Eberle on "The Presumption Against War"

Philosopher Chris Eberle -- whom Notre Dame has been fortunate to host this academic year -- has written an interesting response to an exchange in a recent issue of First Things between Paul Griffiths and George Weigel on the "presumption against war" in just-war theory.  With Chris's permission, here it is:

. . .  Paul Griffiths expresses perplexity as to why some advocates of the Just War Tradition reject the claim that there is a “presumption against war,” and purports to provide an unimpeachable argument in support of that claim.  George Weigel rejects that argument and insists that there isn’t a presumption against war.  Both authors stumble badly:  Griffiths’ argument is anything but unimpeachable, Weigel’s denial that there is a presumption against war is deeply implausible.

Griffiths begins with the assertion that a person can be morally permitted to perform certain actions in some circumstances but not in others: she can drive after reaching the age of 15 but not before.   But if it’s the case that a person is not permitted to perform a particular action in some circumstances, then that person can’t just willy nilly perform that action whenever she wants – she has to have adequate reason to perform that action in the circumstances in which she finds herself.  That is, she shouldn’t perform that action without adequate justification.  Now it’s sometimes permissible to engage in war, sometimes not.  Hence, those who engage in war must have adequate reason to engage in war.  But that’s just what’s meant by there being a presumption against war – you can’t wage war without having the appropriate reasons to show that, in the circumstances, war is licit.  And, of course, the Just War Tradition specifies what those reasons are.

We should reject this argument, for it has entirely implausible implications – as Weigel happily points out.  Consider: I am morally permitted to snore loudly in some circumstances but not in others – for example, when I’m attending Professor Griffith’s public lecture on the Just War Tradition.  Does that imply that there is a presumption against snoring?  Hardly – snoring is a harmless activity and so there is neither a presumption for or against it, in spite of the fact that there are circumstances in which snoring is impermissible. 

But this objection to Griffith’s rather impeachable argument indicates a much better argument – one that I fancy is unimpeachable.  For unlike snoring, it’s not the case that waging war is a harmless activity. It’s unnecessary to detail the excruciating pain, dispossessed populations, and flying bits of human bone and flesh, that the waging of war does in fact inevitably involve.  Wars destroy human lives, the lives of persons with great moral worth.  Surely – surely – we should not destroy human lives unless we have very powerful reasons to do so.  And as a consequence, there is a presumption against waging war.  Weigel provides no good reason to deny anything of the sort.

He does provide a number of bad reasons – a surprisingly large number, given the limited space available to him.  Here is one such reason: those who adopt the claim that there is a presumption against war have been consistently wrong in their estimation of the justice of recent wars.  The U.S. bishops, for example, got the dynamics of the cold war wrong in their pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace.”  Other religious leaders and intellectuals falsely predicted disaster in the first Gulf War and the recent Iraq War.  These misjudgments are to be attributed to the reality-distorting claim that there is a presumption against war.  In fact, Weigel suspects those who adopt the presumption against war position – “that the use of even proportionate and discriminate force is, at the outset of moral analysis, presumptively deplorable – of smuggling in a “pacifist premise.”  It’s no wonder that they fail to recognize a just war when they see one. 

But Weigel’s argument is confused.  The claim that there is a presumption against war is exactly the kind of claim a pacifist should not make.  After all, a presumption – if it really is only a presumption – must be overridable by sufficiently weighty considerations.  So a dictator who uses his military power to eradicate a segment of his population is doing a really bad thing, and it might very well be the case that, if waging war on that dictator is the only feasible way to stop him from succeeding, then we ought to wage war on him.  That is, we should wage war against him even though doing so might very well involve inflicting great pain and suffering on large numbers of people and so even though there is a very powerful presumption against waging war against him.  Once we get clear that presumptions can be overridden, there is no reason whatever to believe that adopting the presumption against war position must provide aid and comfort to pacifism. 

Why is the presumption against war position important?  Not least because it’s the sober moral truth: if there isn’t a presumption against war, with all its attendant suffering, then there isn’t a presumption against anything.  But also because adopting that position distinguishes the advocate of the just war tradition from those who glorify war, who seem to regard the waging of war as an intrinsically worthy pastime, and so who need, not a reason to go to war, but to refrain from waging war.  The latter position, an all too common human failing, is corruption and the claim that there’s a presumption against war captures that judgment.

Rick