| Just War in the 21st Century - Conclusion |
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Conclusion As a result of the tactics adopted by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda some would argue that ‘the gloves need to come off’, suggesting that increased aggression and less discrimination by NATO forces would be more militarily effective. On the surface such an approach is appealing, especially for combatants who stand in the firing line and politicians who want quicker results. Such a temptation must be resisted because it would simply ensure a bigger loss for the UK and its allies. The loss would take a number of forms. I suggest that the first loss would be strategic failure, which may still happen anyway. If the UK knowingly unleashes a brutal war fighting machine on the civilians of Afghanistan, some of whom might be Taliban fighters and some not, the remaining fragile support for the campaign by the British public would evaporate. With the UK being a signatory to the International Criminal Court British politicians and military commanders who advocated such an approach would leave themselves open to prosecution. As Carl von Clausewitz, the great Prussian strategic theorist, pointed out two centuries ago in his book On War, the military needs the moral and material support of the people and the political support of the government if it is to successfully engage in war. The International Assistance Force could win every tactical engagement with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters yet still suffer political defeat, paralleling the experience of the Americans in Vietnam. The second loss that the unrestrained use of force would incur would be the loss of British self-identity that for most citizens is characterised by a sense of justice and fair play. For the British people to have to see themselves as deliberate purveyors of indiscriminate destruction would be a demand too far. Finally, any claim that the UK could make to being a force for good, particularly in Afghanistan, would be ridiculed around the world. The long-term consequences for a country that is rich in history but small in size and poor in natural resources could be severe. The only practical option, therefore, for the UK in making war in the twenty-first century is to engage with just war principles. One consequence of the ongoing doubts about Prime Minister Blair’s justification of the 2003 invasion of Iraq is a sense among the British people that they were somehow misled. If or when the time comes that the present, or a future, Prime Minister believes it to be essential for the UK to go to war again it is likely that the British people will demand a higher burden of proof than might previously have been the case. In the execution of war, especially interventionist wars like Afghanistan, proportionality and discrimination will be essential if support for war is to be maintained and a positive outcome achieved. If the constraints of engaging an enemy in a just manner results in a sense of fighting with one hand tied behind our backs, so be it. This is a price that must be paid if the values that Britons claim to cherish are not to be sacrificed on the altar of military expediency. Peter Lee served as a Royal Air Force chaplain during the build-up to the 2003 invasion, and for most of the period of the UK’s involvement in Iraq. After hostilities commenced he spent five months at a military hospital in Cyprus providing pastoral support to wounded, maimed and injured soldiers who had been airlifted from the battlefield. During this period Dr Lee developed a keen interest in the way the intervention was justified, particularly by Prime Minister Tony Blair. This prompted extensive reading of the classic just war arguments, eventually leading to formal research in the field at King’s College London War Studies Department. Since 2008 Dr Lee has been employed by King’s College London as a Lecturer in Air Power Studies based at Royal Air Force College Cranwell in Lincolnshire, specialising in the ethics of war. In 2010 he gained his PhD in War Studies for a thesis entitled A Genealogy of the Ethical Subject in the Just War Tradition. Dr Lee is regularly invited to lecture on this subject to military, academic and wider audiences.
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