Staring at Armageddon

Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-56000-9 - Morality and Political Violence C. A. J. Coady Excerpt More information 1 Staring at Armageddon ...my thoughts were powerless against an unhappiness so huge. I couldn’t alter European history, or order the artillery tostop firing. I could stare atthe WarasIstared atthe sultry sky, longing for life and freedom and vaguely altru- istic about my fellow-victims. But asecond-lieutenantcould attempt nothing – excepttosatisfy his superior officers; and altogether, I concluded, Armaged- don was too immense for my solitary understanding. Siegfried Sassoon1 Sassoon’s ironic articulation ofthe enormityof war and its capacity to reach beyond understanding or individual control captures something that has been echoed in the thoughts and writings of many participants, observers, and theoristsof warfare. Indeed, the impotence and blankness that Sassoon describes is one ofthe perceptions that lies behind a famous dictum pro- pounded by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century. Always a foe of euphemism and evasion, Hobbes succinctly posed a central issue with whichmuchofthis book will be concerned: “Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.”2 Amongst other things, we shall examine whether this bleak view is true and what would follow if it were. Initially, the existenceof laws of war, just war theories, and codes of military ethics would seem to give the lie to Hobbes, and it is interesting that he makes virtually no reference to the extensive body of writing on suchmatters that existed at the time he wrote, though he must have been familiar withit. Hobbes may have thought most ofthis to be “mere words,” and we must ask whether it is so. We must also ask whether the “force and fraud” outlook, iftrue, could form the basis of arguments for the total rejection of war (“pacifism”) or for the removal of war altogether from the scope of morality (some forms of 1 Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), pp. 82–83. 2 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan,ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 188. 1 © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-56000-9 - Morality and Political Violence C. A. J. Coady Excerpt More information 2 Morality and Political Violence “realism”). Bothofthese options have in fact been urged by people impressed with whatthey see as the truthinsuchanoutlook as Hobbes’s. Hobbes’s comment, while it poses a challenge to any treatment ofthe ethicsof war, is first of all addressed to the question of whether there are moral constraints upon how a war should be conducted, upon the ways and means of waging war. This question has been discussed in the just war tradition under the heading ofthe jus in bello (or as I shall hereafter refer to it, the JIB). Butthe question that is, in some sense, prior to this is the question of whether morality has anything to say about going to war in the first place. (In just war terminology, this is the matter ofthe jus ad bellum, or as I shall abbreviateit, the JAB). Hobbes, in fact, thoughtthat resortto war was often morally legitimate, an exercise of natural right by the state, but he insisted that rebellion was always immoral. In keeping with his generally “tough” outlook on the power ofthe state and his theory of absolute sovereignty, Hobbes might be thoughtto give carte blanche to the sovereign state’s right togoto war, but his discussions of war between states, though notfully developed, suggest otherwise. The sovereign cannot be called toaccount by the citizens, but has certain obligations as a ruler to preserve the peace and is bound before God to conform to the tenetsof Natural Law. Consequently, many resorts to war would be ruled out on prudential and moral grounds (insofar as this distinction can be made in Hobbesian theory – and, in a complex way, I think itcan). Moreover, Hobbes, at least sometimes, allows for some, admittedly minimal, restrictions on how warriors should conduct themselves in the course of a war. In The Elements of Law, for instance, he rejects the resortto unnecessary violenceorcruelty. After mentioning with approval the idea that laws are silent about war (captured in the Latin saying that he cites, inter arma silent leges), Hobbes draws back from this terrifying brink by adding: “Yetthus much the law of nature commandeth in war: that men satiatenotthe crueltyoftheir present passions, whereby in their own conscience they foresee no benefit to come. For that betrayethnot a necessitybut a disposition ofthe mind to war, which is againstthe law of nature.”3 He continues by noting that even in those times when “rapine was a trade of life,” some restraint in killing and dispossessing victims was nonetheless exercised, both in obedience to the law of nature and as a matter of honour. He concludes “thatthough there be in war no law, the breach whereof is injury, yetthere are those laws, the breach whereof is dishonour. In one word, therefore, the only law of actions in war is honour; and the right of war providence.”4 In this discussion, he echoes some ofthe views of medieval theologians about proportionalityinthe use of military violence and also seems to have in mind some ofthe military codes of honour, but he 3 Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law: Natural and Politic,ed. Ferdinand Tonnies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), Part 1, Chapter 19,section 2,p. 100. 