War: Theory: Anti-Constantinian Christian thawt vs Neo-Constantinian Christian thawt chez Gideon Strauss' blog

Over at Gideon Strauss' blog (click the blue title), you can read a fine series of comments and replies to an earlier post of his, regarding War. Listening in on this lengthy series of exchange of comments which he has brawt to the fore on his frontpage today makes for interesting theory to which I won't offer objections, except to note that I personally find Just War theory to be overwrought. So far, humans go to War, and not to do so at times makes things worse. I won't expatiate or elaborate the foregoing remark. But I do want to say this: citizens in democratic countries like the USA and Canada need to shift the focus of the thinking about War, need to shift to a geostrategic horizon.

Christians committed to a principled neo-Constantian view of the salutary use of force by advanced democracies need to understand better their role as citizens, seeing that role to involve helping their nation-state make good decisions in the use of armed force when and if the other forces out there have our countries in their gun sights. But the problems are not between Us and Them. The problems are more often between Them1 and Them 2 and so on, in varying and shifting combinations. If A and B have a dispute, forcing C to take sides, then the USA may have to get become involved for a wide range of reasons, usually a combination of such. And, at least hypothetically, even Canada may be dragged in, as it was in Haiti because of the francophone factor and the Haitian émigré population in Québec. The US, on the other hand, was dragged in because the conflicts on the Island were expelling thousands of Boat People who were bent on arriving illegally in the US. So, both Canada and the US had to get involved. Geostrategics.

Now, true pacifists can develop tactics to contribute to a geostrategic mutuality with non-pacificists: what are true francophone pacificists from Québec doing in Haiti these days, while Canada is maintaining something of a(n inadequate) military "presence" there? A case like this brings us to a threshold of the issue of sacrifice: there are only two honourable paths - that of the soldier putting her/his life in harm's way and willing to use lethal force; and that of the saint going into the conflict to live a helpful life among and for the most needy there, thus putting him/herself also in harm's way. But people who live middle-class or counter-cultural lives, who don't do their democratic homework to help their own nation deploy its resources of armed force to make the world more orderly, stable, and need-asssuaging according to some communally determined set of priorities, are just talktalk about Just War theory.

Just War theory doesn't cover the situation in the world today, if it ever did (altho I do think the Augustinian tradition did some good along that line in regard to the rising plethora of Christian kingdoms alongside those still holding onto earlier religious patterns while changing swiftly in societal structure from tribes to nations). Today, we are in a much different situation, and Just War theory floats abstractly above the seething permutations of forces active in the world, forces of change - of poverty of rapid enrichment of religion of nihilism of crime of migration of displacement. Maybe we need a moratorium on Just War theory, and instead take a look, for instance, at why Uzbekistan received the attention of both the USA and Russia, but overnite both patron-states of the iron-fist dictator there lost their influence (the USA because it began to press the Bush Doctrine of democratization. The upshot is that Uzbekistan suddenly received the support of and, it seems, became an ally of China.

Well, members of the fictitious Rookmaker Club should take a look at the Gideon Strauss file on War, as some Christians are arguing it out right now at his site. Also, his blog entry offers a PDF download of a 2002 article by Dr Keith Pavlischek, a prof of military ethics at the US National War College (something like that). If my attempt at a link here to the article, doesn't work, go to the Gideon Strauss site and get your copy of Pavlischek's "Just and Unjust Wars in an Age of Terrorism." - Owlb