Just war

The doctrine of just war ( Latin: bellum iustum ) is a conception developed in western legal history , according to which a war or armed conflict between collectives - mostly states - is ethically and legally legitimate if and only if it meets certain requirements: the law war ( Latin ius ad bellum ) is reserved for a legitimate authority who must wage war for a just cause and with the right intentions and goals, while the law in war ( Latin ius in bello ) requires compliance with certain rules of warfare, including the Proportionality of the means and the protection of the civilian population and prisoners of war . A special right is also adopted for the final phase of a war, the jus post bellum , which deals with the end of an armed conflict including the related agreements and reparations as well as the reconstruction of the economy and society.

The term originated, after Greek forerunners, in ancient Rome (especially with Cicero ), and has been developed into a detailed ecclesiastical theory since around 420 . Around 1140 this was included in the Decretum Gratiani and thus part of canon law .

From the late 16th century onwards, modern international war law developed from this doctrine . While the classical doctrine for the right to war requires a "just reason" ( Latin causa iusta ), which objectively only one of the two belligerent parties can invoke, in modern times the view has prevailed that a formal war between sovereigns States to be considered lawful on both sides. At the same time, the law was contractually specified and tightened during war .

According to modern international law , war of aggression is fundamentally outlawed and the right to war is thus suspended; Only "military sanctions" mandated by the United Nations for the purpose of securing peace are legitimate . Since 1990, however, there has been a new discussion about the possibility of “just wars” in connection with humanitarian interventions .

Main criteria

The criteria of a just war developed in scholasticism and adopted in international martial law are divided up

• the right to war ( ius ad bellum : who is allowed to wage war for what reasons?) and
• the law in war ( ius in bello : What kind of warfare is legitimate?)

Right to war:

• legitimate authority ( legitima auctoritas / potestas )
• Existence of a valid reason for war ( causa iusta )
• just intention of those waging war ( recta intentio )
• last resort to restore law ( ultima ratio )
• Prospect of peace with the war opponent ( iustus finis )

Law in War:

• Proportionality ( proportionalitas ) of the military means used
• Differentiation between soldiers and civilians (principle of discrimination) and protection of the latter during combat operations (principle of immunity).

The interpretation, ranking, binding force, scope, applicability and fulfillment of these main criteria have been controversial since their formation. Today the main discussion is whether all criteria must be met at the same time (restrictive interpretation) or only some of the most important (permissive interpretation) for a war to be considered fair.

Antiquity

Orient

Even the rulers of ancient oriental high cultures tried to justify their wars, since peace was generally considered a better condition. The Assyrians legitimized their wars of aggression by claiming that the gods had granted the god Aššur rule over the world; anyone who did not submit must be fought as a rebel. The Egyptians saw themselves as representatives of the order ( Ma'at against the) Chaos entitled to take up arms. In ancient Persia , the concept of defending "truth" and "justice" against the "lie" played a central role.

Greece

The occidental concept of a just war is rooted in the virtue ethics of Greek philosophy , which also influenced their theories of the state . Without even mentioning the term, Plato also dealt with the just avoidance and solution of violent conflicts in his main work Politeia (Πολιτεία). In a fictional dialogue with Polemarchos (Πολέμαρχος, πόλεμος polemos : "fight, dispute, war"; άρχος archos : "originator") he explained his theory of harmony : This arises when every soul is guided by justice and reasonable prudence . The result is a sensible domestic policy that balances all individual interests. The harmony achieved in this way would also shape foreign policy if every state were in a just constitution. Since the virtues are not recognized and followed everywhere, power imbalances and attacks on virtue-led city-states could arise.

1. In such cases, their violent defense and, if necessary, emergency aid for attacked neighbors are necessary and fair.
2. Wars of aggression and wars of conquest are unjust and unreasonable greed (επιθυμία epithymia ).
3. Only philosophers and guardians of virtue should find a just defense.
4. Prisoners of war should not be enslaved and robbed, the opponent's country should be spared, only the guilty should be punished.
5. In the case of attacks by unreasonable barbarians, not only victory is necessary to establish a just peace, but also the destruction of the enemy.

Aristotle declared some peoples to be naturally destined to be slaves and justified their submission as a natural art of war like hunting, which corresponds to natural law . He called this a "just fight" (δίκαιος πόλεμος, dikaios polemos ).

The amphictyony of Delphi limited war for the first time on a legal basis: the contracting parties ruled out war against each other for no good reason, the enslavement and deliberate killing of Greeks and the destruction of member cities among themselves.

Roman Empire

The Roman Empire legitimized its campaigns of conquest by opening them up with the ritual rite of the fetials : a priest had to inform the respective neighbor of the Romans about the Roman demands according to a precisely defined protocol in order to declare war with a formula after a certain period of time. The Romans assumed that only a bellum iustum would enjoy the support of the gods. For them, a defeat meant that the gods invoked before the battle regarded the reason for war as unjust; conversely, a victory retrospectively legitimized the reasons for war. The Romans concluded legally valid treaties ( pacta sunt servanda ) with those peoples who had fallen down and whose territory they did not annex directly . So they saw the expansion of their empire as the unification of sovereign collectives.

The Greek philosopher Karneades criticized 155 BC The Roman fetial practice: The appeal to divine assistance is only to secure against injustice. In order to restore justice , the Romans should withdraw from all conquered areas and limit themselves to the Palatine . In doing so, he made the ethical examination of war a philosophical task.

Cicero dealt with the war in De officiis (I, 11, 34 ff.) And De re publica (III, 34, 35). It was based on the duty of every human being to establish and uphold justice in private and public life: even if one is wronged. That is why politics should only violently resolve conflicts over competing legal claims when civil disputes ( disceptatio ) have failed. According to the holy law of priests, war must also be announced ( denuntiare ) and declared ( indicere ). He cited the punishment or revenge for injustice suffered and the expulsion of enemies as self-defense or emergency aid for others as just reasons for war . But moderation should always be kept; warfare must distinguish the guilty from the crowd. Only soldiers ( miles ) are allowed to take part in combat operations. Oaths and promises are also to be kept towards enemies - not criminals. The goal must be to live in peace without injustice ( ut sine iniuria in pace vivatur ).

With this, Cicero formulated five basic conditions: War must

1. react to injustice suffered,

2. follow failed attempts at negotiations,

3. are led by the central political power,

4. are formally legitimized by sacred authorities,

5. restore the violated legal status ( restitutio ) and repair damage ( repetitio ).

For him, war was a kind of enforced criminal law ( executio iuris ) of the Roman state against attackers from outside. He equated rightly with the preservation of the Roman world empire in the sense of the Pax Romana . For him, the warring parties were not equal, but faced each other like criminals and judges. This “discriminatory enemy concept”, that is, equating external aggressors with criminals against one's own legal system , subsequently determined all medieval theories of just war.

Early Christianity

Jesus of Nazareth proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom of God , which would limit and replace all earthly tyranny ( Mt 5,3-10  EU ). That is why he practiced and commanded the renunciation of force against persecutors ( Mt 5.39  EU ). His successors should not bear arms ( Mk 6.8  EU ), develop no differences in rank (10.42ff EU ) and should not defend their faith by force ( Matt 26.52  EU ). Since the baptismal command included keeping all of Jesus' commandments ( Mt 28:20  EU ), the early Christians largely viewed military service as incompatible with baptism . Living in the apocalyptic expectation of the imminent final judgment , they distanced themselves from the world destined to perish, which for them inevitably included war and civil war ( Mk 13.7ff  EU ).

The pre-Constantine church fathers did not formulate any general teaching on war. They rejected the war service of Christians, but not just as clearly the wars of Roman emperors. For them this was a matter for the Roman state, whose task of protection and order against pagans and barbarians they increasingly recognized.

Since Tertullian , the church also included Roman soldiers in the intercessions ; some church teachers now tolerated Christians in the military, provided they were soldiers before their conversion (a Christian was still not allowed to join the legions). Origen then took up Cicero's distinction between just and unjust war ( Contra Celsum IV, 82; VIII, 73) and basically allowed the Christians to serve in the military. It was and remains forbidden to the clergy.

