Michael Walzer. J. Toby Reiner

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СКАЧАТЬ Walzer concludes that the realist claim that morality has no fixed reference in war is wrong: moral judgments are “socially patterned” rather than idiosyncratic (45), which makes it possible for just-war theorists to appeal to the convention and insist that breaches of it are unjustified. Given that living in our societies brings us awareness of the tenets of the convention, its principles have a stable meaning. There might indeed be people in “other worlds” to “whose inhabitants” Walzer’s arguments would be incomprehensible (20), but Walzer insists that nobody in our world can coherently claim ignorance of the general tenor of the war convention. There is a moral reality of war because moral precepts about war are an aspect of everyone’s experiences that are relatively stable across different societies.

      Walzer considers the version of realism that attempts to describe the behavior of states in the anarchic international system, but it is important to note that his critique simply does not address all versions of realism. There is also a “prescriptive realism” that stipulates that states ought to act out of concern for national survival, because any attempt to wage just wars will increase military destructiveness by encouraging secularized crusades (for discussion, Orend 2000: 66–8, 2013: 257–68). On the prescriptive realist view, an amoral policy motivated by national security is the best that we can hope for in a world marked by moral disagreement and because just-war theorists “fill people’s head with talk of aggression” (Orend 2013: 258; for a similar argument, Calhoun 2001). Indeed, realism is not by any means always a militaristic doctrine. Hans Morgenthau, one of the major realists of the 1960s, joined Walzer in opposition to Vietnam, largely because of concern that the USA would overstretch itself (for discussion, Rafshoon 2001, Zambernardi 2011). He and Walzer even co-authored an article in Dissent on American responsibility for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia (Chomsky, Morgenthau, and Walzer 1978).

Walzer does not address this position, so his case for just-war theory does not do as much as it might to assuage concern that notions of just war increase the humanitarian costs of war. On the prescriptive-realist view, just-war theory makes war more bellicose than it would otherwise be, rather than showing that it is possible for wars to maintain a modicum of moral decency such that they are not, as realists suggests, simply hellish (for Walzer’s discussion of the view that “war is hell,” see Walzer 2015a: 32–3; for critique of prescriptive realism, Orend 2013: 259–68). However, this omission is less significant than it might appear. Walzer’s intention in criticizing realism is not to refute all objections to just-war theory but to make a case for its meaningfulness and coherence. In this regard, prescriptive realism’s critique is rather different than the descriptive version, for it does not claim that talk of justice in war is a meaningless chimera but, rather, that it is wrongheaded. In other words, prescriptive realism’s challenge operates within the world of morality to which Walzer appeals, for it accepts the role of choice in human action, but rejects the particular set of moral prescriptions for which just-war theorists argue. So, Walzer’s writings on just war taken as a whole should be seen as an extended critique of the view that amoral behavior minimizes the havoc of war.

      The most significant feature of Walzer’s critique of realism is what it tells us about the bases and method of his just-war theory. It is because moral judgments are shared across cultures and epochs that moral arguments about war are mutually comprehensible and just-war theorizing possible. So, although Walzer starts Wars by stating that he will not appeal to moral foundations, or “expound morality from the ground up,” but simply assume universal rights to life and liberty (Walzer 2015a: xxvi), the critique of realism reveals that the theory has a foundation. It is an interpretation of the discourse about war developed over centuries of military history. What Walzer means when he says that he will not consider the foundations of morality is that he will not seek to establish his premises in logical or abstract argumentation. Rather, he assumes that the tools needed for military ethics are immanent in the world and that, starting with a set of conventional understandings, it is possible to develop a coherent theory that is, often, critical of practice. This occurs by systematizing principles and juxtaposing them both to each other and to military events. That is, the moral reality of war does not consist of shared conclusions but of shared language and problems (xxviii). Walzer’s just-war theory uses conventional understandings as its starting point but seeks to reform them by exposing their incompatibility with other deeply held commitments. The method is at once interpretive and critical.

As just-war theory suggests that some actions in war are permissible, making the case for it requires Walzer also to address pacifist non-violence. Yet while Walzer starts Wars by addressing realism and builds his answer to it into the structure of his theory by virtue of the notion of the moral reality of war, he delays responding to pacifism until the six-page afterword (329–34). Walzer assimilates pacifism into Gandhian satyagraha or the direct action of the American civil-rights movement (Gandhi 1997, King 2011). The crux of Walzer’s critique is that, while non-violence is an attractive ideal, it is unrealistic, as it is “no defense at all against tyrants and conquerors” such as the Nazis, who are willing to do whatever is necessary to crush opponents (Walzer 2015a: 332). Against such opponents, nonviolence is “a disguised form of surrender” (333). To Walzer, the Nazis were “evil objectified in the world, and in a form so potent and apparent that there could never have been anything to do but fight against it” (Walzer 1971b: 4). So, the dream of a nonviolent world in which disputes are settled politically relies on ensuring the success of just-war attempts to forbid aggressive war (Walzer 2015a: 334).

      Orend notes that Walzer does not attempt to address recent philosophical pacifism (Orend 2000: 70–2). While much of this work postdates Wars, Walzer does not devote sustained attention to it in any of his subsequent just-war theorizing.⁴ The challenge is that, like Walzer, pacifists point to conventional ideals, but suggest that, when properly understood, they point toward outright rejection of war. Orend suggests, rightly I think, that Walzer’s best response to pacifism comes in his account of jus in bello, in particular in the argument that civilians are entitled not to absolute immunity from harm but rather to “due care” such that combatants accept risks in order to minimize the threat they pose to civilians (Orend 2000: 74–5, Walzer 2015a: 152–9). What this points to is that Walzer’s real critique of pacifism is parallel to his critique of prescriptive realism: he argues that both are at odds with our deepest commitments expressed in a refined version of the war convention. While we might appear to be committed to a blanket ban on harming non-combatants, and while that would indeed suggest that pacifists are right that no contemporary war can conceivably be justified, we are also committed to combating aggression. Yet that requires that some civilians be harmed, however much a state tries to avoid such harm, so pacifism is at odds with the best interpretation of the war convention. As a result, Walzer’s critique of pacifism is the overall argument of Wars: he holds that just-war theory better encapsulates the ideals constructed by our moral reality than does pacifism.

The Theory of Aggression

Walzer’s central claim with regard to jus ad bellum is that starting a war is unjust: because people have individual rights to life and liberty, all just wars are defensive ones fought to vindicate those rights. That is to say, aggression is unjust, and defense against it – whether on the part of self or other – constitutes a just cause. Almost all just-war theory now follows Walzer in holding that just wars are defensive, whereas in the traditional view, there was some possibility of both sides being partially justified – having “comparative justice” of cause (for discussion, Coates 2016: 162–83).

      Walzer’s position has proven controversial, however, in terms of how he defines aggression. He insists that it means the use of force across national boundaries, and so implies that war should be understood, in the first instance, as armed conflict between different states. On Walzer’s account, states have rights to political sovereignty and territorial integrity, and aggression is the violation of those rights (Walzer 2015a: 51–3). This was the most immediately controversial argument in Wars: it led critics to argue that Walzer’s theory would allow states to violate individual rights with impunity СКАЧАТЬ