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Secular theology and noble sacrifice: the ethics of Michael Walzer's just war theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2012

RONAN O'CALLAGHAN
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Abstract

The last decade has witnessed an attempt to solidify debate on war around the dichotomy of just war and holy war. In this dichotomy, the just war has increasingly been depicted as the progressive secularised opposite to holy war's antiquated religious fundamentalism. While wars argued for under the just war banner have been extensively critiqued and protested against, the rights based language of just war theory has largely escaped critical evaluation. Michael Walzer has emerged as a pivotal figure in just war theory's modern, secular rebirth within the discipline of International Relations. Walzer's theory argues the language of just war theory provides an effective means for us to engage with the moral reality of war. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Derrida this article investigates the construction of Walzer's moral language and its ethical implications. The first section focuses on Walzer's moral language; its structure, inconsistencies, and theological underpinnings. The second section addresses how Walzer employs this language to justify the sacrifice of combatants in defence of non-combatants. The central arguments presented in this article are that Walzer's theory is inconsistent in itself, and that the sacrifices initiated by this language constitute the unjustified sacrifice of just war theory's own ethical principles.

Type
Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 2013 , pp. 361 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2012

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References

1 Barack Obama, ‘Barack Obama's Nobel Prize Speech Transcript’ (October 2009), available at: {http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/12/10/barack-obamas-nobel-prize-speech-transcript/}.

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3 This is not to argue that the depiction of Jihad embodied by the images of terrorism and brutality are true to the nature of Jihad as described in the Qur'an or its juridical incarnation. It is simply to argue that such an image has become synonymous with popular imaginings of Jihad as holy war in the post-9/11 Western media. See Yenigun, Halil Ibrahim, ‘Muslims and the Media after 9/11: A Muslim Discourse in the American Media?’, The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 21:3 (2002), pp. 39–69Google Scholar; and Johnson, James Turner, ‘Jihad and Just War’, First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (June-July 2002), pp. 12–14Google Scholar.

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11 This is not to argue that there has been a lack of recent critical analysis of Walzer's work; see, for example, Butler, Judith, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (New YorkVerso, 2010)Google Scholar; McMahan, Jeff, Killing in War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; and Rodin, David and Shue, Henry (eds), Just and Unjust Warrior: The Moral and Legal Status of Soldiers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

12 This is an important component of a deconstructive reading. Such a reading does not privilege what the author (in this case Walzer) intended to say, but rather what they actually end up saying irrespective of their intentions.

13 However, the ultimate aim of this article is not to dismiss Walzer's theory simply as terrorism, or to argue that his theory could be rescued through a reformulation, or indeed, to promote pacifism, which would entail its own sacrifices. For an exposition on the role of sacrifice in pacifism, see Ricoeur, Paul, History and Truth, trans. Kelbley, Charles A. (2nd edn, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), pp. 234–46Google Scholar.

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17 Ibid., p. 7.

18 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. xix.

19 Ibid., pp. xxiii.

20 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

21 This is not to say that Walzer believes just war theory is the only possible language by which to engage with morality in war. It is simply to emphasise that he believes that it is the best way of expressing the moral reality of war.

22 Walzer, Michael, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1994), p. xGoogle Scholar.

23 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 8.

24 In this respect, the concept of community is indistinct from the concept of a nation state in Walzer's work, as he assures that a nation state must already contain a community within it. Walzer, Michael, Spheres of Justice: A Defence of Pluralism and Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p. 44Google Scholar.

25 See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 53–55, 61.

26 As will be illustrated throughout this article, the dialect of just war theory cannot be written in minimal form, and therefore, comprises of a maximal codification embedded with minimal force.

27 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. xxiii–iv.

28 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 16.

29 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 54.

30 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 16.

31 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 54.

32 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 10.

33 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. xv.

34 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. xxiv.

35 Ibid., p. 47.

36 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 4.

37 Ibid., p. 10.

38 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 44–5.

39 Walzer, Arguing About War, p. 49.

40 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 54.

41 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 28.

42 For a more substantial discussion on the role of the member/stranger distinction in Walzer's theory of morality, see Pin-Fat, Veronique, Universality, Ethics and International Relations: A Grammatical Reading (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 85–110Google Scholar.

43 Walzer, Arguing About War, pp. 42–3.

44 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 32.

45 Pin-Fat, Universality, Ethics, p. 90

46 Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, p. 4.

47 Ibid., p. 12.

48 Walzer, Michael, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1987a), p. 21Google Scholar.

49 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. 304.

50 See Walzer, Thick and Thin.

51 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 99.

52 This is provided that the parties involved do not resort to the practices of genocide or enslavement, see Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 107.

53 See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, chaps 6 and 11.

54 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 101.

55 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 1. Walzer summaries these special occasions as ‘a personal or social crisis or a political confrontation’. Ibid., p. 3.

56 Ibid., p. 4.

57 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 9.

58 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 107.

59 Ibid., p. 54.

60 Walzer, Michael, ‘Notes on Self-Criticism’, Social Research, 54:1 (1987b), pp. 33–43Google Scholar.

61 Walzer, Thick and Thin, pp. 85, 96.

62 Ibid., pp. 98–100.

63 Pin-Fat, Universality, Ethics and International Relations, p. 97.

64 Ibid., emphasis in original.

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66 Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology, trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 159Google Scholar.