With the Constantinian Turn in 313, the baptized soldiers still persecuted by Emperor Diocletian were allowed to return to the Roman army . The question arose for the church, which was now allowed and soon to be promoted, how it stood with regard to political power and the use of force. Within a year, many theologians gave up the almost unanimous rejection of Christian military service: on the contrary, the Council of Arles (314) now even closed deserters “who throw away their weapons in peace” - that probably meant: those who refused to go to the police Tasks of the army to participate - from the reception of the sacraments and thus from the church. From then on it was only a matter of pastoral and legal regulation of the participation of Christians in the war.

For Ambrose , the Roman state already had the fundamental right, and under certain circumstances even the duty, to wage war if it was attacked from outside. This injustice must be punished for the sake of peace. Besides barbarians, he also saw heretics as wrongdoers . Christians were of course also allowed to participate in their military punishment for him. However, following Cicero, he also called for proportionate means and morally impeccable penal methods.

Augustine of Hippo

After Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire until 392 , Emperor Theodosius II decreed in 416 that only Orthodox Christians be accepted into the army. These had to fight against external enemies like the Vandals , who plundered Rome in 455, and against the Circumcellions and Donatists judged heretical by the imperial church .

It was against this background that Augustine of Hippo wrote his main work De Civitate Dei (420). In it he contrasted the civitas Dei (God's citizenship, i.e. the church) with the civitas terrena (the secular rule, i.e. the state) as two associations of persons. The former strived for eternal life that God alone could give, while the latter sought in vain fulfillment in earthly existence. Augustine defined peace as a goal of world history that can only be established by God, war as a matter of the ungodly world, which nevertheless longs for earthly peace. In order to at least approach this, even the most godless state needs the church. This can and must remind him of his purpose, to create and protect an "orderly harmony" ( ordinata concordia ) between believers and non-believers, since they alone know about true peace.

Augustine integrated the traditional Roman state ethics into Christian eschatology and declared peace to be the common goal of church and state in order to be able to criticize state power and Christian involvement in violence. Christians are only allowed to take part in war if it serves peace: therefore also be a peacemaker when you are at war. So you must always keep the goal of peace in mind and orient the warfare towards it.

With regard to the war, he first determined what made it questionable:

The greed to harm, the cruelty of vengeance, the dissatisfaction and irreconcilability of the spirit, the ferocity of rebellion, the lust for superiority and the like.

Plato and Cicero did not pay enough attention to these dangers either. How war could nevertheless serve peace, Augustine discussed in 397 in the work Contra Faustum Manichaeum (22.74f.). He referred to the wars that Moses, according to the Bible, waged not out of his own pleasure in conquering, but under God's command. These wars were the appropriate punishment for those who had previously attacked God's people with war. They would also have served to deter other enemies of Israel. Because they had been shown the destructive power of their striving, namely that that greed to harm harmed them by having to endure the war that they had provoked.

But Augustine went even further:

Indeed, what is so wrong with war anyway? That people die who will die anyway, so that those who survive can find peace? A coward may complain about it, but believers do not […]. No one should ever doubt the legitimacy of a war that is commanded in God's name, for even that which arises from human greed cannot harm either the incorruptible God or his saints. God commands war to drive out, crush, and subdue the pride of mortals. Enduring war is a test of the believers' patience to humiliate them and accept his fatherly reproaches. Because no one has power over others unless he has received it from heaven. All violence is only exercised on God's command or with His permission. And so a man can fight righteously for order even when serving under an unbelieving ruler. What he is commanded to do is either clearly not against God's rule, or when it is inconclusive, for example when an unjust order is given, the order of service shows that the king is guilty and the soldier innocent. How much more innocent must there be a man who wages a war that was commanded by God, who can never command anything wrong, as everyone who serves him knows?

According to Augustine, it follows from God's omnipotence that there can be no war against God's will on earth either. War is not bad per se . Christians should therefore also fight for pagan or unjust rulers, because all power on earth is bestowed by God ( neque enim habet in eos quisquam ullam potestatem, nisi cui data fuerit desuper ), but especially in every war that is waged in God's name , since this can never order anything bad ( quem male aliquid i clean non posse ). One shouldn't doubt the justice of such wars ( dubitare fas non est ).

Defense against God's enemies was justified for him even if it was as cruel as a war waged for selfish reasons. Augustine presupposes a natural order of the “good” who stand together against the “bad” partly as commanders and partly as obeys; He considered it necessary to defend this order militarily as well. Iusta autem bella definiri solent, quae ulciscuntur iniurias : Such wars can be defined as just, which avenge crimes. He also declared a war against heretics or schismatics like the Donatists to be just, in order to preserve the unity of the church with the help of the state army.

Augustine's criteria for a just war in the Roman Empire, which was shaped by Christianity, were:

• He must serve peace and restore it ( iustus finis ).
• He may only be directed against injustices that the enemy can blame - a serious violation or threat to the legal system - that persists because of the hostile behavior ( causa iusta ).
• A legitimate authority - God or a prince ( princeps ) - must order war ( legitima auctoritas ). In doing so, the prince must maintain internal order, i.e. H. the given structures of command and obedience.
• His war order must not violate God's command: The soldier must see and be able to carry out it as a service to peace.

With this, Augustine emphasized more clearly than Cicero the goal of a just war - peace with the defeated enemy, not his annihilation -, the sole war decision of the given government and the responsibility of all war participants for a legitimate warfare appropriate to the peace goal. In this way he wanted to delegitimize private feuds , civil wars and pure wars of conquest. On the other hand, he did not rule out the possibility of a holy war for an order that is considered to be God's will. Its conditions remained authoritative for the doctrine of just war throughout the Middle Ages.

middle Ages

papacy

Pope Gregory the Great (590–604) approved the violent crackdown on heretics and wars of conquest against pagan peoples in order to enable or facilitate the Christian mission there. Charlemagne in particular provided military support for the Christian mission in the Frankish Empire. Pope Nicholas I (858–867), on the other hand, only considered the defensive war to be justified and rejected violent conversions on principle.

At the second Lateran Council (1139), Pope Innocent II condemned the use of bow and crossbowmen in combat between Christians, but allowed it against equally armed Saracens (Arabs, Muslims). This was the first time that a pope claimed the moral judgment of the means of war.

The Decretum Gratiani (around 1140) answered the question whether waging war was a sin, with reference to biblical passages that speak in favor of Christian pacifism . However, this related to the inner attitude: If this is characterized by love of peace and kindness, who want to protect the good from attacks by the bad and thus pursue the state's welfare, armed defense against externally imposed wars is justified. A lust for destruction, a cruel lust for vengeance and power made war unjust. This should exclude private feuds and pure campaigns of conquest. The church may use force to defend itself against heretics and also call upon the authorities to help; if these orders war, Christian soldiers must obey, except when the order violates God's commandment. In case of doubt, however, they should obey and are also excused if the injustice of the war order subsequently emerges.

Canonized church law strengthened the position of the Curia as the highest court of justice for interstate conflicts within Christianity. Only the Pope could therefore allow crusades and the fight against heretics, order them and enforce them with sanctions such as the ban on secular lords.

The Third Lateran Council in 1179 prohibited the enslavement of prisoners of war. Pope Innocent IV taught in 1234 in his commentary on Gregory IX's "Liber extra" . the natural right of the heathen to private property and recognized non-Christian rulers, provided that they did not oppress the Christians living among them. Around 1360 Johannes de Legnano wrote a special scholastic work on the just war: De bello, de repressaliis, de duello .

Thus the crusades became the impetus for interreligious legal principles and their theoretical discussion.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) took up Augustine's theory of state and warfare and systematized them. The natural worldly order must serve the common good : this includes the protection of believers and not-yet-believers from external enemies, so that everyone can achieve the highest good, supernatural redemption . For Thomas, therefore, peace not only included the absence of war, but also the orderly coexistence of believers and non-believers with the prospect of religious salvation .

This is why Thomas dealt with war in his Summa theologica (II / II, quaestio 40) under the vices that conflict with Christian love ( caritas ). Unlike hatred, envy, discord, quarrel, quarrel and riot, however, war is not in itself a sin , but only becomes so if it is waged with negative intentions. Here Thomas took up the factors that qualified war as an evil for Augustine too. For him, however, these were not connected with the use of force itself: unlike the riot, war was not directed against the moral order from the start, but rather a "mutual struggle in execution" ( mutua impugnatio in actu ). In contrast to arguments and quarrels, not only individuals, but large numbers of people are involved.

