"Are There Just Wars?" Why? Radio Episode with guest Michael Walzer

2:50AM Apr 4, 2022

Speakers:

Announcer

Jack Russell Weinstein

Michael Walzer

Keywords:

war

people

question

fought

soldiers

moral

argument

philosophical discussions

decision

unjust war

civilians

fighting

justified

intervention

intervene

philosophy

engaged

defend

weinstein

finland

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Why philosophical discussions about everyday life is produced by the Institute for philosophy and public life, a partnership of Prairie Public, the North Dakota Humanities Council, and the University of North Dakota college of arts and sciences. Visit us at why radio show.org

Hello, everybody, welcome to Why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host Jack Russell Weinstein. Today we're joined by Michael Walzer to ask whether there can ever be a just war. If you'd like to join the conversation, we'll take your calls and emails later on in the show. And if you'd like to chat with other listeners while we're live follow the link to our chat room at why radio show.org So I got an angry email when I announced today's show. There was no grading no pleasantries it said simply, academics are good at hypothesizing especially those in philosophy, logic and math. Has this guy ever been in a war? Didn't think so? This sounds like warmed over hot dish, but I'd rather really have studio 360. I've gotten an angry email from this person before last time, I simply asked her a question politely during the show. I tried to not take her comments personally. But it's hard, especially in the current political climate when one complaint could put my funding at risk. I could have responded to her by attacking the criticism it would have been pretty easy to do here is someone who thinks math and logic are speculation and have no connection to reality, try building a bridge or baking a cake without them. I could also have just deleted the email. This would have been more pleasant, but also would have been less productive. I like to take questions seriously to take people at their word, even the angry ones. And to do this, I think we should all ask together the crucial and interesting question at the core of her distaste. What gives someone the authority to think about war? This I will admit is going to be the my very first question for Michael Walter. He's the world's most prominent just for theorist does his biography qualify him for this title. He's not a pacifist, but he's also not a tank commander at least as far as I know. A former student of mine was just this a tank commander. He served three tours in Iraq. And while he was there, he used email to tutor soldiers wives who are taking philosophy one on one. Another student also a soldier wrote me that the combination of philosophy and combat made him proud to be a scholar, a warrior and a father who models both to these experiences make my students better qualified to ask about the nature and limits of war, maybe. But at the same time, their experiences may make it harder for them to be objective, they may need to justify their own involvement, to explain away the violence of which they were apart. Maybe having participated in war disqualifies them from thinking rationally about it. I don't know. I do know that one doesn't have to be raped to know that rape is wrong. One doesn't have to experience war to know about it either. But this too, is complicated. Since every American is at war right now. We may not personally be in combat, but we're all deeply involved in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, we are losing or feeling for family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers we see on the news, I can't tell you how relieved I was when my tank commander student came home, he sent me messages from the front, I watched his marriage fell apart as he figured out what to do next combat or not, wasn't I in some sense, at war with him? I suspect he'd like to think so. Part of what gives us the right to think about these things is that we're human beings. And that thinking is what we do. Whether we admit it or not. We're all asked philosophical questions every day all the time. And we like it. So by the way, does the woman who sent me that email, she doesn't like the show, she'd rather listen to Studio 360. But she didn't delete my announcement. Instead, she sent me an email and she sent it with a question and an argument. She could have turned on Dancing with the Stars. But instead, she engaged with me, challenged me. And this shows that despite the fact that she's scared of the desire, she actually wanted to do philosophy, and she wanted to do it with someone else. I was a convenient foil. I respect this. I'm not happy with her manners, but I understand the need to ask and to share their human needs. There are those who claim that war is the absence of contemplation that it is the very opposite of morality of rules of community. But this cannot be true because we cannot be human. Without these things. People in combat may be under fire, but there are still people. It isn't that someone has to have been at war to think about war, but rather that someone is a person first and only at war after that. This is what makes it so awful. War is the potential destruction of a human life of community of caring and philosophical minds. It is true that sometimes these minds prefer to think about studio 360. But while they do it, they're still thinking. They're still being philosophical. So then, let's get to the first question. Today's guest Michael Walter is the author of five books about war and close to 15 others Latest topics. He's professor emeritus at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University and currently a fellow at New York University's Tikvah Center for Law and Jewish civilization. He is a contributing editor for The New Republic and CO editor for dissent magazine. Michael, thanks so much for joining us on why.

Thank you for inviting me.

We'll start taking calls and questions shortly shortly. If you'd like to join the conversation, call us at 888-755-6377 That's 888-755-6377. Email us at ask why@umd.edu or chat with other listeners at why Radio show.org. So Michael, as I promised, let's start with that first question. What qualifies someone to think about and write about war?