67 Ibid., p. 247.

68 Derrida, Of Grammatology, p. 154.

69 Derrida, Jacques, The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret, trans. Wills, David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 108, emphasis in originalGoogle Scholar.

70 Walzer, ‘Notes on Self Criticism’, p. 43.

71 Walzer describes this standard as the standard of God or humanity. See Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, p. 47.

72 Derrida, Jacques, Acts of Religion, ed. Andijar, Gil (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 70, 98Google Scholar.

73 Orend, Brian, Walzer on War and Justice (Cardiff: University of Wales Press), p. 31Google Scholar.

74 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 51–2.

75 Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 12, emphasis in original.

76 Ibid., p. 45.

77 Dasein is Heidegger's term for his conception of ‘being’ or more specifically the being-present-of-being, see Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie, John and Robinson, Edward (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1978)Google Scholar.

78 Levinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay On Exteriority, trans. Lingis, Alphonso (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1999), p. 179, emphasis in originalGoogle Scholar.

79 Ibid., pp. 46–7.

80 Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 48.

81 See Nancy, Jean-Luc, The Inoperative Community, ed. Connor, Peter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), pp. 1–42Google Scholar.

82 Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 12, emphasis in orignal.

83 Ibid., p. 68.

84 Ibid., p. 69.

85 See Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling, trans. Walsh, Sylvia, eds Evans, C. Stephen, and Walsh, Sylvia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. The full tale of the binding of Isaac is contained within Genesis 22: 1–19.

86 By the ethical Kierkegaard means any form of universal ethical code or generality. Specifically, in Fear and Trembling, he is responding to the Hegelian understanding of ethics.

87 Derrida, The Gift of Death, p. 71.

88 Walzer, Spheres of Justice, p. xv.

89 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 42.

90 Ibid., p. 135, emphasis added.

91 Ibid., p. 136.

92 Ibid., p. 138.

93 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 146.

94 Ibid., p. 43.

95 It must be noted that Walzer does not equate non-innocence to guilt. However, while combatants are not de facto guilty, they are also not fully innocent. In this sense, non-innocence can be regarded as another example of différance in Walzer's theory.

96 Ibid., p. 137.

97 Walzer describes conventional wars as all wars that do not constitute a supreme emergency. Supreme emergencies are instances in which the aggressor threatens to destroy both a set of lives existing within a political community and its way of life. Under the circumstances of such an emergency Walzer argues that it may be necessary to target the innocent. See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 251–68, and Walzer, Arguing About War, pp. 33–50.

98 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 136.

99 Ibid., pp. 40–1.

100 Ibid., p. 128.

101 The aggressor state, is the state that has started an unjust war in Walzer's paradigm, See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 51–3.

102 See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, pp. 34–41.

103 In this respect it could potentially be argued that a third justification is offered under the idea of the shared victimhood of combatants. However, Walzer's concept of shared victimhood is, in many regards, logically indistinct from his second justification. In both cases the combatant can ultimately be attacked because they are already a victim or a fighter. In essence they can be attacked because they are on the battlefield and in a uniform.

104 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 136.

105 It is interesting to note here the masculine connotations of soldering in Walzer's analysis. Combatants are almost uniformly denoted in masculine forms, while innocent civilians are often denoted as women and children.

106 Ibid., p. 145.

107 Walzer, Arguing About War, p. 73.

108 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 40.

109 Ibid., p. 138.

110 For example, if a solider is irreparably wounded or completes their military service and reverts back to civilian life.

111 Walzer also equates this to the question of a soldier's ability to bear arms; ‘That right (to immunity) is lost by those who bear arms “effectively” because they pose a danger to other people’ (2006), p. 145. However, as Walzer fails to provide any criteria through which the ‘effectiveness’ of arms bearing can be judged (i.e. Walzer theory implies that any soldier on the battlefield must be assumed to be a dangerous man regardless of the validity of this assumption), it is more prudent to pursue Walzer's definition of what it means to be threatened.

112 Walzer, Thick and Thin, p. 24.

113 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 144.

114 Ibid., p. 200.

115 Ibid., pp. 53–4.

116 This point is supported by Walzer's subsequent appeal to an objective standard of just fear. For if the standard is objective then it is logical that such a standard can be applied to both ad bellum and in bello.

117 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 78.

118 Ibid.

119 Ibid., p. 80.

120 Ibid., p. 81, emphasis in original.

121 Ibid., p. 80.

122 Ibid., p. 140.

123 Ibid., p. 143.

124 Ibid., p. 214.

125 Bull, Hedley, ‘Recapturing the Just War for Political Theory’, World Politics, 31:4 (1979), p. 593CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 144.

127 Ibid., p. 27.

128 Ibid., p. 28.

129 Ibid., p. 27.

130 Ibid., p. 30, emphasis added.

131 Ibid.

132 Ibid., pp. 306–9.

133 For an example of what such a theory would look like, see McMahan, Killing in War.

134 Ibid., p. 230.

135 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 200.

136 Walzer, Arguing About War, p. 61.

137 Indeed, this article does not intend to provide a justification for terrorism, but rather a critique of Walzer's theory of just war.

138 Ibid., p. 51.