Thomas did not conclude from this, however, that war had to violently resolve conflicts of interest between collectives with equal rights in principle after failed negotiations, but that only the just order had to be defended against external and internal enemies, since only this ultimately guaranteed access to salvation for all people:

Much more than the salvation of a single person is the salvation of the community to be preserved, because this prevents the killing of very many people and countless temporal as well as spiritual evils.

Therefore, the state that protects the common good, including the Christian religion, is allowed to prepare for war. The common believers should, if necessary, also have to take part in just wars on church holidays. In addition, Thomas Joh 7.23  EU - Jesus' healing on Shabbat - referred to the field of politics. Cunning and deceiving the enemy are also allowed, since waging war only has to fulfill its purpose. Bloodshed, killing, and being killed, depending on the circumstances, could not only be necessary but also morally meritorious. Thomas quoted from the Decretum Gratiani :

If one gives his life for the truth of faith or for the salvation of the fatherland and in defense of Christianity, he will receive heavenly reward from God.

However, he excluded the clergy from serving as soldiers, since their task was to direct the war towards higher goods and "to prepare others to wage just wars".

Thomas named three conditions for the ius ad bellum :

• First, the power of attorney of the princeps on whose orders [mandatum] the war must be waged ...
• Second, a just cause [causa iusta] is required ...
• Third, the belligerents are required to have the right intention [recta intentio] ...

The princeps - at the time of the interregnum that meant every city prince, provincial prince and imperial emperor - was legitimate authority ( legitima potestas ) for Thomas because he had God's mandate to preserve the common good. He was therefore fully responsible for determining whether and when military defense was necessary for the preservation of the common good, for ordering it to his soldiers and for ensuring that unjust warfare did not take place.

Not every external threat to his own legal system was a causa iusta for Thomas , but rather an accompanying guilt that external aggressors could blame and which deserved to be punished with war: namely, attacks that threatened the entire legal and salvation system permanently. Thomas wanted to bind the prince to his mandate to uphold and restore the law for everyone, not just for his rule. Only this righteous intention, not an appeal to God's commission, legitimized military defense for him.

In order to make this credible, the prince should convey to his subordinates the consideration that allowing sinful attacks would be worse than war against them. The military defense against danger was supposed to show the desired legal peace for all also in the implementation and was therefore never allowed to degenerate into tumult. The belligerents should definitely keep themselves free from bad motives such as greed , hatred , vengeance or ambition . In the course of the war opponents were never allowed to kill intentionally, only as an unintended consequence of self-protection. This excluded direct combat against enemy civilians and the killing of soldiers who could not be identified as unlawful attackers.

For Thomas, the war was only just if it could be waged by a government legitimized to defend a potentially valid legal system with the prospect of a positive outcome, less instead of more sin and without selfish motives. However, he did not apply these criteria to certain wars of his time and did not explicitly prohibit aggressive wars . In any case, even after a seizure of power, it is forbidden to force a pagan or Jew to believe, which excludes an actual mission war.

Early modern age

reformation

The medieval central authorities, the emperor and the pope, had tried to curb feuds within the empire through the institution of limited divine peace and land peace, while trying to make the state monopoly of force and peace as the most important goal, at least for domestic politics, binding. Their political weakness in the German-speaking areas favored the Reformation there in the 16th century.

Martin Luther assumed that God justified the sinner through Jesus Christ alone, without human cooperation . Therefore, in contrast to Thomas Aquinas, he understood Christian political action as a result of their faith, not as a means of attaining higher spiritual goals. Against the Catholic two-tier ethics , he made Jesus' Sermon on the Mount binding for all Christians: It commanded them to love their enemies , forgive and non-violent one another, but also towards non-Christians, since one could not force anyone to believe correctly by force of arms. That is why Christians should rather suffer injustice than do injustice and should not use force to defend their faith. However, since they lived with the non-Christians in a sin-ridden world, they might have to affirm violence to protect the weak and punish lawbreakers, not for their own survival. This is the task of the worldly authorities through whom God preserves the world until the final judgment.

In the context of this doctrine of two kingdoms , Luther understood peace as an elementary condition for all coexistence and the highest earthly good that all people should serve. Christians would have to demand this peace from politics and if necessary protect and restore it by force as civil servants. In doing so, they should have a clear conscience, as they both with their renunciation of violence among themselves and with their use of violence in politics contributed to God's will for the redemption of the world.

From there, Luther affirmed his prince's request whether warriors could be in a happy position in 1526, but insisted that war was only legitimate to ward off an acute attack that had actually taken place on a legitimate “authority”. He ruled out preventive, aggressive and religious wars as inadmissible. The individual has the duty to critically examine his government's decision to go to war, to refuse to obey it if necessary and to accept the punishments imposed for it. Luther, who otherwise sharply rejected any rebellion against the authorities, affirmed a situation-related conscientious objection . In accordance with his separation of clerical and secular office, however, he took the government's good intentions and lawful conduct of war for granted and largely refrained from making use of criteria for their review in the course of the war: he no longer saw this as a church duty.

On this line, Luther justified the armed defense of the evangelical territories against the emperor and pope, but also their defense measures against the "Turkish threat". But he rejected a crusade against the Turks as an unjust religious war. He rejected the Anabaptist movement , which wanted to apply the commandments of the Sermon on the Mount to the political organization of the communes they ruled and derived from it a Christian pacifism , as ungodly. Against them, as well as against the rebels in the German Peasants' War , he encouraged all princes, whether Catholic or Protestant, to use extreme violence.

The Confessio Augustana of 1530 declared in the 16th article that all government had been instituted by God, and Christians who hold public offices should uphold the law without sin: including "punishing evildoers with the sword" as well as "waging real wars". Because of this reduction of the classic criteria of just war, Lutheran denominational churches later justified many denominational and national wars as undisputable state law to protect an order of creation .

Spanish late scholasticism

The unity of the medieval empire under papal and imperial leadership had collapsed since the Reformation. What authority was legitimate and could call just wars and what reasons for war were permissible had largely become arbitrary and justifiable. That is why theologians judged less the reasons for war than the conduct of war, in order to at least standardize and humanize them.

Faced with the cruel treatment of South America's indigenous people , Bartolomé de Las Casas declared all Spanish colonial wars in the New World to be unjust. The entire conquered land should therefore be returned to the previous owners.

Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) further developed the Roman law on aliens ( ius gentium ) into a universal ius inter gentes : only if all peoples were recognized in principle as having the right to exist, law could be viewed as universally valid. The ruling powers of Europe should no longer define right and wrong alone. Vitoria extended the concept of the common good to all of the then known world. He is therefore considered to be the founder of modern international law.

Since there was no general authority to enforce it, he thought pragmatically: Every state could defend itself militarily against serious injustices suffered. Conquerors of foreign territories would also have to protect the right to life of the conquered. If this duty is disregarded, the neighboring states are likely to intervene and wage war against the conquerors. They were acting on the tacit mandate of the world community.

Vitoria invalidated some of the justifications of the Spanish conquerors: the claims of the emperor and the pope to world domination, the moral superiority of Christianity, the refusal of the Indians to accept the Catholic faith were impermissible reasons for war. He also considered Christianity to be the only true religion that the Spaniards were fundamentally entitled to spread. But barbarians are too stupid to recognize this, so are innocent if they do not want to become Christians immediately. But you should allow yourself to be evangelized in the long term in order to catch up with European Christians. Resistance to this contradicts the natural law on which the international community is based. That is why he considered the use of force to defend Christian missionaries and converts if necessary as legitimate.

By granting all peoples the same right to life, Vitoria no longer equated non-Christian opponents of war with criminals. Objectively only one side can be right, but a war cannot be blamed on those who find themselves in an inevitable error about its injustice. Subjectively, they felt just like their opponents in the right. They can only be robbed of their property and driven out if this is the only way to guarantee future security. If the suffering and devastation in the course of the war no longer served the goal of peace, even a war that began with just reasons would lose its moral justification.

Vitoria thus gave priority to the way of waging war ( debitus modus ) and the proportionality of the means, owed to the right to life of all, over the just intentions of those who wage war ( recta intentio ). Vitoria's lectures on human and martial law - especially De indis and De iure bello - were censored during his lifetime, forgotten after the Tridentinum and only rediscovered in the 19th century.

