In the light of the Israeli prime minister’s address to Congress this week and the incipient diplomatic agreement with Iran, Patrick Callahan’s post at RealClearReligion on the moral dimensions of an agreement with Iran on its nuclear development program. It provides food for thought.
I think that care must be taken in distinguishing between Iran’s nuclear development program and Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons. This statement:
One alternative would be the use of force. Any such use might be beyond moral justification. It may violate any number of the criteria in the just war framework. A full moral evaluation using the just war framework is beyond the limits of this contribution. Suffice it to say that it would fail the two most pragmatic. It would not have a reasonable chance of success in attaining its just ends. It would set back Iranian capabilities for only a year or two and it may even increase the regime’s will to acquire nuclear weapons.
fully conflates the two and I think Mr. Callahan makes a basic error. There is no moral obligation for any country to absorb mass casualties because of uncertainty.
I think there are other moral considerations which in the interests of clarity he should have at least touched on. For example, American leaders have more responsibility for the lives of Americans than they do for the lives of Iranians. That’s something that has been recognized in the treatment of just war theory for more than a millennium. That the Iranians have located many of their nuclear development facilities in their population centers was their moral decision not ours.
The preoccupation with precluding civilian casualties is a modern one; Augustine, the author of just war theory, did not have such illusions. Our greater abilities places a higher obligation on us to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties but they do not mean we must preclude them. When the only effective means that can ensure a just end could be expected to inflict mass civilian casualties does not render the means unjust. In this context “proportional” means proportional to the risk.
Let me give a hypothetical example. Let’s say that we have credible information that Iran is about to attack the United States with a nuclear weapon. Under those circumstances American leaders have not only a right but an obligation to preempt such an attack by any effective means including attacking all of Iran’s nuclear development and command and control facilities with nuclear weapons, if those are the only effective means, regardless of the civilian casualties that might be inflicted. There are a lot of “ifs” in that statement but the points I’m trying to emphasize are that:
- The use of powerful weapons is not inherently morally wrong. There’s nothing particularly special about nuclear weapons other than they’re very powerful.
- Civilian casualties are not inherently morally wrong.
- Preemptive war is not immoral. Preventive war, on the other hand, is almost always immoral.
- Political leaders have responsibilities that go beyond yours and mine.
To a realist, war is just another means of imposing your will upon an opponent. If the end is just, the means are just, and if the means are deemed unjust, the end must be deemed unjust.
Successfully eliminating Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons can be accomplished using several means, but many would reject them as unjust. The means that are deemed just will not accomplish the end.
As a realist, I offer two solutions. Accept a nuclear Iran, or recalibrate your moral system. For those who claim to be atheists, it is easy. You should have moved beyond good and evil. You simply recreate it in your own image. You own the moral universe. Act like it.
There are moral considerations even for foreign policy realists. For example, there is a moral obligation to use the least amount of force that can effect the end. Thinking otherwise is to deny that there is any role for morality in the relations between states.
You need to use the amount of force to break your opponents will to resist. This is almost always far exceeds the amount of force to simply win.
If you believe that the US Civil War was just, you should also believe that the South should have been subjected to another two to three years of a Sherman-like ravaging to break their will to resist. After, there would have been no Klan, and anybody suggesting its formation would have been lynched.
Few people would consider this to be just, but the realistic outcome would have been much more just. If you are going to resort to violence then you should resort to the maximum amount of violence not the minimum.
People assume that your minimum was actually your maximum, and then, they decide that it was not too bad. You, on the other hand, are tired of inflicting pain, and you are not naturally violent.
You have confused realism with being feral. “Foreign policy realism” is a term of art that means the recognition that countries, including our own, have real interests and pursue them. Normatively, it means that we should pursue our interests (in the sense of trade, freedom of the seas, alliances or other material interests) rather than trying to “make the world safe for democracy”, convert other countries to Chrisitianity, or other idealist goals.
