Grotius, Just War, and Just Politics

• In Event: Enmity, War, and Peace in the History of Political Thought

Abstract

The moral principles that should regulate warfare are important both in their own right and because those principles might help us formulate principles of political engagement in settings where pluralistic politics has war-like features: opponents who are construed as enemies, claims that only victory can prevent an existential threat, and otherwise morally problematic behavior justified as necessary to forestall catastrophe or to respond in kind to violations by one’s adversaries. Our paper will explore the answer offered by classic just war thinker Hugo Grotius to one of the critical questions related to just war theory: what additional rights does the side that is fighting on the side of justice have? We argue that Grotius’s framework offers a productive potential resolution of one of the central disputes between traditionalist just war theories such as Michael Walzer’s and revisionist critiques such as Jeff McMahan’s. We also suggest in the conclusion that future research could extend this same framework to formulate principles of political engagement in cases where political conflict has analogies to war.

Walzer argues for “combatant equality,” the principle that all those who bear arms and follow the rules of war, whether they fight on the just or unjust side, equally surrender their normal right to not be killed. McMahan has challenged combatant equality on the grounds that it underestimates the moral difference between being on the just versus the unjust side. If those who fight on the just side are acting commendably, why should they be thought of as surrendering their right to life?

Against this debate, Grotius provides an alternative account that hinges on a distinction between what is morally right and what may be punished. On the one hand, those who fight for an unjust cause are blameworthy: they ought to lay down their arms, and they commit new moral wrongs each time they continue fighting for an unjust cause. Grotius can thus acknowledge that it is essential to an accurate moral assessment of the actions of the belligerent parties to know which (if either) acts on the side of justice. On the other hand, Grotius also has an acute awareness of what will happen in practice if people simply act from the above paradigm. Since both sides will normally be convinced of the justice of their cause, the result of acting within one’s “rights” is that each side will think itself justified in making full use of the expansive permissions that Grotius thinks the law of nature grants to those fighting for a just cause. Viewing their opponents as unjust enemies, they will view every enemy attack as a new crime justifying new punishments. The result is a spiral of escalating violence. To avoid this outcome, Grotius introduces the perspective of an international law that sets limits such that some acts, although ethically unjustified, are deemed unpunishable within war. This restraint is justified by a perspectival shift from the perspective of a participant in war to the perspective of one who thinks about a general set of rules that both oneself and one’s enemy should abide by. In the end, Grotius’s approach provides a better defense of Walzer’s main claim for combatant equality as well as a starting point for thinking about norms for political engagement that adversaries could mutually adopt while disagreeing with each other about which participants are on the side of justice.

Authors

• Alex Tuckness, Iowa State University

• John Michael Parrish, Loyola Marymount University