What Should a Christian Realist Presume about War? 1

The Spirit of the NCR

While Niebuhr’s approach to war is occasionally glossed as a thin form of pragmatism, Niebuhr’s position is more robust than these depictions would suggest. Niebuhr was not (as is much of just-war thinking) primarily concerned with producing deontic standards for governing war because he was doubtful of the power of deontic standards in an ever-changing world, and was loath to endorse rules independent of the virtues that enable people to make proper judgments about the world.

Distinctions must be made. But the judgments with which we make them are influenced by passions and interests, so that even the most obvious case of aggression can be made to appear a necessity of defence; and even a war which is judged by neutral opinion to be wholly defensive cannot be waged with completely good conscience because the situations out of which wars arise are charged with memories of previous acts of aggression on the part of those now in defence. ¹²

Niebuhr’s work was primarily about shaping the perspective of persons and warning them of the pitfalls that came with abandoning the complexity of reality in favor of an imposed systematic clarity. ¹³

Niebuhr thought all moral judgments ought to be shaped by a sense of the tragedy of history. For Niebuhr, it is impossible within history to live up to the true standard of goodness. ¹⁴ Through the lens of Christianity, Niebuhr drew an analysis of human nature that saw the ultimate telos of humanity in perfectly loving God and neighbor—i.e. the activity of fulfilling the needs of all neighbors in need. ¹⁵ This ideal activity is constantly frustrated within history.

As sinners, we always act with an admixture of egoistic and altruistic motives. But even when other-oriented, our actions fall short of the absolute demands of divine love, which is only satisfied when it produces a perfect harmony of life with life. As I write this article, hopefully contributing to reflection on the morality of violent conflict, I am simultaneously not out working to feed the hungry of my society. When I do go to work at the local food bank, my actions may contribute to enabling idleness in some recipients who would be motivated to contribute more to society if support of the food bank were not present. From the perspective of perfect love, my actions are always ambiguous. Echoing Niebuhr, Miroslav Volf writes:

given the nature of human interaction, every pursuit of justice not only rests on partial injustice but also creates new injustices. In an ongoing relationship, as the temporal and spatial contexts of an offense are broadened to give an adequate account of it, it becomes clear that any action we undertake now is inescapably ambiguous, at best partially just and therefore partially unjust. ¹⁶

My divinely given nature is not fulfilled by any of these partially just activities, and I ought not to feel completely satisfied with any of these activities. So long as any neighbors continue to suffer, all remain incomplete. There are ways to determine what to do in such circumstances, but whatever mechanism one deploys, it is a matter of picking and choosing whom to serve. This is exactly what love refuses to tolerate. Love, Niebuhr writes, ‘makes an end of the nicely calculated less and more of structures of justice’. ¹⁷

Within this general context, what stands out about war is not the uniqueness of its moral character, but rather the way in which it makes explicit the tragedy implicit in all human action. War is, for Niebuhr, ‘a final revelation of the very character of human history’. ¹⁸

War is a special instance of the ongoing tragedy of history. In times of war, the ‘good’ human being is caught between the urge to provide help to some neighbors and the urge to avoid self-assertion in harming other neighbors. When the enemy soldier aims a gun at you, you must choose whether you are going to protect the lives of those the enemy soldier will kill (and live to return to service to your family) or allow your enemy to live. Humanity is broken in war.

The starkness of human tragedy in times of war leads us to properly locate war as a last resort. But it does not make war fundamentally different from other human activities. Carl von Clausewitz was right to say that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Social life requires the prudential decisions we call politics, and at times requires the prudential activity we call war. War is distinguished in degree, but not in kind, from other manifestations of the ongoing tragedy.

This understanding of the nature of war informs those who struggle with the decisions of war, not by providing clear rules for sorting through apparently contradictory duties, but by making one aware of the pitfall of thinking one can escape this tragedy in a time of war. Niebuhr’s was an anti-ideological ideology. Humans are always tempted to think that they can escape from the tragic complexity of moral decisions in history into citadels of self-righteousness. They overestimate the ability of their reason or their moral senses. They presume the righteousness of their own established perspective rather than taking a fresh view at the context of the decision at the moment. They think that by their own efforts, they can bring about perfect justice by avoiding the conflict or by imposing justice through the use of military might. Niebuhr’s position stood against these tendencies. ¹⁹

Any Niebuhrian position must provide for two different strategies in hedging against the above dangers. First, it should entail that participants embody a set of virtues that will prevent the decision maker from falling into uncritical acceptance of one or another extreme option in times of conflict. Second, since the realist never has complete confidence in human virtue, realist arguments should be structured as openly as possible given the constraints of the situation so that the ideology of one participant may be checked by the ideology of another. Any Niebuhrian model of just-war reasoning must be dialogical, and should not allow for any person to claim a place beyond criticism.