Yeah, well, you've already begun very eloquently to answer that question. I, I think, first, that I am a citizen of a democratic state. And I've been involved in with all my fellow citizens in arguments about war for a very long time, in my case, ever since Korea, I haven't, in fact, fought in a war. But before writing about it, I talked to many, many soldiers who had been in the fighting. And I read military history. And I read the memoirs of soldiers, especially junior officers who make some of the most critical moral decisions in in wartime. And my book has been read most intensely, most critically, but also most appreciatively by professional soldiers. It's used as a textbook and or has been used as a textbook at West Point in Annapolis. So I think if you if you if you engage with people who are engaged with war, then you are, you are not an authority no more than authority than anyone else. But we are all engaged with these issues. And we need to talk about

is war a unique case, the kinds of problems and questions that get asked many critics of of just war theory we'll talk a little bit about realism later on, we'll say that war is the absence of rules the absence of morality, is war different philosophically than any other inquiry, or is it does it overlap?

It certainly overlaps but it is morality and extremity. But it has to be it has to be connected, because no political leader can can ask his fellow citizens to go to war can send young men and women into battle can ask them to risk their lives and to kill other people, without assuring them that there is a good reason for doing that. That what they are doing his head is justifiable. And so the decision to go to war has always been a moral as well as a political decision. And it has always been defended in moral language in every human civilization.

Yet at the same time, in your book, you talk about the fact that hypocrisy about war is actually ordinary that one of the things that remains most consistent over time are the is the the rhetoric and the lies and the stories that people tell about war. And so if that hypocrisy is so present, are the moral justifications or the moral debates real or are they just manipulations?

The moral language with which we talk about war can be and is frequently misused, distorted, but so is the moral language with which we talk about democratic politics or about friendship. The moral language of friendship is misused by false friends. Remember how the the Bulgarian communists insisted that they had a people's democracy? moral and political language is subject to distortion and misuse. But that doesn't mean we can stop using it.

One of the things that you said in actually the fourth edition of the book that struck me as particularly relevant to our current situation is you remarked that we're not allowed to look at war optimistically, that we're not allowed to talk about war in advance and have a positive spin about how fast about how easy about how minimal the war will be? Why is that what what is what is it about optimism that is so inappropriate in this context?

Because war so frighteningly destructive and so frighteningly unpredictable and it's destructiveness. There's that line about letting loose the dogs of war. When you when you begin a war, you, you, you have to do so with great sobriety and, and caution and you you you must not you obviously you're aiming at a better piece than what existed before. And you you have to talk about that and explain why you think it will be a better piece if this war is, is fought. But you can't ever you can't ever free yourself from the the the necessary anxieties of of a military struggle. And you have to you have to talk with your own citizens with your fellow citizens about the dangers as well as the as well as the hopeful prospects of a military campaign.

Have people let's let's stick to the American government for the moment. Has the American government gotten better or worse at having this conversation since Korea or or really since earlier wars that you studied? Or is there a consistency in the tension between trying to get people's consent but inspiring nationalistic fervor trying to encourage people to take the risk, but at the same time, telling them it's not too much of risk? It'll be over fairly quickly. Has this remained consistent? Or are we getting? Or is it different than it once was?

I think we've probably had better debates, not necessarily better outcomes. In the years since Korea, the long political struggle over over Vietnam, was the occasion for many people to return to the theory of just an unjust wars, which is now a small cottage industry in American academia. Of course, governments that want to go to war the way the US government did in 2002, and three in Iraq, will, as as our government did, distort the available, the information available to them, and limit the information available to us in the interests of, of the war, they want to fight. But the national debate, the national debate has been pretty impressive in recent years. I think.

It sounds like you're impressed that that you're reasonably satisfied with the discourse that you hear this runs counter to a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum spectrum, or I should say all along the political spectrum, who feel they were misled. Why Why are you feeling more positive?

Oh, I think we were misled, in the run up to the Iraq to the Iraq War. But then there were an awful lot of people telling us that we were being misled. During all those months. It was a democratic decision. And those of us who lost who were defeated, who oppose the war, but couldn't stop it, are naturally dissatisfied with the, with the debate. But all the voices were were heard. It was it was, as I said, before months of months of an argument of the sort of democracies ought to have.

And yet you also describe moral talk, as coercive, you explain that one thing leads to another could? Well, first of all, could you explain that but second of all, could someone have said something? Could you have envisioned something that someone would have said or done that could stop a country on the way to war? Or is there an inevitability after a certain point that makes just war unstoppable?

When I said that more languages course, if I meant that if you if you say that this attack is an act of aggression, it means you're committed to oppose it. If you say that there's a massacre going on in country X, that means that you should try to stop it. If you look back to 1994, when the killings in Rwanda began, and the United States insisted at the UN that this was not genocide. That was because if we call that genocide we would have been committed to intervene in that's the sense in which moral language is coercive, and it's one of the reasons why we sometimes hesitate to use it properly.

That's really interesting. A lot of people when they talk about Rwanda, they talked about us being blind, us being uninterested. But what you're actually saying is, we knew what was going on. But we had either political or national interests that prevented us from acknowledging what it was.

