Walzer’s second objection was that the war was the result of Cold War ideology (Schrecker and Walzer 1965, Howe and Walzer 1979: 17). The geopolitical goals for which the US fought involved the containment of communism, and resulted from the struggle between the US and the Soviet Union (and, later, China). Again, it is important to emphasize that Walzer did not sympathize with the Soviet government; indeed, for Walzer and Dissent, one of the major challenges for an American socialism was avoiding the collapse into authoritarianism of the Soviet experiment. However, the goal of containment did not make the war legitimate, because it clashed with the moral requirement of “[w]orking for a bit of freedom in third world countries” such as Vietnam (Howe and Walzer 1979: 17–18). While such a task might have been stymied by the dominance of Soviet-style communism within both the North Vietnamese government and the Vietcong, this did not make the war legitimate. Rather, it suggests that Walzer’s opposition to the war had “no happy ending to offer” (Howe and Walzer 1979: 18), but nonetheless insisted that American geopolitical hostility to Soviet communism could not legitimately be pursued at the expense of Vietnamese lives and self-determination.
At the heart of Walzer’s opposition to American involvement in Vietnam, then, is the claim that the Vietnamese people must determine for themselves their system of government. This belief, rooted in Walzer’s version of social democracy, which insists that each community must govern itself by its own standards, was to become a central plank of his just-war theory, most notably in the claim that almost all just wars are fought in defense of national sovereignty. It recurs throughout Walzer’s work in the claim that communities need a protected space for their common life.
In Defense of Just-War Theory
In 1977, much recent work on justice in war was by Christian theologians (see especially Ramsey 1968). In part, this reflected the Christian roots of the subject: as far back as Augustine (354–430CE), Christian thinkers had grappled with the dilemmas of political sovereignty by arguing that the use of force is justified in defense of a Christian community. Christian thinkers in medieval Europe, such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), invented the division of just wars into two parts, one focusing on the outbreak of war (jus ad bellum) and the other on the conduct of war (jus in bello). Early-modern thinkers such as Hugo Grotius applied military ethics to the European wars of religion and voyages of conquest (for overview, see Orend 2013: 14–18). Christian just-war theory rests on the idea of natural moral law that applies at all times and in all places (Anscombe 2006: 623). Christian thinkers have typically held that there are seven criteria that must all be met for resort to war to be justified: just cause, right intention, just means, reasonable hope of success, last resort, proportionality, and declaration by a competent authority (for example, Anscombe 2006: 624–9). Violating any of these is absolutely prohibited, which led Anscombe to argue in 1939 that British consideration of bombing Germany cities made World War II – for Walzer, the paradigm of a just war (Walzer 1971b) – unjust. Christian just-war theory is a type of deontological ethics, because it stipulates a set of principles that are binding in all cases.
Secular thought on war in the 1960s was dominated by realist theories of international relations. Realism holds that moral judgments about war are meaningless. We might not like certain military campaigns, but that is a question of taste equivalent to dislike of foods or colors. As the saying goes, all’s fair in love and war. The realist argument asserts that states are motivated only by considerations of national interest, that they lack the freedom to make moral choices, and that there is no fixed international morality with reference to which they might make choices (see Orend 2000: 62–3). Added to the influence of realism was the dominance of utilitarian moral thinking. Utilitarianism judges morality by considering consequences, and is skeptical of the sort of absolute prohibition invoked by Christian just-war theory. Before he can advance a theory of just war, Walzer has to refute realism by establishing that judgments of justice in war are meaningful. By basing his theory on defense of human rights to life and liberty, Walzer provides a secular anchor for a non-Christian audience, while he attempts to balance reliance on the deontological notion of rights with some elements of utilitarianism, taking just-war principles to be binding in almost all cases (see his doctrine of “supreme emergency,” Walzer 2015a: 251–68, discussed in Chapter 2).
Realists hold that war is a realm of necessity in which states and soldiers are engaged in a struggle for survival such that they have no meaningful choices concerning their courses of action. Because of the moral principle that “ought implies can,” in the absence of choice, it follows that no actions can be wrong. If combatants do what they must, it is impossible to criticize them morally. In analyzing this argument, Walzer focuses on the version that the Greek historian Thucydides advances in his History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides 1954). The crucial part of the text is the “Melian Dialogue” (400–8), in which Thucydides tells the story of the attempts of colonial Athens to persuade the small island nation of Melos to submit to Athenian rule. Melos was an ally of Sparta, so the Melians refused to submit in the hope that Sparta would come to their aid. As a result, Athens invaded and conquered Melos. Commenting that this is a “classic account of aggression” akin to, say, Nazi Germany invading Poland, Walzer notes that the dialogue in which the Athenians seek to persuade Melos to submit is the “climax of [Thucydides’] realism” because he puts into the mouths of the Athenian generals party to the debate speech that is unusually frank about the impossibility of justice during war (Walzer 2015a: 5). The Athenians make no moral claim to deserve their empire, nor any pretense of Melos having harmed them. Rather, they insist that such matters are irrelevant because “the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel … the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept” (Thucydides 1954: 402). As Walzer notes, this claim is not just a descriptive one: Athens has to conquer those territories that it can, because failure to extend its empire would reveal weakness and encourage rebellion. Mighty Athens, like tiny Melos, must face up to the “burdens of necessity” in war (Walzer 2015a: 4–6).
The interesting thing about the Melian Dialogue is that, although in much of the rest of his History, Thucydides “set himself a standard of accuracy … [that] was quite extraordinary in the fifth century,” (Thucydides 1954: 19), the Dialogue is his invention. What Thucydides has the generals say is not what he thought they said in Melos but what he thinks is the necessary true meaning of combatants in their position (Walzer 2015a: 6–8). Criticizing this notion of necessity, Walzer notes that Thucydides does not report on the debate in the Athenian assembly about which policy to adopt with regard to Melos. This is significant, because it allows Thucydides to blur the fact that, in ancient Greek as in modern English, “necessary” may mean either “inevitable” or “indispensable” (8–10). This is a crucial distinction, because the realist position relies upon defining military actions as “inevitable,” yet the Athenians could hardly have argued in their assembly that invading Melos was inevitable. If it were, no discussion could take place. In the Athenian assembly, Walzer insists, the question must have been, “What should we do?” (9) While the invasion of Melos might indeed be considered indispensable, defining necessity in terms of indispensability enables the question, “Indispensable for what purpose(s)?” In other words, while Athenians may have felt that it was indispensable that they maintain their empire, they cannot have taken it to be inevitable that they do so. Once we are involved in discussion of purposes, we are squarely within the world of moral argument, a core aspect of which is debate