What makes a war just?

--Is it ever just for a country to engage in a war in which it is the aggressor? --What rights should enemy civilians lose? --Are the people of a democracy responsible for the war of their government?

The first YSR discussion of the semester began with a rather explosive topic: war. In attempting to determine what legitimizes a war’s initiation, what rules and standards apply to war once under way, and the responsibilities of individual citizens in war situations, the group inevitably struggled to define the very concept of justice in various situations of human interaction.

Discussion began with attempts to put forth a definition of justice for the basis of our consideration. Nick was the first to suggest that justice is most simply what is “owed to someone” in a given situation, and the group subsequently referred to this definition a good deal as the discussion progressed. Yet other considerations arose. Was justice about utilitarianism or morality, retribution or mercy? Did justice stem naturally from rather universal conceptions of human good or was it more like a societal construct called upon to preserve order or rationalize certain actions?

Justice in the abstract proved difficult to pin down, but Elah introduced a hypothetical framework for considering justice of inter-state conflict, with her example of two groups facing a dilemma over limited water resources in the desert. In such a situation in which the interests of one group meant harm towards another, how should or could the justice of each group’s actions be judged? Nate B, the resident economist, proposed that cost-benefit considerations of maximizing total lives be the best measure of objective justice, yet Joe C argued that the ability to consider and plan such situations with a sense of “God-in-the-sky” omniscient objectivity was not always possible in real life.

Extending the survival-in-the-desert example to real state warfare, Phil advocated that in such “desert” cases, war launched by a state would be just if it were “necessary” to address a threat to its survival. Others, though, noted that such a definition could leave room for ambiguity in determining justice due to the imperfect way in which states dealt with uncertainty in calculating the appropriate responses to threats. Could it ever be possible to objectively calculate the absolute justice of a state’s actions, much less the relative justice of one group’s interests over another in a “well-in-the-desert” situation?

In addition to considering the justice of wars, the group also discussed justice in conduct of wars. When considering war as affecting people on an individual scale, members of the roundtable invoked more concerns of justice as human mercy and morality. Ben asked us to consider the permissibility of killing a Frenchman in wartime versus in peacetime, and Danie posed the question of whether war meant a suspension of person-to-person justice in favor of different rules of justice between nations.

Are these justices distinct from one another, in our minds, and in the real world? We considered such in discussing where the individual fit in as a citizen during wartime. How much was the individual citizen responsible for the actions of his/her government? How much ought a citizen stand by one’s nation or have a duty to protest aspects of a war s/he found unjust? Perhaps as both a member of a national group and an individual human being, the individual citizen finds him/herself somewhat caught between the impersonal justice of necessity between nations and notions of justice linked to human “morality” (whose definition seems to demand more YSR discussions to ever agree upon). These considerations seemed to all lead us back to the group’s earlier definitions of justice. Members suggested that such a definition of what one “owes someone” seemed to speak of justice as applying values to different people, interests, groups, and causes when calculating what is appropriately “owed.” Matt suggested that such could be the flaw inherent in any one group attempting to judge justice. Perhaps this is the reason that the search for a perfectly objective measure of world war justice remains elusive and that the Security Council always seems unable to agree with itself. Maybe we might as well have YSR take over the world and be the judge.