Tag: U.N. Charter

Proportionality in recourse to war (Just war, part 8)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we again welcome another in our series on just war, by guest author Dr. Michael Corgan.]

Proportionality with respect to just war principles is a broad idea. It refers both to the decision to go to war and  to conduct during a war, even a just one. Here we deal with jus ad bellum or the level at which war can be fought.

Falklands war, ship sinking
Argentine ship sinking after British submarine attack (Image in public domain)

The U.N. Charter in Articles 41 and 42 suggests that a range of actions can be contemplated against an aggressor state, with war (military action) as the last resort. Clearly any concept of just war means that all other means must be attempted before resorting to war.

The historical record on this point is not reassuring.

But if this last resort–the use of actual war–is called for, the scale of the war must still be appropriate to a frustration or undoing of the aggressor’s actions. It must not be used as a  pretext for a major effort to “teach a lesson” to the aggressor or to reduce his future
capacities for waging war. Two recent examples may illustrate.

In 1982 the Argentinian government of General Galtieri invaded the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands and captured the small British garrison there. When the British counterattacked to retake the islands, they made it clear that their actions would be confined to a war zone around the Falklands and no action would be taken against the Argentine mainland. Nor was any.

Ten years later the U.N. Security Council authorized the first war against Iraq. Fighting was ended after 100 hours in which the Iraqi forces were driven out of Kuwait. Some military action was taken in Iraq itself but there was no drive to Baghdad.

Contrast this relative restraint with the “shock and awe” introducing the second Iraq war in 2002 and its lingering on for nearly ten years.

In both the Falklands and the first Iraq war there were some excesses, but the wars were, relatively speaking, constrained to undoing the effects of the aggressions. Yet another test for a just war is that its employment of force and its duration be only what is required to undo a specific aggression and no more.

Michael T. Corgan, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of International Relations, Boston University

Using war to stop or undo harm (Just war, part 5)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Today we once again welcome guest contributor Dr. Michael Corgan, for his ongoing series on just war.]

Animated image comparing two columns of dots
Animation by Sbyrnes321; in public domain. From Wikimedia Commons.

The idea of proportionality is one of the more comprehensive notions in both the international laws governing war and in just war theory. Proportionality applies both to the resort to war and the conduct of a war, however justly or legally entered into.

In terms of international law, the only just or legal cause for war is self-defense against aggression. But the UN Charter in particular countenances not just the repulsion of aggression and punishment for its having been used. In just war theory, proportionality places no such requirements on those repelling aggression. War can stop or undo the harm but not be an excuse for vengeance or aggrandizement.

Instead, proportionality in just war theory implies that only war can correct the wrong suffered. The wrong to be corrected must be grave. Insults to national pride or need to maintain reputation are insufficient reasons to use war. So, too, for example would be economic harm that does not materially destroy a national economy.

Weighing scale
Image in public domain

War, even a just war, always involves the loss of innocent life and destruction of things that are simply too near the battle area. The inevitability of this so-called  “collateral damage” means that war is necessarily a blunt instrument. This reality undergirds the just war notion of proportionality.

Consider the current conflict in Libya. In your opinion, would war be justified according to the just war principle of proportionality?

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University

Humanitarian intervention and war (Just war, Part 2)

Posted on by kathiemm

[Editor’s note: This is the second in the series on just war by Dr. Michael Corgan.]

The anguish for leaders of countries is never about right versus wrong. It’s usually about bad versus worse or right versus right. Nowhere is this anguish more sharply drawn than in the tension between legal war and just war as defined by just war theory.

To set the simplest case first, the current legal restrictions on the use of war are essentially the United Nations Charter, which all states have signed, and the attendant treaties and conventions that attempt to codify restraints on armed aggression.

Defendants at Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials: Defendants in their dock, circa 1945-1946. (National Archives photo in public domain; from Wikimedia Commons)

Basically, the only legal recourse to war is self-defense against aggression. The one addition is that a state may, if requested, come to the defense of another state that cannot defend itself against aggression.

The famous Nuremberg Trials following WWII brought the world’s attention to the issue of expanding the criteria for war beyond legally permitted war. Up to that point, international law had been guided by laws that had been agreed to and written down.

But what law had the Nazis in the dock at Nuremberg violated? Certainly no law of the Third Reich had stood in their murderous way. But just as clearly, “crimes against humanity” had been committed, as all civilized nations agreed, even if there were no legal protocols for addressing such crimes.

Enter the idea of “natural law” and the elaboration of just war doctrine, which rejected the prevailing assumption that recognized every state as sovereign and as inviolable for what it did within its own borders.

The new idea of humanitarian intervention as a justification for war was first called into play when NATO took military action in Kosovo in 1999. Was this a legal use of war? Not according to current interpretations of the treaties almost all nations had signed. Was it a just war? If the Nuremberg principles were valid, then it seems it was just, at least from the standpoint of having a just cause.

We will return to this dilemma later but subsequent just war posts will first look at the other five criteria for just war and the conundrums they raise.

Michael T. Corgan, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University