Confession time first. I approached this book with deep prejudice about what is called the ‘Just War’ debate. It seems to me that it has little practical application. Apart from the belated condemnation by the United States Catholic Bishops of the Vietnam War, I know of no application of Just War principles to actual wars that might oblige soldiers not to fight in them. (I do not forget Archbishop Hurley who alone told young South Africans not to fight in apartheid wars nor Archbishop Romero who urged his fellow-countrymen not to kill their brothers.) Once we had swallowed Hiroshima and Nagasaki anything seemed permissible, including a nuclear deterrence policy that rested on our willingness to kill ten million Soviets.
Having confessed such prejudice what is this book about? The two editors, in their final chapter, explain that one of the book's main purposes is ‘to show that the ideology of Al-Qa’ida is not shared by the overwhelming majority of Muslims’. Further, that military activity should follow ethics and not ethics military activity.
The issue of Islam and Al-Qa’ida is thoroughly discussed by Ahmad Achtar of Heythrop College and Tim Winter of Cambridge University, the latter himself an Imam. These are really the key chapters and need to be read with care. This is new territory for most of us. It seems that the official teaching of Islam and that of Christianity do not differ much if at all: both faiths believe that the direct killing of the innocent in war or otherwise is morally wrong.
But neither here nor anywhere else in the book is there a study of the reasons why many young Muslims, who do not support Al-Qa’ida's ideology, think that a war in the Middle East of political liberation from the West is underway. Until we in the West understand what we have done in the Middle East, especially in the last century, we will not make permanent progress towards peace.
There is much more of interest. The distinguished historian Michael Howard slices up Philip Bobbitt's recent book Terror and Consent so delicately that it is not clear that the victim is aware that he has been sliced, despite being given a right of reply in a penultimate chapter.
Richard Lock-Pullan of Birmingham University provides an account of the theology of the Bush years that would be funny if the consequences were not so ghastly. ‘America is the hope of all mankind,’ Bush told a gathering on an anniversary of 9/11, ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it’. No credits given to Saint John. For Bush, and the many in the United States who think like him, the war of good against evil is their permanent responsibility.
General Hugh Beach provides the best account of United States strategy and its development in Iraq that I have seen. His focus here is primarily on counter-insurgency. One remark of his, which not only relates to Iraq, made me a little uncomfortable. ‘The wider question remains,’ he says, ‘of deciding which insurgencies to crush when there is a choice among so many’. Since over half of current wars are civil wars your insurgency may well be my just rebellion. Where does the Just War's ‘lawful authority’ lie? To be fair he does acknowledge that another book is needed to deal with these many rebellions.
Nick Ritchie of Bradford University deals with an issue that usually gets too little attention: what do we do about possible nuclear terror threats? He does not put such threats at the top of the terror list but says that those dangers cannot be ignored. He lists a series of possible political and military responses to them. But at the end of the day ‘the nuclear weapon states will have to commit seriously to nuclear disarmament’. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ has never worked.
Sir David Omand, once Security and Intelligence Coordinator at the Cabinet office, tackles a key question. To what extent should we sacrifice liberty in the hope of achieving security? Many of our hard-won legal rights are now challenged. We have already gone some way down the road of restricting liberty. Few realise that in the UK today people can be kept in prison or under house arrest for indefinite periods without knowing what they are accused of or by whom. ‘Innocent until proved guilty’ has substantial holes in it today.
Paul Schulte, once of the MOD and now visiting fellow at various universities, takes us into the future with his essay on Fourth Generation warfare which is not confined to state boundaries, employs non-state actors, and relies on terror and intimidation. This is a form of warfare not dreamt of when Augustine, Aquinas, et al were laying the foundations of what is now called the Just War doctrine.
The chapter that I found most interesting and indeed most ‘religious’ was Brian Wicker's ‘Just War and State Sovereignty’. A one-time chair of the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament, Wicker challenges us to think about the national state divisions of the world which we have grown up to assume to be normal if not inevitable. The so-called Sovereign State is however a fairly recent construct. Even the UN Charter puts limits on absolute sovereignty. The UN Charter, art 2.7, says that there should be no interference in matters ‘essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state’. But are human rights domestic issues only?
The Charter of the UN was signed in 1945 by 50 states. Today it has 192 signatories. Each imagines itself to be sovereign and to expect the primary loyalty of its citizens. Wicker's view is that the world of sovereign states is coming to an end. International communications, economics and ‘the market’, travel, social inequalities, environmental threats, are forcing us to think of our global unity – our interdependence not our divisions. We do not yet know what the future holds for the political structure of our world.
Rather optimistically Wicker thinks of the Church as the sacrament of the future world community. ‘The transnational Body of Christ’, the United Reformed Church once called our global community. The Church is a sign of God's reign yet to come in its fullness. Wicker's overall conclusion is clear: ‘Terrorism is just organised crime which needs global policing’. He looks forward to a future world of global law and law enforcement.
All those interested in the tensions between morality and militarism will find this book of great interest.
