War. An Enquiry by AC Grayling (Yale, 2017). What are your thoughts on first reading?

AC Grayling commands our respect. He founded the New College of the Humanities in London, in which all students must study critical reasoning, science literacy, and applied ethics. He is a philosopher who believes that philosophy should be applied to daily life, and so appears frequently in British media discussing philosophy and public affairs. He is an atheist, a humanist, and a secularist, and this is all important, as we shall see.

He starts his Enquiry with a broad sweep of the history of war in Part 1 delineating war in which the combatants are constrained in what they do from war in which they are not. In Part 2 he further discusses the causes of war, the kinds of reasons, explanations and justifications, between those that look at human nature and those that focus on how humans have organised their societies. He also covers the effects of constrained and unconstrained wars. Part 3 brings the first two parts together in discussing how war can be constrained: if we can understand it, we can reduce its frequency and its consequences, Grayling argues.

What Grayling has written will be well received in the UK. But Britain is not the world; British liberal, atheist, humanist, and secularist values are not shared around the world. In fact, most countries and peoples disavow British values and would do the same to Grayling's. Although the British Government has been guilty of acts of aggression, today the British people are pacific. British society is experiencing all-time low levels of civil violence, and only the oldest generation has experienced war and even then not as combatants but as their children. The poor performance of British armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan was epitomised by how easily the Iranian Revolutionary Guards took and terrified the 15 sailors of HMS Cornwall in March 2007. So it won't surprise anyone to see in the 2018 FIFA World Cup news stories of over-weight Englishmen being beset by Khuliganskaya Armiya led by Vasily the Killer and the Orel Butchers with the tacit support of the Federal Politsia (motto, sic: "By serving Russia, I serve the law!"). Grayling is simply deluded by the Liberal Fallacy: the world doesn't want to be British, or American, even if given the chance.

Accepting an election result doesn't mean accepting that the ethics of the losing side are defeated, is what losers and some winners of them often say. That those people do accept the result of elections illuminates the nature of politics, that it is only tendentially, and sometimes not at all, about applied ethics, about The Good. Here's a quote from Grayling which portrays the essence of politics and betrays the frustration that British liberals have with the rest of the non-liberal world (being most of the other 7 billion people on the planet):
"There is something very crude indeed about war as a solution to serious differences between two or more parties, for it hands the argument over to killing and destruction as a form of settlement, leaving to killing and destruction the decision as to who will have the final say. It goes without saying that there is no guarantee such outcomes will represent the better moral case in the dispute. ... War does not determine who is right, only who is left". Replace the words "killing and destruction" and "war" for "elections", and you get what I mean about Grayling's certainty in The Right and The Wrong, The Good, The Bad, the better and the worse.

His argument to de-institutionalise war seems nice, but when you realise that modern weapons systems take many years to bring into service (for example the Eurofighter was started in 1983, first went into service with the Luftwaffe in 2003, and may well keep flying until 2033 and beyond) then you realise that the institutionalisation of war, from the defence equipment perspective at least, has never been stronger. When you realise that to have this weapons-making capacity requires, as Grayling himself points out, the money, the manufacturing and technological infrastructure, and not only that but especially the encouragement of positive social attitudes to those whose business is war, not summoned up and pulled out of a cupboard for a sudden, single threat, but to be maintained over generations, then the abolition of war under such circumstances is impossible. So the choice between pacifism and permitting weapons even just for self-defence (which can easily be misunderstood for offence and aggression) has never been starker.