Francisco Suárez and Luis de Molina emphasized the necessary proportionality between goals and means: Where the consequential damage of the war was foreseeable greater than the damage it averted, it could not be fair. An excessive wear and tear of human and technical resources should be avoided. In contrast to tradition, they obliged soldiers and civilians not to take part in a war that they recognized as unjust, even if the prince forced them to do so. He had to inform his subordinates about the reasons for the war before the war began. Subjects with military and political insight would have to examine the reasons given and, if necessary, prevent the king from war. The representatives of the School of Salamanca derived from the ius in bello the information and accountability of the government and the right to conscientious objection even before general conscription became common.

Suarez also stressed that states could voluntarily waive their right to war and submit to arbitration. This self-restraint corresponds to natural law, while getting used to the waging of conflicts through wars goes against the common good of mankind and permanently gives the more armed warlords right. That was obviously unreasonable and barbaric.

Balthasar Ayala (1548–1584) no longer linked the right to war to material reasons for war, but only to a formally valid declaration of war by a legitimate state authority. If all warring parties met this condition, they would have to treat each other as just enemies ( hostes iusti ), i.e. exclude impermissible means of war. However, Ayala continued to regard revolts against her own government as so unjust that they justified a punitive war by all means. Just as heretics and non-Christians were excluded from general international law in the Middle Ages, so he excluded rebels and national freedom fighters (as was the case in the Netherlands against Spain's rule).

International law drafts since 1600

Around 1600, Alberico Gentili was the first to speak of a war that was not only subjectively but also objectively mutually just ( bellum iustum ex utraque parte ). This made it unnecessary to distinguish between just and unjust reasons for war. He did not want to ostracize the war, but to establish it as a legal status equivalent to peace by repealing his moral judgment. For him, war was not an exceptional right, but an ordinary right of every territorial lord whom third parties could be neutral towards.

In the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the Christian denominations mutually declared themselves criminals and heretics, affirmed the campaigns of conquest and extermination of their sovereigns and participated in them. Since every war party claimed theoretically admissible reasons for war, the moral authority of the churches as advisors for war and peace was broken.

Legal theorists therefore resorted to the idea of ​​natural law, which is understandable to all people from reason and not from religion, and which can therefore achieve agreement among the educated of all peoples. A lasting peace order appeared to be possible only through contractually guaranteed equal rights for the denominations. During the war, drafts were drawn up by Émeric Crucé ( Der Neue Kineas 1623) and Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully (Memoirs 1638).

Hugo Grotius developed his doctrine of interstate peace and the legal conditions of war in 1625 in De iure belli ac pacis . Natural law applies unconditionally and universally, “as if there was no God” ( etsi deus non daretur ), ie it is independent of the respective beliefs of the peoples and their masters. He understood humanity for the first time as a legal community standing above the individual states, whose rights are superior to those of sovereign states. He did not therefore demand a world government, but the unification of the peoples organized in states and their voluntary submission to a common international law. Unlike his contemporary Thomas Hobbes , he did not assume war as a natural condition, but rather that people were originally capable of peace.

Modern times

the Age of Enlightenment

The Peace of Westphalia of 1648 recognized the full sovereignty of the imperial estates to decide on war and peace. This undermined the idea of ​​a supreme legitimate authority and its sole power to judge the causa iusta in the area of ​​the former Roman Empire. Since then, treaty theories that wanted to secure peace through international agreements gained influence. They assumed the sovereignty of the territorial rulers, but tried harder than before to bind them to a generally observable martial law and to subject it to democratic control of power.

William Penn wrote the essay on present and future peace in Europe in 1693 , which essentially called for a European parliament to safeguard continental peace. Charles Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre proposed a League of Nations for this in 1713 . Jean-Jacques Rousseau published an excerpt from this initially neglected plan in 1756 and again in 1781, adding to his own ideas of democracy.

Immanuel Kant stated in 1793 that all previous attempts to bind war to legal rules had not brought real peace, but at most a temporary armistice. Neither the monopoly of force nor property nor the military could protect a legal system from external attacks. A balance of power through military armament is an illusion. It does not change anything in the pursuit of domination and violence and could therefore collapse at any time. It leads to armament, which, even without war, could destroy welfare and thus social peace within. Only general international law that can be enforced by means of power, to which every state would have to submit, could ensure lasting peace.

In his text On Eternal Peace in 1795, Kant summarized the conditions and measures that were necessary to create such a universal international law. The previous natural law was too optimistic about the social nature of man. If peace should not just interrupt wars, but end them, then essential causes of war would have to be taken into account and eliminated:

• Secret policy, as it favors secret war plans
• the consideration of foreign states as possessions to be conquered rather than as a result of the self-determination of the peoples
• standing armies that prompted the arms race and made wars of aggression possible
• taking on national debts for foreign policy conflicts that led to national bankruptcy , from which the next war should save
• any violent intervention in the affairs of foreign states, except in the case of civil war.

Martial law must exclude all measures that would destroy mutual trust in future peace:

• Employment of criminals in the state and the army,
• Incitement to treason
• Disregard of opposing offers of surrender.

This presupposes the following positive conditions:

• Internal rule of law : only a society that protects civil rights and the separation of powers in a constitution that is recognized and enforceable by all will respect the self-determination of other peoples and keep peace with them. Only then is the decision to go to war dependent on the consent of all citizens, so that their interest in maintaining their prosperity can come into play and prevent wars.
• a federal voluntary League of Nations in which the states recognize each other as free legal subjects and subordinate themselves to the peoples' right to self-determination.

In doing so, Kant transferred the enlightened idea of ​​the social contract of free individuals with inalienable human rights to the level of international law. He wanted to overcome the deficits of the traditional doctrine of war, which had always defined law and peace within the boundaries of the self-preservation interests of undemocratic forms of government, had not analyzed the causes of war and had not promoted any content-related coverage of domestic and foreign policy even in times of peace.

Neo-scholasticism

In addition to calls for peace and harsh condemnations of war by the popes since Leo XIII. (1878–1903) contradicting tendencies can be found in the moral theological handbooks in the 19th century:

• The little man cannot have any political or diplomatic perspective and should only obey (Prümmer)
• Recourse to the Middle Ages and glz. Openness to the needs of the present
• z. T. Justification of war
• z. T. War conviction: War is only allowed as an act of collective self-defense within moral barriers under international law (Eberle 1914), militarism makes the distinction between just and unjust war completely ineffective (Stöckl 1879).

Modern international law

At the end of the 19th century, the idea of ​​a universal peace emerged more strongly again and became apparent in the form of peace conferences which, in contrast to previous ones, did not deal with existing conflicts, but instead dealt with the preservation of peace itself. However, the classic interpretation remained predominant , as can be seen from the first and second Hague Peace Conferences, both of which dealt with the codification of international war law ( Hague Land Warfare Regulations ). The creation of a permanent court of arbitration in 1907 by the Second Hague Agreement in this context can be seen as the first approach to war prevention law, even if this was of little importance.

In modern times the following principles are added:

• War is the last resort . Until all reasonable diplomatic and political means have been exhausted, one cannot speak of a just war.
• A just war makes a difference in choosing its goals. It is directed against the military perpetrators of the evil and protects the civilian population . He refrains from bombing civil residential areas that are not a military target, acts of terrorism or reprisals against the civilian population.
• A just war has to respect the principle of proportionality. The strength expended has to withstand the evil and help the good to grow. The higher the number of collateral damage , the more suspect the moral claim of the warring party.
• The torture of opponents of the war is prohibited.
• Prisoners of war are to be treated humanely.

Outlawing war

A legal prohibition of war was already being debated in the 19th century; War was not forbidden, a right of the sovereign to free, i. H. Warfare, detached from international criteria, in the sense of a liberum ius ad bellum did not exist - contrary to what was long assumed - but not. After the experiences of the First World War and with the establishment of the League of Nations , the sovereignty of the states was restricted by the international community and thus the tradition of the state ius ad bellum tended to end. The War Guilt Articles of the Versailles Treaty gave this principle retroactive effect at the expense of the vanquished. Every war and every threat of war is defined in the statutes of the League of Nations as a matter for the entire international community. The established rules for the prevention of war included a number of dispute settlement measures and a general prohibition of war unless an attempt was made to settle the dispute peacefully beforehand. There was no distinction between just and unjust wars.