I think that's right. And I'm not sure that we had interests except an interest in our own indifference. We were not We were not prepared for the expense of energy and resources. That would have been required to stop the massacre.

I don't know if you're a fan of The Daily Show. But Jon Stewart, in the last few weeks, spent a lot of time talking about Libya, and comparing Libya to Afghanistan, and Iran, but also to the places we haven't been to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and he describes the decision to participate or not participate based on interests as somehow fundamentally awful, for lack of a better term, hypocritical, again, unsatisfying. He's looking for some consistency of doctrine. And, and and he's really frustrated with the fact that our government has a piecemeal approach a war by war by war approach to deciding who to engage with and who not. Is that is, is he justified and have is beaten being frustrated?

I don't think so. I it consistency is, is is the human condition. And certainly the the condition of any of any political leadership. And the fact that just think about this, the fact that we didn't intervene in Tibet, say, or in Chechnya were intervening would have would have created the risk of global war. The fact that we didn't intervene, there certainly doesn't mean that we shouldn't intervene in our fourth, for example. It can't be an argument against doing something right, that we didn't do some other things. Right. And, and the, in the current case, I was not in favor of the Libyan intervention. But there was a reason to distinguish Libya, from Bahrain or Syria. And the reason was that the rebels managed to create a territorial zone of liberated territory, which made an intervention much easier, much more plausible, than in countries where the rebellion is, is the rebels are not are not able to establish any kind of liberated zone.

If you're interested in participating in this conversation, give us a call at 888-755-6377 that's 888-755-6377 or email us at Ask why@umd.edu. Michael, you have this fascinating discussion about the phrase wars hell when we hear that idea, we think of it as suffering and no one wants to do it. But you actually think that war is hell is a doctrine that it's a theory laden for lack of a better term notion, what is it that that was held that's so compelling to you?

Well, the the the idea that lies behind that that statement, is that there's nothing that we can do, to control or regulate or limit warfare, that warfare is what it is, it is hellish, which indeed it is, and therefore it should be pursued as brutally as possible in order to end it as soon as possible. And the notion of, of establishing any restraints in in warfare is being rejected by people who that's what that statement means. That's the message of General Sherman as he marched through through Georgia. And I think that message is is wrong and I think any any conversation with with professional soldiers, who after all have a code of honor who distinguished what they do from from butchery will lead you to see the importance of, of certain kinds of restraints in warfare, the crucial restraint being the effort to shield civilians from the the, the the effect of combat.

And yet, at the same time, soldiers have a certain understanding about one another, not just on the allies, but but enemies as well. They, you remarked that, that they have a sense that the other soldiers are just as blameless as they are, how can a soldier be blameless?

Well, soldiers are kids, mostly, they are told that their country is in danger. They are told that war is necessary, they are told that by their political leaders, and usually by their religious leaders, and often by their parents, and teachers and peers, they march off, whether they are conscripted or whether they are pressured to enlist because enlistment in war is generally a consequence of quite strong social pressure. They march off, convinced of the justice of their cause. And then they encounter enemy soldiers, equally convinced for the same sociological, moral, political, emotional reasons of the justice of their cause. And that's why there exists on the battlefield, a certain certain kind of equality of, of combatants. It's not the case that the two sides are, are equal. In fact, in most wars, one side is fighting justly and one unjustly. But the the, the the experience of warfare is an experience of equality, which we recognize in the prisoner of war convention. Because all prisoners are supposed to be treated according to that convention, they are accorded benevolent quarantine for the duration of the war, without regard to whether they were fighting adjust, or an unjust war. We don't we don't put the soldiers fighting the unjust war on trial. They are supposed to be treated in exactly the same way. And that's, that is a crucial index of this very strange phenomenon, that, that the soldiers on the battlefield, whatever the justice of their cause, have, so to speak, and equal right to fight.

How does that jibe with the old saying it was a bumper sticker for many, many years? What if they threw a war nobody came? The implication of that is that when people could sent it to go, they assented to the war in some sense, which is why particularly in Vietnam, so many people burnt their draft cards and said they weren't participating in an unjust war. Does this notion of blameless soldiers run counter to that? Or is it just a variation on the same theme?

Well, we do want soldiers who understand that their country is fighting an unjust war, to refuse to fight. back but, but if they, if if they march off, believing that the cause is just because of what they've been told, we don't hold them responsible for the injustice, we hold the political leaders responsible.

When we come back, we're gonna start talking more directly about the question of what makes adjust war and talk both about it on the larger scale as to which wars are justly fought, but also in Belo, meaning, how a war is actually fought, and the individual actions of individual people and strategies and tactics and stuff. So when we come back, we're gonna look at that morality and the justice of war on both of those levels you're listening to why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host, Jack Russell Weinstein, our guest, Michael Walter will return after this.