Understood as such, the NCR produces a very different backdrop for thought about war than that provided by either the PAH or the PAI. It is not, however, so different that it cannot be productively compared and contrasted with these other positions. In what follows I will explore the modes of moral rationality proposed by advocates of the PAH and the PAI, and assess how each takes account of the tragic character of war. I will also suggest how each falls short of providing an adequate account of this tragedy from the perspective of the NCR.

Tragedy and Moral Rationality in the PAI

The NCR, PAI and PAH all mark the tragedy of war in one way or another. Paul Ramsey famously claimed that if war could be justified, it yet could never be just. This said, one of the goals of the PAI is the compartmentalization and containment of the tragedy of war. Ramsey was most concerned about the amoral realist approach to war, which set up an ideal of peace, accepted war as a moral evil, and then went ahead with war anyway. This form of moral thought, Ramsey believed, eliminated all boundaries on human action. Ramsey was also concerned with Christian thinkers who were warming to consequentialism, which he perceived as a parallel of amoral realism. Without clear lines delimiting what was legitimate and what was not, relativism would win the day. What was needed, then, was a clear statement of the moral legitimacy of war and a clear statement of the moral limitations of what ought to be done within war. War had to be good under some circumstances. If it were not, it should never be done. The moral orderliness of war needed to be shored up. ²⁰

Given these grounding concerns, focus on tragedy was problematic for two reasons. First, focus on tragedy, moral tension, and human frailty leads to conflicted consciences. Consciences which are conflicted, it is supposed, are less likely to clearly see or carry out the standards of morality demanded by war. For the advocate of the PAI, the language of tragedy is but a small step from the amoral realism which accepts the doing of a moral evil as the only viable option given the circumstances. ²¹ Second, to focus on the tragic nature of war often obscures the goods at which war aims. This, it seems, erodes the resolve of just-warriors who are acting righteously in battle. As Ramsey wrote: ‘the “mournful Christian warrior” does not blubber over his gunpowder’. ²²

Such concerns are linked to the PAI’s conception of moral reasoning in just-war thought. Here, advocates of the PAI seek to emphasize the role of a set of moral judgments for which they claim moral clarity (the deontic criteria), and to deemphasize the role of other judgments (the prudential criteria). The deontic just-war criteria (just cause, right intent, legitimate authority, and noncombatant immunity) are seen as firmly established through the long history of the just-war tradition. When adjudicating these criteria, the moral agent deploys the faculty of reason to tease out the meaning of each criterion. Thus each criterion is specified to the point that it determines the evaluation of the particular situation. ²³ Deontic judgments establish absolute moral boundaries, according to the advocates of the PAI, and they are treated as epistemically secure judgments, especially in comparison with ‘prudential judgments’. Indeed the very distinction between prudential and deontological criteria suggests that the deontological criteria are somehow applied without the use of prudence. ²⁴ What this would mean in practice is not clear, but rhetorically this produces the aura of security in deontic judgments, as if they are unique loci where pure reason reaches down to touch the particular situation in the world sans mediation by an individual mind. If there are disagreements on matters of deontic judgment it is either because the rules have been misconstrued or not applied. There is always a clear distinction between right and wrong.

The remaining problematic criteria are those which admit of degrees of goodness and badness: the prudential and/or consequential criteria. Unlike the deontic criteria, these are cast as recent additions to the just-war tradition. ²⁵ These criteria, according to advocates of the PAI, are ‘secondary’ to the deontic criteria. ²⁶ They should be applied only after the deontic criteria. At times it also seems that the prudential criteria bear less moral weight than the deontic criteria, or even constitute non-moral judgments. ²⁷ Notably, advocates of the PAI offer no account of the rationality by which prudential judgments are to be made. Ramsey occasionally likened these judgments (which are the province of legitimate authorities) to the divine act of creation. Unlike deontic judgments, which link pre-existent abstract definitions to particular descriptions of events, prudential judgments appear to be created ex nihilo. ²⁸ The authority creates the definition of the good at the same time that she or he weighs the good. Thus, these judgments fall largely outside the bounds of rational criticism.

There are good reasons for an advocate of the NCR to take the impetus behind the PAI on these points seriously. The sense of moral realism which is at the heart of the PAI is one that Niebuhr shared. ²⁹ Moral claims are not mere fantasies, irrelevant opinions, or projections, but rather are claims about what is the case concerning the flourishing of human life. As such, while Niebuhr embraced a form of ‘realism’, his was not an amoral realism. Nor did he unequivocally embrace consequentialism. While Niebuhr was no fan of casuistry, he also rejected ‘extreme pragmatism, which disavows all moral principles’. ³⁰ To the extent that Niebuhr’s treatment of just-war criteria was overly critical, advocates of the NCR have good reason to learn from the careful casuistry often deployed by advocates of the PAI. ³¹

Niebuhr’s critique of the irresponsibility of most pacifism also resonates with the PAI. ³² Advocates of the PAI are often motivated by their sense that the PAH is constructed to collapse just-war thought into a kind of sentimental pacifism, wherein wars are rejected one by one according to a measure that is set too high for any conflict. To the extent that the PAH is deployed in this manner, advocates of the PAI and NCR can find common ground in opposing the PAH. ³³ This said, the PAI approach to the moral rationality of just-war thought is deeply flawed from the perspective of the NCR, for at least three reasons.

