Just War Theory

ASSIGNMENT
ETHICS IN POLITICS

SEMESTER 2 2014/2015

KULLIYYAH OF ISLAMIC REVEALED KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN SCIENCES,
INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY
MALAYSIA

PSCI 4610

INSTRUCTOR Dr.Aldila ishak

NO.
NAME
MATRIC NO.
SECTION
1
MUHAMMAD NAZRI BIN MOHMUD HUSSIN
1031189
1

Just War Theory: An Introduction. Just war theory is an interesting idea which constitutes both elements of ethics and politics to form a theory that describe the ethical and political relationship between states and sovereignty. Just War theory can be describes as an attempt to reconcile war with morality. Its main objective was to give justification for a state to launch an attack towards another state provided they have a valid reason to do so. From this we can come to define just war theory as a theory that specifies conditions for judging if it is just to go to war, and conditions for how the war should be fought (BBC, 2014). Just War theory is often associated with Christianity as it was first developed through biblical teachings by Christian theologians, St Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even though Just war theory started from biblical teaching it does not mean that Christianity endorses violence or war but instead the ultimate goal is peace. War can only serve as the last resort action to achieve peace. After Christianity become dominant in the Roman civilization, the demand for a theory to justify the act of war lead St. Augustine to propose the Just War theory that was driven from biblical teachings (Catholic Answer, n.d). This was later perfected by St. Thomas Aquinas to form the Just War Theory that we know today. In his work, Summa Theologicae, St. Thomas Aquinas had outlined the criteria for a just war as (Jus Ad Bellum) well as the kind of activities that are permissible during a war (Jus in Bello). These two proponents of just war theories have provided scholars for many fields be it International law, philosopher and many others of the framework and ideas of Just War theory (Moseley, n.d). These two components of Just War theory will be explain later in this assignment. Even though Just War theory is associated with Christianity, the idea of justifying war had existed longer before Christianity. For example in Bhagavadgita, one of the oldest book in human civilization, the idea of just war is describe from the dialogues of Lord Krishna towards Arjuna in which the former say " As a ksatriya (soldier), you should know that there is no better engagement for you than fighting for justice/righteousness; and so there is no need for hesitation. If, however, you do not fight for justice/righteousness, then you will certainly incur sins for neglecting your duties and thus lose your reputation as a fighter. " Bhagavad Gita 2:31-33. This dialogue clearly indicates that fighting in the name of justice is permissible and part of responsibility to defend. Base on this, some scholar believe that Bhagavadgita or Hinduism are among the first to explore the idea of justifying war.
Just war theory had become one of the heated discussion by scholars after September 11, incident in the United States. President Bush administration retaliate terrorism attack with counter terror war by claiming that it was justified. He was quoted sayings “our nation’s cause has always been larger than our nation’s defense. We fight, as we always fight, for a just peace—a peace that favors human liberty. . . . Building this just peace is America’s opportunity, and America’s duty”. His administration statements regarding this war had evoke scholars to rethink the idea of Just War theory and whether it still relevant or not (Crawford, 2003).

Components of Just War Theory.
Jus Ad Bellum Jus ad bellum is a latin word that can be translated as justice of the war, meaning it constitutes criteria that allow certain war to be justified. Scholars agree on six criteria that allow for a state to declare a just war. The first criteria are just cause or a valid reason. For a state to resorting to act of war and attacking other states sovereignty, they must have a good reason for them to commit act of violence which is not moral. Among suggested good reason are self- defense when the states are under attack, preemptive strike where there is clear and present danger or if there is humanitarian disaster or in the making. Another criterion is last resort. This is an important criterion because it indicates that a war is only justified if other preventive measure such as negotiations, sanctions or other method is used. This indicates that Just War theory had never encourage states to go to war, but it only provide justification if states decided to go to war after trying other methods to prevent them. The third criterion would be proportionality. This criterion sees war from cost and benefit perspective hence, according to this criterion, if a war promises to be more costly than the projected gains, then it is unjust. The fourth criterion is likelihood of success. According to this criterion, if there is no clear chance for achieving something through the war, then the war is declared unjust. The fifth criterion which is the most controversial one is good intention. It is controversial since it is hard to predict the intention of the states be it good or bad. Therefore good intention is describe as national interest that are just for example defending the states from an aggressor rather than pursuing national interest like for economic gain. The last criterion under jus ad bellum is legitimate authority, meaning to say that only those with legitimate authority are allowed to declared war against other nations. Private people for example military leaders or political parties do not have the right to declare war hence it is unjustified. However, many scholars think that this criterion is not valid anymore since right now war can only be declared with the permission of bodies like United Nations (UN) (Fotion, 2006).
Jus in Bello Another component of Just War theory is Jus in Bello, Latin words that means justice within the war. It serves as some kind of guidelines or code of conduct in war. What is justified to do and what is not. There are two principles within this component which is proportionality and discrimination. While proportionality in jus ad bellum section refers to the start of the war, proportionality in this sense concern with the conduct during the war instead. Another principle is discrimination. During war, the warring parties must take notice that there is some innocent life that should not be attacked for example the civilian. Instead they can only attack soldiers, not women or children. The discrimination also holds for facilities whereas they can only destroy facilities use by the armies for example railroads, roads, and factories manufacturing military tools. However, they are not allowed to attack public facilities such as hospitals, schools, civilian house and religious institutions (Fotion, 2006). These two principles has become the international code of conduct during war and need to be observed I order for a state to justify their act of war or else they can be prosecuted as war criminals.