In the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928, the contracting states condemned war as a means of resolving international disputes and declared that they would renounce it among themselves. They outlawed war as a means of enforcing law, but continued to allow collective , including military, sanctions and armed self-defense. With this, the medieval concept of the bellum iustum returned as a legitimate collective punitive action. However, the League Council was now the overriding decision-making body for the legality of a war. As with de Ayala, the criteria of the League of Nations statutes aimed at formal, not moral legitimacy ( bellum legale ).

Since 1945, the use of violence in international relations has been regulated by the United Nations Charter , which took up and specified some of the just war criteria. One of the main goals of the UN set out there is the maintenance of world peace (Chapter I Art. 1 No. 1). In order to achieve this, the states imposed a general ban on violence (Chapter I Art. 1 No. 1; Art. 2 No. 3/4) and emphasized the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states with equal rights (Chapter I Art. 1 No. 2; Art. 2 No. 1 and No. 7).

Chapter VII regulates coercive measures as an exception to the general renunciation of force by states. It gives the UN Security Council the power to determine whether a certain fact in international relations constitutes a threat or a breach of peace (Chapter VII Art. 39). If the latter is established, he can also decide to intervene militarily (Chapter VII, Art. 42). In terms of international law, one can only speak of a just war if it has been authorized and is being waged in accordance with the preceding principles.

Catholic pacifism after 1918

The principle of pacifism has also found approval in the Catholic area since the First World War. In order to give it a theoretical basis, Franziskus Maria Stratmann (1883–1971), pioneer for the Friedensbund Deutscher Katholiken , wrote the book World Church and World Peace in 1924 . In it he listed the traditional criteria of a just war:

• serious injustice on the part of one and only one of the two contending parties; severe formal moral guilt on either side. Material injustice is not enough; unequivocal demonstrability of this guilt;
• Inevitability of armed conflict after failure of all attempts at peaceful understanding that were undertaken with all seriousness and with all their might;
• Proportion between guilt and penalties. A degree of punishment that exceeds the degree of guilt is unjust and impermissible;
• moral assurance that victory will come to the just cause;
• right intention to promote good through war and to avoid evil. The good of the state to be expected from the war must outweigh the evil to be expected;
• right intention of waging war: observance of the limits of justice and love;
• Avoidance of severe shock to other states not directly involved in the war, as well as the Christian community as a whole;
• Declaration of war by a legally authorized government in the name of God for the execution of his justice.

He came to the conclusion that a war would probably never have fulfilled all of these conditions and, in view of modern weapon technology and warfare, would henceforth be impossible to fulfill, so that Christians only had to conscientious objection . But he stuck to the binding nature of the church's war theory in order to win all Catholics for pacifism on this basis.

Atomic age

After the Second World War, many Christians of all denominations questioned traditional war ethics. The first plenary session of the World Council of Churches declared in 1948 in view of the total war waged with weapons of mass destruction :

According to God's will there should be no war!

The role that war plays in international life today is sin against God and humiliation. [...] The war is something completely different today than it used to be. We now have total war. The tremendous use of the Luftwaffe and the discovery of the atomic bomb and other new weapons: all of this leads to indiscriminate destruction in a modern war on a scale that the world has not known in previous wars.

The traditional assumption that a just war can be waged with right arms for a just cause can no longer be sustained under such circumstances.

In view of the armament of NATO and the Warsaw Pact with nuclear weapons , the churches unanimously rejected nuclear war, but not just as clearly rejected nuclear deterrence. Pius XII. declared a defensive war in 1953:

When the harm it causes is incomparably greater than that of tolerated injustice, one can be obliged to take on the injustice.

The 1954 World Conference of Churches in Evanston declared the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction to be contrary to God, but not the deterrence with existing nuclear weapons. Unilateral nuclear disarmament was considered dangerous, as this could enable blackmail by immoral opponents. In contrast, the Protestant theological faculties in the GDR referred to the church mandate in 1957:

It is part of the task of Christian preaching to warn all people that by participating in the manufacture and use of modern means of mass destruction they are misusing God's gift, blaspheming God's goodness and betraying God's image.

Since the toleration of these means threatens all future generations, everyone is called upon to "achieve the goal of a universal ban and abolition of weapons of mass destruction." How, remained open; Conscientious objection was not made mandatory for Christians.

Helmut Gollwitzer was the first German Protestant theologian to apply the criteria of the iustum bellum 1957 to the ABC funds. Ecclesiastical war ethics and international law only permitted those means with which just warfare was possible. But the Protestant churches have hardly examined the debitus modus since Luther. Using this criterion, he determined:

• The nature of these new means of violence does not allow a distinction to be made between fighters and non-fighters ...
  Because their use will definitely, not just accidentally, kill civilians. It is impossible for them to protect the enemy population's right to life and are therefore unsuitable for lawful warfare from the outset.
• The only aim of the new weapons is the destruction of the enemy, which they seek to bring about by assault ... They make us all murderers in our spirit; because only in a murderous disposition can one create and apply them ... They remove all connection between war and law ... Because only those who are ready to carry out and who present themselves as someone who can be trusted to carry them out can threaten effectively.
• In contrast to all previous and biological and chemical means of war, nuclear weapons also hit future generations and vegetation.
  Because of the radioactive fallout , the consequences of their use for humans and nature are incalculable, so that a nuclear war can never create peace. Even the nuclear tests in the Pacific to develop a “clean” atomic bomb would have claimed many lives.
• Nuclear warfare makes any distinction between defense and attack impossible. Because it requires preventive attacks that lead to "the troops only fighting for themselves" in order to save themselves from reactive extinction. This is how war becomes an end in itself.
• A coming nuclear war between East and West will not only lead to the destruction of the enemy, but also to self-destruction.
  However, the ABC resources are not only reprehensible when they "boomerang and drag those who use them to ruin". They are "by their very nature, not just their illegal use, morally absolutely excluded means".

From this analysis the West German church brotherhoods concluded in 1958 that “the inclusion of means of mass destruction in the use of state threats of power can only take place in the factual negation of the will of God who is faithful to his creation and gracious to man.” They challenged the EKD to claim this incompatibility to explain. This then set up a theological committee, which in 1959 formulated the compromise in the Heidelberg Theses :

The church must recognize the renunciation of arms as a possible Christian course of action.

The Church must recognize participation in the attempt to secure peace in freedom through the existence of nuclear weapons as a Christian way of acting that is still possible today.

This "grace period" should be used for multilateral disarmament treaties, which should replace the nuclear balance with real peace.

Pope John XXIII In Pacem in Terris 1963, he insistently described the dangers of the nuclear arms race, called for its end, simultaneous controlled disarmament on both sides, a ban on all nuclear weapons and the contractual settlement of interstate conflicts by “all people of good will”. He saw in the "terrible destructive power of modern weapons" an anti-war effect and concluded:

Therefore, in our age that boasts of being the atomic age, it is contrary to reason to regard war as the appropriate means of restoring violated rights.

However, he did not order Christians to withdraw from nuclear armies and did not demand any unilateral disarmament of war means that were contrary to international law. This position - no to nuclear war and at the same time a conditional yes to nuclear deterrence - was also represented by the pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes of 1965:

Every act of war that aims at the destruction of entire cities or large areas and their people without distinction is a crime against God and against man, which must be firmly and decisively rejected ... Since peace should grow from the mutual trust of peoples instead of Nations imposed by the horror of arms should all strive to end the arms race. One should really start with disarmament, not unilaterally, but in contractually agreed equal steps and with real and effective safeguards.

The arms race, however, continued unabated. In 1980 the NATO double resolution put the churches in a new ordeal. The Dutch General Synod of the Reformed Church stated that the deadline for nuclear disarmament had passed unused:

... the experience of the past 18 years shows how the possession of these weapon systems has drawn us into their accelerated expansion and perfecting, up to and including the development of a strategy of "limited" nuclear wars. We must therefore first of all repeat our “no” from 1962 and state very clearly that this “no” also applies without restriction to the possession of nuclear weapons.

The German Reformed Federation followed suit in October 1981 and formulated following the Barmen Theological Declaration of 1934:

It is of course the task of the state to ensure law and peace and to protect the lives of its citizens. But weapons of mass destruction destroy what they claim to protect. On the part of the Christians, an unconditional “No!”, A “No without any yes”, applies to them from the confession of God the Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer.

