Neta C. Crawford
Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University
Just War Theory and Counter-Terror War: An Evaluation and Critique 

            I. Is this a Just War? The Bush Administration claims that its counter-terror war is just — begun in self-defense as a response to an unprovoked attack, and waged justly.  "The Americans who conduct those operations are a tough and proud bunch.  Their cause is a just one. It's to stop terrorists from killing Americans and others."[i]  The administration also claims that this is a new kind of "asymmetric" war, and the US must be prepared for new ways of fighting. But can the counter-terror war be just?  And is just war theory any longer, if it ever was, an appropriate way to morally evaluate the questions of resort to and conduct of war?

            The just war tradition proposes that we evaluate and limit war in two respects.  Very roughly, jus ad bellum limits on war are about how to evaluate whether going to war is just.  A just war in this respect is waged in self-defense, to promote peace, as last resort, under right authority, with a probability of success, and proportionately.  Jus in bello limits on war's conduct concern discrimination — avoiding and limiting damage to non-combatants — and proportionality, or ensuring that the destruction is in proportion to the aims war. Just war theory thus assumes and accepts the inevitability of war and poses criteria for fighting justly, assuming that such a thing is possible.

            II. Counter-Terror War Is Not and Cannot be Just.  The Bush administration is correct when it says this is a new kind of conflict. But, because the nature of war (and society) have changed, the administration is not correct when it argues that the counter-terror war is just.  Indeed it is extremely difficult for any counter-terror war to be just. Specifically, modern urban industrial and post-industrial societies whose infrastructures are concentrated and dependent on a few key resources of transport, energy, and information are always vulnerable to terrorism.  As the Bush administration admits, there is no way to protect all the assets of a modern state at all times: there is no way to be absolutely secure: "the problem with terrorism is that there is no way to defend against the terrorists at every place and every time against every conceivable technique. Therefore, the only way to deal with the terrorist network is to take the battle to them."[ii] On the other hand, terrorists have certain military advantages over states that fight conventionally.  Terrorists do not need to concentrate their forces, they can piggy-back on their target's transportation infrastructure and communications technology (which imposes a limit on how much they can destroy before they lose the infrastructure they are parasites on), and they have the element of surprise.  Further, one can never be sure who is a terrorist and when you have defeated them. 

            These three conditions — the vulnerability of modern states/economies, the military advantages of terrorists in those environments, and the potential ubiquity of terrorists — combined tithe fact that US political and military leaders believe in the utility of military force have led war planners to two conclusions.  First, counter-terrorism must be ever vigilant since terrorists can strike any time, anywhere, with devastating impact.  As Bush argues: "In defending the peace, we face a threat with no precedent. Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger the American people and our nation. The attacks of September the 11th required a few hundred thousand dollars in the hands of a few dozen evil and deluded men."[iii]  This leads to permanent mobilization and permanent war, along ever expanding dimensions.   As Secretary Rumsfeld said: "we intend to pursue it [the war] until such time as we're satisfied that those terrorist networks don't exist.  That they have been destroyed."[iv] 

            Second, counter-terror logic leads to the equation of pre-emption with self-defense and prevention.  "The only way to deal with the terrorists that has all the advantage of offense is to take the battle to them, and find them, and root them out.  And that is self-defense.  And there is no question that any nation on earth has the right of self-defense.  And we do.  And what we are doing is going after those people, and those organizations, and those capabilities wherever we're going to find them in the world, and stop them from killing Americans."[v]

            But a permanent counter-terror war probably cannot be just.  First, in terms of jus ad bellum criteria of just cause, a doctrine of preemption is not self-defense, nor is it last resort.  Second, a counter-terror strategy that primarily relies on military force is unlikely to succeed.  Third, the conduct of counter-terror war is unlikely to be just because it is extremely difficult to reliably discriminate between non-combatants and terrorists, even with smart bombs.  It often difficult tell who is a terrorist and who is not.  Further, terrorists are often "co-located" with non-combatants, and indeed sometimes use them as shields.

            III. Roots and Consequences of the Counter-Terror War Mentality and Strategy. The US military was headed toward the policies of permanent war and pre-emption before the September 11, 2001 attacks.  Why?  And what are the consequences of a permanent war?

