Abstract
Starting from violence's widely acknowledged status as a wrong, this article critically explores attempts to legitimate violence through appeals to moral frameworks that determine the ends for which violence may be employed. Recognizing that such frameworks exist on all sides of violent conflict, it argues that since there will never be complete agreement on their content or application, nor complete certainty about which moral framework is the ‘correct’ one, it becomes impossible to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate violence either non-controversially or with certainity. Two problems result: our own ‘legitimate’ violence may reproduce rather than limit violence by sparking ‘legitimate’ violence in return, and our own use of violence may actually be unjust, despite our intentions. If we wish to avoid these problems yet maintain our moral commitments – however contested or contingent – we must employ nonviolent means to wage our conflicts, as such means remain legitimate despite disagreement or uncertainty regarding ends.
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Notes
I am intentionally employing a minimal definition of violence here, rather than a more expansive one that might include what Johan Galtung calls ‘structural violence’ (violence as unequal power structures and therefore uneven life chances, where the harm cannot be traced back to a particular agent or agents) (Galtung, 1969). The reason for this choice is that the more expansive a definition of violence is, the more it overlaps with what could also be called injustice and the more likelihood there is of disagreement over the content of that injustice (as well as over the conception of justice that it violates). The minimal conception of violence, on the other hand, is as close as we get to something that is universally viewed as abhorrent (when, as I will argue, no legitimating meaning is attached to it). Vittorio Bufacchi (2005) discusses what he sees as the advantages and disadvantages of what he calls the ‘minimalist’ and ‘comprehensive’ conceptions of violence (violence as excessive force and violence as violation).
I use the terms ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ throughout this article very expansively (except where otherwise noted) to include those of us who could potentially support violence as legitimated through some moral framework.
According to Stark, the US Department of Justice found that ‘nearly 80 per cent of inmates on federal death row are Black, Hispanic or from another minority group’.
Most just war theorists would want a distinction to be made between a ‘just war’ and a ‘crusade’ – a prime difference between the two being the extent to which one feels righteous in one's use of violence and to which the enemy is seen as the embodiment of evil.
I am using the terms ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ in reference to violence with the following distinction between justification and legitimacy in mind: Justification refers to an appeal to moral principles in order to philosophically or theologically ground a claim or an action. Legitimacy, on the other hand, refers to the sociological fact of people deeming a certain claim or action as right (broader than its strict usage in liberal political theory to mean the acceptance of domestic political authority – and the attendant use of political coercion – on the basis of fair, democratic processes). As such, there is a definite link between philosophical justification and legitimacy, insofar as a successful appeal to moral principles may persuade people to see a certain action – a war, for instance – as legitimate. By opting for the terms ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ over the terms ‘justified’ and ‘unjustified’ in reference to violence in this article – even when discussing philosophical/theological justification – I aim to highlight the fact that we are dealing here with the use of philosophy and theology in the world, as political practice rather than as isolated, neutral or universal philosophical reflection. I do, however, occasionally use the terms ‘just’ or ‘unjust’ not only in reference to just war theory (where these terms are normally employed) but also when discussing moral un/certainty and the possibility that there could be objectively ‘un/just’ ends or ‘un/just’ violence – even if the point is that we would never be able to know for sure if such a morally correct position were to exist or what that position might be.
In doing so, he effectively moves from what he sees as ‘a presumption against war’ in just war theory to ‘a presumption in favour of justice’ (Holliday, 2002, p. 562). Such a move would likely bring about even greater philosophical/theological disagreement between just war theory and other moral/religious traditions, as other traditions might dispute not only just war theory's conception of self-defense but also what constitutes injustice.
Originally used in the Qur’an to refer to the ‘era of pre-Islamic ignorance in Arabia’, jahiliyya is now used to mean ‘a “condition” rather than a particular historical period, a state of ignorance into which a society descends whenever it “deviates” from the straight path dictated by Islamic sources’ (Euben, 2002, p. 15).