In 1982 the EKD, on the other hand, extended the thesis that deterrence with nuclear weapons is “still” possible in Christian terms. She did not specify the conditions under which this period ended. The West German Catholic Bishops' Conference again justified the atomic balance without considering strategies of limited nuclear war and condemned the pacifists as those who endangered this security for ideological reasons.

The World Ecumenical Conference in Vancouver in 1983 dropped all previous reservations and compromise formulas:

The testing, manufacture and threat of means of mass and future destruction are a crime against humanity ... Nuclear deterrence must be fundamentally rejected as a strategic doctrine that justified nuclear weapons in the name of security and war prevention, as it contradicts the belief in Jesus Christ who is our life and peace. Nuclear deterrence is morally unacceptable because its credibility rests on the fact that the use of nuclear weapons is actually intended. [...] Atomic deterrence is the antithesis of ultimate belief in that love that drives away fear. It can never be the basis of real peace.

In these declarations, the theory of just war was not given up, but was tied to God's command for peace, which was made clear in Jesus Christ. As a result, weapons of mass destruction could not only be criticized with a view to their possible effects in war, but already in peace. The question of whether and when military defense was necessary and ethically permissible could only be posed as part of the question of effective war prevention, disarmament and replacement of the deterrent system by an international peace and legal order.

Intervention wars since 1990

The doctrine of just war has experienced a renaissance since around 1990, parallel to the Western wars of intervention in Iraq in 1991, in Kosovo in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003 and is again relevant in today's discussion. In 2001 the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published a report entitled Responsibility to protect . This explicitly calls for the inclusion of the just war criteria for humanitarian intervention.

Ethics of peace

The question of a just war is placed in the churches today in the context of the task of creating a just peace that responds to the gospel and addresses the pressing problems of the world community. Peace is distinguished from the concept of security and at the same time closely linked to the guiding values ​​of justice and the integrity of creation. The outlawing of war, the means of mass destruction and the trade in armaments is assumed as a broad consensus. A possible role for the military in conflicts is not ruled out in principle, but is treated as subordinate to other conflict management methods.

criticism

The concept of a just war has been criticized from several quarters:

• From pacifism: Christian groups in particular who want to join early Christianity see the rejection of any war as the only legitimate opportunity to live their faith and contribute to peace. For reasons of reason, some non-Christians also come to a general rejection of military conflict solutions.
• from Bellizismus : See That the war as a natural and inevitable state law, see attempts to subordinate war moral principles and rules of war, an illusion and an obstacle to power politics.
• of realpolitik : Here moral criteria are rejected unsuitable as ineffective and sustainable political agreements; this does not exclude that individual wars are rejected with a view to possible political consequences.
• Further criticism applies to individual criteria of the theory that are rejected as inadequate, unrealistic or impracticable and thus indirectly require further development of the theory.

Pacifist rejection

In response to the Crusades in the High Middle Ages, Christian minorities began to reject the great church doctrine of just war. The Franciscans refused to carry weapons and thus to participate in the war. Its founder, Francis of Assisi , rejected just and holy wars as well as any violent mission and taught a way of life based on ancient Christian commandments by renouncing weapons and possession as a critical contrast to the participation of the major church in wars and crusades.

Peace churches that emerged in the wake of the Reformation, such as the Bohemian Brethren , the Church of the Brethren , Quakers and Mennonites , strictly reject any participation in war, since war is always unjust and the Gospel dictates peace without violence.

The humanists of the 16th century stated that all efforts to rationally contain war were in vain. Erasmus von Rotterdam examined the European wars of his time with the result that none had been fair, since none had fulfilled the conditions of Augustin and Thomas. In his famous peace speech he shouted Querela pacis :

I appeal to all who call themselves Christians to unite all their strengths and efforts in the fight against war. Everyone should do their part. Enduring unity must unite all who are naturally and in Christ by so many bonds together.

Every unjust state of peace is preferable to the apparently most just of all wars.

Sebastian Franck wrote in the War Book of Peace in 1539 that a just war had been as rare as "storks in winter" since the beginning of the end times. George Fox justified his petition to the king for the exemption of the Quakers from military service in 1661 as follows:

We know that wars and battles arise from the desires of men (Jam 4,3), and the Lord has freed us from this desire and thus placed us outside the cause of war ... We reject all wars, campaigns and battles with external weapons, for whatever purpose, under whatever pretext, they take place.

Realpolitical rejection

The fact that the theory of the iustum bellum can and will be misused to justify wars is criticized by philosophers, historians and realpoliticians in addition to the pacifists. The US philosopher LeRoy Walters noted in 1974 using case studies from wars of the 20th century that "all theorists used the categories of just war to prove that their own country was waging a just war".

The historian Wolfram Wette criticized:

Such war doctrines may originally have arisen from the human need for a rational management of the phenomenon of war, and some of the authors of such doctrines may have also intended to limit the frequency of armed conflicts, but in practice they quickly became an aid to the politics of violence. If, for example, a ruler succeeded in justifying his war policy with the criteria of theoretical doctrine and then presenting it as just, it would be easier for him and the elites who support him to demand military service and thus the commitment of life from his subjects. In this way, the various doctrines of just and unjust wars directly or indirectly served the legitimation needs of politics. They fulfilled the function of means of rule. Their long-term effect was that in the consciousness of the people the idea solidified into the belief that namely the war broke out from time to time like a force of nature and one must therefore necessarily accept it as an imposed fate.

Today the following points in particular are criticized:

• Historically, the doctrine of just war has never prevented unjust wars or reduced the violence of war according to its criteria.
• She was at a war picture from the period of feudalism bound and politically by the modern development (sovereign nation-states), socially (total war) and military (long-distance and weapons of mass destruction) obsolete.
• It promotes wars by nourishing the illusion of a morally permissible conduct of war, although justice and peace can never be established through war.
• It causes an improper moralization of international politics. It is impossible for warring parties to distinguish between morally permissible and impermissible wars. Each warring party claims the just cause for itself and thus sets a spiral of violence in motion, in the course of which every escalation up to total war can (apparently) be justified.
• By granting state leaders the right to counter violence with violence, the theory declares them to be judges in their own cause.
• International law now forms the normative framework for the use of force between states. This means that additional criteria or principles such as those of a just war are either superfluous or create conflicting norms .

Criticism of individual criteria

• Because of the mass mobilization associated with conscription - for example during the German Volkssturm in World War II - every member of the enemy state could be viewed as a possible combatant. On the other hand, it is difficult to justify ethically why a person who has been forced into a uniform should be less worthy of protection than someone who works enthusiastically in arms production or in maintaining the war economy.

The most important points of criticism are also based on the fundamental principles of the criticized doctrine, which have been incorporated into the international law of war: Since modern warfare and means of war make it impossible to distinguish between fighters and civilians and to reliably calculate the consequences of war, they can under no circumstances achieve the theoretically required proportionality of Ensure goals and means. Accordingly, it seems all the more necessary to abolish war altogether: In view of the destructive power of modern weapons, it can no longer be justified ethically from any point of view.

The further development of international law is also indirectly called for by the criteria of the just war: The treaty pacifists of the 19th and 20th centuries demanded a neutral supranational arbitration tribunal, since only this could determine the right or wrong of violent defense. This court must be recognized by all sovereign warring parties and be able to enforce the rules of war against their military might.

literature

Historical overview

• Reiner Steinweg (ed.): The just war. Christianity, Islam, Marxism. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-11017-9
• Terry Nardin: The Ethics of War and Peace. Religious and Secular Perspectives. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1996, ISBN 0-691-03713-2
• Donald A. Wells: An Encyclopedia of War and Ethics. Greenwood Publications Group, 1996, ISBN 0-313-29116-0
• John Kelsay, James Turner Johnson (Eds.): Just War and Jihad. Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions. Greenwood Press, New York 1991, ISBN 0-313-27347-2
• Georg Kreis (ed.): The "just war". On the history of a current figure of thought. Schwabe, Basel 2006, ISBN 978-3-7965-2239-0

