"Surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle."
Eliot Ness,
The Untouchables (1987)
Central to the movie The Untouchables is the conflict between federal agent Eliot Ness (as portrayed by Kevin Costner) and veteran cop James Malone (Sean Connery). For Ness, the fight against Al Capone — an urban terrorist, 1930s-style — must be waged from the moral high ground. "As we are going to enforce the law," he declares, "we must do so first by example." For Malone, it is more a question of doing whatever is necessary to win. "Here’s how you get Capone," he tells Ness. "He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to hospital, you send one of his to the morgue."
In the end, Ness comes to embrace Malone’s ruthless methods — flinging one suspect from a rooftop to his death — and brings Capone to justice. By then, however, Malone is already dead as well, a victim of the same gangland logic he lived by.
As in art, so it is with life. In the West, two major theories (or paradigms) have dominated thinking about the conduct of war over the past few centuries. The first theory — idealism — centres on the concept of a "just war," the belief that the destruction inherent in armed conflict should serve a greater good. From the medieval Crusades onwards, writes Michael Walzer in Arguing About War (2004), "rulers of this world embraced the theory, and did not fight a single war without describing it, or hiring intellectuals to describe it, as a war for peace and justice."
The second theory — realism – rejects the idea of a just war and, following Machiavelli’s lead, instead maintains that wars should be fought in the service of self-interests, not ideals. "Arguments about justice were treated as a kind of moralizing," notes Walzer, "inappropriate to the anarchic conditions of international society. For this world, just war was not worldly enough."
For much of the post-1945 era, the realist approach to war dominated political and academic thinking in the West, especially in North America. By the 1970s, however, wars of liberation in former European colonies in Asia and Africa and the failure of the United States in Vietnam had rekindled the belief that wars served a greater purpose than mere material interest. The idea of a just war regained popularity. Thus the First Gulf War (1990-91), for example, was waged consciously and deliberately as a "just war," even if more profane interests — oil companies, investment houses – benefited in the process.
This is not to say that wars themselves became more "just"; simply, how they were viewed and judged shifted once more. "Just war theory is not an apology for any particular war, and it is not a renunciation of war itself," concludes Walzer. "It is designed to sustain a constant scrutiny and an immanent critique."
What does all this mean in practice? In determining the justness of any specific conflict, theorists distinguish between the conditions in place before the war starts (jus ad bellum) and the conduct of war itself once it has begun (jus in bello). In the first case, the criteria include the following:
· Just cause — e.g. self-defence, retaliation against armed attack, recovery of persons or property wrongly taken.
· Legitimate authority — only duly authorized representatives of a sovereign power may sanction the use of force.
· Right intention — force may be used only for a just end, and not for material gain or territorial acquisition.
· Probability of success — armed force may not be used in a futile cause or where disproportionate measures are required to achieve success.
· Proportionality — the destruction expected from the proposed use of force must be outweighed by the good to be achieved.
· Last resort — armed force may be used only after all peaceful alternatives have been tried and exhausted.
Once an armed conflict has begun (for just cause or otherwise), its status as a just war rests on the following three main principles:
· Discrimination – armed force should be directed against enemy combatants and not civilians. Prohibited acts include the bombing of residential areas that include no military targets and acts of terrorism against civilians.
· Proportionality — armed force used must be proportional to the (alleged) wrong suffered.
· Minimum force — unnecessary death and destruction should be avoided, including the torture of enemy combatants or civilians.
It’s worth reviewing these various criteria in detail, for much commentary on the current Israel-Lebanon conflict has invoked the notion of a just war, even if the complexity and implications of that theory receive less consideration. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for example, called Israel’s initial attack a "measured response." Those who rejected this characterization also appealed to the same just war idea. "The deliberate targeting … of civilian dwellings, cars and food convoys … is not a justified self-defence, nor does it constitute a moderate response," argued Shalom-Salaam — a Jewish-Arab "dialogue group" — in an open letter published this week.
Is this conflict a just war? Supporters of Israel might certainly claim that its decision to attack Lebanon fulfilled the first three criteria of jus ad bellum (just cause, legitimate authority and right intention), while opponents could equally argue that it failed to meet the last three (probability of success, proportionality and last resort). Moving beyond the decision to go to war to the actual conduct of combat (jus in bello), however, Israel’s claim to be fighting a just war appears to be on shakier ground. The daily attacks on Lebanese residences, alleged to be sheltering Hezbollah rockets, are in breach of the discrimination principle. Likewise, the current death toll of more than 700 seems out of all proportion to Hezbollah’s kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, the stated provocation of war. Finally, the pictures and reports coming out of Lebanon suggest that Israel has hardly avoided unnecessary death or destruction, for example, in its indiscriminate attack on a UN observer post last week.
"To much of the world," the Economist wrote recently, Israel’s retaliation therefore "looks like a crazily disproportionate response. And so it is." But, as the same article quickly went on to point out, "this war did not spring from nowhere" but instead "conditions for it have been building, in slow motion, for years." Its origins lie not with the kidnapping of two soldiers, but with Hezbollah’s stated commitment to the destruction of Israel since its formation in 1982. Or, rather, with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon that year, an act that led to the creation of Hezbollah as a resistance movement. Or, rather, with the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon in the 1970s and ’80s, that prompted Israel’s decision to invade. Or, rather….
The point is, the origins of the present conflict — and hence any question of its justness and eventual resolution — are rooted not in the events of last month, but lie far deeper in the region’s bitter history. How far back is it necessary to go? Some observers point to the creation of Israel in 1948 as the starting point, while others place the blame on European imperialism and anti-Semitism in the late 1800s — is another question for debate. |
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