First, the Christian realist must emphasize that the use of reason offers no escape from the tragedy of history. The application of rules requires the use of fallible human reason, and can be twisted by this reason to serve all manner of ideological purposes. To suppose some clean distinction in the level of epistemic security between deontic and prudential judgments will not do. Further, the PAI overestimates the security of rules stated even in the abstract. Conscientious disagreements come not only at the level of application, but also at the level of naming the rules and the exceptions to the rules themselves. ³⁴ History and tradition are important sources for moral standards. At the same time, no appeal to history and tradition ought to shortcut the process of criticism that inherited thought must undergo in each new generation and in each particular context.

Second, the Christian realist must stress the limitations of human actions in history in ways that seem incompatible with the PAI. The PAI foregrounds the duty to right injustices, the intent to bring justly ordered peace, and the place of legitimate authorities in acting to bring justice. It simultaneously de-emphasizes criteria concerning proportionality, last resort, and reasonable chance of success. This cuts against the imperative to establish realistic ends to military conflicts, and short changes the role of public criticism on a range of issues which are vital topics of debate in a time of war. For example, during the debate over the 2003 invasion of Iraq, advocates of the PAI allowed President Bush more of a blank check in constructing idealized ends for the war and in calculating the proportionality of the war than the mature Niebuhr would have allowed any president. The same can be said of Ramsey’s allowances for American presidents during the Vietnam War.

Finally, the advocate for the NCR will also suspect that the PAI has produced a reductive account of the moral import of the sense of tragedy in war. By focusing on the danger of allowing this sense of tragedy to erode the security of deontic standards, the advocate of the PAI has overlooked the significance of a sense of tragedy for the moral being of the agent. A sense of tragedy gives rise, in the NCR, to an attitude of humility and a beneficial state of destabilization. As Charles Mathewes writes:

This is a general fact about our lives today: too much of the time, political discourse resists the apprehension of ambiguity and the acknowledgement of ambivalence. Today the very language of ‘moral clarity’ is typically used to mobilize one-sided visions of a situation, and to denigrate opposing positions.

The effect of all this on our apprehension of the world, and on our self-knowledge, is surprisingly bad. Real moral clarity, real faith, teach us a deep appreciation for the breadth of the relevant facts about the world, the standing of any nation in it, and our own standing vis-à-vis those nations; that appreciation would produce in us a deep and complicated ambivalence. ³⁵

If the soldier should not blubber over her or his gunpowder, she or he should also not load her or his weapon with self-righteousness. Good judgment in a time of war calls for virtue, and not just reason. Too often, advocates of the PAI underemphasize this facet of morality.

Tragedy and Moral Rationality in the PAH

There may seem to be a greater deal of overlap between the NCR and the PAH. Advocates of the PAH have critiqued the PAI for its lack of emphasis on tragedy in some ways similar to the above critiques, and have emphasized the import of feelings of regret or remorse when one finds recourse to war to be the best option. ³⁶ Indeed, the PAH is constructed so as to highlight the fact that resort to war is always tragic.

According to the advocates of the PAH, questions of war only become morally viable when there is a conflict between real moral duties: the duty to aid and the duty not to harm. No situation can erase the demands of either of these duties. But it is also true that in times of war, fulfilling one of the duties entails a failure to fulfill the other. In the language of W. D. Ross, these are both prima facie duties, but given the situation only one can be fulfilled within the actual duty that obtains. ³⁷ In the case where a prima facie duty is overridden, the actual duty is not simply that which is imposed by the overriding duty. Prima facie duties do not exit the scene upon being overridden. They continue to stand as real duties, which ought in some way to be recognized even if they cannot be fully executed—the overridden duty leaves ‘moral traces’. ³⁸ Recognition of the overridden duty may come in the form of an approximation of the duty in which the duty is transformed into an ideal beyond complete realization. The duty not to harm, for instance, may be transformed into a duty to do only that harm which is necessary while living up to the overriding duty. Recognition may come in the form of a set of smaller duties related to the overridden duty. Recognition also may come in the form of an affective disposition with which one should undertake the actual duty. For example, one’s breaking of the prima facie duty may be properly marked by ‘remorse and repentance’. ³⁹

In the PAH, it is the conflict of duties that gives rise to the just-war criteria. Because the prima facie duty to do no harm is ‘more extensive’ than other prima facie duties, there are standards for overriding this duty, and thus standards that must be met in order to go to war. Further, a heavy burden of proof in arguments about war ought to be upon those who argue for recourse to military violence. In practice this leads to an emphasis upon the criterion of last resort. Here the PAH seems to advise that it is wise to persist in pursuing peaceful means to some point even if one does not reasonably expect these means to achieve the desired ends. ⁴⁰ Finally, in any overriding of the duty not to harm, the agent ought to feel remorse or regret at the action they undertake.