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The Institute for philosophy and public life bridges the gap between academic philosophy and the general public. It's mission is to cultivate discussion between philosophy professionals and others who have an interest in the subject regardless of experience or credentials. Visit us on the web at philosophy and public life.org The Institute for philosophy and public life because there is no ivory tower

you're back with why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host, Jack Russell Weinstein, we're talking with Michael Walter, and asking whether there is such a thing as a just war. If you would like to get in touch with us, give us a call at 888-755-6377 That's 888-755-6377 Write us at ask why why@umd.edu Or talk to us through our chat room at why radio show.org You know, there's a there's a scene in the movie Forrest Gump that always infuriates me. I mean, the whole movie is not my favorite. But there's a protest and anti Vietnam protest. And one of the signs of the protest has the phrase, support our troops bring them home. And the reason why it gets me so upset. And it's the academic in me in the sense that that phrase didn't, as far as I know, exist during the Vietnam War. That phrase is a response to the reaction that soldiers had to coming home to a country that didn't welcome them. Many, many soldiers talk about being considered baby killers being involved in an unjust war. And so when people who protested war, looked at that history and wanted to have a much more rhetorically powerful position, they tried to argue, understandably so that supporting our troops meant keeping them out of harm's way. And the thing I suspect, I suppose the bothers me the most about seeing that sign is that it makes invisible the fact that we did learn something from Vietnam, as a public, we learned not just about what is or is not a just war, but also how to treat people in war and how to treat people returning from war. And I get very antsy when we ignore the things that we learned. I think that that's very important. And so now we're back talking about just war. And I guess, Michael, I'll start, again, by asking, What are the things that you feel maybe in the second half of the 20th century, that we have learned about war about how to run a just war about how to identify just Where Have there been any things that we've learned?

We've certainly learned how awful war is the 20th century was, was one of the worst of human centuries in, in the scope, extent, intensity and brutality of its wars. So I think that the the discourse of just war, the the effort to set limits on on the decision to go to war, and also to set limits on how wars are fought, is a direct product of the experience of, of the last century.

Yet at the same time, we have, maybe not at the same time, how much of that is comparing World War Two, which many people believe is a paradigm case of adjust war? On the Allied side, of course, to comparing that with Vietnam, which lots of people think is the paradigm case of an unjust war? Koreas is fuzzier. And certainly the first Iraq war is different than the second Iraq War. How much of that is, is having these things to justify themselves to justify a comparison and how much of it is just the sheer technological brutality as well as the vivid imagery that comes from wars post industrial revolution and wars that are televised?

I think the series of wars that you listed from Korea through the second Iraq War and maybe some of interventions like the one we're currently engaged in in Libya have forced American citizens to think again and again, about war and to make judgments and to recognize that all wars are not the same, and that the judgments we make have to be shaped and in to reflect the circumstances that we are facing. But the the, the overall desire to set limits, I think that that is comes that begins with the experience of World War Two.

Don from Winona Minnesota, asked whether whether you had an idea of when humanitarian military intervention is morally justified. And I guess I'd like to extend that question to ask, is the question of humanitarian military intervention, the same question as war? Or is the only thing in common that there's a military involved in that there's violence? Are they two different categories?

I don't think so. I think when you when you send soldiers across a frontier, into into a zone of great danger, especially when you're doing it against a government that has its own military forces, it's best to call this a war and not to pretend that it is something else. There is an effort, starting with the UN charter to abolish war as a as a category. And to think of all aggressive acts as crimes and the military response as a police action. That's the way Korea was described. The northern the northern attack was a was a criminal aggression. And the UN response was police work. But every history of that event is called, calls it the Korean War. And we haven't we haven't, in fact, domesticated war in a way that makes that makes it into crime and and police work. It is still something else it is still it is still an experience, quite distinct from those we have in domestic society.

Is there a standard a litmus test, so to speak of when we can intervene? Humanitarian Aliy? If that's a term?

Yeah, it's not it's not easy, and that sometimes it sounds as if it's a question of numbers. Certainly, when a massacre is going on somewhere in the world, when massive ethnic cleansing is going on, when mass enslavement and is going on, then somebody should stop it. And and that act of stopping it is what we call humanitarian intervention. It is what what philosophers call an imperfect duty, somebody should do it. We don't, we aren't always able to give that somebody a proper name, we are always able to say whose duty it it is. I think the relative the relevant victim is simply whoever can should. Whoever can stop it should stop it. But at what level this massacre if if if, if 500 people are killed? Is that not enough to trigger an intervention? In Rwanda, it was 800,000 people. And that's clearly enough. But I, I this is a judgment call in each in each case. In the Libya case, we were told to expect a massacre on a very large scale in in Benghazi, which is a city of hundreds of 1000s of people. Whether that was a legitimate expectation whether there was good reason, I don't I don't know. But that was that was thought to be a sufficient cause for for intervention. In Kosovo, there had been only hundreds of people killed up to that point. But the the the memory of Srebrenica, the memory of what the Serbs had done in Bosnia, served, I think, to justify an intervention in in Kosovo. But this is, these are not it's I can't political theory or moral philosophy cannot, cannot give you any precision on issues like this.

Well, and you've anticipated in your comments. My next question, which is alright, there are people who will agree and say, Yes, someone should intervene in Rwanda. But why does it always have to be us? Why does it have to be the United States? We are not the world police force? And your answer seems to be, it should be us because we can and that's all of the reason you need

a but yes, but it shouldn't always be asked because there are other people who can we need a division of labor Hidden in international society remember, it was the Vietnamese who shut down the killing fields in Cambodia. In the 70s. It was the Indians who stopped state terrorism in East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. It was the Tanzanians who sent an army into Uganda to overthrow the murderous regime of Idi Amin. Those are three examples of interventions, which did not require the high tech military force of the United States. And that is that that's, that's it's important to remember cases like that, because often, massacres can be stopped by relatively small military forces, if they if the intervention is is timely in in Rwanda, there were 5000 UN troops, and the commander of those troops told the Secretary General of the United Nations that he could stop the killing with those troops. And he was not allowed to do that. But But often, I don't know if he was right. But often, the military force of that size intervening at the right moment, can do the work.

So it's interesting, because you're talking about looking at the limits of what is required for help. And we have been educated certainly in the last couple decades to think that technology is actually a better solution. Shock and Awe is a better solution than a ground invasion. And certainly going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the argument in favor of those was, it would kill fewer people, and certainly fewer people on our side, then a ground invasion. And so the tension is between winning versus fighting well, right, that the the means ends distinction of war. How do we balance the need to win versus the technological restraint to fight? And I only want to say, well, although that's the term you use fight virtuously,

right. But the rules of war, the rules of use in bello of justice, in war, in the conduct of war, have been worked out over centuries. And they are designed to permit the fighting of war. I mean, that they're not pacifist rules, there are rules of war, they are rules for war. They are meant to, to, to establish constraints and limits on what you can do. They are not meant and I don't think that to deny you the possibility of winning. They are the rules of war are not ordinary morality. They are they are and an adaptation of ordinary morality, to the the circumstances of of warfare. I, we can look at some examples of that. But I think it's important that that general that be understood that you have to be able to fight in when the rules can't stop you from from from doing that. So the argument against dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The argument against doing that wasn't that you would have to be able to say there were other ways of winning. And also, sometimes you want to say we need to change our understanding of what winning means. That is in the case of in 1945. The demand for unconditional surrender made the use of the atomic bomb much more attractive. Whereas had we been prepared for a negotiated peace, even for the the evil for what we've eventually did, allowing the Emperor to remain as emperor. We might have had, we might have imagined that the use of the bomb was not necessary.

Well, this some of what you're saying anyway, runs counter to one of the dominant adages about war which I mentioned earlier called realism. And realism basically says that there is no universal international law that we are just states countries, fighting with each other, trying to exist. And so to argue for morality in war is to misunderstand the true philosophers will say Hobbes, no But I'll say anarchic nature, the true chaos that we are in as the United States of America. And so how would you respond to someone who says, you're imposing all of these things on war, but the real situation is that it's killer be killed, and we have to do whatever it takes in order to win. And if we do a little more than it takes Well, that's still what it took.

Yeah, I don't, I don't believe that. Whatever it takes is a is a phrase we need in every case, and and soldiers do this, is to consider the the different things it might take, to win. And then there are there are judgments that have to be that have to be made. There is a way of capturing this hill, or outflanking, that enemy unit that will endanger a village full of civilians. And there is another way of doing it, that won't endanger that village, or that will reduce the danger to that village. And we have to, then there are moral reasons for choosing the other way. And those kinds of those kinds of arguments go on in the heads of junior officers, and among junior officers on the battlefield all the time. And, and we have to train those officers to make those decisions in the best in the best possible way. Now, think of the use of civilians as shields, which invites a brutal response, right, you need to get at the the terrorists who are hiding behind the shields. And so you kill the shields. But then think think, again, this is a this is a quasi realist argument, which which of go aligns with morality, the people who are using civilians, as shields are not only protecting themselves, they are also deliberately exposing those civilians, because they believe that if you kill those civilians, it will help them it will strengthen their hand politically and morally, and they're right about that. So if we look for ways that will reduce the number of civilians we kill in a place like Afghanistan, we are we are doing what it takes to win. Because often doing what it takes to win means doing what is morally right. or So one

last question before I ask the million dollar question about the definition of adjust what is what you're saying the reason why you argue that war is singularly and entirely the crime of those who started that war is the guilty party is the aggressor.

The guilty party is is the one who yes, who makes the decision to the Soviet decision to invade Finland in 1939, the German decision to invade Poland, the Italian decision to invade Ethiopia, that is the critical decision. And we have to identify the the we have to insist on the criminality of that decision.

So then, and this is, this is the point we've all been waiting for. What is a just war?

Well, we generally think of it in terms of the of an easy analogy. If I am attacked on the street, and defend myself, I am fighting a miniature version of adjust for if I see someone attacked on the street, and I rushed to help them, I am fighting another miniature version of adjust for so translated into international society, when a when a country is attacked, gave those examples of Finland Poland Ethiopia, when a country is attacked and defends itself, its defense is just and when some other country comes to the aid of the victim of aggression. That war is just and sometimes when government is engaged in the criminal is engaged in the massacre of its own people by the Khmer Rouge regime and Cambodia, then anyone who goes in militarily to stop that is engaged in a just war. So I think that those are the three, the three crucial examples self defense, the defense of of another country, and the defense of, of just ordinary people at at risk of, of death and destruction.

Does that make just war a problem of epistemology a problem of knowledge in the sense that what's the difference between stopping the Khmer Rouge and stopping Qaddafi? Is it that we have to know distinctly that one person is genuinely going after their people for I don't know how to finish that sentence, the wrong reason or too many of their people, because Gaddafi certainly was going after his own people. But there are many people who think that going into Libya is wrong. What's the difference? How do we know the difference between those two cases?

Well, you have to know something about the circumstances of the case. That's not peculiar to war, you can't make decisions about health care or welfare policies or tax policies without knowing something about the way the world is. And and that knowledge is going often to be disputed. So we get into we get into arguments. Yes, the Khmer Rouge was in fact engaged in murder on a scale far beyond anything that the Gaddafi regime ever attempted, which is not the denied that brutality and tyranny of the Qaddafi regime, the scale is, is very, very different. And that's one reason why many people opposed the Libyan intervention, it looked what was going on in Libya look less like a massacre than like a tribal Civil War, in which we were, we were intervening on behalf of one side, without in fact, knowing very much about the character, or the politics of the side that we were supporting.

So Michael, we have a question via the chat room from someone who has the great name of war, Mississippi. And this person asks, Can we hope for no war just or otherwise? And this This strikes me, reminiscent of the William James comment that I advertise the show with, which is the people who think that that war is inevitable suffer from a lack of imagination? Is, is war inevitable? Is it possible to think of a world without war?

Well, it's, it's it's possible and probably worth it's, it's worth spending some some time imagining a world like that, and trying to figure out what sorts of institutions would be necessary to sustain it. What I, what I what I don't think we should ever do is pretend that those institutions already exist. I remember after 911, there were many people who said, We should not respond militarily in as we did in Afghanistan. This was police work, this was a crime, and we should we should treat it in in the way police treat crimes and not the way armies deal with enemies. And and that would be fine. If this is the dial the dial 911 response to 911 If there were an emergency phone number, and somebody was answering it, if there were a global phone number and someone was answering it, then that would be the right response. But but in the world as as it is right now. I think that the use of military force to overthrow the Taliban and to deny al Qaeda territorial base was justified and there simply wasn't any police force in the world that could have done that.

is would the Michael Walter of 1965 agree with that statement? Or has your attitude about when it's acceptable to fight change since you first started thinking about these things? And I suppose it Korea's earlier than that, have your attitudes changed? Or?

I don't think so. I think I may have become because of experiences like Rwanda. And therefore I may have become more inclined to call for interventions, military interventions in places like those, then I will might have been in the 70s when I was writing just an unjust wars. I don't think my views have changed, have changed very, very much. And, and I'm not sure that they were decisively shaped by Vietnam. I think they may have been decisively shaped when I was 10 years old, by World War Two.

I'm trying to figure out how to ask the next question, because that's such an interesting comment. In formal logicians, critical thinking theorists, many political scientists will challenge the ability of anyone to persuade anyone else that there is some sense that people don't actually change their minds. If your fundamental views about war, were shaped the least distinctly will say, as a 10 year old, what then? What role does the reflection play? And how to the books and the Institute for Advanced Study? And your tremendously impressive career, both academically and with descent? Magazine? How does? How does that fit in to the 10 year olds inside?

Well, World War Two is a pretty extraordinary event to be shaped by that isn't isn't a isn't something entirely unexpected? I am sure I have changed my mind about many other things. Over Over the years, do

you still have beds?

Yes, I, I do think especially in in a democratic society, that the work of argument is critically important. But sometimes you do succeed in convincing people.

So so. Alright, so whether war is inevitable, it's still reality. We need to deal with that, whether World War Two is a paradigm case or not, in various other other contexts change. Yet, in your book, one of the more categorical statements you make is that the only justification for war is defending one's rights defending national rights defending individual rights. What do you mean by that?

