War and Ethics

“No war can ever be justified since any war will put innocent civilians in danger”. Evaluate. Indeed, there is arguably no human activity more destructive and more detrimental to the global community than the fighting of war. In the context of this discourse I refer to war as a large scale armed conflict between two or more nations or other political entities. While some may argue that war is morally permissible under certain circumstances, it is my opinion that the cost of any war is far too high to justify. Some contend that war is inevitable, a fact of human life, and that to argue against it is futile. However, I maintain that war only seems inevitable because of the current geopolitical climate, and the failure of political states to act as responsible moral agents. Before further introducing the positive points of my argument, I will describe the two most common pro-war ideologies, and consider their flaws. The just war theory, commonly attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, is the most commonly regarded war philosophy. It states that as long as certain conditions are satisfied, war can be just and moral. These conditions are as follows: 1) A state must have a just cause, or a proper reason or justification for entering a war, such as self-defense. 2) The state must enter a war based only on the established just cause; there can be no ulterior motive. 3) The state must have the proper authority to carry a war in the name of the people or nation it represents. Thus, if these three conditions are fulfilled, any war, and the destruction and violence it may bring, can be morally justified. However, I do not believe that there is ever a circumstance that a war may be called “just.”
I find the just war theory to be outdated, idealistic, and impractical. If one were to examine all the wars fought in the last century, maybe only a handful out of the hundreds could be considered completely just. And even if a war has a just cause, the actions that war promotes are