Peace and War
The moral conditions for a just war; the rights and limits of belligerents; the duty to seek peace and the conditions under which armed force may be morally employed.
Peace — the tranquillity of order, the right ordering of society under justice and charity — is the natural goal of political life and the greatest of earthly goods. War is the supreme disorder and may be morally justified only under the strict conditions of the just war doctrine (St. Augustine, St. Thomas): just cause (actual grave injustice to be remedied), right intention (to restore justice, not for conquest or revenge), legitimate authority (declared by the proper public authority), last resort (all peaceful means have been exhausted), and proportionate means (the damage inflicted must not exceed the injustice repaired and must not include direct targeting of non-combatants). Even in a justified war, belligerents retain all obligations of the natural law toward civilians, prisoners, and the wounded. The duty to seek peace is absolute; the permission to wage war is strictly conditional.
a) Peace
Peace may be defined as a state of concord, order, and security among nations. It is a positive thing, not to be defined as a mere absence of war. Peace is a term applicable also to a single civil society when its citizens and its governing power are working harmoniously together with mutual trust. Further, peace is the state of the individual man whose life is lived in accordance with the requirements of law, when his conscience is tranquil, his mind and heart unperturbed, yet manfully active. True peace comes to the individual, and through him to the nation and the world, by his steady effort to achieve his last end by the knowledge, love, and service of God in the practice of the true religion. Peace is not mere quiet, it is not inactivity, it is not repose, it is not laziness. On the contrary, it is found in activity, in free human activity conducted in accordance with the requirements of justice and charity, and marked by prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Peace is the greatest earthly good for which men or nations may strive; it is the essential condition of true development; it is the soul of security; it is the foundation of justice. When God came as Man to save the world, He came as the Prince of Peace, and His peace was given to men of good will. Good will means willingness to work for the attaining of the end for which life was given. Good will is not the mark of the man who is content to sit with folded hands; it is rather the mark of him who is ready to be up and doing, not with the unnatural fever of mere external action, but with the prudent and persevering effort to live life in all acts as it should be lived. And to such a man is peace apportioned. The Prince of Peace commanded men to watch and pray, to be alert for the doing of good, to rely upon the help of heaven. This does not mean an alertness of eye or body, but an alertness of soul and mind and heart. Such alertness is best cultivated in the aloofness from the distraction that comes from sin and from inordinate efforts exercised in the quest of material goods. One must not think, therefore, that the life of the recluse, the hermit, the contemplative, is a lazy life, or an inactive life: on the contrary, it is a life of the greatest alertness and of the most active strides in the direction of the last end. As peace in the home is an inestimable blessing, as peace in the civil society is the joy of all families, so peace in the world is an unbounded good to all nations. Nations, therefore, have the right and the duty to foster peace. And peace is not fostered by mere sentimental talk; it is not fostered by the evasions of diplomatists; it is not fostered by jealousies, suspicions, emulations. Peace is fostered by the cultivation of Christian morality. We must leave the statement for the apologist to prove, for it is outside the province of Ethics to deal with the matter in any detail; yet the fact truly is that men and nations will continue to cry “Peace, Peace!” where there is no peace, until they learn to seek it at the feet of the Prince of Peace and in His Church.
b) War
War is defined as a condition of armed and active hostility between two or more nations. War is distinguished from rebellion, which is an unlawful uprising of citizens against their government ; from revolution, which is a justified resistance against tyranny; and from the public conflict called civil war; for war is a conflict between nations. Wars are divided into just and unjust, offensive and definsive. (i) A just war is one that fulfills the conditions necessary to make war a lawful undertaking. We shall discuss these conditions in a moment. (2) An unjust war is one that fails to meet the requisite conditions. (3) An offensive war is one that is undertaken without provocation for the purpose of injuring or destroying another State, or for the purpose of enrichment at the expense of another State. Offensive wars are always unlawful. (4) A defensive war is one that is undertaken upon provocation to protect the rights of citizens or to uphold the honor of the State. We must notice that it is not always the offensive party that first declares war; war may be first declared by the party of the defence. The first offence may be in the nature of acts of hostility and injustice done before war is declared and enduring in their effects to that time. The conditions necessary for a just war are the following : (1) War must be declared by competent authority, for a just cause, and it must be undertaken with an honest intention. The last named requirement warns us that a war—granted the cause is just and that it is declared by competent authority—is rendered unjust if undertaken for revenge, lust for power, hatred of the opponent, etc. (2) War must be the last resource, undertaken only when all other means of settlement have been found unavailing. (3) The war must offer a reasonable prospect of success; else war would be a greater evil than the wrongs it seeks to right. (4) War must be conducted in a manner approved by civilized peoples. Hence, there must be no wanton slaughter or destruction which has no direct effect on the outcome of the war; there must be no direct killing or maltreatment of noncombatants, there must be no use of inhuman and barbarous methods, such as the poisoning of wells and streams, the using of envenomed weapons, the poisoning of the air by noxious gases; there must be no use of means that are intrinsically evil and against the natural law, such as lies, perjury, inciting to treason, etc.; there must be no continuation of hostile acts after an armistice or peace has been declared. War is licit when all the conditions mentioned are met. For, just as an individual has the right to repel force with force, just as a man may defend himself, under certain conditions, by the indirect slaying of his unjust aggressor, so may a nation defend itself. Now, the only means available to a nation for repelling force with force is war. Again, the State has the duty of self-preservation and of defending the rights of its citizens; and it is clear that there are times when this duty cannot be performed by a State without repelling unjust aggression, i. e., without waging war. Hence wars are sometimes licit. But, however lawful, wars are certainly regrettable. To prevent the great evils that wars inflict upon the peoples of the world, the establishment of an international tribunal has long been thought of, and more than once attempted, as a court before which nations could adjust their difficulties without recourse to war. Many have been of the opinion—and of these a great number are non-Catholics—that the Sovereign Pontiff, the Pope, should be the president of such a tribunal. Leibnitz declares: “If we wish to recover the golden age, a tribunal must be established to settle the wars of princes, and at the head of this body the Pope should be placed, as one who aforetime was truly the judge among Christian powers.” Our World Courts and Peace Conferences are beset with difficulties ; and, according to recent writings of journalistic but, in the main, reliable character, the nations of Europe, great and small, are even now diligently preparing for another war. It is doubtful, to say the least, whether Courts and Conferences will hold back the storm when the time comes for it to break; but we have reason to think that a truly universal international tribunal, with the Holy Father as President, would have an effect in the prevention of wars such as no other Court or Congress could hope to achieve.