Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations

States possess a right to remain neutral and therefore not be attacked. If a state claims neutrality, it must observe strict impartiality toward other military conflicts wherein citizens can express their opinions in favor of one side or another, but not the state. Neutrality limits the coerciveness of war, as states can opt out. However, the more likely it is that the outcome of a war will be disastrous, the more likely it is that other states will deny a state the possibility of non-intervention or neutrality.

Walzer cites the difficulty of maintaining neutrality if a great power is threatening global disaster. While all are threatened in such cases, making neutrally not morally feasible, he notes how such scenarios rest “uneasily on ‘imaginings’ about which there is no general agreement” (238). Belligerents have a choice as to whether they will respect the rights of neutral countries, however, violations of neutrality are an especially egregious form of aggression. Only the need for national survival or the saving of civilization might justify their violation. To highlight how high the bar is for countries to justify the violation of these rights, Walzer cites two examples in which such rights were violated.

The first example is the German attack on Belgium in August 1914. Germany acknowledged its wrong but claimed it would have been defeated without the attack; Walzer argues that Germany had other means of defending itself and its survival was not at stake. A second example is the British mining of Norway’s territorial waters in April 1940. Norway had claimed neutrality at the outset of World War II, and its neutrality advantaged Germany, which depended on iron ore from Norway. With the mining of Norway’s waters, Britain hoped to force German ships into the Atlantic where they could be sunk. Churchill could have argued the presence of a supreme emergency, with the violations “militarily necessary to defeat Nazism” (247). However, the argument fails on the second level, or the strategic claim: There was not a crisis or existential threat to Britain in April 1940. As a result of the British attack, Germany occupied Norway and kept its supply of iron ore: The British decision put Norwegian lives at stake.

Only a supreme emergency can allow for the war convention to be broken. Such an emergency requires both an imminent danger and a catastrophic threat. There is a great difference between a threat that results in a minor territorial loss and one that threatens the lives of a people. At the outer limit of threats is the case of Nazism, which promised to destroy all that was decent. Its imminent victory would constitute a supreme emergency. A similar threat to the survival and freedom of a political community, if imminent, would qualify. Walzer stresses that the nature of the threat makes only half the case. If there are alternatives to preventing that threat’s realization, then the war convention holds, and innocents cannot be targeted.

To present a legitimate emergency, he uses the examples of the British decision to bomb German cities in World War II. Late in 1940, Britain was facing a very real possibility of defeat, and the only offensive strategy available was bombing. At that time, bombers only had the capability to target cities, not smaller areas. Walzer reasons, “it does seem to me that the more certain a German victory appeared to be in the absence of a bomber offensive, the more justifiable was the decision to launch the offensive” (258). However, the supreme emergency passed long before Britain stopped bombing cities. The bombings, including the firebombing of Dresden, between 1942 and 1945, were utilitarian in character with goals of cutting the time and price of war. As a result, they were not justified by Walzer.

An illegitimate emergency was the American decision to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Because Japan was not in the same political position as Nazi Germany, the US did not need Japan’s unconditional surrender and a regime change. President Truman and his advisers seemed to accept the “war is hell” doctrine and justified all retaliatory actions because Japan initiated hostilities. The calculations to use a nuclear bomb were also based on personnel considerations. If the US did not drop the bomb, it would have had to send ground troops into Japan, which would have been costly. Walzer maintains that neither was necessary and there could have been a negotiated settlement to end the war. This was not a supreme emergency that justified the murder of civilians.

After the bombing of Hiroshima, political leaders had to focus on the prevention of nuclear war. The strategy used is nuclear deterrence, which relies on a theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD). If one country launches nuclear weapons at another, that country will launch its own, and both countries will be destroyed. Walzer argues that this threat is immoral, as it promises to kill large numbers of civilians. Yet deterrence works to prevent nuclear blackmail, foreign domination, and nuclear destruction. Although Walzer would prefer an alternative means to prevent nuclear wars, he acknowledges that “there may well be no other that is practical in a world of sovereign and suspicious states” (273). The threat, although immoral, is justified by the supreme emergency of nuclear war, which is permanent in this case.

There would be no justification, however, for carrying out the threat as a nuclear war cannot be won. There are those who have argued for the possibility of limited nuclear war, but Walzer maintains that the collateral damage from nuclear weapons would be so extensive that proportionality limits would be violated. Moreover, leaders would probably not observe such limits once a war was underway. Nuclear weapons, he concludes, are unusable, and it is immoral to threaten their use.

Walzer presents and criticizes Paul Ramsey’s argument, which claims that it is possible to invoke deterrence without threatening to bomb population centers. This argument relies upon the deterrent effect of significant collateral damage. Even if the threat is not spoken, the mere possession of nuclear weapons presents an implicit threat. Walzer condemns all options on Ramsey’s continuum of possibilities, the prospect of collateral damage, the implicit threat of counter-city strikes, the appearance of a commitment to counter-city strikes, and the actual commitment (281). “Nuclear weapons explode the theory of just war” (281).