There is a Niebuhrian ring to much of the moral rationality proposed in the PAH. By framing moral issues in terms of prima facie duties, the PAH tends toward a proportionalism that fits with Niebuhr’s thought much more squarely than does the model of moral rationality proposed in the PAI. ⁴¹ Further, PAI’s emphases on tragedy in war and the necessary role of moral affect in proper decision-making dovetails with much of Niebuhr’s thought.

The advocate of the NCR, however, has good reasons to resist elements of the PAH account presented above. Of central concern is the way in which tragedy is located in relation to war. For the PAH, going to war is a tragedy. For the NCR, war is an instance of an ongoing tragedy. This is to say that, from the perspective of the NCR, the PAH overstates the moral cost of going to war, or, better, the PAH understates the moral costs of life in the absence of explicitly violent conflict. This leads the PAH to obscure the stories in which particular wars should be located. The world of politics is a world where we are always already involved in doling out harms and benefits. Thus the prospect of war does not throw up an entirely new set of conflictual duties; war is always the extension of a preexisting conflict of duties. This is, in part, why it is hard to identify a time when decisions to go to war are made. Such decisions are only properly understood in the context of a narrative of ongoing diplomatic, cultural, economic, etc. tensions.

Put another way, for the advocate of the NCR, the PAH locates war too much as the problem. The Niebuhrian realist resists any account that does not locate the primary problem in the sinful will of humanity. War certainly would not exist if it were not for sin, but war is only one of the many conditions that sin occasionally necessitates. Police forces, prenuptial contracts, and, as I occasionally remind my students, course exams are also necessitated by the existence of sin. ⁴²

But if sin is the primary problem, this calls for a different focus than the PAH provides. We should not be primarily concerned about setting the bar too low for allowing harm. We should be primarily concerned that whatever measure we deploy will be corrupted by our own ability to sinfully, selectively sift through the information we are given to produce the conclusion that we wish to impose on the world. Determining when to have recourse to war should not rely on a pre-determined presumption against going, but should grow out of a patient openness to and consideration of the ongoing pains, machinations, accidents, relationships, etc. that influence all parties in conflict.

Paul Ramsey, responding to critiques of the PAI by advocates of the PAH, points out the sense in which these advocates miss a significant facet of the tragedy of decisions about war. Ramsey suggests ‘a proper use of just-war political wisdom’ gives rise to ‘moral anguish’ over wars with just causes which could not be fought due to the disproportionate evils that would follow. ⁴³ It may be, for instance, that military humanitarian intervention in places such as Somalia or Darfur would be disproportionate given a full account of goods and harms. But the person who decides that we are unable to effectively intervene in such cases should be tormented by this inability in light of continuation of atrocities. The virtuous person is not spared from moral agony simply because she or he has avoided directly causing harm. Advocates of the PAH fail to address the propriety of this kind of anguish. Since Ramsey does not adequately acknowledge the anguish which should also mark the decision to undertake a just war, Ramsey’s criticism is as wrong in its one sidedness as is the PAH, but it raises an important point. By emphasizing the moral weight of the duty not to harm, the PAH has obscured the weight and significance of the duties that may lead one to decide in favor of war, and have granted tragedy only on one side of the equation. Niebuhr had a much more comprehensive sense of tragedy than the PAH supports.

None of this is to say that the Christian realist does not recognize a greater degree, or explicitness, to human tragedy in war than outside of it. Niebuhr did write that ‘if violence can be justified at all, its terror must have the tempo of a surgeon’s skill and healing must follow quickly upon its wounds’, and at various points he did place a great deal of emphasis upon the criterion of last resort. ⁴⁴ But Niebuhr was also capable of reversing this emphasis depending on the circumstance. Finding the proper disposition toward war at any particular time requires being attuned to the particularities of the moment. As he wrote in the run up to World War II: ‘I believe that contemporary history refutes the idea that nations are drawn into war too precipitately. It proves, on the contrary, that it is the general inclination of democratic nations at least, to hesitate so long before taking this fateful plunge that the dictator nations gain a fateful advantage.’ ⁴⁵ Here, Niebuhr was not establishing a presumption in the abstract in favor of war, but was articulating a truth that grew out of his observation of the American culture during the period in which he was writing.

This means that one should not establish a universal, high burden of proof against one side in just-war debates. It is not the case that only militarists are tempted to skew conclusions in their own favor. Those who are inclined in the abstract against the justifiability of war are also subject to being drawn to conclusions by ideological bias rather than attention to the reality of the present situation. Outside of the context of the debate, one cannot tell that one side should have a high burden of proof. Prior to World War II, Niebuhr looked at the character of the United States and noted that isolationist, sentimental pacifism was a widespread and powerful ideology. In this climate, he found that the public was most likely to underestimate the need for the use of force. In the years between World War II and Vietnam, Niebuhr marked the shift of American exceptionalism from emphasis on isolationist purity to an emphasis on the messianic status of the United States in protecting freedom. As such, when it came to Vietnam, he found that there was a need to rein in the tendency to accept justification of the use of force in areas where the United States did not sufficiently appreciate the cultural dimensions of conflict. ⁴⁶ Talk of a uniform burden of proof in these diverse contexts would be overly broad, and would undercut the functioning of the virtue of prudence necessary to discern what is required given the current national and international situation.

Cumulative Case Argumentation and the NCR

From the perspective of the NCR, the impossible ideal of aiding all through self-giving is broken on the shoal of sinful history. This fact drives the Christian realist to accept the frailty of any position she or he takes, and leads her or him to avoid overreaching in claiming to know ahead of time what will be required in order to argue for or against any particular war, or even for or against any particular interpretation of the just-war criteria themselves. Instead, the human lives in a chaotic world with imperfect knowledge. What is left is neither a proof of rightness nor a claim of strict probability of rightness. We have, instead, an argument that should be made in the context of each particular war.

What I am proposing is that the NCR conceives of arguments about war in terms of what Basil Mitchell has called ‘cumulative case arguments’. ⁴⁷ Mitchell contrasts cumulative case arguments with efforts to produce ‘proofs’ or arguments from ‘strict probability’. The debated issues or cases which are subject to cumulative case arguments are susceptible to different interpretations. It is not clear from the beginning of such an argument whether or not the facts of the case underdetermine what the best interpretation of the case will be. In the context of a debated issue, different participants produce accounts of how the issue should be interpreted and resolved. Often, participants who produce these accounts have significantly divergent presuppositions concerning what a good account will consist in. All participants, however, are attempting a similar feat. They are attempting to produce the best explanation of the issue or case at hand, given all of the relevant evidence.

As an example of such an argument, Mitchell explores an exegetical debate about the meaning of Andrew Marvell’s Horatian Ode. ⁴⁸ Here, two different interpreters have argued for their own construals of the meaning of the poem—particularly about whether or not the poem should be read as treating Cromwell as an honorable leader or as a reckless historical force. Each begins from different passages in the poem. Each must work to account for other passages which present apparent problems for his interpretation. Each must also do justice to the historical figure of Marvell who lies behind the poem. In this argument, as Mitchell points out, one cannot establish what counts as evidence prior to the actual debate, then simply apply the rules of evidence to produce a clear victor. To do such would be to shortcut the process of argumentation prematurely and find in favor of one or the other without hearing each case as it warrants. Arguing out the case properly requires that each participant present her or his own reading, be presented with the alternative reading, and be allowed to respond to the problems raised by the alternative reading.

Several things should be noted about cumulative case rationality. First, the disagreement between the participants runs deep, even to many of the presuppositions that they bring to the debate. Still, the disagreement does not go all the way down. Cumulative case arguments must be held within the context of broad background agreements, or it is not possible. In Mitchell’s example, the two debaters agree that when they search for the meaning of the text, they are searching for something like authorial intent. If they did not agree on this they may yet have a cumulative case argument, but this argument would have to function on levels beyond those Mitchell has suggested here. What is notable, then, is that the argument exists within boundaries that provide some limits to what is taken as rational within the argument. If one of the authors claimed that he knew that Marvell did not mean x when he wrote it, but that the poem still means x, he would have to be told that he was no longer within the bounds of the argument.

Second, the arguments proposed can be evaluated on the basis of several kinds of coherence. The cumulative case is a holistic case, and as such it should be judged as a whole. This entails logical coherence, but winning a cumulative case argument will also come down to less precise measures of coherence, measures concerned with the simplicity, elegance and beauty of the account. Nor should it be said that these measures of internal coherence are sufficient. The world is never completely enveloped by the interpretation. Thus, the cumulative case must also adequately account for all of the relevant evidence, even that which appears to (or perhaps does) strengthen the opponent’s case. As Mitchell writes, ‘there is a continuous tension between the individual bits of evidence and the overall interpretation, such that (a) the overall interpretation has to make sense of the evidence, neither ignoring nor distorting it, (b) the evidence has to square with all the other evidence’. ⁴⁹

Third, given the nature of cumulative case arguments, participants must embody certain intellectual virtues and other moral virtues. ⁵⁰ For instance, they must be humble, recognizing the limitations of their perspective, open to hear and take seriously opponents’ objections, and willing—if they are unable to produce an adequate answer to these objections—to abandon their position. Participants must also be critical, both of one’s own and one’s opponent’s position. The virtue of criticality entails that one develops a sense of when people (including themselves) are prone to stubbornness and intellectual recalcitrance, and that one develop the practice of providing challenges that open new avenues forward in the argument. Participants must also have the virtue of responsibility—recognizing what is at stake in the discourse, and adopting an appropriate stance of assertiveness in arguing for the conclusion she or he believes to be true. This is only a partial list of virtues, but it suggests the central role which virtues must play within cumulative case arguments.

Fourth, even with these limits, one does not know ahead of time whether or not by the end there will be agreement among all rational, conscientious participants. It may be that two interpretations are equally justified. Or, it may be that there are multiple positions that participants are justified in accepting given the participants’ different backgrounds, worldviews, individual presuppositions, etc. Cumulative case arguments are ‘person-relative’ in a significant sense. There is no arbiter with a view from nowhere to resolve these arguments.

Let us now return to just-war reasoning to explore how this form of rationality would be relevant to just-war questions and how it would contrast with the approaches of the PAI and the PAH. Where the PAH suggests that just-war arguments ought to entail a heavy burden of proof against those arguing for war, a cumulative case approach to war would make such a burden problematic. The question at hand when dealing with arguments for or against particular wars should be about which side has produced the best account of the world as it exists at that time.

There may be points at which desired evidence in favor of an argument for war is missing. This lack of evidence should be raised by all participants in the effort to describe the situation, and it may count in favor of war opponents. But, it is also possible, in the context of a cumulative case, that those in favor of a war may be able to provide plausible accounts of why the particular evidence for which their opponent is looking is not present. For instance, it may be hidden for national security reasons, or it may be unattainable because of the ongoing nature of the situation on the ground (evidence for genocide, for instance, is hard to gather in the midst of the action because of the nature of genocide itself). Thus, from the perspective of a cumulative case analysis we can see why it is that a blanket heavy burden of proof is an overly simple tool for dealing with arguments about war.

Cumulative case argumentation also fails to support a universal stress on the criterion of last resort. Last resort is an important criterion, and each cumulative case argument for war should include an account of why non-military means are unlikely to bring about the ends sought. But the participants must, in the context of particular conflicts, be guided by the best account available at the moment. They ought not to be barred from accepting that account by some constraint outside the framework of the argument at hand. If all other criteria are met, and if the best cumulative case account finds that non-military means will not achieve the ends sought, there should be no further barrier to clear in arguing for war.

In contrast to the PAI, the cumulative case approach would not distinguish in any clean way between deontic and ‘prudential’ criteria. Rather, it would suggest that what is really at stake is a set of nesting cumulative case arguments occurring within boundary contexts of varying specificity. On one level, each criterion can be the site for a cumulative case argument. The boundary context for the argument will be established by background agreements about the broad meaning of just-war terminology. This terminology should be taken to provide boundaries for argument, but at this abstract level to underdetermine the application of the criteria to particular cases. ⁵¹ It should not, for instance, be determined in the abstract whether or not the UN ought to function as a legitimate authority, whether or not police forces ought to be included in the category of noncombatants, or whether living up to the end of peace requires the institution of democracy in the post-bellum period. Interpreting these criteria to levels of specificity beyond that provided by the background presuppositions of the debate ought to be done in the context of debate over specific wars.

It is a virtue of the cumulative case model that it can highlight the similarity between arguments over authority, cause, and noncombatant status on the one hand and of proportionality, consequence, etc. on the other hand. Arguments about proportionality and consequence are not without form. Rather, they concern various competing accounts of what is going on and sometimes various accounts of how events are likely to play out. In order to argue claims about proportion and consequences, one ought to embrace particular virtues and attempt to produce a more adequate account of the situation than any of the alternatives. There are rational limits to this debate, and rational critiques that can be brought against such cumulative case positions. These debates over proportionality or consequence will often not be specified by the common presuppositions of debate to the level that the so-called ‘deontic criteria’ may be, but this is a distinction of degree and not of kind.

More broadly, each of these arguments over specific criteria will fit into broader cumulative arguments concerning the justness of the war, and the justness of particular acts of war. In contrast to the image of moral rationality proposed by the PAI, in these arguments the different criteria could not be cleanly separated from one another. How one interprets authority or the cause of war in a particular instance will influence how one sees the course of future action evolving, and thus will influence measures of proportionality, etc. ⁵² In this broader argument each participant will make her or his case for or against the war given her or his construal of the particular criteria. These arguments must be limited by the presuppositions of debate, by the measures of internal and external coherence, and by the requirements of virtue manifest by all involved in the debate. Often, there will be no clear winner even when the dust has settled.

Libyan Intervention: A Case Study

Before concluding, it is useful to contrast the kind of argumentation I am suggesting with that offered by some prominent advocates of the PAI and PAH in the real world. The case of the United States’ recent intervention in Libya is suitable for our purposes. Here, I will not be able to fully develop the arguments involved, but will be able to point out how advocates of the PAI and PAH reacted to the intervention in predictable and largely unhelpful ways. I will then sketch what would be necessary in order to provide a cumulative case argument for or against intervention.

In late March of 2011, after the United States and its allies began firing cruise missiles into Libya, advocates of the PAI and PAH took up their positions in order to assess the situation. For George Weigel, an advocate of the PAI, while intervention was justified, the Obama administration’s approach to Libya was flawed. Indeed, the administration suffered from ‘dithering indecisiveness, feckless multilateralism, and lack of strategic vision’. ⁵³ The problem was that the administration had limited itself too much in doing the good that could be done via the use of force. By waiting to gather international support for the intervention and by failing to push far enough to provide a new just order as the end of the conflict, the administration had shown a failure of nerve. The United States, Weigel implied, ought to understand its special place in the world as ‘the indispensable nation’ and should ‘actively seek to shape world politics’ in line with justice and its own interests. This echoes some of Weigel’s earlier statements to the effect that the United States would be justified in using force to ‘expand the zone of freedom’. ⁵⁴ In short, the United States needs primarily to use force for a supremely just cause, and do so decisively.