            There are three basic reasons the US was headed toward permanent war before the terrorist assault.  First, despite build-downs and even the end of Cold War, the United States has never fully demobilized since World War II.  As a consequence, there is tremendous inertia in the institutions, habits and ways of thinking associated with war and cold war.  Further, ethnic and political conflicts that smoldered during the cold war, or were fueled by it (e.g. Bosnia and Kosovo, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait) erupted in the 1990s, precisely when the US was considering a major demobilization.  Second, with its rising economic might and sense of political/military superiority, the US has gradually come to understand its military mission as the search for total security.  Small threats loom large and the overall threat, when it could not be clearly identified, became uncertainty.  The US has sought to control instability and uncertainty.  Third, changes in the social and economic organization of the world has led to a greater understanding of the possibilities and vulnerabilities of "asymmetric war."  That is, precisely when the US has less to fear from large conventionally armed and nuclear equipped states, globalization and greater interconnectedness led to the sense of increased US vulnerability to small powers and individuals.  The evidence for these three forces can be found in the military reviews and force plans undertaken since the end of the Cold War: in the Bottom Up Review completed in 1993, the Quadrennial Reviews of 1997 and 2001 and in the Nuclear Posture reviews of 1994 and 2002.  The quest for total security culminated in the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, where the Bush administration articulated a nuclear preemptive strike doctrine, and in Bush's West Point Speech, where he stated a conventional pre-emptive strike doctrine.  Now US policy looks rather like South Africa's military doctrine of the 1970s and 1980s, (inspired by the work of the French counter-insurgency theorist André Beaufré) known as the "total strategy", but which was really a total war strategy.

            The consequences of total war at home are increased military spending, surpassing all major rivals combined, and decreased social spending (which fits the conservative's social agenda).  National debt will eventually increase, as will the domestic militarization.  Abroad, US military strategy, combined with its unilateralism and contempt for the international accords reached threatens to create greater isolation of the US and perhaps even coalitions against it.  A former President Carter wrote recently: "Peremptory rejections of nuclear arms agreements, the biological weapons convention, environmental protection, anti-torture proposals, and punishment of war criminals have sometimes been combined with economic threats against those who might disagree with us. These unilateral acts and assertions increasingly isolate the United States from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism."[vi]

            IV. How to Exit Counter-Terror Logic.  The Administration's logic seems inescapable if the world really is one where threats are ubiquitous, where the US is constantly vulnerable, and if terrorists actually backed down in the face of threats.  The way out of this logic is to reject its premises.  While self-defense might be justified, the US has gone beyond self-defense in a futile search for total security.  Pre-emption and permanent war are not just, nor will they necessarily be successful. The next step is to redefine the problem of terrorism and counter-terrorism from war to politics, economics, criminality, and culture.  In other words, a total response is necessary, but it should not be violent.  An agenda of development, democracy, law enforcement, and understanding will both protect the United States to the extent it is possible to protect it, and avoid the counter-productive and illegitimate effects of permanent and pre-emptive total war strategies. The first step is thus discrediting the present policy. The next step for a nascent peace movement should be reframing the threat and offering credible alternatives to war.

            V. Why Just War Theory is Still Useful.  Interactions with John Ladd, Iris Young, Carol Cohn, and, especially, Sally Ruddick have convinced me that all conversations about just war theory need to admit that there are some things potentially and profoundly dangerous about the approach. Simply put, just war theory makes three mistakes.

            First, it assumes that there are such things as just wars.  Critics of just war theory argue that the use of force in war cannot ever be justified.  War is wrong, period.  Second, if we are to grant that some wars are just and use just war theory as the criteria for evaluating the justness of wars, we open ourselves up to an abuse of casuistry.  Because the criteria for just wars are so slippery and open to manipulation, all political leaders can and will claim that their wars are just.  But not all wars are just.  Moreover, once someone claims that their war is just, moral absolutism and extremism in the conduct of war become more likely.  In a perverse logic, the perception and conviction that your side is in the right makes the use of military might acceptable, indeed required.  Third, just war theory does not sufficiently address war prevention.

            These are powerful critiques to which I have two responses.  First, at a moral level, I agree that war is in almost every instance wrong. That said, wars of self-defense seem to me to be legitimate.  Which leaves the problems of defining self-defense, and of getting states to limit their uses of force to self-defense. If all states did so, as Randy Forsberg has argued for many years, war would no longer be practiced.  But this raises a deeper question, over the long run, of how to create the culture of peace where individuals and states see respect for difference and others as their first obligation.  Developing this culture of peace should be at least half of the work of any peace movement.

            The second response is at a political level.  Because the just war tradition (and its correlates in international law, e.g. see the Geneva Conventions) is the starting point of most contemporary thinking about the just cause and just conduct of war, most arguments about war must reckon with it. That is, because the just war tradition is the starting point for moral evaluation of war, prudent political actors can use just war discourse to highlight the hypocrisy of present state practices.  To use just war theory in this way is not to accept forever the just war framework, but to engage in a political conversation where just war theory already implicitly and sometimes explicitly sets the terms of public debate and is understood as relevant by a wide range of political actors.  In sum, just war theory can be used subversively, not just to rationalize war.  There might be practical arguments against counter-terror war — that it is ineffective, or worse, counter-productive — but adding moral arguments to an anti-war discourse is an important strategic move.  We are thus able to start where people are and move the conversation to another level, in the immediate present. This seems vitally important, since constraining the war machine now does save lives.