Indeed, there are competing interpretations of both just war theory and jihad from within these traditions. Anthony Burke (2004, pp. 339–342) highlights disagreements among prominent just war theorists Jean Bethke Elshtain and Michael Walzer in regards to US policy towards Iraq over the past 20 years, whereas, as already noted, Roxanne Euben (2002, pp. 14–15) mentions real disagreement within the jihad tradition in regards to whether jihad is limited to struggle between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds or whether it can also be applied to internal struggles against the governments of Muslim but non-Islamic states who are actually governing with the secularism of the non-Islamic world.
Holliday (2002, p. 571) notes that this ‘global public forum’ would need to ‘ensure that only generally acceptable claims [to just cause] are sustained’ and to ‘decid[e] when sovereignty should override the claims of justice, and alternatively when justice should prevail’. I am much more pessimistic about our ability to come to real consensus on these questions and think that even if we get close, what matters is that there will always be some people on the outside of whatever decision is made. And as long as that is the case, the problems I have outlined above are still pertinent, as the line drawn to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate violence will not be universally agreed to.
Sudan's insistence in 2007 that the hybrid UN/AU force deployed in Darfur be solely comprised of African troops is an apt example of this perception, even if it reflects more cynical motives (BBC News, 2007; Smith, 2007).
Laurie Calhoun (2002, pp. 97–98) makes this point, emphasizing that, if we are concerned about consequences, the interpretations people hold of an experience of violence are what matter rather than whatever the ‘objective’ reasons for that act of violence might be, as these interpretations will be what motivate action, likely in the form of ‘justified’ violence in return.
Laurie Calhoun (2002, pp. 97–98) draws out a further implication from the unverifiable status of our claims to legitimate violence: ‘In a world filled with finite and fallible beings, the epistemological status of the conviction that one ought to wield deadly force never transcends the level of belief. In other words, leaders who wage wars when they believe that justice mandates such action must, to be consistent, accord the same right to other leaders, whenever they find themselves in similar situations – that is, whenever they believe that justice mandates resort to deadly force’.
Many thanks to Thomas Biersteker for this point.
Satyagraha means, literally, something like ‘holding to the truth’, which is apt given the tension I am trying to bring out here.
Stephen White (2009, p. 3) offers a similar approach when he argues that embracing a ‘late-modern ethos’, characterized by a ‘weak ontology’, means that one can, for example, be committed to ‘some variant of theism … but also admit that there can be other ways of spiritually animating one's life that cannot summarily be dismissed as nihilistic’. In other words, ‘the depth of one's commitment does not translate immediately into absoluteness of conviction’ (White, 2009, p. 4, emphasis in original).
Walzer (1977, p. 38) cites a British prosecutor at Nuremberg: ‘The killing of combatants is justifiable … only where the war itself is legal. But where the war is illegal … there is nothing to justify the killing and these murders are not to be distinguished from those of any other lawless robber bands’. Walzer (1977, pp. 34–47) goes on to note, however, that soldiers themselves should only be held responsible for the means of war not its initiation over which they did not have control.
One can see this dynamic in the way many mainstream white American responded to the civil rights movement. Many who formerly supported the segregationist status quo witnessed on television the sometimes violent repression of the non-violent civil rights movement in the 1950 s and the 1960 s and thereby started to revise their views about segregation. Non-violent action theorist Gene Sharp (1973) termed this process – when a regime's use of violent repression against a non-violent movement backfires – ‘political jiu-jitsu’.
An elaboration of the potential and effectiveness of non-violent means in a range of situations (from non-violent struggle against injustice to non-violent intervention to protect civilians from violence) is the subject of my larger research project.
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1Thanks to Sharon Krause, Thomas Biersteker, Catherine Lutz, and Michael Cox for comments on earlier versions of this article.
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Wallace, M. Fighting the good fight? Legitimating violence in a world of contested and contingent moral frameworks. Int Polit 49, 671–695 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.24