Perpetual War

The Injustice of Even Contemplating War in Syria

As the war drums beat over Syria the controversy about casus belli rises again.  What are the just causes for going to war?  In the Western tradition what constitutes a just cause for war has become inflated significantly in the past two hundred years.  We see the fruits of that inflation in the debates swirling in the United States at present over Syria. 

The notion of a just war is rooted in Christian doctrine and in the first Christendom.  Whilst the idea of a just war is inherently right, the details can be diabolical.  Who or what determines what is just?  When you have medieval and post-medieval rulers fixated upon their own vanities the concept of justice can be stretched to cover a mountain of vainglory.  Any insult to the Sun-King of the day becomes intolerable; to punish the malefactors becomes cast as an act of retributive justice.  Therefore, to be genuinely so, the doctrine of a just war must be grounded in a higher law which defines wherein justice actually lies, not in the vanity of vainglorious rulers or nations. 

The situation got noticeably worse during the time of doctrines of the divine right of kings.
  King Henry VIII, for example, was an absolutist tyrant--his malefaction justified by the pernicious idea that he was God's highest representative upon earth, and therefore the absolute ruler over church and state.  Wars under such misconceptions become manifestly unjust, and that very quickly.

The Christian concept of a just war can be neatly summarised, on the one hand, and tied to the teachings of Holy Scripture, on the other, by the doctrine of "clear and present danger".  The phrase is regnant with significance.  A clear danger is one which is beyond doubt.  It is a danger not hypothetical, contingent, or theoretical.  It is self-evident.  It is a danger which threatens life and limb of citizens. It is a danger that even the cats and dogs can see. A present danger is one which is confronting a nation immediately, not contingently or potentially. 

The concept of a just war being tied to the doctrine of a clear and present danger means that wars ought  always to be defensive in nature. 

In modern and post-modern times the justification for war has expanded way beyond the strictures of a just war based upon a clear and present danger.  There are two additional doctrines which have overtaken the restrictive, yet inherently just, concept of defensive war.  The first is a war to defend national interests.  The second is a war in the name of humanity or human rights (that is, a humanitarian war). 

Many wars in recent times have been waged to defend US interests.  Since the US is the only remaining superpower, it has interests all over the show; consequently, under the doctrine of warring to protect national interests, one can expect that the US will be at war somewhere in the world all the time.  And so it has proved to be.  The doctrine of warring to protect national interests is really a continuation of the nineteenth century nationalistic imperialist doctrines.  It is also inherently corrupt.  Who, pray tell, determines where the national interests really lie?  National interests of the many immediately parley into the commercial interests of some.  The war powers of the state become applied to defend the commercial interests of the nation's plutocrats. 

Hence, in the case of the recent wars in Iraq there was plenty of evidence that the West was thinking of its commercial interests in protecting its supplies of oil as the fundamental driver of war.  The fact that senior members of government had long-standing commercial interests in the region made the optics much, much worse.  Justifying war to defend (or promote) national interests is a pernicious concept.  It is a ghastly hangover from the period of Western imperialism where might made right and where pride was to be protected.  Wars waged to defend national interests are inherently immoral and unjust. 

The second modern justification is going to war to defend human rights, or in the name of humanitarian ideals.  This pernicious doctrine has been the stock-in-trade of the progressive movement in the West; it is regnant in the United Nations, and it now rules the war doctrine of the United States.  It turns the US into an international policeman, a Redeemer of mankind.  It is the most useless and empty justification for war imaginable.  For, in almost every case, it leaves the particular nation unfortunate enough to suffer the depredations of a humanitarian war far, far worse off. Wars in the name of humanity can destroy; they are powerless to build, restore, and reclaim.  They can tear down, but fail to built up.

Moreover, wars waged in the name of humanitarian concerns and human rights are always erratic and hypocritical.   A classic example is the current intention of the United States government to go to war in Syria.  Why Syria, and why now?  The purported provocation is the use of poisonous gas.  Apparently killing children with poison gas is beyond the pale.  Terrible as it has been, why now?  The civil war being brutally waged in Syria has killed north of  100,000 people, many of them non-combatant women and children.  Do they not count?  Are they not just as dead?  Are their human rights nothing?  Why does 400 children killed by poison gas become a cause c'elebre for human rights to be protected and avenged, but many thousands slaughtered in an ongoing civil war be regarded as "see no evil, hear no evil".  Hypocrisies necessarily abound because man cannot remove evil from this fallen world.  Evil is ubiquitous, and mankind is not the redeemer: he is the problem. 

Wars in the name of human rights are riddled with inconsistencies, cant, and hypocrisy.  Therefore, they themselves are inherently unjust. 

As long as the war doctrines of defending national interests and protecting human rights are clutched to the bosoms of nations there will be no ending of wars and rumours of wars.  And the US, being the last super-power, will be at war all the time. 

If the question is asked, Does the situation in Syria represent a clear and present danger to the United States? the answer is self-evidently negative.  To consider war for a moment in such a case is wrong and unjust.  But if it were asked, Does the Syrian situation represent a threat to American interests?, or Does it represent a violation of humanitarian ethics? the answer can always be made affirmatively on both counts. 

When these doctrines are applied, the United States becomes like Sauron who would always have his wars.