He writes of the romanticisation and cosmeticisation of war. Again, this is an argument which will appeal to British people even if they will be uneasy about acting upon it. But war is commonplace in many parts of the world, and many hundreds of millions alive today have experienced it directly and will testify that it is an evil as Grayling judges it to be. But few of these hundreds of millions resile from it. Where are the massive pacifist movements overwhelming the world's gun-toting polities? Do you see them, because I don't. Where have you seen widespread civil disobedience or the revolutionary rise of the anti-war party in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Congo, Yemen, Ethiopia, or Ukraine, to name just a few current conflicts? In the country where Gandhi devised the pacifist Satyagraha much beloved of British liberals, there is a standing army of 1.4 million soldiers, a navy of aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines, and an arsenal of nuclear weapons enough to destroy the whole world. In a country where a guerilla army rose to fight social injustice but which metastasised into violently-criminal drug traffickers and murderous terrorists committing human rights atrocities on a daily basis that would bring even the most determined and courageous to their knees, the impoverished and blood-spattered Colombian people initially voted against being bullied and murdered into making peace. People around the world might agree with Grayling that war is an evil, but they all point to greater evils than the wars they willingly fight. 

It is for this reason that I disagree with Grayling's assertion that war represents the failure of diplomacy, trade and cultural ties. It is a continuation of all that, and more. Politics is about conflict and disagreement, and the point of politics (and war) is forcing the opponent (the enemy) to the point where they cannot or do not wish to continue fighting. A final decision will have been made, whether using violence or its threat, or not. Appeals to ethics will be made as one of many ways to force the opponent to the point where they cannot or do not wish to continue fighting, but there is no guarantee the final decision will represent the better moral case in the dispute.

I've left this "war is a continuation of politics" argument till last because Grayling did. He initially left out of his definition of war the notion of the political, that the aim is to maintain or gain state/political power, but instead made it one of his Concluding Remarks, as if he had advanced the learning of humankind with this conclusion. Sorry, AC, but we have known this for centuries.

World War Three Revisited?

1.

The war was not an ideological one of liberalism on one side and robber capitalism on the other, nor of nice democratic people versus evil Russian mafia, nor of any blueprint for a Greater Russia.

Rather, the war started due to NATO / EU blunders, Russian-speaking peoples' opportunism, and the balance of power. Putin was a traditional European statesman wanting a little respect for his country, he "simply leaned on the door hoping to gain entrance and the whole house fell in". Putin's homophobia was not unique, he merely took advantage of the mood throughout Eastern Europe.

Russia had always been an element in European politics since 1812. It was perhaps the richest country in the world for all sorts of natural resources. The Cold War that ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union was also started due to blunders, opportunism and misperceptions emanating from the security and defence dilemmas. Putin's revanchism had constant and large majority support in Russia.

Merkel and Hollande who negotiated Minsk-Munich pursued their own national interests. Ukraine's constitution was not popular in its Eastern regions. Kiev was weak, corrupt, and elitist, and Ukraine itself was an artificial construct. The pervading religions of "democracy" and "national self-determination" over-ruled diplomatic contracts like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the April 2014 Geneva Accord, the Minsk Protocol of September 2014, and later Article 5 of the NATO Constitution in favour of the Russian-speakers in first Crimea, then Eastern Ukraine and finally the Baltics who dog-whistled "discrimination" and "racism" and "human rights" against their governments.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Postscript post-bellum: the war trials in Kiev in October 2021 that convicted Putin’s oligarchs were convenient for the victors and hid the blame for the war, let Russian-speakers avoid any responsibility, and created a situation whereby West Russia was rehabilitated as a respectable Third Cold War ally against a China wanting revenge for the Western Imperialism of the 1800s.

2.

After the annexation of Crimea and the creation of the Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples' Republics, EU countries resisted calls to put industry on a war footing, convinced that such an action would persuade Putin that Europe had decided to abandon negotiations.

Despite Putin's relative quietness as Russia shored up the former provinces of Ukraine, NATO leaders made trips to the capitals of Europe hoping to incite the EU to stronger sanctions while also to relaunch negotiations, to which Russia agreed. However, public revulsion over “Pogrom Noch” of gays in Russia during the negotiations while the Western world were celebrating numerous gay pride events made any attempt at a rapprochement with Putin publicly unacceptable.