4 Ibid. © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-56000-9 - Morality and Political Violence C. A. J. Coady Excerpt More information Staring at Armageddon 3 also looks forward to the doctrine of “military necessity,” which, as we shall see, can be used both to restrict certain forms of immoral activity in war and tolicense others. I have begun with Hobbes and war, butthe key term in the title ofthis book is “political violence” rather than “war,” and this requires a terminolog- ical explanation, since the choiceofterms raises substantial issues. My use ofthe expression “political violence” includes war as the primary instance of such violence, but it is also meantto cover other violent activities that some would not include under the heading of war. Suchactivities encom- pass terrorism, armed intervention (for “humanitarian” or other purposes), armed revolution, violent demonstrations or attacks by citizens aimed at less than the overthrow oftheir government, and the deployment of mercenary companies or individuals. Itcould also include other activities, which, for reasons of space, I will not discuss in great depth, suchascertain forms oftorture, assassination, and violentcovert operations. There are common usages, especially, I think, in the United States, which would restrict the term “political violence” to the activities of nonstate agents and strongly separate ethical questions concerning suchactivities from those having todowith war or intervention. This form of discourse would have itthat war and armed intervention by states are not uses of political violence. I wantto resistthis restriction ofthe term on semantic, political, and ethical grounds. Since the usage I object toisoften linked to a “legitimist” definition of violence, which I discuss in Chapter 2, my reasons need tobe supplemented by the discussion to come in thatchapter and in Chapter 6. Nonetheless, they can be briefly outlined here. Given the appalling record of states in the unjustified employment of lethal force to devastate popu- lations, economies, and cultures over the centuries, I am unimpressed by any attempttoput a conceptual or moral gulf between the resorttosuch force (or, as I would prefer to say, violence) for political purposes by state agencies and its political employment by nonstateactors. The tendency to talk ofthe state as using “force” and ofterrorists or revolutionaries as using “violence” embodies an attemptto bring initial opprobrium upon the nonstateactors (via the negative connotations of “violence”) and to give an a priori mantle of respectability to the stateactors. When the qualification “political” is added only to the activities ofthe nonstate agents and withheld from the state’s operations, even where the means employed are identical or similar in kind, this can suggestthatthe purposes of state violence are some- how above politics and presumptively acceptable, at least when employed by “our” state. But we should not smuggle into the terms of our discussion some bias in favour of states when they employ morally contestable means. Indeed, given the power of states, their deployment ofthe sword is more likely to wreak morally objectionable damage, at least in terms of scale, than anything nonstate agents can achieve. These facts can be concealed by the anodyne expression “force,” which is one reason why I prefer to use the © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-56000-9 - Morality and Political Violence C. A. J. Coady Excerpt More information 4 Morality and Political Violence term “violence”; military cum political jargon is repletewith euphemisms for the state’s efforts to inflict death, carnage, and damage, and a serious discussion ofthe ethical problems these efforts pose should be plainspoken. Talk of “force” makes it sound as if we are proposing to move things by using superior physical strength (as we might lift protesters out ofthe way with- out seriously harming them), when what is usually on the agenda is killing, maiming, and destroying.5 So I shall view the moral problems of international war as a central part ofthe wider issue ofthe use of violence for political purposes. It is true thatthere are aspectspeculiar tointernational war thatcause grave moral concern, suchasthe scale of actual and possible carnage and the capacity for escalation. These help to explain the tendency to concentrate upon it.

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