anyone who believes that moral reasoning has a place in the affairs of statecraft. This is so for two reasons: first, because "presumption against war" thinking effectively destroys the logic of just-war theory by putting jus in bello above jus ad bellum, and by putting lesser, prudential considerations within jus ad bellum above major ones; and, second, because the assumptions about the nature of war on which it is based are flawed.

The Logical Problem

From the perspective of pure moral argument, the problem with the "presumption against war" idea is not only that it is radically at odds with the classical idea of just war, but that the nature of the judgment upon which the claim is made is inadequate. Rather than flowing from a deontological moral principle (a "categorical imperative", as Kant put it), the "presumption against war" is a product of prudential judgments about the nature of modern war.

The problem with prudential judgments such as those incorporated into the presumption against war logic is not only that they are prudential, but that they are contingent. In other words, they are not based on an unchangeable moral principle, but on a condition in the world that is not only subject to change but fated to change. Pure moral reasoning about justice and injustice lives in the realm of absolutes, of deontological reasoning: One obeys a moral principle not because of the consequences of obeying it, but because it is right. Moral judgments - applied moral reasoning - obviously must assess contingent conditions, but such judgments must not be guided by them. It is precisely for this reason that medieval and early modern just-war theory placed responsibility for the four lesser prudential concerns included in jus ad bellum - that it produce a preponderance of good over evil, have a reasonable chance of success, be a last resort, and that its expected outcome be peace - on the competent authority who determines whether to resort to armed force.

In other words, these lesser but still very important concerns pertain to the function of statecraft, not moral analysis. The role of the moralist is to insist on the application of the three essential, non-contingent elements of jus ad bellum - just cause, competent authority, right intention - and to specify that the prudential elements be taken into account. But the moralist is not to usurp the role of statecraft by specifying how they are to apply or what they mean for specific instances or periods of time. The "presumption against war" view, by reversing the weight of essential and contingent considerations, would vitiate statecraft and presume to tell sovereigns how to conduct their affairs - a most worldly and untraditional presumption at that. From the perspective of moral reasoning, too, it gives pride of place to judgments about contingent conditions over obligations inherent in moral duty.

The Practical Problem

To the extent that it is taken seriously, "presumption against war" thinking also has clear implications for the shape of public policy on the use of force. For if war is always presumptively wrong, the moral frame for policy debate over the use of force is reduced to the arena of those very limited exceptional circumstances that may override this presumption. What the 1983 pastoral letter meant for policy on nuclear weapons, relating both to deterrence and to possible use, was well-examined at the time the letter appeared: It was, politically, an attempt to advance the campaign for a nuclear freeze, and it was justified largely on the basis of the claim that neither the demands of discrimination nor proportionality could possibly be met in any use of nuclear weapons.

One can still argue such matters today, for the chances of a major nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia (or China) are not completely nil. But in the contemporary environment, policy questions relating to very different forms of the national use of force and occasions for such use are at center stage. The types of forces involved are different, the justifications entered into debate are different, and the authority for employment of force is different. The key issues now relate to conventional, not nuclear arms; they involve low-intensity conflict and various forms of interventionary uses of military force, not superpower deterrence or war; the goals served are often defined by broadly held international values, not national interests narrowly construed; and the question of the rightness of the use of force encompasses not only cases in which unilateral action by the United States is at issue, but also cases in which the United States is a participant in groups of nations ranging from ad hoc coalitions (such as that against Iraq in the Gulf War), to regional alliances (like NATO or the OAS), to the United Nations.

Restoring Justice to Just-War Reasoning

Despite the existence of such variable circumstances, some modern just-war theorists have marginalized themselves to the point where they can barely speak to such matters. It is hard to see how, from a posture defined by the "presumption against war", uses of force can be justified for reasons of national interest other than resistance to a direct attack in progress (and perhaps not then, if the prudential tests are not met), even in the face of serious threat to national security or for international order purposes. Yet these kinds of cases provide the context for debate over the use of force today: threats to national interest take such forms as terrorist attack and the drug trade; recent international order concerns include rolling back aggression (the Gulf War), promoting human rights and democracy (Haiti), and ending an indiscriminately destructive civil war (Bosnia). Just-war theory, if brought back to its real roots, can be relevant to all these contingencies. The way to do this is to restore the centrality of the idea of justice to reasoning about the use of force.

There is no question that classic just-war theorists were motivated in their thinking about the use of force by the desire to prevent, punish, and remedy injustice, and even to do so at risk to oneself - as per Ambrose and Augustine. The purpose of statecraft followed from this: The role of the sovereign was to act as minister of God to police injustice. So, unless it is granted in advance that the resort to force always produces the greatest injustice, the matter remains open to case by case, or class by class, investigation. If one undertakes such an investigation, it becomes clear that the uses of military force typical of the present day do not justify the judgments underlying "presumption against war" arguments. In those arguments, it will be recalled, two themes stand out: first, that the moral possibility of national purpose has been subverted by the militarism imposed by large military establishments, for which the only cure is disarmament; and second, that the destructiveness of modern weapons, especially nuclear weapons, severely restricts and perhaps removes the possibility of their use as instruments of moral purpose.

