The Duties of Citizen and Soldier

When is aggressive war justifiable in Catholic social thought? An essay from The State in Catholic Thought, by Heinrich A. Rommen.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Heinrich A. Rommen

Under what conditions is an aggressive war justified as punishment for a violation of the international order or as a redress for an injury suffered? Defensive war offers fewer problems. We have already pointed out that the justice of the cause of war must be certain for the public authority. Hence, the other party, in the dispute is formaliter and materialiter in the wrong; its grave violation of a right or rule of the international order makes it guilty, legally and morally: the offense is an international delictum. Consequently, the war as ultima ratio of the enforcement of law then falls under the rules of vindictive justice. Precisely because of this fact, the state proceeding to war as vindicator must be certain about all the elements of guilt: evil intention or grave negligence, notorious illegality of the act that is declared to be a violation, and absence of any doubt about the material facts and about the legal rule that governs the case. The soldier who participates in such a war can generally rely upon the rightfulness of the decision by the public authority, as can the citizens.

The complication arises in territorial disputes or in such disputes as are usually enumerated in treaties of arbitration and mediation. These disputes may arise about existence, interpretation, and application of treaties between the parties to the dispute; about the existence and application of a rule of international law concerning the dispute; about the elements of a fact or about an act of one of the parties that, if proved to exist, would be a violation of an international obligation.²¹ It is implied in cases where there is no certainty about the justice and the legality of the object of the dispute or about prima facie guilt of one of the parties. To say that this is a good case for arbitration or mediation is no great help; for the real problem of war arises after one of the parties has declined any sort of legal settlement under the treaty or under positive international law because it contends that the question in dispute falls neither under the treaty nor under any commonly accepted positive rule of international law. Then only arises the crucial question of whether the party that proposed all peaceful means has now the right to enforce its contention by war. Of course, we must suppose that the whole matter is of such importance as to be proportionate to the unavoidable damages that any war causes. The difficulty seems to be that the dispute is originally similar to disputes of the civil law and of distributive or commutative justice, and not parallel to those of penal law and therefore of vindictive justice; and further, that in such disputes the certitude of the just cause is implicitly not complete and beyond any doubt, so that war would become the arbiter between parties which have no unquestionable and full right, although the right of one party may be better and more probable than that of the other and, in addition, both parties may be in good faith.

The decision would be that the state declining proposals of arbitration and mediation thus violates the international order because the very essence of peace and order presupposes the willingness to have disputes arbitrated or otherwise peacefully settled in justice and equity. The state that wantonly declines an arbitration or other peaceful settlement of the dispute commits an injury against the international order, an injury that, if grave enough, would give the other party in the dispute the right of resort to war as the only available way of settlement because in the international order as yet no superior power enforces the law. The just cause is, then, not so much the presumed or altogether certain justice of the claim of the one party, but the wanton refusal of the other party to settle the dispute peacefully. In this case the soldier and the citizen may rely upon the public authority because it has rightfully fulfilled all international obligations of law and morality.²²

A crucial case would be one in which both parties refuse to resort, or fail to resort, to arbitration or mediation at all. If in such a dispute the right of one party is more probable than that of the other party, has the former party the right to proceed to war? Here the authorities disagree. Suarez decides that the state with the better right may proceed to war, if after careful scrutiny a judge would have decided a similar dispute in favor of that state. Vasquez and Layman disagree. St. Alphonsus, though not rejecting Suarez’s opinion, concludes that in practice no just war ever occurred which rested on only probable and not certain rights. There is unanimity when the rights in the dispute are equally probable. Here there exists no cause for a just war without the intervention of arbitration and mediation. For the outcome would be a just war on both sides, which is monstrous.²⁴

What about the individual citizen’s conscience? First, let us repeat that the question concerns the justice of the war, not aggressive or defensive war. The problem would be simplified if it concerned only defensive war; for there is a strong presumption that a defensive war is just. But defensive war is presumably just not only because the general rule applies, that melior est conditio possidentis, or because it may be said that the status quo of peace has always the presumption of justice, or that in defensive war undoubted rights under the given status quo are always defended against unjust aggression. A just defensive war is also a realization of the international order of peace and justice; the attacked state not only defends itself and its rights but it likewise defends the international order, international justice and morality, on which the defended rights legally and morally rest. But defense of the international order is, in addition to the redress for an injury or the re-adjustment of an obviously unjust status quo, the function of an aggressive just war, too. The moral and legal justice of an aggressive war is far more complicated. Here, the difficulties for the individual conscience may arise. It is easy to say simply that nobody must participate in an unquestionably unjust aggressive war. But in reality, there are practically almost never such unequivocal cases. If, then, most cases are so complicated, how can the individual conscience come to its decision? To say that it may in all wars not openly and clearly unjust rely upon the decision of the public authority is obviously not a fully satisfactory solution.

Perhaps we may come nearer to the heart of the problem by the following reasoning. The best opportunities for the individual exist where there are freedom of the press and freedom of speech. They afford a chance for the issue to be presented broadly and objectively and for both sides to be heard. A good opportunity exists also where the representatives of the people have some control over the foreign policy of the government. Another favorable factor would be a constitutional provision that the most concentrated competence of sovereignty—the declaration of war—be exercised “by plebiscite or at least by resolution of representatives of the people.” And lastly, that “diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”

Only where these factors in some way operate, has the individual citizen an access to the elements of fact and of law that make the justice of the case. Where no freedom of speech and no freedom of the press exist, where the public authority is uncontrolled and the citizen is merely the subject of tendentious propaganda, he has hardly any access to the objective facts which constitute the truth and to the justice of the case, and must nolens volens rely upon authority. The more that international frictions may arise through the growth of international interdependence, the more should the opportunities for judgment of the individual citizen be increased by the general acceptance of the constitutional rights just mentioned. The more, too, should intellectual cooperation of nations, of international understanding between economic and cultural and religious communities, be promoted. And let us not forget that it is the acceptance by rulers and ruled of the universal rule of an equally universal morality that will afford the best chance for the individual conscience to decide upon justice and injustice. For we believe that dictators and dishonest cliques or ruthless pressure groups in more democratic states, can drive John Doe and Richard Roe into wars only because, by insincere “patriotic” propaganda, they are able to make them believe in the justice of their cause.

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This essay is taken from The State in Catholic Thought. Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.

The featured image is “The Battle of Long Island, a National Guard Heritage Painting by 21st century artist Domenick D’Andrea that was created for the National Guard Bureau. The painting depicts the Delaware Regiment at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776.” Painted circa 2004. This file is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.