What is in Kelvin's Head?

Should there be missile strikes on Syria?

13/04/2018
It has taken me a little while to work out whether or not missile strikes against Syria are justified by the UK at the moment.

It seems to me that there are quite a lot of people who don’t seem to need to take their time and know instinctively that military action either should or should not take place. Certainly those who are against missile strikes seem to be dusting down their “not in my name” T-shirts and getting ready to oppose military action.

If you are a pacifist then the answer is clear. If you are a pacifist then you are going to be opposed to military action come what may.

As it happens, I am not a pacifist. I think that there are situations when military action is justified but I think you’ve got to cross quite a high moral bar before you can justify the use of force.

There’s three tests for me – classic just war theory, intervention for humanitarian purposes and enforcing international law.

Let’s take them one by one.

Just War Theory

There’s plenty to read about Just War Theory. Some people don’t buy it at all but I think the tests are useful.

The idea is that certain conditions must be met before a war might be considered legitimate. Such tests are laid out, for example, in the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.

They are:
1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
3. there must be serious prospects of success;
4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated (the power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition).
In this case, I think that the first test is partly but not wholly met.

The use of chemical weapons is lasting and grave. However, the public doesn’t have certainty about how they were deployed. If governments have such proof they have not made it public yet. There may be circumstances in which it is wise for governments to keep secret how they know things but it is the case that in modern times, simply saying “we know best and we are not telling you how we know” is a difficult place for governments to find themselves with their people.

The second test is difficult for me to assess. Are there any alternatives to military action. If military action is just about the use of chemical weapons and not about taking sides in the war then I don’t know whether there are any alternatives. There certainly don’t seem to be many.

The third test is more of a struggle I think. Is there really a serious chance of success? This doesn’t mean a chance that, for example, Western missiles might hit particular targets. The test is whether by hitting such targets, the use of chemical weapons would cease. Given that there were similar strikes by the US some time ago and we now appear to have further use of chemical weapons, I think we have to say that there are serious doubts about whether there is realistic prospect of success.

The fourth test is perhaps the most grave. It seems to me that the use of force might well produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. We don’t know and we cannot know whether this test can be met in this case.

So, I’d say that Just War Theory offers little support for military intervention at the moment.

Intervention for Humanitarian Purposes

The UK has intervened in some countries in recent years for humanitarian purposes. In some cases it has gone well and in others perhaps less well. The Bosnian and Sierra Leone campaigns were said by many to be classic uses of force for good.

The prospect of missile strikes in Syria does not seem to me to be entirely about intervention for humanitarian purposes. Certainly it would be good to stop chemical weapons being used but far from certain that this can be achieved. I see no plans to be involved in building the peace after the bombing. I see no plans to intervene for anyone’s good.

Humanitarian concerns do not seem to be met by this proposed military intervention.

Enforcing International Law

The use of chemical weapons is illegal. Whoever used them committed a crime and should be brought to justice in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Military intervention that was designed to bring perpetrators to justice could, in my view, be justified.

However, I don’t think that what is currently apparently being considered comes anywhere near this.

My conclusion

So, my conclusion after looking at this proposed action through these moral lenses is that military action cannot be justified at this time.

That is not to say that I think this is easy. I may be wrong. I think that it behoves everyone to support military personnel involved in any action that is taken. And I have much sympathy with the politicians who have decisions to make.

I once wanted to be one of them.

They have a hard job to do with partial information and some information that cannot be shared.

So far as I can see this military action cannot be justified. However, I’m very aware that this is a view based on my limited knowledge of events.

My thoughts are with all who have decisions to make which affect the lives of others.
just war, missile strikes, syria

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
  Reply
Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply