The Nature of Necessity in the Just War Theories of The West and Islam more

Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 The Nature of Necessity in the Just War Theories of The West and Islam Most normal people prefer not to fight wars if the situation does not require them to do so. Indeed, when justifying going to war, leaders often say that they are doing so out of ³necessity.´ But what exactly do people mean when they talk about this necessity? It turns out that people can mean a wide variety of things when talking about necessity in wartime, and in the many sub-contexts associated with the overall context of wartime. This paper will focus on two contexts in which people invoke the idea of wartime necessity: first, in Western Just War Theory, as exemplified by Michael Walzer, and second, in Islamic Just War Theory as explained by John Kelsay. This paper will argue that the best way to explain the concept of necessity in just war theory is that while it serves similar purposes across cultures as a criterion for violating the rules of war, the variation in its use in the just war theories of the West and Islam comes from what actually qualifies as a case of necessity in each. To show this, first this paper will look at how Michael Walzer ties the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello together with his nature of necessity in his book, Just and Unjust Wars, then it will look at how Islamic Just War Theory treats the nature of necessity in John Kelsay¶s book, Arguing the Just War in Islam, before finally concluding. Michael Walzer¶s Just War Theory Western Just War Theory has a long history behind it. However, of all the literature in the field, Michael Walzer¶s Just and Unjust Wars stands out as paradigmatic. This section will give a brief overview of some of the most important parts of the book. 1 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 While Just and Unjust Wars has many significant points to make, most importantly, the book contributes a fine distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. To put it in English, the book delineates the difference between the justice for going to (or towards) war as compared with the justice of conduct in (or within) war. The fact that Walzer separates the two serves to counteract the common conflation of the two. Often when one side in a war commits atrocities, people assume that they must have an unjust cause for fighting. Conversely, when a state starts an aggressive war, people often expect it to fight its war unjustly. The inverse and contrapositive follow as corollaries as well. Basically, the common notion conceives of an extant positive correlation between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In other words, the more just a war, the more justly it will be fought. Walzer¶s distinction between the two breaks down this correlation and argues that no such correlation actually exists. As Walzer explains it, ³The moral reality of war is divided into two parts. War is always judged twice, first with reference to the reasons states have for fighting, secondly with reference to the means they adopt. The first kind of judgment is adjectival in character: we say that a particular war is just or unjust. The second is adverbial: we say the war is being fought justly or unjustly. Medieval writers made the difference a matter of prepositions, distinguishing jus ad bellum, the justice of war, from jus in bello, justice in war« The two sorts of judgment are logically independent.´ (Walzer 21) This logical independence Walzer mentions allows for the interpretation of his view as seeing no correlation between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. 2 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 Michael Walzer¶s Nature of Necessity So now that Walzer has established his distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, where does his concept of necessity come into play? It turns out that a discussion of the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello leads right into Walzer¶s nature of necessity. This section will show how Walzer makes this connection, and attempt to give an idea of his formulation of the nature of necessity. As established previously, Walzer argues that the correlation between jus ad bellum and jus in bello is nonexistent, instead of positive as people commonly assume. However, when it comes to correlations between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the options of ³positive correlation´ and ³no correlation´ do not comprise the entire set of options. Walzer also addresses the argument of ³negative correlation´ between the two. He calls this option the ³sliding scale.´ The sliding scale argument argues that the more just one¶s cause for war, the more atrocities one can commit in pursuit of victory. Walzer rejects this argument. However, the question remains, when does it become acceptable (if ever) to break the rules of war in pursuit of a victory for a just cause? Walzer¶s alternative argument hinges on the concept of ³supreme emergency.´ In other words, in cases of extreme necessity, it may be acceptable to break the rules of war. As Walzer sums it up, ³Do justice unless the heavens are (really) about to fall´ (Walzer 231). These cases in which the heavens really are about to fall are the cases in which extreme necessity justifies injustice. Walzer spends much of his book trying to outline the exact nature of this necessity. Walzer¶s search for the nature of necessity brings him through many topics. Throughout his discussion of necessity, he keeps coming back to the threat of Nazism as an example of supreme emergency: ³Nazism lies at the outer limits of exigency, at a point where we are likely 3 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 to find ourselves united in fear and abhorrence´ (Walzer 253). It may be easy to simplify Walzer¶s viewpoint to, ³do justice, unless you¶re fighting Nazis.