If you look through enough wars, you'll find nearly identical incidents used on one occasion as the excuse for a war and on another occasion as nothing of the sort. President George W. Bush proposed to U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that getting a U2 airplane shot at could get them into a war they wanted. [xv] Yet when the Soviet Union shot down a U2 airplane, President Dwight Eisenhower started no war.
Yes, yes, yes, one might reply, hundreds of actual and unjust wars are not last resorts, even though their supporters claim that status for them. But a theoretical Just War would be a last resort. Would it? Would there really be no other option morally equivalent or superior? Allman and Winright quote Pope John Paul II on the "duty to disarm this aggressor if all other means have proven ineffective." But is "disarm" really the equivalent of "bomb or invade"? We've seen wars launched supposedly to disarm, and the result has been more weapons than ever before. What about ceasing to arm as one possible method of disarming? What about an international arms embargo? What about economic and other incentives to disarm?
There was no moment when bombing Rwanda would have been a moral "last resort." There was a moment when armed police might have helped, or cutting off a radio signal being used to provoke killings might have helped. There were many moments when unarmed peaceworkers would have helped. There was a moment when demanding accountability for the assassination of the president would have helped. There were three years before that when refraining from arming and funding Ugandan killers would have helped.
"Last resort" claims are usually pretty weak when one imagines traveling back in time to the moment of crisis, but dramatically weaker still if one just imagines traveling back a bit further. Many more people try to justify World War II than World War I, even though one of them could never have happened without the other or without the dumb manner of ending it, which led numerous observers at the time to predict World War II with significant accuracy. If attacking ISIS in Iraq now is somehow a "last resort" it is only because of the war that was escalated in 2003, which couldn't have happened without the earlier Gulf War, which couldn't have happened without arming and supporting Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war, and so on back through the centuries. Of course unjust causes of crises don't render all new decisions unjust, but they suggest that someone with an idea other than more war should intervene in a destructive cycle of self-justifying crisis generation.
Even in the moment of crisis, is it really as urgent a crisis as war supporters claim? Is a clock really ticking here any more than in torture thought experiments? Allman and Winright suggest this list of alternatives to war that must have been exhausted for war to be a last resort: "smart sanctions, diplomatic efforts, third-party negotiations, or an ultimatum."[xvi] That's it? This list is to the full list of available alternatives what the National Public Radio show "All Things Considered" is to all things. They ought to rename it "Two Percent of Things Considered." Later, Allman and Winright quote a claim that overthrowing governments is kinder than "containing" them. This argument, the authors maintain, challenges "pacifist and contemporary just war theorists alike." It does? Which option were those two types supposedly favoring? "Containment"? That's not a very peaceful approach and certainly not the only alternative to war.
If a nation were actually attacked and chose to fight back in defense, it would not have the time for sanctions and each of the other options listed. It wouldn't even have time for academic support from Just War theorists. It would just find itself fighting back. The area for Just War theory to work in is, therefore, at least in great part, those wars that are something short of defensive, those wars that are "preemptive," "preventive," "protective," etc.
The first step up from actually defensive is a war launched to prevent an imminent attack. The Obama Administration has, in recent years, redefined "imminent" to mean theoretically possible someday. They then claimed to be murdering with drones only people who constituted "an imminent and continuing threat to the United States." Of course, if it were imminent under the usual definition, it wouldn't be continuing, because it would happen.
Here is a critical passage from the Department of Justice "White Paper" defining "imminent":
"[T]he condition that an operational leader present an 'imminent' threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future."[xvii]
The George W. Bush Administration saw things in a similar way. The 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy states: "We recognize that our best defense is a good offense."[xviii] Of course, this is false, as offensive wars stir up hostility. But it is also admirably honest.
Once we're talking about non-defensive war proposals, about crises in which one has time for sanctions, diplomacy, and ultimatums, one also has time for all sorts of other things. Possibilities include: nonviolent (unarmed) civilian-based defense: announcing the organization of nonviolent resistance to any attempted occupation, global protests and demonstrations, disarmament proposals, unilateral disarmament declarations, gestures of friendship including aid, taking a dispute to arbitration or court, convening a truth and reconciliation commission, restorative dialogues, leadership by example through joining binding treaties or the International Criminal Court or through democratizing the United Nations, civilian diplomacy, cultural collaborations, and creative nonviolence of endless variety.
But what if we imagine an actually defensive war, either the much feared but ridiculously impossible invasion of the United States, or a U.S. war viewed from the other side? Was it just for the Vietnamese to fight back? Was it just for the Iraqis to fight back? Et cetera. (I mean this to include the scenario of an attack on the actual land of the United States, not an attack on, for example, U.S. troops in Syria. As I write, the United States government is threatening to "defend" its troops in Syria should the government of Syria "attack" them.)
The short answer to that question is that if the aggressor would have refrained, no defense would have been needed. Turning resistance to U.S. wars around into justification for further U.S. military spending is too twisted even for a K Street lobbyist.
The slightly longer answer is that it's generally not the proper role for someone born and living in the United States to advise people living under U.S. bombs that they should experiment with nonviolent resistance.
But the right answer is a bit more difficult than either of those. It's an answer that becomes clearer if we look at both foreign invasions and revolutions/civil wars. There are more of the latter to look at, and there are more strong examples to point to. But the purpose of theory, including Anti-Just-War theory, should be to help generate more real-world examples of superior outcomes, such as in the use of nonviolence against foreign invasions.
Studies like Erica Chenoweth's have established that nonviolent resistance to tyranny is far more likely to succeed, and the success far more likely to be lasting, than with violent resistance. [xix] So if we look at something like the nonviolent revolution in Tunisia in 2011, we might find that it meets as many criteria as any other situation for a Just War, except that it wasn't a war at all. One wouldn't go back in time and argue for a strategy less likely to succeed but likely to cause a lot more pain and death. Perhaps doing so might constitute a Just War argument. Perhaps a Just War argument could even be made, anachronistically, for a 2011 U.S. "intervention" to bring democracy to Tunisia (apart from the United States' obvious inability to do such a thing, and the guaranteed catastrophe that would have resulted). But once you've done a revolution without all the killing and dying, it can no longer makes sense to propose all the killing and dying"not if a thousand new Geneva Conventions were created, and no matter the imperfections of the nonviolent success.
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