This was followed soon after when Russia intervened in the other provinces of Ukraine to quell the violence that had broken out between pro- and anti-Russian Ukrainians from Kharkiv in the North (where 63.1% of the population were Russian-speaking), through Kirovohrad in the Centre of Ukraine (34.64%) to Mykolaiv (66.33%), Kherson (47.21%), Melitopol (42.8%), Dnipropetrovsk, (41.78%) in the East, and Odessa in the South-West (49.09%). The British Prime Minister wondered publicly whether this move into half of all Ukraine was "the end of an old adventure, or the beginning of a new".

NATO nations then reasserted the interlocking series of defence pacts with the Baltic States aswell as with Kiev as a means of deterring Putin from war, that they would lend Ukraine all possible aid in the event of any action which threatened Kiev’s independence.

Merkel and Hollande then accepted an offer of negotiations with Chairman of the Lugansk Supreme Soviet Aleksey Karyakin and Chairman of the Donetsk People's Soviet Andrei Purgin, who offered not to aid Russia in any further annexation of Ukraine. Although Merkel and Hollande themselves were reluctant to seek a military alliance with Lugansk and Donetsk, distrusting Karyakin and Purgin ideologically, much of their governments favoured negotiations. The talks dragged on and eventually foundered on 14 August.

A week after the failure of these talks Lugansk, Russia, Crimea and Donetsk signed the Karyakin-Lavrov-Aksenov-Purgin (KLAP) Pact which committed the countries to non-aggression toward each other. A secret agreement divided up Western Ukraine and the Baltics in the event of war. Merkel and Hollande had dismissed rumours of such a deal, and pooh-poohed the publicly announced pact stating that it in no way affected EU (and NATO) obligations toward Ukraine and the Baltics. To this end, on 23 August the NATO Secretary General and EU Commissioner jointly delivered a letter to Putin telling him that the EU and NATO were fully prepared to live up to their obligations to Ukraine and the Baltics. Putin straightway instructed his generals to prepare for an assault on Kiev, telling them, "Our enemies are small worms. I saw them at Minsk-Munich."

In the early hours of 1 September 2015 Russia marched into Western Ukraine and the Baltics. By nightfall T-90 tanks were trundling down the tree-lined avenues of Talinn, Riga and Vilnius, and had the outskirts of Kiev in their scopes.

On the third day of the Russian campaign, a Special BBC Outside Broadcast relayed live at 11.15am to the world these words of a Special Convention of NATO and EU Heads of State held in Number 10 Downing Street: “We are speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning we handed the Russian Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Ukraine, a state of war would exist between us. We have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently the EU and NATO are at war with Russia.”

3.

After Ukraine was put to the sword, cut off completely from the Black Sea and severed of its Eastern and Southern regions, Merkel and Hollande felt that Putin's word could not be trusted. They decided to change tack, and would meet any further unilateral Russian expansion with force. They feared that the next target for Russia’s further expansion would naturally be the Baltic States. Their populations were a quarter Russian-speaking settled there from the Soviet era, and their agitations for human rights had been growing ever since the global financial crisis. Especially vulnerable was Lithuania, whose territory blocked access to the headquarters of the Russian Baltic Fleet and economic powerhouse Kaliningrad.

During Putin’s era, Kaliningrad had become Russia's best performing regional economy and "the Russian Hong Kong", supplying finance, technology and manufacturing for the rest of the Russian economy. For two decades Kaliningrad had led the "We are Russians" programme, and had been the home town for many top Russian footballers, Olympic athletes, media personalities, and pop stars. But it was cut off from the rest of Russia, like Danzig an exclave and completely surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, and accessible through them by road, rail and air by costly visas, transit taxes and tolls, or too slowly by lumbering ferry via the Baltic Sea to St Petersburg.

Kaliningrad was to become the Third World War's immediate trigger.

