Fictional (Un)Just War Theory

When I went to school, I only had room in my schedule for a single philosophy course, which was the one required for all students.  That is no great loss, as I’ve done plenty of philosophical studying on my own, as evidenced by many of the reviews and posts I’ve featured here on the site.  Plus, that one class was less interested in pondering deep questions than it was in force-feeding philosophical “answers” down students’ throats.  In particular, the course was obsessed with ensuring our acceptance of Just War Theory.

While I could speculate upon the reasons for this crude indoctrination, reminiscence is not the purpose of this post; rather, it is to discuss the concept of law in war, especially with regard to fiction.  Something, a fantasy story I was reading recently which featured an alternative world setting and so forth, happened to mention war crimes.  It presented this as natural and expected, except that the world-building did not support it.  Like our discussion about the derivation of “fundamental” rights, war crimes and laws of war are not intrinsic qualities that are necessary and natural, but rather constructs that arise under specific circumstances for complex reasons.  Simply invoking laws of war or definitions of war crimes analogous to those with which a modern reader would be familiar is insufficient and anachronistic.

First, consider warfare itself, which is also a product of a specific set of circumstances, albeit far more common ones than are required for its regulation.  War, as it is distinct from battle and general conflict such as can exist even between rival groups of animals, presupposes the existence of some form of nation-state, of at least two polities capable of sufficient organization to engage in strategic, scaled combat.  Given this distinction, Just War Theory’s scope comes into considerable question from the outset, not merely its tenets.  Does it apply to all conflicts, all conflicts involving nation-states, or only true wars between independent polities?

Just War Theory’s most significant problem, like the fallacy of invoking modern concepts of international law with regards to armed conflict between states in alternative-world fantasy, is incoherence.  It does not hew to nor apply an overarching, unifying philosophy or morality, instead declaring its claims in apparently arbitrary fashion.  As a result, it can easily be critiqued as a victor’s hegemonic tool of moral grandstanding, regardless of whether or not you agree with the basis or outcomes attached to specific claims within the theory.  Reminding us of John Locke’s warnings regarding the dangers of a state monopoly on violence and its instruments (the unspoken reason for the US 2nd Amendment’s existence), Just War Theory attempts to apply standards of conduct in warfare such as can be met by the dominant international players and which steeply and starkly limit the means available under its aegis to underdog players.  In a word, it is insufficiently fundamental.  It fails to provide adequate bases for its sometimes contradictory judgements, and it makes far too many unfounded assumptions.

Those assumptions in particular, and the historical bases behind them, are integral to why modern law of armed conflict and Just War Theory cannot be applied whole-cloth or even by analogy to alternative world fiction.  While attempts to regulate warfare may be as old as warfare itself, or nearly, its modern incarnations are derived primarily from the experiences and behaviors of the victorious nations that emerged from the crucible of the Second World War.  Regulations on weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical warfare, the treatment of prisoners and noncombatants, the acceptability of certain targets versus others, and so forth do have earlier foundations, but are so heavily influenced by that pivotal, defining conflict that its particular circumstances become inextricable from the modern understanding of justice and law with regards to armed conflict.  Only by replicating such circumstances could something similar be expected to emerge, precisely because of the piecemeal nature of Just War Theory and its derivative partners in international law.

An arbitrary nature to regulation upon warfare (or perhaps it would be more accurate to refer to attempted regulation, as there are notorious issues with the very concept of international law, and especially when it comes to warfare such limitations are often discarded if defeat looms) will not detract from world-building realism; it will even help, provided that it is not arbitrarily based upon our modern standards.  Rather, attempts to regulate conflict dating back to ancient times were largely arbitrary, and most often arose from particularly fierce, brutal conflicts, usually in which one side took unusual actions in an attempt to achieve victory – and subsequently lost.  The principles are less unifying than you might imagine.  Xenophon’s tale of his ten thousand, for instance, makes clear that it was considered quite normal and acceptable by the Mediterranean cultures of his day for armed forces to take provisions, weapons, tools, and so forth at the tip of a spear from villages and towns that could not defend themselves, despite the treatment of noncombatants being a commonly cited unifying thread of “just war” today.

Regulations and limitations upon conflict commonly existed only between specific states or groups of states, and would not apply to rebellions or states not party to such agreements.  Continuing from the example of Xenophon’s time, for illustration, the Greek states behaved differently towards each other in war than they did towards “outsiders,” like the Persians, and vice versa.  Conflicts between states deriving from the same culture, like the Hellenic peoples, were far more likely to exhibit restraint and adherence to local practice, whether that simply be cultural norms or formal interstate agreements and treaties.  Conflicts involving polities of different culture and origin tended to exhibit far fewer restraints and normative behavior, as such agreements, both implicit and explicit, were not extant, less was known about such foreigners, and they tended to be viewed as alien.  In our modern world, with ready access to the internet and information on cultures around the world, it is difficult to convey the sense of otherness, and true foreignness that would have been associated with a culture that your people had perhaps never encountered, or heard of only through vague rumor.  As terrible as it sounds to modern sensibilities, distant cultures really would regard each other as alien.

Far more common than inter-state agreements upon the implementation of warfare, therefore, would be internal standards of conduct.  As a world-builder, you have much more flexibility in this respect in constructing believable and convincing cultures than in the area of inter-state regulations and agreements.  Here, you could even attempt to create a coherent philosophy of warfare, whether that be religiously derived, experientially, or via some other mechanism (going back to the age-old “is conduct right because the Gods demand it, or do the Gods demand it because it is right” argument).

As much as I would find it fascinating to attempt to create such a philosophically coherent refute of Just War Theory here, that is not the purpose of this post.  Really, this is another example of the importance of merely realizing the assumptions that we hold as participants in our modern contexts, that you might know which ones are valid for your particular world-building, and which ones are not.  Like units of measurement (I swear we did that post, but I can’t recall when), or the existence of pockets, there are certain things that we don’t think about in our day-to-day lives that can appear in our writing.  Ideas of morality in warfare is another example, and we world-builders must be vigilant for such anachronisms.