´ However, Walzer¶s viewpoint has more nuances than that. As he clarifies, ³In order to get the map right, however, we must imagine a Nazi-like danger somewhat different from the one the Nazis actually posed´ (Walzer 253-254). While the Nazis were clearly evil enough to pose a case of necessity, they never actually got close enough to victory to pose the ³supreme emergency´ the Allied leaders argued they were posing. In other words, Walzer¶s necessity requires not only a horrific threat, but also a clear and present one. The threat must actually be imminently threatening. Only in these cases does the emergency become supreme enough to justify the necessity for breaking the rules of war. Islamic Just War Theory, As Explained by John Kelsay Islamic Just War Theory takes a different view not only of what exactly necessity in wartime consists of, but also of just war theory overall. While many of the components of Islamic Just War Theory have analogues in Western Just War Theory, Islamic Just War Theory comes from different sources and has different reasoning behind it. As such, it often comes off as foreign to Westerners. John Kelsay tries to bridge this gap with his book, Arguing the Just War in Islam. This section will briefly recap his explanation of the roots of Islamic Just War Theory, and then tie it in to arguments about necessity in Islamic Just War Theory. First of all, Islam¶s roots play a great part in its differences in just war theory. Its central founding narrative was about war. As Kelsay puts it, ³Fighting is an appropriate means by which Muslims should seek to secure the right to order life according to divine directives. The notion of a just war is therefore an aspect of the foundational narrative of Islam.´ (Kelsay 97) Specifically, this founding narrative told how Islam¶s founding prophet, Muhammad, led his people, the 4 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 Muslims, along with the other residents of Medina, to war with the Meccans, who would not follow God according to Muhammad¶s prophecies. As Kelsay describes, ³They were to support [Muhammad], respect his orders, and, above all, to fight with him against the Meccans. Why the stress on fighting? As the biographers have it, God gave the order, specifically by revealing the verses recorded in Qur¶an 22:39-40: µThose who have been attacked are permitted to take up arms because they have been wronged.¶´ (Kelsay 23-24) Thus, in Islamic just war, Muslims can justify their fighting when they fight to resist the injustice imposed by non-Muslim invaders. While this describes an example of jus ad bellum in Islamic Just War Theory, does it also count as an example of necessity? As with Walzer, what counts as necessity in Islamic Just War Theory follows directly from whether or not there exists a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Islamic Just War Theory has a more complicated distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello than the distinction Walzer makes in Western Just War Theory. At times, it seems like Kelsay questions the distinction between the two, as he often poses questions, such as the following: ³When questionable or immoral behavior reaches a certain, difficult-to-specify point, it must be the case that people will ask: µWho will believe that your cause is just, when your behavior is so unjust?¶´ (Kelsay 220) Here he seems to be granting that distinctions may exist between the two, while arguing that violations in one raise questions about the other. However, on the other hand, in other parts of the book, Kelsay describes distinctions that are almost straight out of Walzer: ³Necessity, Shari¶a experts say, µmakes the forbidden things permitted.¶ In an emergency situation, a people cannot rely on publicly constituted leadership´ (Kelsay 136). This quote matches almost exactly Walzer¶s argument about necessity: That in cases of 5 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 emergency, the people can break the rules of war. The difference, of course, lies in what constitutes these cases of emergency. From Kelsay¶s description, a history of declaring emergency wars to save Islam seems to exist in the Islamic Just War tradition. This often fits in with the Islamic concept of ³imposed war.´ Osama bin Laden tried to invoke a case for such a war when justifying his call for attacks against the United States and the West. As Kelsay describes it, ³The argument of [bin Laden¶s] Declaration is more opaque on these matters. It might be read as a sort of µpure¶ emergency appeal, along the lines of Michael Walzer¶s famous discussion of supreme emergencies in the context of the just-war tradition... In connection with the Declaration, however, such an interpretation seems forced; and bin Laden¶s ³Letter´ makes no appeal to emergency, but rather focuses on the shared guilt of citizens in a democratic state and on the Islamic version of the law of retaliation.´ (Kelsay 150) Besides the difference Kelsay notes, bin Laden¶s Declaration differs from Walzer¶s necessity argument in other ways as well. First of all, the threat posed by the West to Islam differs from the threat posed by the Nazis to the rest of the world. The rest of the world saw the Nazis as threatening to conquer, subjugate, and disenfranchise them while committing atrocities, while Islam sees the West as threatening to destroy their religion and replace it with one filled with error and lawlessness. Without making any sort of value judgment about which sounds like a worse fate, we can safely say that these are two very different criteria for the necessity argument, yet they are still both criteria for the same necessity argument nonetheless. 6 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 Conclusion Western Just War Theory as described by Michael Walzer and Islamic Just War Theory as described by John Kelsay actually have many more similarities than they might first seem to have, at least when focusing on the narrow topic of necessity. In both, necessity provides an occasion to override the rules for fighting in war (jus in bello), because the cause (jus ad bellum) poses such an emergency that not winning would have extreme consequences. The differences arise in what these extreme consequences actually consist of. In Western Just War Theory, supreme emergency involves a Nazi-like threat that will take over the world and put everyone under a cruel yoke. In Islamic Just War Theory, supreme emergency involves an un-Islamic people who refuse to submit to God threatening to end Islam and preventing Muslims from being able to observe their religion properly. These hypothetical supreme emergencies differ greatly, yet people still invoke them for the same purpose: to delineate cases in which necessity would make it morally necessary to violate the rules of war. This shows how the concept of necessity can serve similar purposes across cultures, while varying in implementation. Perhaps the West and Islam shall someday come to an agreement as to what counts as a supreme emergency, but until then it shall suffice to note their differences. 7 Eric Gallager 11/29/11 PSTD 1010 Bibliography Kelsay, John. Arguing the Just War in Islam. Cambridge: Harvard University Press , 2007. Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars. Fourth Edition. New York: Basic Books, 2006. 8