‘Just War’ And ‘Just Peace’: A Religious Examination Of Ukraine’s Plight
(ANALYSIS) In recent weeks, as peace discussions proceeded among victimized Ukraine, its imperialistic neighbor Russia, pro-Ukraine Europeans and America’s Donald Trump administration, there’s been some vigorous religious debate about the this muddled situation.
When Russia invaded Ukraine three years ago, religious leaders across the globe condemned President Vladimir Putin (with the conspicuous exception of Moscow’s Putinized Orthodox Patriarch Kirill). But now some think it’s time to reconsider whether Ukraine’s dogged military defense is still moral.
Reasoning on what constitutes a “just war” has ancient roots. Christians in the early church were mostly non-combatants or outright pacifists, if only because Roman soldiers faced pagan rituals and loyalty oaths to supposedly divine emperors. Christianity eventually achieved toleration and thus growing responsibility for government. Building upon the Roman philosopher Cicero, St. Augustine formulated conditions under which warfare could be morally justified, followed by St. Thomas Aquinas and many other theologians.
The customary definition starts with “jus ad bellum” — justice in deciding to undertake war. Combat must be authorized by legitimate rulers, be only for defense or to counter grave injustice and not selfish motives like conquest, and have the goal of establishing a “just peace.” The accompanying “jus in bello,” (justice in waging war) involves such matters as humane limits in weaponry, protections for innocent civilians and prisoners of war.
In modern times, theorists have added that justified combat must have a reasonably serious chance of success, be launched only as a last resort after all reconciliation efforts have failed and produce sufficient benefits to outweigh warfare’s damage. Such is the teaching on “moral legitimacy” of war in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Another modern addition is “jus post bellum,” conditions needed for justice after a war.
Weighing all that, Editor R. R. Reno of the interfaith First Things felt even two years ago that truce negotiations were needed because it was “pagan vanity” to suppose Ukraine — with limited forces due to its far smaller population — could defeat Russia. In excerpts from a forthcoming article, he continues to feel “moral reasoning must reckon with realities” and Ukraine is “sacrificing the lives of soldiers in pursuit of unrealistic objectives.” The U.S. and Ukraine’s European allies lack the will and the military means to beat Russia, he figures. Putin has already “won a victory,” however “partial and costly,” so Trump seeks to end “a war that cannot be won.”
There’s similar thinking in Providence magazine this month from Tim Milosch, a political scientist at evangelical Biola University. It’s “beyond dispute” that Ukraine’s military self-defense is justified, he grants. But righteousness “does not guarantee victory” and one criterion of a just war is “a reasonable chance of success. … Even the prosecution of a just war can become unjust if it unnecessarily prolongs suffering.” Thus Trump’s peace efforts should be supported.
Instead of the “just war” theory, Milosch favors the “just statecraft” concept as defined in Providence by Eric Patterson, a Georgetown University fellow and former dean of Regent University’s School of Government. Instead of theory, he emphasizes how peace-making operates in practice as public officials draw expertise from many disciplines and ponder a more comprehensive array of competing values and national interests.
Providence, founded in 2015 by the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, is uniquely devoted to “Christian Realism” in national security and foreign policy. That school of thought is associated with influential U.S. Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. He was a youthful pacifist who came to strongly advocate total resistance to the Nazi German threat, over against pre-war liberal Protestants who preached idealistic non-involvement or pacifism.
The magazine’s editor-in-chief, evangelical Methodist leader Mark Tooley, contended in a March 10 essay that realism and just war doctrine do not require “an outnumbered nation under attack automatically to surrender or agree to highly unfavorable terms.” Victimized smaller nations may have advantages over bigger enemy nations in terms of leadership, united motivation, wealth, geography or “better allies.” He sees those advantages in Ukraine and cites prior examples such as ill-armed Britain defying Germany’s air assault in 1940-41.
Also, he insisted, an easily negotiated “peace” may only postpone “further Russian aggression” and that sort of U.S. pressure upon Ukraine “actually makes a plausible peace less likely.” He figures Russia will not accept reasonable truce terms if America mainly encourages Putin, as he thought Trump had been doing.
Two other Providence writers took Trump to task more harshly in analyses of the situation as of late February. Alan Dowd of Indiana’s Sagamore Institute denounced Trump’s “moral emptiness” in preparing to reward Russia’s aggression and “holding the victim at fault for daring to defend itself.” For him, the resident’s “gun-to-the-head” campaign to force peace will more likely produce a “broken” Ukraine, an “eroded” free world, an “unraveled” international order that has fostered peace for decades, and eventually a dangerous proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Then “just peace” proponent J. Daryl Charles of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy compared Trump’s “absurd fabrications” about Russia with Britain’s Neville Chamberlain, who infamously thought surrendering a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938 would win “peace for our time.”
Charles also insisted the U.S. has a “moral commitment” to honor is 1994 accord with Russia and Britain to guarantee Ukraine’s independence and “existing borders.” For him, “peace is illegitimate if it is not justly ordered. Where there is no justice, there is no peace, and people perish,” and “at stake is nothing less than the nation’s survival.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.