[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.
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