Well, it's I'm trying to speak in our moral idiom, we have an I think it's a, it's a good thing we have adopted and to some extent, universalized, the language of, of human rights. It's one of the, it's one of the the intellectual achievements, perhaps also political achievements of the post World War Two, period. So when when we think about warfare, we we think about it in terms of the, the rights of, of individuals, and one of the rights of individuals is to form a political community, and to attach value to that community and to and to work to sustain it. And to defend it while it is endangered. That's so when I think of the the invasion of Finland by the Russians in 1939, I think have the rights the right of the Finns, to have a Finland of their own country of their own. And, and to, and their right to defend that country, even by the use of force. I don't know that the Finns in 1939 thought of it in that, that language, they may have used a different moral language to explain to each other what they were doing in resisting the Russian attack. That's all right. Moral languages, I think can be translated into into one another. And the language of rights is ours.

I'm always fascinated by Finland. I've spent some time in Finland and the first time I was there, I ended up in a museum where they were talking About the Winter War. And what's striking about their story is they're fighting alongside the Germans, and they're fighting during World War Two, but they don't consider themselves as fighting in World War Two. And I would have thought that an argument like that would have been completely ridiculous. But I found myself really persuaded by that. And I was persuaded by it for the very reason that you're talking about it, that they really saw themselves as doing the only thing they could possibly do, in order to protect their sovereignty to protect their very existence, and that gives people permission to do things that they otherwise wouldn't do.

Right. And but the most interesting thing about the Winter War is that no one in Finland imagined that they could defeat right Soviet Union, and they chose to fight anyway, when the rational course would have been to negotiate a surrender. But because they fought, then they did not become a satellite after World War Two, by fighting in 39. They they save themselves from the communist tyrannies of the rest of Eastern Europe.

How does how does this compare to the Six Days War? You spend some time talking about that? And this also was a controversial war where Israel, it's not worth getting to the long history, but Israel and Egypt have a conflict, in part because Egypt doesn't think that Israel should be there. And Israel fights back. And one of the things you say about it is that it doesn't matter whether they should or shouldn't have been there. They were there. And the fact that they were there gave them the right to defend themselves, does Finland's unquestioned sovereignty, give them a different perspective? Then Israel's questioned? I'll call it sovereignty.

I don't think from Israel's right. There was any question about their, their right to defend this the stake that they had created. The interesting thing about the Six Day War is the decision to launch a preemptive attack against Egypt, which has become now the the paradigm case the case used by lawyers, international lawyers to define justified preemption because the Israelis attacked, not it wasn't a preventive war, it wasn't an effort to avoid some speculative threat. It was an effort to get the first punch in knowing that the Egyptians were planning an attack. And that is the definition of preemption When, when, when President Bush went to West Point in 2002, and talked about preemption, he was giving it a very, very different meaning much closer to the notion of, of a preventive war, which is a war not against an immediate threat, but against the threat that may or may not come about in the future.

Is is the difference between pre emptive and preventative imminence. I mean, is it the fact that the person may not be throwing the punch, but you can see them cocking their hand?

Yes, yes, imminence is crucial to the idea of preemption. And it is the what justifies preemption. Whereas when you see a distant threat we need we need to be skeptical about whether a military response now is really necessary. There may be it may be sufficient to to rearm, it may be sufficient to negotiate a new alliances with some strong neighbor, it may be sufficient to engage in a negotiation over disputed issues. There there may be a whole series of things to do before war should be considered.

And is is this imminent? Is this why the weapons of mass destruction thing in Iraq was so important? Because if there had been weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration would have been able to claim more plausibly that it was imminent, and since it wasn't, it's more preventative.

The question would have been more about the instruments of deployment because they're working There were intelligence services in Europe and in Israel, who believed as we did that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but thought they that they did not have the means to deploy them. And so the threat was not, in fact, imminent. As it turns out, the regime of containment that was established after the first Gulf War, the no fly zones, the embargo, the inspection system, all that was really work. And, and the war was, was not, in fact, necessary, and if not necessary, then not justified.

What do you think, might be a psychological rather than philosophical question, and it's leading, and it's part of another question that's floating around in my head, but what do you think it is about war that allows people to be so patriotic, so nationalistic, so resistant to opposition? Why is war fervor are so easy to inspire? And so easy to exploit by politicians or others? Who want to use it for their personal interest?

Yes, well, because issues of life and issues of life and death are inspire deep passions. And if you feel that your your homeland is is threatened by an evil enemy, who wants to, to conquer to dominate, perhaps to kill, it isn't so hard to get emotionally engaged in an effort to stop him. And then it isn't so hard to become very hostile to anybody who suggests that maybe the enemy isn't evil. And maybe it isn't. The maybe you're not faced with a danger of quite those proportions. The arguments are, are, are intensified by the the, the risks the imagined and the real risks of warfare.

