Applying lessons from the ethics of war to President Trump’s attack on Iran
War tends to undermine critical thinking. As Bertrand Russell once said, “The evils of war are almost always greater than they seem to excited populations at the moment when war breaks out.” So, let’s take a deep breath and assess the morality of the Iran war by employing the conceptual apparatus developed by centuries of ethical reflection. Here I want to remind readers of both the just war tradition and the tradition of pacifism and nonviolence—traditions of moral thought that are considered in much more detail in my recent book with Jennifer Kling, Can War Be Justified? A Debate.
In general, war is not easily justified, atrocities are difficult to prevent, and the anticipated benefits of war rarely outweigh the suffering that war produces. Peace is not created by engines of destruction. Rather, progress toward a better world requires that we refuse to treat humans beings as objects to be obliterated. This is true whether we are considering American or Iranian war-fighting. The moral evaluation of war is not about us or them. Rather, it is about right and wrong.
Defense, Preemption, and Revenge
Writing here as an American, my focal point is the American case for war, as articulated by President Trump in his video address explaining the attacks on Iran. The President announced several goals and offered an escalating series of rationales, each of which is more dangerous and more difficult to justify.
The President began by suggesting the attack on Iran would be a defensive and preemptive war: “to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats.” Defensive war is the primary rationale for justified warfare in the just war tradition. States are permitted to respond to attacks with defensive force. It is also widely held that states are permitted to preempt imminent threats. However, the case for preemption is more difficult to make than the case for defense against aggressive attack.
The President’s case for preemptive war also pointed in the direction of what scholars call “preventive war.” He listed a number of atrocities committed by Iran and its proxies, as evidence of the threat posed by the Iranian “terrorist regime.” There is no doubt that the Iranian regime is responsible for atrocity, including the slaughter of thousands of protesters in Iran last month. The list of Iranian atrocities is relevant to the case for preventive war, as it shows a pattern in Iran’s past actions. But preventive war is even harder to justify than preemptive war, as we’ll see in a moment.
There is a risk, moreover, that outrage over past atrocities will provoke a war of revenge that responds to atrocity with further atrocity. The just war tradition aims to prevent the escalatory spiral of revenge. The threat of escalation also occurs when casualties are incurred and the war aim is linked to a desire to avenge these deaths. It is natural to desire that our soldiers should not die in vain. But this way of thinking can become self-justifying. After wars begin, the rationale shifts to avenging deaths caused by the war itself. The problem of the “sunk-cost fallacy” kicks in and we continue to fight because we are already fighting.
Preventive War, Humanitarian Intervention, and Regime Change
The President warned that Iranian long-range missiles “could soon reach the American homeland.” Trump said he was going to “annihilate” and “obliterate” Iranian military power, while ensuring that Iran will “never have a nuclear weapon.” This is “preventive war,” aimed at eliminating hypothetical threats before they become imminent. In the scholarship on the ethics of war, preventive war is problematic. War may be justified preemptively, if we are certain that an attack is imminent. But preventive war introduces the threat of escalation based upon uncertain and hypothetical concerns. Preventive war is perilous because it kills in the name of speculative threats.
President Trump further encouraged members of the Iranian armed forces to “lay down their arms” or “face certain death.” He said he was presenting the Iranian people with an opportunity to rise up and seize power. This shifted the justification toward “humanitarian intervention” and “regime change.” Humanitarian intervention may be justified in order to defend people against their own governments. Scholars argue that major powers have a “responsibility to protect”: those who have the power to prevent atrocities should act to do so. This is a reasonable idea. And Iran’s slaughter of its own citizens is relevant. But humanitarian intervention is difficult, and it often leads to “regime change,” which is what Trump is suggesting here. Regime change is exceedingly difficult to accomplish, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is likely impossible without extended occupation and a substantial effort at reconstruction.
Crusading Warfare
Another rationale for war implicit in the President’s speech was a kind of religious justification. Trump asked God to protect American soldiers and said “with His help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.” He concluded by invoking God’s blessings. It is fairly typical of political leaders to invoke God when going to war. The gravity of war points in this direction. However, it is worth noting that there is a risk of crusading wars. The crusading spirit appears when we view the enemy as evil. Trump said of the Iranians in his speech, “They just wanted to practice evil.” This kind language can lead to excessive violence.
Defensive or preemptive warfare is quite different from a war against evil or a war in God’s name. I am not suggesting that Trump is actually declaring a crusade. But Trumpianism is linked to the call for religious revival and the rise of Christian nationalism (as I discuss here). In his recent State of the Union speech, the President touted what he called a “tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God.” It remains to be seen how religious justifications for the war in Iran will play out. But we should note that the just war tradition emerged as a critique of the violence of the Crusades. Crusading wars tend to foster excessive violence, as righteous warriors engage in eschatological battles about religious ideology.
World Peace?
Finally, it is worth considering a further rationale provided by President Trump, which is the goal of creating world peace. In a social media post celebrating the killing of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, the President added a further goal to the prior rationales of defensive, preemptive, and humanitarian war. He wrote:
The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!
This may appear to be a noble idea: to create peace in the Middle East and in the world. But pacifists have long pointed out the absurdity of building peace by way of obliteration (a word that Trump seems to use quite often). This would be the “peace of the graveyard.” One way to create peace, after all, is to kill everyone. But peace by obliteration is obviously immoral. It is worrying that the President says here that the killing will continue “as long as necessary” to create peace in the world. This might mean that we will kill until there is no one left to fight back.
The scholarship of peace suggests a distinction between negative peace and positive peace that can help us think about Trump’s grandiose objective of world peace. “Negative peace” is a state in which there is no direct or overt violence. We see negative peace when there is a truce, a cease-fire, détente, or stalemate: the killing stops even though enmity and hostility may remain. This war will likely end with some kind of truce or stalemate, which is worth considering as a reasonable outcome. But “positive peace” is much deeper and more robust: it includes mutual respect, justice, hospitality, and even love. When poets and prophets dream of “peace on earth” or “world peace” they typically aspire toward something like positive peace.
Positive peace is not obtainable by way of obliteration. Reflecting the wisdom of the pacifist tradition, Barry Gan has explained, “peace can only be sought by peaceful means.” Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way in his 1967 Christmas sermon: “If we are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere.” And the U.N. Secretary General said of the Iran war, “Lasting peace can only be achieved through peaceful means.”
War obliterates enemies; but it does not convert or persuade them. Positive peace requires a change of heart and a transformed way of being. War cannot change hearts or transform thinking. It only aims at coercion. In order to accomplish this, it produces suffering and death. And it is not only the soldiers who suffer and die. Civilians are killed. Children are orphaned. Institutions are decimated. Infrastructure is destroyed. And even among victorious soldiers there is post-traumatic stress and “moral injury.” Genuine, positive peace must be achieved by nonviolent means.
Critical Thinking and the Critique of War
Much more could be said about the ethics of war and peace. I discuss these issues in more detail in The Just War Myth, in my Stanford Encyclopedia article on “Pacifism,” in my book, Transformative Pacifism, and in my book with Jennifer Kling.
We could also say more about the politics of President Trump’s war against Iran. Some critics have suggested that this war is a distraction from domestic political problems or that Trump is somehow trying to enrich himself through this war. Others have complained that Congress has not been consulted, and that this unilateral war subverts the international community and violates international law.
Those critiques are relevant. But the moral questions are different from the political, legal, and pecuniary questions. My goal here has been to think carefully about President Trump’s explicit rationale for war. As this war unfolds, we all need to think more carefully about the difficult moral question of the justification of war.