Pre-Christian antiquity

• Sigrid Albert: Bellum iustum. The theory of the just war and its practical relevance for the foreign disputes of Rome during the republican era. Lassleben, Kallmünz 1980, ISBN 3-7847-7110-6 (plus dissertation, University of Frankfurt am Main 1978/79)
• Silvia Clavadetscher : Polemos dikaios and bellum iustum. Attempt a story of ideas. Juris Druck, Zurich 1985
• Mauro Mantovani: Bellum iustum. The idea of ​​a just war in the Roman Empire. Peter Lang, Bern 1990, ISBN 3-261-04222-2
• Andreas Zack: Studies on "Roman International Law". Declaration of war, decision of war, formation and ratification of international treaties, international friendship and hostility during the Roman Republic until the beginning of the Principate. Edition Ruprecht, 2nd edition, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89744-139-2

Christianity in general

• Eugen Drewermann : The war and Christianity. Friedrich Pustet Verlag, 2nd edition, Regensburg 1984, ISBN 3-7917-0759-0
• Andreas Holzem: War and Christianity. Religious theories of violence in the Western experience of war. Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 3-506-76785-2

Catholic tradition

• Timo J. Weissenberg: The peace teaching of Augustine. Theological foundations and ethical development. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-17-018744-9
• Gerhard Beestermöller: Thomas Aquinas and the just war. Peace ethics in the theological context of the Summa Theologiae. Bachem, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7616-1028-9
• McCormick, D. Christiansen: War, morality of. In: Thomas Carson (Ed.): New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2nd edition, Thomson / Gale, Detroit 2003, ISBN 0-7876-4004-2 , Volume 14, pp. 635-644
• Richard J. Regan: Just War. Principles and Cases. Catholic University of America Press, Washington DC 1996, ISBN 0-8132-0855-6
• Heinz-Gerhard Justenhoven : Francisco de Vitoria on war and peace. Bachem, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7616-1029-7
• Anselm Doering-Manteuffel (Diss.): Catholicism and rearmament. The attitude of German Catholics towards the military question 1948–1955 (publications of the Commission for Contemporary History, Vol. 32), Mainz 1981.

Atomic age

• Michael Walzer: Just and Unjust Wars. A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. Basic Books, New York 1977, ISBN 0-465-03704-6 (German edition: Is there a just war? Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1982, ISBN 3-12-911870-5 )
• Paul Ramsey: The Just War. Force and Political Responsibility. (1968) University Press of America, Lanham 1983, ISBN 0-8191-3356-6
• Secretariat of the German Bishops' Conference (ed.): Justice creates peace. Word of the German Bishops' Conference on Peace , Bonn, April 18, 1983
• Robert L. Phillips: War and Justice. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman OK 1984, ISBN 0-8061-1893-8
• Franz Klüber: Catholics and nuclear weapons. The Catholic war ethic and its falsification by the German Bishops' Conference. Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1984, ISBN 3-7609-0881-0
• James E. Dougherty: The Bishops and Nuclear Weapons. The pastoral letter on War and Peace. Archon Books, Cambridge / Massachusetts 1984
• James Turner Johnson: Can Modern War Be Just? Yale University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-300-03165-3
• Thomas Hoppe: Peace policy with military means. An ethical analysis of strategic approaches. Bachem, Cologne 1986, ISBN 3-7616-0863-2
• Ernst Josef Nagel: The peace teaching of the Catholic Church. A concordance of official church documents. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne 1997, ISBN 3-17-013931-2

On wars of intervention and armed conflicts since 1990

• Elliott Abrams, James Turner Johnson (Eds.): Close Calls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense, and 'Just War' Today. Ethics & Public Policy Center, 1998, ISBN 0-89633-187-3
• Dieter Janssen, Michael Quante (ed.): Just war. Mentis Verlag, Paderborn 2003, ISBN 3-89785-304-3
• Wilfried Hinsch, Dieter Janssen: Protecting human rights militarily. A plea for humanitarian intervention. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54099-6
• Uwe Steinhoff: On the Ethics of War and Terrorism. Oxford University Press, Oxford u. a. 2007, ISBN 0-19-921737-8
• Michael W. Brough, John W. Lango, Harry Van Der Linden (Eds.): Rethinking the Just War Tradition. St. University of New York, New York 2007, ISBN 0-7914-7155-1
• Christian von Starck (Ed.): Can there still be just wars today? Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0261-7
• Josef Bordat: Just War? Military anti-terrorism measures as reflected in the bellum iustum tradition. In: Riou, J. / Petersen, C. (Ed.): Signs of war in literature, film and the media. Volume III (Terror). Kiel 2008, pp. 43-65.
• Howard M. Hensel (Ed.): The Legitimate Use of Military Force: The Just War Tradition and the Customary Law of Armed Conflict. Ashgate, 2008, ISBN 0-7546-4980-6 .
• Ines-Jacqueline Werkner, Antonius Liedhegener (ed.): Just war - just peace. Religions and the legitimation of peace ethics in current military conflicts. Verlag VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16989-7 .
• Amy E. Eckert: Outsourcing War. The Just War Tradition in the Age of Military Privatization . Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York State, USA 2016, ISBN 978-1-5017-0357-7 .

philosophy

• Bernhard Koch (Ed.): Protecting the enemy? Baden-Baden 2014
• Terry Nardin: The Philosophy of War and Peace. In: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Volume 9, 1998, pp. 684-691
• Brian Orend: The Morality of War. Broadview Press, Peterbourough / Ontario 2006, ISBN 1-55111-727-4
• Larry May (Ed.): War: Essays in Political Philosophy. Cambridge University Press 2008

Web links

overview

• Alexander Moseley:  Just War Theory. In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Brian Orend: Just War Theory . In: Was . Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2000/2005. Archive version Spring 2016.
• Institute Theology and Peace: Publications

Church documents

• Basic document of the German bishops: Just Peace (PDF; 800 kB)
• Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany: Steps on the Path to Peace , EKD -tex 48, 1994 (3rd expanded edition 2001)
• Wolfgang Huber: Return to the Just War Doctrine? - Current developments in Protestant peace ethics (1) (April 2004)

Topicality

• Peter Godzik : Values ​​of a Christian-Oriented Politics. Contribution to a book project , Ratzeburg 2003 (online at pkgodzik.de) .
• Klaus Kastner: From "just war" to outlawing war (pdf) (222 kB)
• Georg Meggle: Just Wars - Philosophy and Ideology (2002) (PDF file; 182 kB)
• Michael Walzer: An Assessment of the War (PDF file; 142 kB)
• Michael Walzer: The Debate About Humanitarian Interventions (2004)
• Werner Goldschmidt: Just War for a Just World Order? (Journal of Marxist Renewal, issue 40, December 1999)
• Matija Gašparević: The Doctrine of Just War and the Risks of the 21st Century - Preemptive War and the Military Humanitarian Intervention Munich, Univ.-Diss., 2010

