In OpinioJuris, Hans Gutbrod, an Associate Professor at Ilia State University in Tbilisi and Senior Fellow, Center for Peace and Conflict Studies, Seton Hall University, comments on the “just war theory”:
“Four key conflicts of recent years – Afghanistan, Iraq, Karabakh and the recent Russian attack on Ukraine – illustrate how illuminating the framework remains, for scrutinizing the appropriate use of force. Highlighting its relevance may thus help to generate further respect for the core principles of IHL, even if the just war tradition itself is, of course, not coterminous with IHL itself.
Afghanistan shows that with regards to Ius ad Bellum, an initial just cause (pursuing Al Qaeda after 9/11) and a broadly plausible intention (stabilizing Afghanistan, securing rights for women and also minorities such as the Hazara) may not be enough to be on the right side of history, if one doesn’t also have a reasonable chance of success. As Carter Malkasian has put it, the “very presence of Americans in Afghanistan trod on what it meant to be Afghan… Any Afghan government, however good, however democratic, was going to be imperiled as long as it was aligned with the United States.” This challenge cannot be described as a surprise given Afghanistan’s history, became visible early in the conflict, and the consideration of reasonable chances of success at appropriate proportionality is a core component of the just war tradition.
With Ius in Bello, Afghanistan also highlights that Western militaries, in spite of major efforts, still struggle with discrimination when facing adversaries that blend into a population that remains skeptical of foreign and central authority, as incisive reporting by Anand Gopal from Helmand has shown. On Western engagement in Afghanistan, there remains a plausible debate on whether a more modest intention might have had a higher chance of success. Such debates fit directly into the framework of the just war tradition, even if they do not make explicit reference to it.
For the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the just war tradition shows up the fundamental flaws of this U.S.-led venture. The supposed cause — weapons of mass destruction — was flimsy and turned out to be false, dealing a damaging blow to Western credibility. The intentions at least in part seem to have been dubious, if one is to take the pronouncements of then U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz seriously, who had proposed to pay for the invasion with oil revenues belonging to the Iraqi people, and who had previously developed a doctrine of US imperial supremacy. The effort lacked basic realism about achieving a more stable Iraq with proportionate means. While Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator and the prospect of succession to his unhinged sons posed a challenge to the region, and while perhaps Kurdish people in Northern Iraq welcome the comparative freedom they achieved post-2003, just war theory shows how flawed an undertaking the U.S. led itself and its allies into, at an extraordinary cost in lives, money and credibility.
For Karabakh, the just war tradition helps to highlight different aspects of this conflict in the South Caucasus. With hundreds of thousands of internally displaced, it can be argued that Azerbaijan had a just cause for resorting to force in the fall of 2020. After nearly thirty years of negotiations, it had tried many options and at least some claim to last resort could be made. Yet conversely, Azerbaijan lacked a good intention in that it demonstrated little willingness to respect the wish of the Armenians of Karabakh to determine their own affairs. Also, Azerbaijan had legitimate authority only in the narrow sense of having a sovereign government. In many other respects, critics have questioned the legitimacy of Azerbaijan’s autocratic government, pointing to the country’s poor standing in international comparisons of rights and freedoms. With Azerbaijani citizens arguably under siege by their own government, many Armenians wondered who one could make a lasting peace with.
For the recent Russian attack on Ukraine, the just war tradition shows how broad public sentiment . Russia’s desire to lay claim to a sphere of influence is not a just cause, much as it can be explained in terms of Realpolitik. De-Nazification and de-militarization are not plausible intentions, and to the extent that there are, as the Kremlin claimed, perpetrators to be held to account for alleged transgressions, a full-fledged invasion is neither proportional nor a plausible last resort. A government which does not allow protest or public mention of the word “war” hardly can claim that its attack is legitimized by genuine support. That not all countries share in strong condemnation is, perhaps, partially a result of the West not having consistently applied the standards of the just war tradition to its own actions. At the same time, the stark departure of the Kremlin from broadly accepted standards suggests that it may be difficult to return to constructive multilateralism in the near future. “
Just War Theory: The Only Winner Across Four Grim Conflicts https://t.co/AA082kHp0J via @opiniojuris
— Lars Patrick Berg MdEP (@L_P_Berg) July 17, 2022