I think the realist objection is that if Country A unjustly imposes its will on Country B, particularly through a belligerent act of war, then Country C, D, E, F, . . . etc. will align together against Country A, perhaps even attack it. This is because all states have a rational interest in survival (first) and material gain (second). By disturbing the status quo for its own material gain, Country A risks blowback from other states that have interest in survival as their highest priority.
Country A can reduce the risk of attacking Country B by particularizing the conflict: Country B was acting unjust by global standards, or Country B started the conflict, or Country B was a threat to Countries C, D, E, F . .. In other words, Country A doffs a moral posture, real or feigned, that lessens the anxieties of other states, and I seriously doubt feigned morality actually is effective.
Now granted it is not given that all countries will align against Country A. Some will determine their survival interest is improved by supplication to Country A and will become subservient to Country A. This, however, is most likely if Country C is already resource poor, economically dependent, and/or military weak. Country A can receive material gain from invading Country B and gaining compliance from a weak Country C, but it faces long-term threats from more significant actors.
Putting out a fire requires more than simply extinguishing the flames. If you only use enough effort to extinguish the flames, you will have created a much more dangerous situation. It would be better to allow the place to burn down completely while containing it.
The use of violence is no less dangerous. If you are going to use it, you do not allow the embers to continue to burn. Once you start the fire, you must fully extinguish the embers also. If you are not willing to finish the job, do not start it.
Prior to the 20th century, the just war theory worked because you had killed most of the enemy by the time you were victorious, and as opposed to prior times, you no longer killed or sold everybody into slavery. Today, we can take down a country in a few weeks.
Violence is feral. One of the reasons for military discipline is to counter the natural tendencies of human animals when inflicting violence.
If you only want to repel an attacker, you can limit your violence to match his, and as long as you can hold out, you will eventually wear him out. He will more than likely try again, and you will need to become stronger.
If you attack your attacker, you are back to the original problem. You need to break his will, and this is more than just getting him to stop shooting today. You need to convince him that trying to blow you up tomorrow will bring more pain to him than you.
War is about accomplishing with violence what cannot be accomplished with negotiations, debates, or politics. It is using violence to kill, maim, and destroy as much of your opponents people and property as is necessary to convince them that you are right and they are wrong.
War is about intentionally inflicting pain and suffering on other human beings, and once they have become fully convinced that you are right and they are wrong, you can stop. Until then, you keep upping the pain and suffering.
Sugarcoat it any way you like it, but that is the reality.
This would seem much more like a preventive war to me. The only way I really see us keeping them from obtaining nukes is to invade and occupy. Incredibly expensive. I think we can also be fairly sure it would provoke more attacks on us in places other than Iran. If you think the mullahs are mad enough to use nukes, then you should probably think that they are mad enough to shut down oil through the straits there.
What is so special about Iran that we feel the need to invade and occupy them to keep them from getting nukes when we did not do so for Russia, China, Pakistan, North Korea or anywhere else? Some people, sad to say, seems to believe that we could remake Iraq into a functional democracy sympathetic to the West. Anyone think we can do that with Iran? How long do we stay and what happens when we leave?
Steve
I believe that morality only applies to humans. Countries cannot act moral or immoral, but I will assume that they can for discussion.
Who gets to decide who is and who is not acting moral, and who gets to act to correct the immoral behavior?
Was the Iraq invasion moral? Was murdering Gaddafi to steal Libyan oil moral? Should the countries which perpetrated these crimes be punished? Should they be allowed to have an offensive military capability? If so, why?
Why is a nuclear Iran any more dangerous than the US? The US is apt to invade whomever has pissed-off the delusional hawks, neo-conservatives, paleo-liberals, and candidates lagging behind in the polls.
The democratically elected government in Ukraine is overthrown in a coup and replaced with a US & European backed government, and nobody asks who engineered this coup. The US/European backed government is corrupt with fascist elements, but somehow, this is overlooked. Where is the moral outrage?
While there are many countries a lot worse than the US, I hate to break the news to Americans, but your sh*t stinks. You have just gotten used to the smell. To everybody else, it smells like something crawled up your a$$ and died.