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Fuchs: Was the Neo-Assyrian Empire a military state? In: Burkhard Meißner u. a. (Ed.): War, Society, Institutions , Berlin 2005, p. 35ff.
2. ↑ Marcus Müller: The effects of war on ancient Egyptian society. In: Burhard Meißner u. a. (Ed.): War, Society, Institutions , Berlin 2005, p. 89ff.
3. ↑ Maria Brosius: The Persians , London 2006, p 32ff.
4. ↑ Ulrike Kleemeier: Basic questions of a philosophical theory of war , Akademie-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-05-003730-X
5. ↑ Barbara Merker: The theory of the just war and the problem of the justification of violence , in: Dieter Janssen, Michael Quante (ed.): Gerechter Krieg. Paderborn 2003, p. 31, note 7
6. ^ Aristotle: Hauptwerke - Selected translated and introduced by Wilhelm Nestle , Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1977, p. 296
7. ↑ Ulrike Kleemeier: Basic questions of a philosophical theory of war , Akademie Verlag, p. 27
8. ↑ James E. Dougherty: The Bishops and Nuclear Weapons , 1984. p. 37
9. ↑ James E. Dougherty: The Bishops and Nuclear Weapons , 1984. p. 38.
10. ↑ Martin Bode: Historical materials on the bellum iustum
11. ↑ Josef Rief: The bellum-iustum theory historically. In: Norbert Glatzel, Ernst Josef Nagel (Hrsg.): Peace in Security, for the further development of the Catholic Peace Ethics. Herder Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1981, p. 16 ff., Here p. 18 ff.
12. ↑ Cicero: De re publica III, 35; based on Bernhard Häring: Retrofitting to Peace , Herder Verlag, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-451-19723-5 , p. 36.
13. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-17-009604-4 , p. 51.
14. ^ Walther Bienert: War, military service and conscientious objection according to the message of the New Testament , Brunnen-Verlag, 2nd expanded edition, Gießen 1985, ISBN 3-7655-9701-5
15. ↑ Cf. in a later formulation the intercession for the Roman emperor in the up to the removal from the missal after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation : "ut Deus et Dominus noster subditas illi faciat omnes barbaras nationes [...] respice ad Romanum benignus Imperium, ut gentes, quae in sua feritate confidunt, potentiae tuae dextera comprimantur. ”The goal was clearly stated:“ ad nostram perpetuam pacen ”[up to here Good Friday ] or“ tranquillum perpetuae pacis accomoda ”[ Easter night ]]
16. ↑ CIC 1983 can. 289 and previous norms, for the theoretical justification in scholasticism see Thomas von Aquin , Summa theol. II / II q. 40 a. 2
17. ↑ Heinz-Horst Schrey, article Krieg IV , in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Volume 20, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, p. 29ff
18. ^ Hubert Mader: Sources on the understanding of peace in the Catholic Church since Pius IX , Herold Verlag, Vienna / Munich 1985, ISBN 3-7008-0260-9 , p. 11
19. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990, p. 49ff
20. ↑ Josef Rief 1981, p. 20
21. ↑ Quid enim culpatur in bello? An quia moriuntur quandoque morituri, ut domentur in pace victuri? Hoc reprehendere timidorum est, non religiosorum […]. 75. Bellum autem quod gerendum Deo auctore suscipitur, recte suscipi, dubitare fas non est, vel ad terrendam, vel ad obterendam, vel ad subiugandam mortalium superbiam: quando ne illud quidem quod humana cupiditate geritur, non solum incorruptibili Deo, sed nec sanctis eius obesse aliquid potest; quibus potius ad exercendam patientiam, et ad humiliandam animam, ferendamque paternam disciplinam etiam prodesse invenitur. Neque enim had in eos quisquam ullam potestatem, nisi cui data fuerit desuper. Non est enim potestas nisi a Deo, sive iubente, sive sinente. Cum ergo vir iustus, si forte sub rege homine etiam sacrilego militet, recte poscit illo iubente bellare civicae pacis ordinem servans; cui quod iubetur, vel non esse contra Dei praeceptum certum est, vel utrum sit, certum non est, ita ut fortasse reum regem faciat iniquitas imperandi, innocentem autem militem ostendat ordo serviendi: quanto magis in administratione bellorum innocentissime diversatur, qui Deo iubente belligerato quem male aliquid i clean non posse, nemo qui ei servit ignorat. Augustine. Contra fist. 22.74f. Quoted from: J. Migne: Sancti Aurelii Augustini, Hipponensis episcopi, opera omnia (Patrologia Latina Volume 42). An English translation of this central passage can be found in J. Helgeland et al. a. (Ed.): Christians and the Military , Philadelphia 1985, pp. 81f.
22. ↑ Josef Rief 1981, p. 21ff
23. ↑ Hubert Mader: Sources on the understanding of peace in the Catholic Church since Pius IX , 1985, p. 12
24. ↑ Josef Rief 1981, p. 25
25. ^ Article Krieg IV , in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Volume 20, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1990, p. 37
26. ↑ Article Völkerrecht , in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Volume 35, 2003. S. 178.
27. ↑ ^{a b} quoted from Josef Rief 1981, p. 30
28. ↑ quoted from Josef Rief 1981, p. 31f
29. ↑ Josef Rief 1981, p. 32ff
30. ↑ Summa Theologica II / II, quaestio 64, A7
31. ^ Paul Ramsey, The Just War , New York 1968, based on Franz Böckle, Gert Krell (Ed.): Politics and Ethics of Deterrence , Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-459-01558-6 , p. 166
32. ↑ S. th. II / II q. 10 a. 8th
33. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 68ff
34. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 67
35. ↑ Hubert Mader (ed.): Sources for the understanding of peace in the Catholic Church , 1985. p. 16
36. ↑ Ulrike Kleemeier: Basic questions of a philosophical theory of war , Akademie-Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-05-003730-X , p. 32.
37. ↑ Bernhard Häring: Converting to Peace , 1983. P. 37
38. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans Richard-Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 80f
39. ^ Hubert Mader: Sources on the understanding of peace in the Catholic Church since Pius IX. , 1985. p. 16
40. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans Richard-Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 82
41. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 79
42. ↑ Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 80
43. ↑ Immanuel Kant: About the common saying: That may be correct in theory, but is not suitable for practice, p. 171f; Lecture based on Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richard Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 91
44. ↑ referenced by Wolfgang Huber, Hans-Richar Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990. P. 92f
45. ↑ Hendrik Simon: The Myth of Liberum Ius ad Bellum: Justifying War in 19th-Century Legal Theory and Political Practice . In: European Journal of International Law . tape 29 , no. 1 , May 8, 2018, ISSN  0938-5428 , p. 113–136 , doi : 10.1093 / ejil / chy009 ( oup.com [accessed December 30, 2019]).
46. ^ Sigmar Stadlmeier: Dynamic interpretation of permanent neutrality. Duncker & Humblot, 1991, ISBN 978-3-428-07098-5 , p. 61 .
47. ↑ Study Department of the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Geneva (ed.): The disorder of the world and God's plan of salvation. Amsterdam Ecumenical Discussion 1948. Volume 4: The Church and International Disorder. Gotthelf-Verlag 1948
48. ↑ quoted from Ecumenical Peace Network Düsseldorf: Circular letter to the Düsseldorf parishes on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2005) ( MS Word ; 111 kB)
49. ↑ Helmut Gollwitzer: Die Christisten und die Atomwaffen (1957), Christian Kaiser Verlag, 6th unaltered edition, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-459-01407-5 , pp. 22-27
50. ↑ EKD (Ed.): Maintaining, promoting and renewing peace. A memorandum of the Evangelical Church in Germany. Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 3rd edition Gütersloh 1982, ISBN 3-579-01975-9 , appendix: Die Heidelberger Thesen 1957 , p. 82ff
51. ↑ Pacem in terris , Chapter 3, Paragraph 170
52. ↑ Gaudium et Spes German
53. ↑ Moderamen of the Reformed Covenant (ed.): The Confession of Jesus Christ and the Church's Responsibility for Peace. Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, Gütersloh 1982, ISBN 3-579-01979-1 , p. 9
54. ↑ EKD (Ed.): Maintaining, promoting and renewing peace. A memorandum of the Evangelical Church in Germany. 1982, pp. 58 and 72
55. ↑ quoted from Bertold Klappert: The resurrection of Jesus and the uprising against the nothing , in: Bertold Klappert: Reconciliation and Liberation , Neukirchener Verlag, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1994, ISBN 3-7887-1451-4 , p. 284
56. ↑ Thomas Risse-Kappen: The double face of deterrence. Political science comments on the church's controversies over nuclear deterrence and warfare. In: Franz Böckle, Gert Krell: Politics and ethics of deterrence. Contributions to the Nuclear Weapons Challenge. Munich 1984, p. 193ff
57. ^ Wolfgang Huber, Hans Richard-Reuter: Friedensethik , 1990 .; Jean-Daniel Strub, Stefan Grotefeld (eds.): The just peace between pacifism and just war. Paradigms of Peace Ethics in Discourse. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019508-0
58. ↑ Volkhard Krech: Sacrifice and Holy War: Violence from a religious-scientific point of view. In: Wilhelm Heitmeyer (Ed.): International manual of violence research. Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2002, ISBN 3-531-13500-7 , p. 1262  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
59. ↑ Klaus Reblin: Francis of Assisi. The rebellious brother. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006, pp. 55ff.
60. ↑ quoted from Bernhard Häring: Umrüsten zum Frieden , 1983. S. 38 and S. 52
61. ↑ ^{a b} Article Krieg IV , in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 1990. P. 43
62. ^ LeRoy Walters: Historical Applications of the Just-War Theory: Four Case Studies in Normative Ethics. In: Love and Society: Essays in the Ethics of Paul Ramsey. American Academy of Religion, Missoula, Montana 1974; quoted from Bernhard Häring: Umrüsten zum Frieden , 1983. p. 38
63. ↑ quoted from Karl Holl, Wolfram Wette: Pazifismus in der Weimarer Republik , p. 150