just, though one might claim justly to go to war in defence of a weak third
party, and to not be limited only to defending one’s own territorial integrity. It
was this notion of defence of a weak victim that was used in theUnited
Nations (UN)to justify theGulf Waragainst Iraq, although the original
theory had not contemplated an international organization as having the right
to fight. In fact one aspect of just war theory refers specifically to the notion of
‘a competent authority’, which has hitherto always been taken to mean a
nation state. The point is not irrelevant, because on it depends the question of
whether organizations such as thePLOor theIRAare entitled to see
themselves as fighting a war, rather than being merely terrorists or criminals.
In contrast, arguments over what warlike actions are permissible have been
more heated, less consensual, but probably more influential. At least since the
beginning of the 20th century, and in most countries increasingly so, most
soldiers and politicians have made serious efforts to limit the barbarity of war,
through mechanisms like the Geneva Conventions. During the early stages of
the conflict between the UN and Iraq the language and concepts of just war
theory were prominent in public debate, and much care was taken by the
governments contributing to the UN effort to insist that the doctrines of just
war were being observed, particularly in view of the known capacity of the
Iraqi forces to use reviled means such as gas and chemical weapons. Acts of
atrocity, though they have happened often enough, have not always gone
without punishment, and would be more frequent and worse were it not for a
general attempt to abide byjus in bello, even when a combatant could not
realistically claimjus ad bellum.
A basic doctrine that runs through both halves of the theory of just warfare is
the idea of proportionality, which roughly means that an action taken must not
cause suffering vastly out of proportion to the harm suffered from the attacker.
Thus, for example, even defence of one’s own land might be unjust were the
reaction to the invasion of some arid and useless border land with little strategic
value to be the destruction of an enemy city with a nuclear missile. While there
are strong arguments that the USA was behaving justly in going to war in
Vietnam to protect the weak state of South Vietnam from aggression on the
part of China-backed North Vietnam, there can be little doubt that the search
and destroy missions, or declarations of huge portions of the country as free-
fire zones, were disproportional to the military utility and constituted a breach
ofjus in bello.
In the context of nuclear warfare it is very difficult to see how the theory can
be developed in any useful way, but such a conclusion should not lightly be
accepted, if only because of the effect on morale, and thus the effect on the
credibility ofdeterrence. Equally difficult, in a completely different way, is the
application of just war theory to international terrorism, whether one is
considering the actions of terrorists or of the attacked nation states.
Just War