After taking power, the Putin government made efforts to establish friendly relations with Lithuania and the Baltics. Because of the Soviet era legacy of a unified industrial and governmental infrastructure and of ethnic, linguistic and cultural ties of the Baltics with Belarus and Russia, Putin made constant and regular overtures to each of the Baltics to join an extended Commonwealth of Independent States. There were regular summits and conferences, and in early 2015, because of the tumult in nearby Ukraine, they started negotiations for a Non Aggression Pact also sponsored by Germany and France though not by the EU or NATO. When these talks foundered in mutual recriminations, Presidents Putin and Lukashenko signed the P&L Pact of Non Aggression. Secretly they also agreed to parcel up the Baltics between them in the event of war.

In April 2015, Russia and Belarus jointly claimed extra-territoriality for “The Kaliningrad Corridor” of road, rail and air routes from Minsk through Southern Lithuania (where most of the Lithuanian Russian speakers lived) and through North Eastern Poland and on into Kaliningrad, in exchange for giving territory from Belarus to both Lithuania and Poland, Favoured Trading Nation Status with Russia and Belarus and a 25-year non-aggression pact. Both Poland and Lithuania refused, fearing subjugation as Russian client states, and further Russian demands in the future. Lukashenko then withdrew the claim on Poland’s territory in exchange for Polish support of his demand on Lithuania. On the 23rd of August 2015, Putin delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on extra-territoriality to be accepted by the 31st,, citing in addition the humanitarian need to "liberate" the Russian minority still in the Corridor, as well as Kaliningrad from its exclave status and economic stranglehold that both Poland and especially Lithuania had over the Oblast. T90 tanks rolled into Lithuania at 4.45am the next day.

Just War?

The Origins of the Third World War

After AJP Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War -

THE ORIGINS OF THE THIRD WORLD WAR

Part 1

After the ousting of Yanukovich, Russian-speakers supported by Russia moved quickly in Crimea using protection of native speakers, national self-determination and plebiscites as cover. The same happened in Eastern Ukraine again not instigated by Russia and again Russia's Western European negotiators did little, both because they could not nor were they willing. Russian-speakers in the Baltics saw the example of their Crimean brethren and began agitating. British, French and NATO military promises to the Baltics were ignored by the Baltic Russian-speakers in their nationalist fervour, nor did the Russian government and their armed forces see them as anything other than empty gestures. Putin had tried to de-escalate the crisis, though noted commentators pointed out that national sentiments and cultural and linguistic sensitivities were too strong for him to control.

The Third World War that broke out in September 2014 was not the result of a criminal conspiracy by Putin and his oligarchs. The war trials in Kiev in October 2021 that convicted Putin’s oligarchs were convenient for the victors and hid the blame for the war, let Russian-speakers avoid any responsibility and created a situation whereby West Russia was rehabilitated as a respectable Third Cold War ally against China.

Putin was not the demoniacal figure of popular imagination but in foreign affairs a normal Russian leader. The foreign policy of Russia was the same as that of the Soviet Union and the Tsar’s Russia before it. Putin was no better or worse than Merkel, Cameron or Obama. He merely wished to make Russia a strong and respected power in Europe but he did not want or plan war. The outbreak of war in 2014 was an unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on all sides.

Putin was a simple opportunist with no beliefs other than the pursuit of power and a hatred of homosexuals. His foreign policy was one of seizing chances as they offered themselves. His homophobia was not unique: millions of people around the world were just as ferociously homophobic as Putin and there was no reason to single out Putin for sharing their beliefs.

The basic problem with Europe between the Cold and Third World Wars was a flawed plan for the breakup of the Soviet empire that was sufficiently onerous to ensure that the overwhelming majority of Russians would always hate it, but insufficiently onerous in that it failed to destroy Russia's potential to be a Great Power once more. The breakup plan was destabilising, and after a generation the innate power of Russia that NATO could not destroy in the non-shooting “Cold War” inevitably reasserted itself against the Western bankers and the international system that Russians regarded as unjust and thus had no interest in preserving. Though the Third World War was not inevitable and the Soviet empire's demise was nowhere near as harsh as contemporaries like Yegor Gaidar argued in his 2007 Collapse of an Empire, what he regarded as a flawed “too far, too fast” austerity plan for the new Russia made the war more likely than not.

