Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World

Air & Space Power Journal, Spring, 2005 by Christopher Toner

Just War against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World by Jean Bethke Elshtain. Basic Books (http://www.basicbooks.com), 387 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10016-8810, 2003, 256 pages, $23.00 (hardcover), $14.00 (softcover).

In this book, Jean Elshtain, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago, makes a case for the application of traditional just-war thinking to the global war on terrorism, steering between pacifist and realpolitik approaches. In doing so, she seeks to weave a number of argumentative threads into one fabric: (1) the main one (that just-war thinking can and should be applied to the current war), (2) a retrieval of some classical and recent just-war thinking, (3) a rejoinder to critics of the war on terror, and (4) a kind of expose of some of the intellectually irresponsible behavior of some of these same critics (fellow academics and fellow theologians). As interesting as each of these threads is, the result of her weaving sometimes becomes confusing; occasionally the reader loses sight of one of them, only to see it reappear several chapters later. For example, with regard to just-war theory's legitimate-authority criterion, on page 61 she seems to maintain that a sovereign state such as the United States suffices without addressing the concerns of multilateralists or United Nations (UN) enthusiasts; on page 92 she does appeal to the UN charter's authorization of state self-defense. Not until the last two chapters (pp. 150-73) do we learn her deepest reasons for thinking that the United States has sufficient authority to act on its own.

Elshtain's main argument is fairly straightforward:

1. The first task of government is to ensure basic order--stability and security--for its people.

2. Terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda constitute a grave and implacable threat to this order.

3. Since peaceful negotiation is neither desirable nor even possible, the government must consider the use of force to maintain order and protect its people.

4. The current situation meets traditional jus ad bellum criteria.

5. Fighting this war in accordance with jus in hello criteria is feasible.

6. Therefore, recourse to win, carried out with discrimination and proportionality, is morally justified.

This argument is plausible, and some of the premises are well supported. Indeed, one of the strong points of the book is her portrayal of the implacability of the terrorists (often by citing their own words and deeds) and her argument that they hate what America is even more than what it does; thus, negotiation and appeasement are not real options. Now, appeasement and what she calls "pseudopacifism" are not temptations of the average military reader. From this standpoint, it is regrettable that she did not devote equal time to debunking so-called political realism (the constant temptation for the "military mind"). But some of Elshtain's points do bear on the issue: especially the one that sheer, relentless interdiction of the armed terrorist enemy--without minimization of noncombatant casualties and damage to the civic infrastructure, and without subsequent civic aid (she speaks of a new sort of Marshall Plan)--will result only in havens and breeding grounds for more terrorists. Here, as is so often the case, moral considerations are also prudential.

In the third and fourth chapters, Elshtain makes a fairly persuasive case that America's recourse to and conduct of the war in Afghanistan were substantially just. However, it seems to me that she ducks some of the tougher issues, such as the legitimacy of preemption or prevention, unilateralism, and the Bush Doctrine--some of the new or newly regent topics that contemporary just-war theory must consider. Elshtain goes on in subsequent chapters to demolish a number of bad antiwar arguments (these are not straw men; rather, they are arguments that people have actually made), but there are also better, subtler arguments out there. The latter include arguments criticizing the legitimacy of preemption or especially prevention, contending that it is not feasible to wage war (properly speaking) against nongovernmental organizations like al-Qaeda, or asserting the lack of clear criteria of success in such a broad undertaking as a war on terror. Elshtain does not do enough to consider and refute these.

I will pass over some features of Just War against Terror that some readers would find interesting--the expose of media and academics (the "herd of independent minds") behaving badly, the review of recent Christian thought (good and bad) on war and peace--because I want to focus on the bombshell she drops at the end of the book: the claim that the time has come for an American Empire. Like other contemporary advocates of American imperialism, Elshtain does not call for the use of American power for conquest or world domination, but to enforce international law; to protect the weak; to enable nation building; and to interdict, punish, or deter wrongdoing--call this more benevolent program just-order imperialism.