The Ethics of Violence and War

I have been speaking with a friend recently about violence and war.  When is it justified?  Is it ever justified?  Do hard and fast ethical rules exist, applicable to any situation at any time? Or can we sometimes justify violence by examining the specific circumstances of an event?

My friend, who is thoughtful, logical, religious, and politically liberal, believes in absolutes.  Right is right and wrong is wrong.  Violence, in his estimation, is always wrong.  He believes that natural truth exists beyond the rules that humanity constructs for itself.

I disagree.  I do not believe that there is fundamental law of the universe that says killing is wrong.   Humans live in groups and depend on each other, and as a result it just makes sense, for the well-being of our society, to shun violence.  Conceptions of right and wrong are convenient for maintaining order, stability, and preserving life.  That does not demean these ideas.  That does not make them any less important. 

Ethical codes such as the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them unto you) exist precisely because their broad acceptance is required in order for human civilization to exist.  These values have been created by humans; they have not been handed down from on high.

Many people find this argument terrifying and damaging.  They label it relativism, or the idea that nothing is truly absolute or absolutely true.  As my friend writes:

“One of my professors at [law school] lamented the fact that, in the post-deconstructionist world, we are left with rationales to tear down others' arguments but we have nothing to construct in their place.  Essentially, we deconstruct "natural truths" but then we are left with nothing.”

He disagrees, and so do I, but for different reasons.  I’ll focus on my reasoning: just because the Golden Rule doesn’t come from God doesn’t make it any less true, if by truth we are discussing the most peaceful, free, and prosperous ways to organize humans into societies. 

Aside from the occasional hermit, we live in societies and cannot escape our connections and dependence on others, as John Donne noted several hundred years ago.  Because of this connection then, something similar to the Golden Rule becomes a sort of truth, just not an absolute, universal truth.  In fact, I think it becomes more powerful than an absolute truth, because it is something that we as humans have recognized, nurtured, and passed along throughout our history.  I find that much more compelling than simply accepting an edict from a supernatural being.

We can test the idea of absolutes when it comes to violence by our real-world experiences. I believe that certain actions are wrong in some contexts, while the same action may be considered right, or at least just in other contexts.  The simplest example is an unprovoked violent action versus the same violent action done in self-defense.  We can understand and even justify violence in self-defense, and we do all the time.  Most legal systems have generous exceptions for such situations. 

Yes, humanity has a proud tradition of non-violence, exhibited best by Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  But I would argue that their use of non-violence was a tactic employed to achieve certain ends, as opposed to a fundamental belief system.

My recent conversations on this topic focus on more complex situations, such as the war in Afghanistan, the killing of Bin Laden, or the NATO actions in Libya.  I have generally defended these actions, while my friend has opposed them.  Don’t misunderstand, I find myself opposed to the vast majority of wars.  Iraq, for example is wholly unjust and unjustified. 

But I think that violence and war is justified when the alternative is greater violence, injustice, and human suffering.  I actually supported the war in Afghanistan less because of 9/11 and more because the Taliban and Al Qaeda promote a society that horribly represses women, dissent, and any sort of freedom.  And the violence in Libya, while the rationale seems disjointed, is justified in to stop Qaddafi from engaging in mass killings of those who oppose him.  Granted, we will never know what would have happened in the absence of that intervention, but I would rather have that uncertainty over the certainty of what happened in Rwanda in the 1990’s. 

To me, using violence against someone who uses violence and repression for their own ends is wholly justified.  That person or group, whether it is Hitler, Bin Laden, the Taliban, or any of the colonial powers over recent centuries, has chosen to break the implicit social contract that all humans living in groups enter into. 

And this social contract goes back far beyond the Mayflower and the French Revolution, back to the earliest days of human civilizations.  It goes back to when humans, or the ancestors of humans, realized that living in groups, helping one another, and depending on one another was mutually beneficial for everyone involved.  Doing so, however, involved a degree of trust.  Trust that others would not seek to harm you, your freedom, or your property. 

So there are some serious, rambling, college sophomore-type thoughts for you.  To be clear, I abhor violence, and I think it should be avoided and used only as last resort.  But it sometimes is justified.  As for the related argument about the existence of natural laws, I find it quite freeing to reject. 

Humans have great power to shape the world around them, and we must take responsibility for shaping the morality of that world as well.  By rejecting natural laws, or laws from on high, we take ownership over them, and we are no longer able to commit horrible acts in someone else’s name.  We still may commit horrible acts, but we will be forced to take responsibility for them.