The doctrine of the just war has its roots in the thinking of Cicero, which says that from the outset, war is flawed and should be embarked upon with great reluctance, writes Patrick Hannon.
War in Iraq looms again and again its legitimacy is being canvassed in terms of the applicability of the doctrine of the "just war'. This doctrine is associated especially with mainline western Christian thinking about the ethics of warfare, but its roots are in the thought of the Roman, Cicero, and it's worth noticing his starting-point.
He thought that "discussion" was the human way of settling disputes, "force" the way of other animals. Humans though do not always behave humanly and it may be necessary to use force to defend against attack, but the cause must be a just one and "the only excuse . . . for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed".
I draw attention to Cicero's starting point to emphasise that for him, from the viewpoint of what is fitting for humans, war is from the outset flawed - it is the way of the non-human animal - and so is to be embarked upon with very great reluctance.
Other intimations of the later full-blown doctrine are in his requirement that war is to be initiated by formal declaration and in his insistence that the conduct of a war conform to the demands of "honourable behaviour".
A similar spirit informs the teaching of St Augustine, who developed Cicero's ideas in the light of Christian beliefs about love of neighbour. He thought that the commandment to love the neighbour included a duty to defend the vulnerable from unjust attack, but also that the commandment to love even the enemy placed limits on the use of force in doing so.
He repeated and elaborated upon the criteria proposed by Cicero: the cause must be just, as must the intention and attitude of those who enter war; it must be initiated by legitimate authority and its conduct must be on all points just. As with Cicero, his conclusion that a war might be justified is reluctant. If war is to be waged, he says, it can only be in what he calls a mournful spirit.
From its origins, therefore, the doctrine of the just war was anything but an easy licence for resorting to war, even if its invocation has looked like that at times in history. It's not as if its exponents thought warfare a good thing and sought out ways of justifying it. It was for them a deeply regrettable fact of life and they sought rather ways of limiting the damage which it brought. Nothing in its later treatment by such figures as Aquinas and Suarez or the 17th-century Dutch theologian and jurist Grotius, altered that stance and perspective.
It was Grotius who cast the doctrine in the form perhaps most familiar to us now. A standard enumeration today lists six conditions which must be verified in justification of a decision to go to war (jus ad bellum) and two which must govern its conduct (jus in bello). The six, put summarily, are: last resort, legitimate authority, just cause, right intention, reasonable hope of success and a due proportion between the benefits sought and the damage which the war will bring. The principle of due proportion features also as a condition of justice in bello, as does the principle of "discrimination", in the form especially of the assurance of non-combatant immunity.
I should like to mention just some of these conditions as having special relevance in the case of war in Iraq.
First, it does not seem, on present reports, that the condition of last resort is remotely near being reached; as I write, the weapons inspectors have yet again asked for more time.
Second, just cause is, in modern just war thinking and in the UN charter, limited to "defence against aggression under way". It must, one would imagine, be considered a gain - and a return to the original spirit of the doctrine - that we have passed from a conception which included the recovery of what has been wrongfully taken and punishment of a state or people for evil-doing.
The notion that a pre-emptive strike could properly be seen as defence against aggression under way is as dangerous as it is novel.
And what, in all realism, are the prospects for enduring success in a war against Iraq and what of the proportion between benefit and damage? What indeed is going to count as success? A truly successful outcome must of course include the ending of a regime in which basic human rights are in daily jeopardy, but it also must avoid further destabilisation of an already unstable political situation.
The manner of its achievement must surely not lead to aggravation of fears and suspicions among the Islamic states vis-à-vis the West.
Above all, how can a war be justified which is certain to include a massive number of civilian deaths?
Henry Kissinger in The White House Years recalled a prediction of Immanuel Kant that by mid-20th century there would be no more war, either because we should have learned to live in peace together or because weaponry of such destructive power would have been developed that peace would be, as he put it, "a moral imperative". Kissinger observed that "our age" was giving particular point to Kant's dictum.
Can we not consider that, facing the threat of war in Iraq, we are again being challenged to take seriously the imperative of having recourse only to what Cicero thought of as the human way for settling disputes? How many more challenges do we need?
Patrick Hannon is professor of moral theology and director of postgraduate studies at Maynooth College.