Part 2
After the annexation of Crimea, British Prime Minister Cameron resisted calls to put industry on a war footing, convinced that such an action would persuade Putin that the Prime Minister had decided to abandon debate.

Despite Putin's relative quietness as Russia absorbed Crimea, Cameron made trips to Paris and Berlin hoping to incite the French and Germans to stronger sanctions while also to relaunch negotiations, to which Russia agreed for April 2014 in Geneva. However, public revulsion over “Pogrom Noch” of gays in Russia during the negotiations while the Western world were celebrating numerous gay pride events made any attempt at a rapprochement with Putin unacceptable.

This was followed soon after when Russia intervened in the Eastern provinces of Ukraine to quell the violence that had broken out between pro- and anti-Russian Ukrainians from Zaporizhzhya in the South East through Donetsk and Luhansk and up to Kharkiv in the North East. The Prime Minister wondered publicly whether this move into Eastern Ukraine was "the end of an old adventure, or the beginning of a new".

Cameron then reasserted the interlocking series of defence pacts both in NATO with the Baltic States aswell as with Kiev as a means of deterring Putin from war. Cameron informed an approving House of Commons of British and French guarantees that they would lend Ukraine all possible aid in the event of any action which threatened Kiev’s independence. He doubled the size of the Territorial Army.

The British Government even accepted an offer of negotiations with Sergei Aksenov, new head of Crimea, who offered not to aid Russia in any further annexation of Ukraine. Cameron was reluctant to seek military alliance with Crimea, distrusting Aksenov ideologically. However, much of his Liberal and Conservative Cabinet favoured negotiations. The talks with Crimea, however, dragged on and eventually foundered on 14 August.

A week after the failure of these talks Crimea and Russia signed the Lavrov-Aksenov Pact which committed the countries to non-aggression toward each other. A secret agreement divided up Western Ukraine and the Baltics in the event of war. Cameron had dismissed rumours of such a deal, and pooh-poohed the publicly announced pact stating that it in no way affected British obligations toward Ukraine and the Baltics. To this end, on 23 August Cameron had Hague deliver a letter to Putin telling him that Britain was fully prepared to live up to its obligations to Ukraine. Putin straightway instructed his generals to prepare for an assault on Kiev, telling them, "Our enemies are small worms. I saw them at Geneva."
In the early hours of 1 September 2014 Russia marched into Western Ukraine and the Baltics. By nightfall T-90 tanks were trundling down the tree-lined avenues of Talinn, Riga and Vilnius, and had the outskirts of Kiev in their scopes.

On the third day of the Russian campaign, a Special BBC Outside Broadcast relayed live at 11.15am to the world these words of Prime Minister Cameron: “I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Moscow handed the Russian Government a final note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Ukraine, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Russia.”

No cynical grab for oil

Castro reclaims sovereignty over America for Cuba

In his finest speech since his father escaped war-ravaged Germany and changed his name from Kleist to Castro, Cuba's President used his seat in the UN to declare the USA and Canada now Cuban Sovereign Territory. "North America is located just off our coast and on our Continental Shelf. On reclaiming North America as part of long-stolen Cuban sovereign territory we refute the vile lie of those racist and anti-semitic Anglo-Saxons that this is a cynical grab for oil. In fact we wish to clean up the environment so criminally polluted by the English Petroleum company EP."

Two hours into his speech he declared: "North America was stolen in 1620 by the Pilgrim Fathers from the God-fearing Spanish-speaking aborigines who for millennia had been living in peace and harmony with nature and its rich natural resources in the Americas. We wish to return the land to its former state of nature and ban the drilling of oil off the coast, proving once and for all that this is no cynical grab for oil."