Criticism of Just War Theory. Everything is with criticism, and that is no exception for just war theory. Even though the main objective of Just war theory is to justified war actions in response to criticism, it can never satisfied everyone, hence there are lots of criticism, controversies, doubt and suspicion over just war theory. Among of it criticism was the justification to resort to war itself. Some people believe that the goal of going to war can be justified but the act of terror and violence can be viewed as unjust means since not every goal are worth justifying killings of people. This simply means that states might consider that they have the rights to declare war against another states, but at what expense. War is not a small feat but it involves thousands and millions of people life. Hence the act of terrorizing lives can never be justified (Kamm, 2004). Another criticism of just war theory is that the nature of war today is not the same with the nature of war back then when the theory is still applicable. War today does not necessarily involve two states but they can also involve with some forces that is not regular army deployed by states, they could be some terrorist groups, for example the Al-Qaeda. Hence, this other forces, they do not necessarily following certain moral values, therefore it is harder to speak about ethics when we discuss war against terrorist. Some believe that just war theory need to evolve and transform its idea to fit in with current nature of war (McMahan, 2012). Another criticism about Just War theory is its resort to war as last option. While in a way it is a positive point for just war theory to constitute war as the last action after several others action like negotiation had been taken, it is also provide definite alternative to conflicts which is war. Hence states would always think that it can always resort to war if anything else did not work out giving probability that they will work less to avoid war and go straight to making war arrangements. This is usually happen with state with strong powers over the weak one since they have capabilities and confidence to win in the war. Therefore Just War theory is seen as unrealistic because only the strong will win and the weak does not stand a chance (Westmoreland-White, n.d). Critics of Just War theory does not stop with the war alone, they see things beyond war such as moralizing war would be in a way moralizing killings of people. It’s like just war theory had give license for state to kill peoples. Since just war theory is based on the good intention of the states which is subjected to manipulation, hypocritical or bias, it open to the possibilities of misusing just war theory for some other factors rather than just cause. Just war theory also look at war only from the perspective of defending against aggressors, but usually war constitutes more than that. It could be for scarcity of resource, pursuing national interest or spreading of ideologies like communism (Walzer, 2004). Lastly from humanitarian standpoint, the act of violence against people is not moral at all, hence the possibilities of justifying them is never an issue because it can never be justified. Hence, instead of discussing on how to avoid war and achieved peace, just war theory only promotes war and violence by giving a free pass to the aggressor who can simply able to bend this theory according to what they favour. If we think logically both parties in war have their different take on the issue. Everyone would think that their cause is more justified than the other, therefore it will be a never ending effort to find who is to blame and whose causes are justified.

