Just War
For my part, I tend to think that the Thomistic tradition has got this pretty sewn up; cf., for example, this good (but brief) Web site.
The one thing that I am very unsure about is whether international law applies: I did find a US Christian Web site that argued passionately that there was no justification for saying that the UN was in authority over the US in this regard.
What do others think: is it necessary to have the permission of a supra-national body like the UN for a war to be just?
posted by Daniel Hill at 10:07 pm
3 Comments:
Thanks for this, Michael. I used the word 'just' for the sake of tradition, but perhaps 'morally permissible' would have been better.
Aquinas argues, and I agree, that it is not morally permissible to wage war without the permission of a relevant authority. So you and I cannot morally declare war on Germany; nor can Greater Manchester. I was wondering whether to extend that principle now to the supra-national authority of the UN.
Do you think it's necessary at least to seek the UN's permission or is that basically irrelevant?
The Convention on Biological Diversity provides that access to genetic resources requires the prior informed consent of the country holding them. However, many countries have no mechanism for providing such consent. For such countries, is all access to their genetic resources illegal and immoral?
The point of this highly strained analogy is to question whether the UN has the moral authority to authorise wars. If not, who else does? Maybe nobody - might that be an acceptable conclusion?
Thanks, twr57. I'm not sure I quite follow the analogy, though. Is the idea that the Convention on Biological Diversity stands to the UN as accessing a country's genetic resources stands to declaring war on the country? I.e. just as it can still be morally OK to access a country's genetic resources without abiding by the detail of the Convention on Biological Diversity, so it may still be OK to declare war on a country even if the UN doesn't permit it? The problem with the analogy is that a country's failure to observe the Convention on Biological Diversity is down (in this example) to difficulties with the target country, not with the supra-national body of the UN. The key factor with a war without UN permission is, however, not difficulties with the target country but with the UN.
Arguably, it's at least within the spirit of the Convention on Biological Diversity to access a country's genetic resources without formal permission if it cannot be granted but would be if it could. But a war where UN permission has been sought and denied would appear to go against both the spirit and the letter of international law.
It seems to me that the key question is: is the relationship between country and UN analogous to that between citizen and state?
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