In a previous interview, Weigel had been asked to divine what Pope John Paul II would have thought about intervention in Libya. Interestingly, Weigel’s imagined John Paul looked very much like an advocate for the PAI! The Pope, he suggested, would have been saddened by what was developing in Libya—not by the great potential for loss of life, but rather, by ‘a maniac like Gadhafi, as he was saddened by other maniacs, including Saddam Hussein’. ⁵⁵ Weigel went on to note that the Pope spoke in favor of the justifiability of humanitarian intervention. Thus, the just cause of such an intervention is secured. But what would the Pope have said about the ‘prudential’ just-war criteria which might give one second thoughts about such an intervention? Very little. Wiegel’s John Paul ‘did not understand his role as Pope as that of global referee, determining when the use of armed force was legitimate; that was the responsibility of statesmen, as he understood things’.

One might wonder, given the limits that he recognizes in the Pope’s role, why Weigel does not restrict himself in criticizing the Obama administration. It seems likely to me that he feels justified inasmuch as he sees his own critique as concerning just cause, a ‘deontological’ criterion about which the moralist has the security to speak. Perhaps Weigel (wrongly) takes it that ‘expanding the zone of freedom’ is a just cause that is demanded by reason independent of prudential calculation.

Around the same time that Weigel was laying out his critique, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops presented its own analysis of the situation. Manifesting concerns typical of the PAH, their statements are a near mirror image of Weigel’s. In a letter from the Bishops to the Obama administration on 24 March, the Bishops note that they are watching the unfolding intervention ‘with great apprehension’. ⁵⁶ They go on to treat several of the just-war criteria.

Their treatment starts, notably, with a reminder of the requirement of ‘last resort’. After reminding the reader of this requirement, the Bishops note that the Catholic catechism ‘limits just cause to cases in which “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations [is] lasting, grave and certain” (#2309)’. They then state that the ‘just cause articulated in UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to demand “a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians” appears to meet this criterion in our judgment’. This statement is followed by ‘a key question’: ‘Will the coalition actions stay focused on this limited goal and mission?’ The treatment of war authority in the letter focuses exclusively on the import of international legitimation for intervention, and stresses the need for continued United Nations monitoring of the conflict. The middle third of the letter is then composed of questions concerning the criteria of realistic prospects for success, discrimination and proportionality.

The Bishops conclude by noting that they are not ‘making definitive judgments’ as this would overstep their proper role. Rather, they offer the letter in order to provide ‘moral guidance’. Within three days of the letter’s delivery, Pope Benedict XVI called upon ‘International agencies and those who hold military and political responsibility’ to bring about immediate talks leading to a cease fire in Libya. Diplomatic efforts, he averred, must be deployed in response to ‘even the weakest sign of openness to reconciliation’. ⁵⁷

There is much to be lauded in the Bishop’s response to the events in Libya. The fact that they posed much of their response in terms of questions rather than conclusions signals the presence of the intellectual virtue of humility and is appropriate given their institutional place in public dialogue. Still, their analysis is naïve. The UN resolution legitimizing intervention in Libya was crafted to authorize an impartial and purely humanitarian mission, but the expansion of the mission in Libya was necessary once the decision in favor of intervention was made. As is usually the case, the humanitarian crisis in Libya was part of a civil war. This war was not going to resolve itself without massive humanitarian catastrophe. The rebel forces were weak and disorganized and a Gaddafi victory would entail the brutal repression of his enemies. ⁵⁸ With the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts lingering on, coalition countries did not have the stomachs for the long-term efforts that would be necessary to establish a buffer zone between Gaddafi and the rebels. Nor, since the UN resolution ruled out occupation, did the United Nations grant authority for such a lengthy and intrusive mission.

Intervention to halt Gaddafi’s forces from massacring civilians, if it was to have a reasonable chance at success, was inseparable from participating as partisans in the civil war. Setting the stage for regime change was the only realistic way of heading off the threat of genocidal violence against rebel communities. In short, achieving the ends that the UN and the Bishops envisioned entailed expanding the mission beyond the mission that the UN had explicitly authorized. The Bishops’ analysis had failed to adequately grapple with the costs necessary to achieving justice. The Pope’s later call for immediate talks to end the violence and return to some kind of a status quo ante only highlights more the lack of realism in taking seriously what achieving just ends entailed.

