Alternatives to war

This is the 26^th and final installment in my series of posts on just-war theory. I’m grateful to the folks who have kept up with the discussion.

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“War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will,” said Carl von Clausewitz, the great Prussian general and strategist of the early 19^th century. But there are many different ways to “compel our enemy to do our will;” not all of them involve armies and bloodshed.

Clausewitz is said that war is “a continuation of politics [or diplomacy] with other means.” That famous phrase is sometimes translated as “by other means.” But that rendition produces a misleading result. Clausewitz is not suggesting that when war begins, we leave aside political and diplomatic initiatives. On the contrary, the use of military force is one more way to bring pressure on our adversaries, to force them to the negotiating table, to compel them to do our will. The start of a war may entail a formal break in diplomatic relations, but even then the warring nation should always be on the alert for signs that the enemy is ready to make peace on acceptable terms. War is an instrument of diplomacy, not an alternative.

What are the other alternatives: the ways to put pressure on another nation? Last week I discussed the various forms of cyberwarfare, most of them involving outright hostile acts: conflict, but not armed conflict. Today I will concentrate on less overtly hostile methods.

Sanctions

As a way to put pressure on a nation that is acting unjustly, political leaders today routinely call for economic sanctions. Unfortunately these sanctions have rarely proven effective in changing an adversary nation’s behavior. Tough sanctions undoubtedly impose a burden on a country. But that burden is typically borne by the nation’s poor people, not its political leaders. Dictators in North Korea have always maintained a ready supply of their beloved Scotch whiskey, regardless of international sanctions. The rich and powerful may see some decline in their standards of living, but it is the poor, already living on the edge of misery, who are plunged into disastrous circumstances. For that reasons, economic sanctions are a particularly ineffective way to punish a nation for injustices against its own people; the people who are already living on the margin will face even more suffering.

In some cases, sanctions are recommended as a way to stimulate unrest in a country, to encourage the people to overthrow their government leadership. That reasoning might seem sound at first glance, but it has several faults:

1. In practice, rebellions usually occur not when the people are living in utter misery, but when they have begun to emerge from poverty. It is the “revolution of rising expectations” that leads to regime changes.

2. If people living under an oppressive government choose to make sacrifices in order to bring about change, that is their decision. By imposing sacrifices on them, we are using them as instruments of our will.

3. The country suffering under sanctions invariably uses its propaganda machinery to blame the straitened economic conditions on the country or countries that impose those sanctions. If the propaganda campaign is successful— and it usually has some substantial effect— then the population is turned against the country that is its would-be benefactor. That is not a mark of successful diplomacy.

   Non-violent resistance

In India, Gandhi demonstrated that if people voluntarily make sacrifices, they can force the government’s hand with a campaign of non-violent resistance. More recently the Solidarity labor union started the process that led to the collapse of the Soviet empire: the demolition of a tyrannical superpower, accomplished without force of arms. Non-violence can be effective. But its requirements are demanding. Non-violent resistance succeeds only when:

• The resistance is widespread, involving not just a fringe group but a substantial proportion of the population. And those people are disciplined, united, and prepared to endure suffering.

• The regime is not prepared to use the repressive measures that would break the spirit of the resistance— either because the regime has moral compunction or because the regime has lost its will.

Non-violent resistance by a nation’s people has successfully ousted repressive governments; it has provided, at times, an alternative to armed revolution. But could non-violence replace war as a means of repelling an aggressor? Possibly it could, if the aggressor came to realize that he could not successfully govern the nation he had invaded. But how could the resistance bring him to that conclusion, without first enduring a great deal of suffering?

International law

Hugo Grotius, a Dutch exile living in Paris in the early 17^th century, is known as the “father of international law,” primarily for his work De Jure Belli ac Pacis, in which he sought to lay the foundation for a code of law governing warfare. He could not be called the “father of just-war theory”— that title goes to St. Augustine— but he was the first to envision a system of international law, based on the natural-law thinking that others had already developed. Like those theorists, he argued that war could be just only if it was undertaken in self-defense, to repair an injustice, or to punish a transgression. But of course his system of law was theoretical; it had no governing authority.

Immanuel Kant— writing soon after the French Revolution, and living in the budding military society of Prussia— also made an effort to set out universal principles of justice in warfare, in his Toward Perpetual Peace. His approach in this field, as in all his philosophical work, was to establish principles that he believed all should be able to accept. To reduce the likelihood of war, he argued against secret treaties and standing armies; he supported limits on foreign debt and hospitality for refugees; he insisted that no nation should interfere in the internal politics of another. And he called for a “federation of states” to prevent and/or punish violations of these rules. His proposal, too, was theoretical, lacking any enforcement mechanism.

Flash forward to the 20^th century, and after the demise of the League of Nations, world leaders did manage to create a sort of international body, the United Nations. But the UN has been unable to fulfill its lofty goals. Its “peacekeeping” ventures are limited by the veto power of individual nations and the politics that invariably taint the UN involvement. Its defense of human rights has always been weak, and became almost laughable when Iran gained control of the human-rights commission.

Leaving the leftward political tilt of the UN aside, the most fundamental problem with the effort is the unwillingness of national governments to relinquish any real measure of their own sovereignty. The UN can issue proclamations, but cannot enforce them. Oddly, in spite of the UN’s long history of alignment with the “culture of death,” the Vatican has continued to support the organization, based on an idealized vision of what it could be, rather than what it is. But realistically, how could a world government be effective, without being a threat to freedom?

Conclusion

War cannot be abolished simply by an act of will, nor by legislation that lacks enforcement power. The more practical approach to the question is to demand restraints on warfare: to promote a wider recognition of the reality that war is an instrument of diplomacy, and prudent diplomacy always dictates that sort of restraint. Let’s give the final word to St. Augustine, as quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa:

For peace is not sought in order to the kindling of war, but war is waged in order that peace may be obtained. Therefore even in waging war, cherish a spirit of the peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantages of peace.