Just cause? Yes
Hehir, J. Bryan
WORLD WATCH J. Bryan Hehir JUST CAUSE? YES JUST MEANS? TOO SOON TO SAY January 1992, in striking contrast to a year ago, was a month dominated by domestic politics in the United States. Last...
...For both political and moral reasons the questions of the past should be pressed until they are answered, and the precedents should be scrutinized before they are given political or moral legitimacy for the future...
...In the wider public debate several estimates of casualty figures are circulating, but the first step in a more precise ethical assessment of the war requires a better empirical consensus on data than we now have...
...The post-Gulf War assessments are still unfinished, particularly in moral terms...
...The one exception to this positive evaluation was an article in the Washington 8: 28 February 1992 Commonweal Post in June 1991 which described a strategy in which the targets hit were not civilian themselves, but would increase civilian casualties as collateral damage...
...Every war yields its "lessons" which are imprinted on the psychology of leaders and citizens, and which in turn become the presumptive rules by which the next debate about the use of force is structured...
...Each of these issues is a serious question about the future of international politics, but they do not constitute equally serious claims to be a "just cause" for war...
...It is particularly the postwar consequences in the Iraqi medical system, in its water and sewerage systems which raise the hardest questions, since the postwar deaths have been in the thousands...
...The uncertainty about casualty statistics is one part of the problem, but another is the question whether the principle itself can capture the complexity of high-tech warfare against an industrial society like Iraq...
...The key issue is which versions of the cause-argument will be judged as having been valid...
...The lessons of Munich led to policies about Vietnam, whose lessons —we are now told—have been revised by the Gulf...
...This year the quadrennial pilgrimage of presidential candidates to New Hampshire not only focused attention on the process of domestic politics, it also impelled the candidates to proclaim that it was time to put foreign policy in its place...
...It is the judgment of the bombing policy from the perspective of proportionality which is the most troubling legacy of the postwar debate...
...The evaluation of the means question involves, of course, the two principles of discrimination and proportionality...
...In brief, the argument the next time may well be that the Gulf War shows that power can be used with strategic effectiveness (we win) and moral discrimination (we are justified in winning...
...The discrimination or noncombatant-immunity principle was the center of attention during the conflict...
...In a world where threats to proliferation are likely to increase, and where the interdependence of economies makes war for "vital resources" a likely topic of future debate, the moral arguments should strictly limit what constitutes cause for war...
...government thus far has been particularly circumspect about civilian casualties in Iraq...
...A different point needs to be pressed about the "just cause" arguments which were made during the Gulf War...
...While I believe more data are needed to resolve the just-means debate, I am prepared to argue that only the resistance-to-aggression rationale should be accepted from the list above as a casus belli...
...Commonweal 28 February 1992: 9...
...Unless the scrutiny of both means and cause is pursued with a view to tightening the presumption against force in world affairs, it is almost certain that the "lessons" of the Gulf or its "precedents" will be used in the next argument about the need for a "quick, clean" war to protect the new order...
...The Iraqi government has never published a detailed accounting of civilian and combatant casualties, and the U.S...
...The dominant issue of the postwar period remains the assessment of Iraqi casualties— both military and civilian...
...In addition to the rapidity of the war, the significant restrictions on coverage by the press added to the difficulty of assessing the tactics of the war as it was being conducted...
...Such a policy, if it had been followed, would clearly be proscribed by the proportionality principle even if it might escape a narrowly defined view of discrimination...
...The importance of this issue lies in the way the morality of war was debated...
...There were multiple appeals to "just cause": to resist aggression, to prevent nuclear proliferation, to restore the balance of power in the region, and to guarantee access to oil...
...First, there are unanswered questions from the past, and, second, there are precedents which may be set for the future...
...While the election will understandably not be decided by these questions, the review of the war deserves attention for two reasons...
...The post-factum debate about "just means" in the Gulf may go a long way toward determining how the next post-cold-war decision about the use of force is debated and decided...
...At the level of intention the allied policy seems to have met the demands of the discrimination principle...
...A year later, distant from the pressures of patriotism and the flush of victory, substantial attention was given to an assessment of both the strategy and the ethics of the Gulf War...
...The determination of what does constitute a just-war claim—if any does—will establish precedents for future appeals to use force...
...In my view one cannot have a postwar moral assessment of the Gulf War until the data are more settled, and the moral calculus assessing the impact of the war on the civilian life of Iraqi society is more precisely defined...
...Establishing a precedent that resort to force is an appropriate method to restrain proliferation erodes the case which should be made about other means to address proliferation, and it increases the likelihood that force will be used...
...Civilians are not the targets, but civilians suffer the consequences of the targeting...
...In spite of this deflation of foreign-policy issues, it was also the case that January 1992 was a month of retrospective review of the Gulf War...
...The debate on "just means," therefore, has been a postfactum assessment...
...The facts about Iraqi casualties are still in dispute...
...Last year the riveting congressional debate on the decision to go to war in the Persian Gulf was the center of attention...
...Even if the bombing policy does pass the discrimination test, how does proportionality evaluate the fact that "military targets" like the electrical system have immediate implications for the civilian population...
...While there was extended debate from August 1990 through January 1991 on whether the United States and its allies (gathered under the umbrella of the UN Security Council) should go to war, the intensity and brevity of the war made debate about the tactics and strategy almost impossible...
...The appropriate place varied a bit from Pat Buchanan to Jerry Brown, but the common theme was to locate international issues far down on the scale of priorities...
...This does not at all diminish its significance...
...This means that in targeting policy, and in rules of engagement for pilots, the public record indicates serious efforts to avoid direct attacks on civilians...
...Given the historical propensities of air campaigns to violate this norm, it was significant that in official briefings from Washington and the Gulf much effort was invested in demonstrating how noncombatant immunity was being observed...
...Three dimensions of the means-debate remain open: the facts about casualties, the principles used to assess the facts, and questions about how principles should be applied...
...Proliferation, for example, is a deadly serious threat to international order but there are a range of methods to address the question which are short of war...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 4
