Just and Unjust Europeans
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Michael Walzer has a short, sharp online-only piece for Dissent about the Georgian crisis. A few points in response: (A) Walzer’s point (1), about how Russia’s war is an “unjust war,” seems to fail to recognize a distinction whose essentiality to discussing the justice of war Walzer himself is most responsible for promulgating, namely the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, or just cause and just conduct. Clearly, Russia’s behavior fails appallingly on the second score. But the first is murkier. The Russian invasion was of course hardly launched for humanitarian purposes, and as Walzer notes, “the Russian claim that the Georgians killed or injured 2,000 civilians [isn't] credible.” Nonetheless, Georgia triggered the conflict with an unjust attack on Abkhazian and South Ossetian separatists. It can’t be that Russia doesn’t even have an arguably legitimate interest in protecting them.