John Robson: Gone Are the Days When Careful Thought Was Put Into Waging Just War

Ukrainian State Emergency Service firefighters put out a fire at a house destroyed in a Russian shelling in a residential neighbourhood in Kherson, Ukraine, on July 1, 2023. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

Commentary

When the Canadian prime minister shows up at a NATO conference with empty pockets, then criticizes his allies for giving cluster munitions to Ukraine as the wrong kind of help, it’s tempting to tune him out. But just as an alcoholic might be right that you drink too much, you should sometimes read a message even while grimacing at the messenger.

Back when people made some effort to base policy on principle, they gave much thought to waging just war. And it was broadly divided into two heads in Latin because it was so long ago. (In those supposedly dirty, ignorant, vicious Middle Ages, actually.) On the one hand is ius ad bellum, justice in going to war at all. And on the other ius in bello, justice in conducting the war.

Some people think it was not ius ad bellum for the West to help Ukraine when it was attacked by Russia. And clearly if a war is wrong in principle, for instance Hitler invading Poland, there’s no good way to fight it. Or is there?

Would we not regard the massacre of civilians as compounding the evil of starting even an unjust fight? And while Godwin’s Law warns us against too much Hitler in debates, he does clearly illustrate many things that are absolutely and totally evil, including both why he started wars and how he then fought them. So whether or not you support Ukraine’s self-defence, and most Western nations’ efforts to help, you can legitimately ask whether cluster munitions are ius in bello in its particular circumstances, or any.

Of course, there are people who think war is never or almost never justified. Some disingenuously raise specific objections to any particular conflict, or its conduct, when their real objection is fighting ever for anything. But others are forthrightly pacifist, including Christians who claim the injunction to turn the other cheek means never meeting violence with violence.

I think the injunction to render unto Caesar overrides that one on war. As did George Bernard Shaw’s “Chesterbelloc,” the friends and fellow Christian apologists G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc.

The former accused pacifists of sharing with militarists the deplorable idea that strength must not be resisted, calling them “the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society” because “They preach that if you see a man flogging a woman to death you must not hit him. I would much sooner let a leper come near a little boy than a man who preached such a thing.”

The latter dispatched the matter in a couplet: “Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight/ But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.” In 1938, which surely gives it added force, Godwin or no Godwin. But even if you agree, including on Ukraine today, and mock Trudeau, you must weigh the key ius in bello argument against cluster munitions, that their significant failure rate poses serious long-lasting danger to civilians.

Of course, World War I single-blast shells also had a significant failure rate and are still detonating today. The Commonwealth cemetery in Loos, France, was even called “Dud Corner” for all the unexploded munitions found while preparing the site. And we somehow lost one of the literal “mines” packed with explosives to blast the Germans off Passchendaele’s Messines Ridge in 1917, which they did, and it might erupt at any moment, or never. But conquest by malevolent foes also poses serious long-lasting danger to civilians. Ask Poland’s Jews.

So for supporters of defending Ukraine, cluster bombs require a prudential judgement. Is the overall civilian risk greater, all things considered, if they are used than if not? Which in turn depends, significantly, on what other choices Ukraine has. They are too few.

All nations, including the United States, have made the surprising discovery there that modern mass conflict strongly resembles 20th-century war including its voracious appetite for shells, and no Western nation has sufficient stocks even for Ukraine, let alone other potential battles. But as so often, Canada is out in front here and not in a good way.

Perhaps it’s partly because Justin Trudeau secretly thinks all war illegitimate. But it’s not about him. It’s about cluster munitions. Except it is about him because, if Ukraine must use them for want of sufficient alternatives, those of its allies who forgot to have armies, so would love to help but can’t, bear heavy responsibility for changing the circumstances in ways that decisively alter the moral case.

If cluster munitions are better than surrender or defeat, and enough one-off shells that would be better still are not available, it is we who are committing inius in bello by our inability to supply Ukraine with such shells.

All due to our culpable modern failure to think through when to fight, and how.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.