Neither of these themes holds up as a general descriptive statement of the nature of contemporary states and statecraft as such, or of the actuality of war once begun. Both are particularly outmoded in the post-Cold War context. In the first place, the wars that have occurred since the end of the Cold War do not exemplify a destructiveness inexorably beyond human control, or aims that far outrun the ends of politics, but rather a reality shaped by human decision-making and expressive of rational political purposes - however wrong we may judge such purposes to be in discrete cases. These conflicts have all been limited in significant ways; none has ushered in a global holocaust or escalated to all-out use of conventional military might. Nor is this only a post-Cold War phenomenon. In truth, the face of armed conflict since the end of the Second World War suggests that modern war is characterized by localized and limited, though sharp, conflicts in which ethnic or religious differences or local political disputes provide the proximate causes, rather than totalistic clashes on the model of the two world wars or the feared global nuclear showdown.

Indeed, while the reality of recent conflicts has been terrible enough, the rape of Kuwait, the starvation of civilians in Somalia, the ethnic massacres of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have not shown a destructiveness different in essence from what was known by Vitoria, Grotius, or their predecessors. (Grotius, after all, lived during the Thirty Years' War, still arguably the most devastating conflict Europe has ever experienced.) All these conflicts have been condemned by the international community, and each has, in different ways, occasioned action to relieve suffering and bring the conflict to an end. In these responses the military means of the great powers have been brought to bear in limited rather than totalistic ways and with varying degrees of success. None of these forms of action is consistent with the view of modern war described by the "presumption against war" perspective.

Three general lessons may be deduced from the experience of these recent conflicts. The first is that the perception of the nature of war underlying the "presumption against war" idea is seriously at odds with reality, and that the reality of recent conflicts fits very closely the perception of war found in classic just-war theory. The second is that the recent conflicts cited have helped define the limits of what individual states and groups of states can do to prevent or mitigate war. The United Nations has had success (and failure) at peacekeeping, but other international coalitions have been necessary where peace does not exist or exists only tenuously, as in the cases of the Gulf War and the current NATO intervention in Bosnia. The third lesson is that the major powers have employed their military forces in these conflicts in ways that have gone substantially beyond a narrow definition of their national interests to include humanitarian and international order concerns. This is just the opposite of what they were expected to do on the model of the state in modern Catholic just-war thinking that emphasizes their militarism, national chauvinism, and venality.

Just Cause and Right Authority

These three lessons suggest that the approach to war found in classic just-war reasoning remains relevant to contemporary conflict. At the same time the tradition of such reasoning needs to recognize the particulars of the contemporary international context, especially the specific violations of justice likely to occur, and the variable notion of authority for the use of force that has emerged in responses to recent conflicts. Together these developments point the way to new applications of just-war thought.

The truth is that the classic just-war concept defines the issues in ways that correspond closely to the conditions under which contemporary policy on uses of force must be shaped. There is a place, in just-war terms, for the employment of military force in the contemporary world: not only for defense of national interests - which is, after all, maintained in papal teaching, positive international law, international custom, and realist doctrine - but also for purposes the classic just-war theorists called the punishment of evil and the recovery of something wrongly taken. These latter uses are often, but not always, interventionary in character, and they are often, though not always, undertakings of groups of states operating not only on their own authority but also on that of the United Nations Security Council.

The fundamental policy implication for just-war reasoning, rightly understood, is thus not only that there is a place for the use of force under national authority in resistance to armed attack, but also a place for employment of military means in response to broader kinds of threats to national security, and to the values and structures that define the international order. In the face of such threats force may be the only means likely to produce the desired results: protection of the values at stake (whether this takes the form of preventing starvation, rectifying the criminal looting of civil order, ending indiscriminate warfare against enemy populations, or rolling back interstate aggression). In contemporary context it is well to remember that the conditions of the rightful resort to force to protect these values and end the threat to them is precisely what classic just-war theory aimed to define. Such uses of force for good should not be held hostage to an imagined "presumption against war."

1 Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975).

2 John Courtney Murray, Morality and Modern War (New York: Council on Religion and International Affairs, 1959), p. 9.

3 Ronald G. Musto, The Catholic Peace Tradition (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1986), p. 190.

4 Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (New York: Scribner's, 1968), pp. 190-210.

5 National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1983), iii; cf. 22.

James Turner Johnson is professor of religion at Rutgers University. This essay was originally prepared for a conference sponsored by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC.

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