Argument: Last Resort

War must be a last resort. The state is justified in using armed force only after it has tried all non-violent alternatives. Sometimes peaceful measures – diplomacy, economic sanctions, international pressure, or condemnation from other nations – simply do not work, but they must at least be tried in order to give every chance for a peaceful resolution to a crisis.

Candidate 1: "Many nations wage war without official declaration (e.g. the USA’s involvement in Vietnam) and act unilaterally instead. Such unilateralism does not necessarily lead to an inevitable circumvention of the Geneva Conventions, it merely avoids the bureaucracy necessary to draw authoritative approval. Moreover, who is to decide which entities can and cannot issue calls to arms? Legitimate authorities have sanctioned some of the most horrific wars in history."
Candidate 2: "We have seen that a proportional response frequently doesn’t work. Suicide bombers continue to blow up victims in the Middle East despite the response. Why should a nation tolerate continued aggression for the sake of proportionality? And if a nation knows it is likely to be attacked, why should it wait to disarm the aggressor? Is not pre-emptive action justified to prevent the loss of innocent life? Finally, what of deterrence: a vigorous response to an aggressive act may not be strictly proportionate, but by making all potential aggressors think twice about future actions, it can be justified as saving more suffering in the long run."
Candidate 3: "The traditional just war framework may be difficult to apply to the contemporary war on terror, but whilst war remains, we must possess the just war framework as a strategic tool to both prevent and regulate its occurrence. Whilst they may involve the alteration of certain criteria, as has happened throughout its history, it does not suggest it has lost all use. The Bush administration’s attempts to circumvent the jus in bello principles of non-combatant immunity were stalled, albeit belatedly, by widespread public disapproval, proving the basis for just war thinking is not in vain idealism but moral intuition. Therefore the just war doctrine is not only necessary but to an extent, innate."
Candidate 4: "Just cause is an elastic concept. Who determines what is “aggression”? Could violating a disputed border region (e.g. Ethopia-Eritrea, Pakistan-India) or imposing economic sanctions (e.g on North Korea) be aggression? And if a state is unable to defend itself, can another state intervene militarily on its behalf? These borderline cases make invoking this criterion very problematic."
Candidate 5: "War is a necessary element in international affairs when there is no scope for diplomacy and conditions dictate that force is necessary to prevent or stop suffering. Few would argue that the United States was acting unjustly in entering the 2nd World War, or that more generally the defeat of the Nazis was an unjust act on the behalf of the Allies.

Furthermore, just war theory has little to say on the overall existence of war, but merely seeks to regulate war as a permanent feature of international society. War, as an institution and a human activity, has existed for as long as there have been political communities. The resort to force is therefore not one made due merely to a belief in its legitimacy but a belief in its utility. Just war theory acts therefore as a series of moral criteria to regulate the resort to warfare in order to prevent, rather than exacerbate, war for war’s sake. It recognizes the ‘war is hell’ mentality and is, if anything, born from it, encouraging a resort to force only in cases where diplomacy is unable to function and war is strictly necessary. Even then, jus in bello principles apply to regulate the conflict itself, ensuring that a just war does not descend into the use of illegitimate means and methods of warfare. It does not purport to comment on the matter of the existence of warfare, merely recognises its occurrence and seeks to regulate both its regularity and bloodshed."
Candidate 6: "Sometimes going to war before all alternatives are exhausted is the most moral action. For example, a nation might decide to go to war if it determines that waiting would enable to the enemy to increase its strength and to do much more damage than an early war would have inflicted. This, after all, is the bitter lesson of the failure of appeasement in the 1930s. Waiting might allow an invading state to entrench itself so that far greater force would be necessary to remove it at a later date."
Candidate 7: "Sometimes it is morally imperative to fight against overwhelming odds, as resistance fighters did in World War II. Also this condition may give large nations free rein to bully small ones because they could not win a war. It also may cause a country to surrender in a war it might actually win. Weak countries have won wars against powerful ones – look at the American Revolution. Finally, the point at which a war became unwinnable, and therefore unjust by this definition, is often only identifiable with hindsight – consider the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, or the American involvement in Vietnam."
Candidate 8: "Reality is a lot murkier than theory. How are we to determine a state’s intent? Sometimes good intentions are bound up with bad; public justifications for war may not always represent the real reasons. And who is determine if a peace is just or a wrong has been committed? The nation initiating the war will use its own values to justify its intentions, and these values may be at odds with those of the other party to the conflict. Furthermore, it is altogether possible to fight a war for selfish motives and nevertheless protect civilians and reduce suffering in so doing."
Candidate 9: "War has always been an option in international affairs; few rulers before just war theory was developed felt constrained by the absence of such a moral framework. What the just war criterion provide for is a regulatory framework whereby war cannot break out before at least one side satisfies the criterion. As such, this ensures a temporal space for diplomatic negotiations to play out and if necessary, for either top-down pressure from more powerful states or bottom-up pressure from the public to alleviate any desire for war."

Sometimes going to war before all alternatives are exhausted is the most moral action. For example, a nation might decide to go to war if it determines that waiting would enable to the enemy to increase its strength and to do much more damage than an early war would have inflicted. This, after all, is the bitter lesson of the failure of appeasement in the 1930s. Waiting might allow an invading state to entrench itself so that far greater force would be necessary to remove it at a later date.