Summing up after the UN General Assembly had packed up and gone to the tapas bar for cervesas, Castro held out an olive branch and said:"as the aborigines of North America, we Spanish-speaking peacemakers will even provide waterwings for those piratical and imperialistic English invaders who stole our gold and mineral resources so that they can swim back to Australia whence they came in 1492"

Salmond “Sorry” for Scottish Imperialism, vows to give England back its freedom

In a show of financial and legal generosity typical of his nation, Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond apologised for Scotland's 1707 annexation of England and its imposition of Scottish monarch King James V on a hapless and innocent English nation.

“You have to understand the perspective of the Eighteenth Century. England was a backward country full of fools & knaves, and it was the only kind and Christian gesture for superior and better educated Scots people imbued with a sense of destiny to colonise England.

Now that the English have been taught how to run banks like the RBS properly, it is time to give them back their sovereignty” declared a proud but repentant Mr Salmond, thankful not to have to subsidise the drug-ridden and gin-soaked English anymore. Salmond's office later denied that giving England back its sovereignty was a cynical grab for oil.

France claims sovereignty over UK and surrounding seas

The British Isles are islands located between the North Atlantic and the North Sea, which are subject to a complex territorial dispute involving the surrounding countries. The interests of different nations include acquiring fishing areas around the Isles, the exploitation of crude oil and natural gas, and the strategic control of the sea lanes. Along with territorial land claims on the isles, the disputes also involve the territorial waters of the various countries within the region.

It estimated that the Seas around Britain may contain 17.7 billion tons of crude (compared to Kuwait with 13 billion tons). The abundant fishing opportunities within the region are another motivation for the claim. It is believed to have accounted for 10% of world fishing catches. The area is also one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. At least 270 merchant ships sail around the Isles each day. This traffic is three times greater than that passing through the Suez Canal and five times more than the Panama Canal. This sets the scene for the disputes between Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, and France, all of whom claim part of the seas surrounding the British Isles and the Isles themselves.

The lines drawn by France which marks its claim covers around three-fourths of the total area. The French government has today announced:

“France enjoys indisputable sovereignty over British isles and surrounding seas. France's stand is based on historical facts and international law. On basis of this France is ready to engage in peaceful negotiations and friendly consultations to peacefully solve disputes over territorial sovereignty and maritime rights so as to positively contribute to peace and tranquillity in North Sea and North Atlantic area. As for oil and gas exploration, fishing, and trade route activities, our consistent position is that we are opposed to any country engaging in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under France's jurisdiction, proving once and for all that this is no cynical grab for oil.”

China supports Taiwan intervention in Syria

In another move guaranteed to be criticised as that of Taiwan's "sheep", the People's Republic of China has endorsed Taiwan's military intervention in Syria on humanitarian grounds.

Taiwan has for long been a major humanitarian investor in Syria, expanding the port of Tartus in the 1970s to help build infrastructure and wealth development further inland and to assist Syrian primary produce in being exported to Taiwan's Third World development programs.

Taiwan rolled its tanks swiftly into Syria's third city of Homs, where President Assad's followers were being massacred in numbers approaching genocide.

Assad himself had feared for his life at the hands of the terrorists as his wife and children have already been brutally murdered by the thugs. The terrorists, who have been widely condemned by international opinion, are well known to be sponsored by Pariah Powers USA, UK and France. According to Taiwanese intelligence sources, the thugs have among their number James Bond 007, the cast of Spooks (themselves sponsored by another organ of British imperialism, the BBC), and the entire SAS Regiment. Even Prince William has been videoed in his helicopter murdering the families of Assad's government ministers.

China denied Taiwan's intervention was a cynical grab for oil, explaining that they had extracted and exported most of it already. Their spokesman went on to deny that they were interested in forging closer ties with Taiwan, saying that they do not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

China exports

Michael Walzer's great "Just and Unjust Wars" and my unfair reappraisal?