It seems to me that neither of the above offered analyses of military intervention succeeded in shining much light on the subject. Inasmuch as the participants make good on their efforts to offer only ‘moral guidance’ they tend to highlight one or the other side of a continuum of moral dangers to which decision-makers are prone. But since the advocate of the PAI warns against the dangers of one extreme and the advocates of the PAH warn against the other, neither one provides an adequate picture of the whole continuum. More problematically, the advocates themselves run the risk of partaking in the extreme that the other warns against.

Further, the comparative analysis of these two positions makes clear that neither one is succeeding in the effort to produce a position abstract enough in its moral guidance to remain independent of politics. Even when one only asks questions, one participates in partisanship by asking the particular questions that one does. This in itself is not, from an NCR position, something to be lamented. While appeal to principle plays an important role in moral argumentation, there is no way finally to escape the tragedies of politics. To speak positively on moral issues is always to participate as a fallible person in the give and take necessary to life in a world marked by sin. Our understanding of principles is shaped by our perceptions about situations, just as our understandings of situations are shaped by the principles we hold. The problem with the above advocates for the PAI and PAH is that each party is overstating the extent to which it is possible, and the extent to which it is actually able, to overcome the ambiguities of lived history.

So what would a cumulative case argument about intervention in Libya look like? It would begin with a story: the story of Libya—its cultural, political, economic history; the story of interaction between Libya and ‘the West’, of imperialism and revolution; the story of the wider Middle East, awakening from a long period of autocratic oppression, caught in the upheaval of the Arab Spring; the story of Islam, repressed by Western victories and dreams of secular cultural advance, now convulsing in the midst of rebirth and reinvention; the story of a megalomaniacal dictator who had historically been linked with human rights abuses and terrorism, but who had, after September 11th, found common cause with and willing partners in many western nations. ⁵⁹ It would be a story which lays out the many ambiguous realities that face every possible action that might be taken.

It is within the context of this story that the just-war criteria would be specified and take on determinative content. The constitution of right authority would depend upon how one understands the characters of the United States, the United Nations, NATO, and the Arab League within the story that is told. The determination of just cause would emerge from an account of the horrors perpetrated at home and abroad by the megalomaniac dictator, from an account of the ways that foreign forces (including some of those now aiming to depose the dictator) have supported and opposed the regime in the past, etc. In all of these discussions, principled statements of the criteria will play an important role, but the principles only provide the context for the particular debate. The debate itself is underdetermined.

The elaboration of the story presented above is only the beginning of the debate. Doubtless it will be countered with a different narrative, one that highlights different past events and interprets the characters involved in different ways. Nor is there a clear end point to the debate. Actions will eventually be taken or not taken, but there is no accessible objective judge to determine the winner of the debate. And even if there were an accessible, objective judge, he or she might not be able to judge one account better than another.

Key to the process would be the virtues of the participants; virtues which appear to be largely lacking in recent debates over military action and over just about any other political issue, at least within the United States. Participants would need to be humble and assertive, open to critique and able to point out instances of incoherence in each other’s attempts to tell the story. All would need to take seriously the benefits and costs of any proposed action (there are no actions in history without a mixture of benefits and costs).

No doubt, this may appear too messy to many who have been reared in the current just-war debates. Importantly, I am not suggesting that we roll back the casuistic developments of the years since Niebuhr. But I am calling us toward a realistic view of what just-war argument is and can be. My hope is that by taking more seriously the limitations of just-war reasoning and the necessity of prudential judgment we could escape some of the illusions that mark the present options, and make us better at having the arguments we need to have.

Conclusion

I propose, then, that Christian moralists should embrace cumulative case argumentation as the proper form of just-war rationality. It maintains the space for the recognition of tragedy that Niebuhr suggests. In this form of argument all sides in the debate are recognized as fallible participants in a world where final answers may never be secured. No position is allowed to portray itself as offering a perfect solution. Instead, all must admit the weaknesses of their own arguments and their own solutions to the conundrum at hand. This form of rationality also explicitly requires the embodiment of a set of virtues which fit with those suggested by Niebuhr’s analysis. Humility, criticality, and responsibility, which I have outlined above, are central to any Niebuhrian approach. This proposal further provides a dialogical space for the kind of contention that Niebuhr saw vivifying the search for worldly justice. The structure of a cumulative case argument is inherently dialogical. The argument takes shape in the context of divergent accounts of the nature of reality. It also avoids the temptation of seeking premature moral clarity prior to the actual review of evidence.

Finally, this account has an additional benefit, which is fitting to any position claiming the moniker ‘realist’. Cumulative case argumentation provides a good account of what most people actually try to do when they argue about war. Many lack the virtue, and cut short the process prematurely in various ways by invoking other models of moral rationality to provide the appearance of security where it does not exist. Becoming clear about the model of cumulative case argumentation can help in combating these errors. Still, most arguments about particular wars reflect exactly the kind of give and take that is suggested in the above model of argumentation. Arguments about war are arguments about how to understand the world. Participants with imperfect perspective draw narratives and cite particular facts. It is not an ideal situation for determining life and death. It is, however, the situation in which we live. As such, it is time for the Christian realist again to enter the fray and take a stand for their own position in understanding the just-war tradition.