The "homage hypocrisy pays to virtue"...

...and poisoned wells--excerpts from a rather muscular review, in the Times Literary Supplement, of The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-First Century (Charles Reed and David Ryall, editors):

... Since the just-war tradition restricts war to the last resort, much depends on what this might mean in terms of waiting until a putatively determined enemy is in a position successfully to destroy you or involve you in a war involving appalling losses on all sides before victory is achieved. Of course that is a matter of calculation, not to mention effective propaganda claiming that it is indeed so, but it means there are cases where last resort requires a pre-emptive strike. This is where generational experience plays a role, because if the liberal democracies had been in a position and willing to strike against Hitler in 1936, appalling consequences would probably have been averted. On the other hand, one has to remember the democracies were crippled by guilt over the terms of Versailles, and would have had to face up to a critical barrage defining their action as typical capitalist war-mongering. The conclusions are obvious. First, disablement by guilt seems to be a Christian and liberal speciality. Second, the consequences of not taking armed action are a matter of speculation and there is, moreover, a well-attested likelihood that the conduct of operations will go horribly wrong. As one contributor points out, this is where moral luck comes into play.

More after the jump...

Mark C.

It is also where a great deal depends on one's estimate of the role of international authority and international law, and this is in part an empirical question as to the amount of chaos there is in the system. That in turn partly depends on the degree of international security experienced in particular regions, so that some argue Europe has been so effectively pacified under the wing of American power that it can afford the kind of functional pacifism willing to defer to the United Nations. This stance embraces the post-war papacy, and certainly includes the Anglican Church. What is at issue came sharply into focus when Rowan Williams made the possibility of regime change in Iraq turn on waiting for UN authorization. A Sunday Times commentator argued that this amounted to turning the morality of foreign policy over to the net result of interested power plays on the part of notoriously amoral and blatantly interested parties on the Security Council...On the other hand, it can be argued that long-term international chaos is exacerbated rather than ameliorated if major powers take matters into their own hands and act as judges in their own cause. One has to attribute greater moral status to the UN than it strictly deserves in order to set an example. That raises further questions, such as whether all international actors are to be treated as morally equivalent, a point underlined by the way rival ideologies deploy the idea of "rogue states" against each other. That in turn indicates that, in the low-intensity warfare of reputations, claiming the moral high ground is an important strategic resource. Morality has its political uses and can be ruthlessly deployed in propaganda. Though the international system may be semi-chaotic its discourse is morally saturated, which is the homage hypocrisy pays to virtue.

[...]

Perhaps the two contemporary issues that engage the contributors most are the moral problems raised by non-state combatants like al-Qaeda, and by humanitarian intervention. The problem of the latter turns on who decides, and on what basis intervention represents morally disguised interference. As for non-state combatants, they throw up the problem of whether states respecting just-war criteria may at the margin choose or need to violate their own principles to defeat those totally indifferent to them, given that terrorists hide in civilian populations in order to stimulate such violations, and thereby make the war for hearts and minds that much harder. That in turn raises the question of the just conduct of war in the transition from the industrial and high-tech war of the recent past to new modes of operation. There is clearly a major problem for any judgement about whether or not a war is just when most of the wells of information are poisoned, by government and media alike, including the BBC...

Posted by markc at September 22, 2007 10:27 AM