Just and Unjust Wars has long been held as a manifesto against war-mongering and war-waging. The catalyst for Michael Walzer's writing the book was the wicked American intervention in the Vietnam War, against which he was an activist, and he has long since been a doyen of the American Left. I read the 1977 edition at University, and it seemed to me at the time to close off any moral notion for war except in self-defence, and to be strongly opposed to Great Power intervention. And yet when reading the 1992 edition this week in light of wars since then up to and including the successful Libyan uprising, I have had second thoughts. Are they wrong …. ?

Walzer gets himself into a pickle right from the start. The 1992 edition has a preface on Gulf War One, in which he reflects on the 1991 War in light of his theory, rather presupposing you have already read the book! He goes on to argue that Just War theory runs a middle course between contentious conceptions he has of realism and pacifism. Rather dangerously given other religions & their warfighting heritages, he charts the theory's origins in Christianity and attempts to establish it in a secular, modern context (Part One). I can only imagine that anyone who isn't either Christian or secular (most of the world) could quite easily reject Walzer's injunction against causing or conducting war altogether.

In Part Two The Theory of Aggression, he betrays himself with another dose of cultural dissonance when he underpins Just War theory with the very Western ideas of individual human rights and consent theory of state legitimacy. I'm not even sure that the Anglo-Saxon world even practises what Walzer preaches anymore.

But he hoists himself on his own petard when trying to reconcile his six propositions for his theory of aggression and his arguments subsequent. His six propositions are:

“1 There exists an international society of sovereign states.

2 This international society has law that establishes the right of its members – above all, the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty.

3 Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act.

4 Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defence by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and any other member of international society.

5 Nothing but aggression can justify war.

6 Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished.” (pp 61-2)

He then tests the strength of these propositions, and ends up arguing for ‘pre-emptive self-defence’; support for secessionist movements that are fighting for ‘national liberation’; balancing the intervention of other states in a civil war with counter-intervention; and, citing the Indian invasion of Bangladesh, rescuing populations threatened with enslavement or massacre. Nuclear deterrence, he argues, explodes the theory of just war.

Walzer's book is a classic because he so elegantly illustrates his moral arguments with so many famous historical case studies such as Thucydides’s story of the Melian Dialogue, the Allied bombing of Germany, and the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam. He supported the American justification of Gulf War One, believing that the United States and its allies were right not to march on Baghdad once Kuwait’s sovereignty was restored. He argued that liberation from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein was not an American responsibility: it was up to the citizens of Iraq, and those in Kuwait also, to rid themselves of despotic rule, he stated. As for the conduct of the war, he condemned the policy of destroying the infrastructure of Iraq, which he argued failed to distinguish adequately between military and civilian targets. He also criticised the air attacks on fleeing Iraqi soldiers at the end of the war, since the soldiers no longer posed a real threat to American or other allied troops. Despite also disagreeing with Bush Senior's rhetoric of a New World Order and a victory for democracy, he did not condemn the oil motive, arguing it was only a subsidiary one, or the selectivity of US policy against aggression as a good reason to abandon the theory.

Throughout the book there is a conflict between a commitment to universal rights and the right to self-determination. Second, there is a tension arising from his appeal to human rights as the basis of the war convention regarding jus in bello, and his appeal to limiting the right to go to war for the purpose of self-defence. By appealing to human rights as the basis of the war convention regarding the use of force once war has begun, and by conceding exceptions to the rule of non-intervention on grounds of human rights, Walzer creates problems for himself. If the legitimacy and sovereignty of states derives ultimately from the rights of individuals, then to the degree that a state violates human rights, it loses both its legitimacy and its sovereign rights, including the right to be protected by the principle of non-intervention.

There always has been and seems especially today to be such a clamour for “Justice!” that those who claim they have it deem themselves morally justified to go to and wage any war they want. And my re-reading of Michael Walzer's great book made me feel he gave them the weapons to do so. Is this unjust of me?