Just War theory vs. Jihad In this short section of this assignment, we would be discussion whether Just war theory and Islamic Jihad shared any values or contradicting each other. Why Jihad?, Because both concept do have similarities in term of fighting others with a cause. Some scholars believe that jihad is Islamic version of Just War theory. Note that jihad can have different meanings but the one associated with just war theory is the act of defending and fighting in the name of Islam and Allah. The first distinction between just war theory and jihad are in terms of religious role. For instance, just war theory constitutes justice in the form of protecting states and its interest. However, jihad is beyond that idea in that sense it become a sort of religious obligation to fight injustices against Allah and Islam. It does not necessarily only to protect the states and its interest but to protect Islam and Muslim brothers all around the world. Example of this is during the Crusades, where religion plays a dominant role. However, both Just War theory do shared similar values with jihad in terms of war as last resort action. Both jihad and just war theory only considers option to go to war only if other methods had failed. With regard with the conducts within the war, jihad also applied the concept of discrimination, where women, kids and old folks cannot be harmed. Islam also even extends this to prohibition to destroy local people crops and trees and to avoid destruction of property. From my understandings, both concepts do have similarities with a bit of a twist in certain area. We can clearly conclude that both concept resort to war only as a last option and tried it best to avoid destructions or killings of innocent lives.

Conclusion Throughout this assignment, I had learned a lot about Just War theory and had a different perspective on war from before. While at first I thought there is no way one can justify war and violence, I came to think that it is possible to have just war. It just that it may work perfectly as a theory but it has a lot of flaw because human are involve with it. As we know human can never be perfect, hence due to this human error, just war theory will always have flaw, open to controversies and criticism and sometime will be misuse by those who like to manipulate it according to their way. Not to mention, it had been ages since Just War theory was developed, and the nature of war had evolve and change while Just War theory remain the same. Therefore I believe that scholars should modify the values that are outdated and come out with a better theory for Just War to be still relevant. For me, Just War theory is a very important theory since it combines ethics, moral and politics into one idea, and mold them into something that define relationship between states with one another. It is the back bone of international relation, which is why I think it is important for it to stay relevant. Part of me agreeing with just war theory is because we, Muslims do have similar concept in jihad. That is why I can see this idea as working because jihad through Islamic history or during the prophet time works perfectly fine. It is only rights for human nature to defend themselves, should they had been attacked. Similarly, it is the responsibilities of the states to protect and defend its people from the aggressor. While at that, states who manipulates this theory should be ashamed since they had hid behind ethics and moral to commit an unethical conduct.
Works Cited

BBC. (2014). Just War- Introduction. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from BBC UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/war/just/introduction.shtml
Catholic Answer. (n.d). Just War Doctrine. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from Catholic Answer: http://www.catholic.com/documents/just-war-doctrine
Crawford, N. C. (2003). Just War Theory and the U.S Counter Terror War. Just War Theory , 1-2.
Fotion, N. (2006). The Theories of Just War. Philosophia , 3-5.
Kamm, F. (2004). Failures of Just War Theory: Terror, Harm, and Justice. Chicago Journals , 3.
McMahan, J. (2012, November 11). Rethinking Just War- Part 1. Retrieved May 02, 2015, from The New York Times: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/rethinking-the-just-war-part-1/?_r=0
Moseley, A. (n.d). Just War Theory. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/
Walzer, M. (2004). Arguing About War. Virginia: Yale University Press.
Westmoreland-White, M. L. (n.d). Internal Weaknesses of Just War Theory. Retrieved May 04, 2015, from Levellers: https://levellers.wordpress.com/2006/08/20/internal-weaknesses-of-just-war-theory/

Cited: BBC. (2014). Just War- Introduction. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from BBC UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/war/just/introduction.shtml Catholic Answer. (n.d). Just War Doctrine. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from Catholic Answer: http://www.catholic.com/documents/just-war-doctrine Crawford, N. C. (2003). Just War Theory and the U.S Counter Terror War. Just War Theory , 1-2. Fotion, N. (2006). The Theories of Just War. Philosophia , 3-5. Kamm, F. (2004). Failures of Just War Theory: Terror, Harm, and Justice. Chicago Journals , 3. McMahan, J. (2012, November 11). Rethinking Just War- Part 1. Retrieved May 02, 2015, from The New York Times: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/rethinking-the-just-war-part-1/?_r=0 Moseley, A. (n.d). Just War Theory. Retrieved May 03, 2015, from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/ Walzer, M. (2004). Arguing About War. Virginia: Yale University Press. Westmoreland-White, M. L. (n.d). Internal Weaknesses of Just War Theory. Retrieved May 04, 2015, from Levellers: https://levellers.wordpress.com/2006/08/20/internal-weaknesses-of-just-war-theory/