In defence of the just war tradition

Inga Clendinnen is the author of - among other books - Dancing with Strangers, an account of the first contacts between those who colonized Australia and the indigenous peoples of that continent. If you have read the book, you may find yourself surprised by the brutality of this passage from a recent review written by Clendinnen:

I offer a modest proposal. When we are approaching a war situation - when one or other side is on the brink of declaring itself weary of talk and eager to begin the killing - I suggest that each party appoint a political person, preferably someone who has played a leading part in the failed talking, as emblem of righteousness for their particular cause. Then from the moment that actual fighting begins and real bodies are in jeopardy (given what I have in mind, it would be unwise to wait on a formal declaration of war), for every day the fighting continues a single joint will be removed from the emblem of righteousness's digit of choice - under anaesthetic, by surgeons, with all proper precautions in place, no filthy field hospital for him - until a peace settlement is arrived at.

After the fingers and toes we could begin on larger joints, but I doubt we would get much beyond the amputations (14 on my count) available on one hand: nothing remotely comparable to the injury and agony inflicted by napalm, or a landmine or a single burst of machine-gun fire. I am confident that under such a regimen our negotiators would discover a new talent for compromise.

It's a literary conceit, of course, not a serious proposal. Clendinnen is reviewing books about genocide, and the passage quoted comes at the end, after a discussion in which genocide and the attitudes that make it possible are treated by her as an 'extension' of the practices and attitudes, and the terrible human costs, of war. Those costs are indeed terrible, and if all she's wanting to urge on us is that wars are not to be embarked upon lightly, her point is good.

The distinction between war and genocide, however, is not to be relaxed or fudged. Genocide is always a crime. War is always a tragedy and it is sometimes a crime; but sometimes it is not. A complete pacifist may refuse this distinction, but for the rest of us, obscuring it helps nobody. Or rather it leaves us speechless in face of at least two types of war to which we need to have a response: wars of conquest, such as that waged by Nazi Germany; and the kind of 'war' (to speak more loosely) waged by a regime against its own people, waged to keep them voiceless, without rights, subject to constant violation and violence, impoverished, hungry.

If wars of national defence and wars of popular liberation are permissible, then there remains a distinction between war and genocide; and there is nothing for it but to try and formulate as best we can principles for distinguishing just wars from unjust and criminal ones, and for distinguishing means of warfare that are legitimate from those that aren't. Primary in this latter respect are the ways of trying to protect civilians from deliberate harm - in other words, from the very thing that characterizes the essence of genocide. Contrary to what is suggested by Clendinnen's presumably satirical paragraphs quoted above, not all wars are entered upon in a spirit of light-mindedness. (Thanks: SM.)