There are times though, and this is the question that I'm trying to parse in my head. There are times though, when people talking about war feels a lot like people talking about sports, that there is an us and them and a team and a strategy. And the goal of winning is there's a certain pleasure taken in the advancements in the victories. And on the one hand, if you're defending your life, of course, you're allowed to take pleasure in the fact that you're not as much in danger. On the other hand, there is something almost untoward about the similarities between the sporting attitude and the warring attitude. Am I Am I imagining that is that if it's there, is it a problem?

It could be a problem, it it's something that we should certainly guard against, because war becomes more like a spectator sport, when it's being fought by by people we don't know. And when it's being fought with high tech weapons, that don't seem to to pose any dangers to our side, only to the other side. Yeah, I think it's it's not a good thing. When, when people imagine that war is, is like, a soccer game, a football game. No one would think it's like a baseball game, which is why baseball is a better sport. But it's it's not a good thing. Because if they were if they were engaged in the carnage, they wouldn't feel that way.

Well, in this in this recalls the way that wars were fought at one time, my understanding is that during the Revolutionary War, when when battles were planned in advance by generals and locations were picked out that people could sit on the sidelines and have picnics and watch them and this of course, is no longer possible given the modern nature of war.

Right Right. That was a yes that there are actual stories of, of people coming like tourists to, to watch a battle fought in a contained space with rifles that had relatively short range and didn't endanger the spectators. Were long past that.

It it seems to me that one of the transitional documents in that experience of not just not being able to watch but but understanding the heart is the tremendously long and I think compelling description of Waterloo in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables where you have this planned battle you have this field and yet there is nothing. There's no pleasure in the voyeurism it is just so miserable and so brutal. Probably what descriptions of Gettysburg would have been like as well.

Right? Right. Those battlefields can't in inspire a feeling of, of sporting the life.

Well, Michael, thank you so much for getting us to think about such a difficult issue in such a responsible way.

Thank you for listening to me.

We will be back after this. You've been listening to Jack Russell Weinstein. This is why philosophical discussions about everyday life thanking our guests Michael Walzer.

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You're back with why philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host Jack Russell Weinstein, we've been talking with Michael Walter about the meaning and nature of just war, an issue of immense importance not just theoretical, but practical. Of course, I started off the show by pointing out reminding us all that we are fighting three wars right now and that we are fighting three wars, we may not be in combat, but the United States. And some of our foreign and illicit foreign listeners as well are involved in the NATO action in Libya, are involved in Afghanistan are involved in Iran. What does that mean? How do we look our children, our grandchildren in the eyes? Well, that hangs on whether what we're doing is the right thing. And it's not entirely clear always what it is. And that's why knowledge is so important. There was a theme in today's conversation. And that was the theme of reflection of contemplation of learning. One of the things that Michael Walter said over and over again, is that we have learned over the 20th century we have learned over the last two millennia. What makes a just war, what fighting is permissible and what fighting isn't permissible, not just which wars to start, but also how to treat the enemy, how to treat our prisoners, how to treat civilians, we didn't get a chance to talk about the distinction between combatants and non combatants in a guerrilla war when you can't tell if the peasant population is part of the soldier or not. But at the same time, if we start off with, for lack of a better phrase, something as an absolute, if we start off by saying you do not kill civilians, civilization has taught us that, well, then we are steps above where we were 2000 years ago. And if we start off by saying you defend people who need defending as opposed to you attack the people who want to attack, we've advanced war is terrible. That is also something that we've learned. We've learned by seeing it on the news we've learned, learned by watching our loved ones we've learned by being there ourselves. War is terrible. War is hell, not simply because it's unpleasant, but because things fall apart in war. And the way that you stop hell is by stopping things from falling apart. And we as people in war have the ability to make the little decisions that have huge consequences, which Hill to take, which strategy to follow which tactic to adopt. Now is a time for us to think about the meaning of war in the 21st century and to respect The minds and the thoughts of those junior officers that Walter tells us about who every day think the deep moral, philosophical and difficult questions of how best to fight a war that will allow us again, to look our children and our grandchildren in the eyes. Yet again, you've been listening to why philosophical discussions about everyday life I'm your host, Jack Russell Weinstein, have a wonderful month and keep thinking philosophically.

Why is broadcast on the second Sunday of every month. It is funded by the Institute for philosophy and public life. Prairie Public Broadcasting, the North Dakota Humanities Council in the University of North Dakota College of Arts and Sciences. Skip wood is our studio engineer. Wise music is written and performed by Mark Weinstein, and can be found on his album Louis soul. For more of his music, visit jazz flute weinstein.com or myspace.com/mark Weinstein next month philosopher James Audison joins us for a challenging discussion about libertarianism, the nature of freedom and the responsibilities we may or may not have towards other people. Tune in Sunday, May 8 at 5pm Central here on Prairie Public or at our website at WWW dot why radio show.org philosophy is everywhere you make it and we hope we've inspired you with our discussion today. Remember, as we say at the institute, there is no ivory tower.