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JUST WAR THEORY

Unarmed Drone Technology Raises Huge Questions When Considering Just War Theory: How Should We Think About This New Technology?

One of the most important achievements of Christian thinking is what is known as just war theory. Now, why is it necessary? It is because as you think of nations rising up against nation, as you look through human history, warfare has been a near constant. When you're looking at the global reality, the fact is that there have been far more years of war, including in the 20th century, world war, then there have been years of peace. It is peace that requires an explanation in a sinful world, not violence. That's something for Christians to think about. If you're thinking from a secular perspective and you think the human beings are basically good, then it is war or violence or wrongdoing, that requires some kind of explanation. But from the Christian worldview, when we understand fallen humanity, when we understand what it means to take the doctrine of sin seriously, we understand that it is actually peace that is the great achievement that requires some explanation rather than the condition of war.

We also come to understand that war is one of the most awful experiences human beings can endure. It leads to death and destruction, it changes history, it often sets back civilizations, it impoverishes nations. And of course the ultimate violence in war is the taking of human life. Christians have had to ask the question under what circumstances is that right? Is that legitimate? This comes down to the basic Christian understanding of the use of violence. Violence in this sense, meaning any kind of use of force that could cause any kind of injury, much less death. The Christian worldview has come down to this. There are times in a fallen, sinful world when it is the next than worst thing to bring about some act of violence, to put an end to violence. That is to say, letting the violent go ahead with their mayhem, go ahead with their violence is actually worse than using some kind of sanctioned violence to bring it to an end.

Now, one of the principles of Christian just war theory is that the use of such violence is only legitimate if indeed it is intended to end violence, it is a war to end war that is the only legitimate war. There are a lot of points, principles, and conditions to what we know as just war theory. It developed in the ancient world when Christianity gained influence in the Roman Empire, it continued throughout the medieval era where it was actually expanded and it was elaborated upon. The circumstances of changing history meant that the theory itself, the understanding of what was moral and immoral and when war was justified and how a war was to be conducted. All of this had to be worked out.

The common understanding is that it's divided into two parts. The first part is what is necessary for a law to be ethical, for it actually to be justified as in just or justified war theory.

The second part is if indeed a violent action, a war, a battle and effort is necessary, if it's justified, then how do we justify how it is done? There are certain acts in warfare that are themselves immoral.

So looking at this, the Christian consensus has been operating on a biblical worldview, that violence is never a good in itself, but sometimes to put an end to violence, the measured use of violence is necessary. That's why we have police, that's why we have soldiers, that's why we have an army, and a navy and a air force. And that any kind of legitimate warfare must be defensive rather than offensive. It must be to defend one's territory and people rather than to take other territory and other people. It must be to stop aggression rather than to extend it. It must be justified in that it's declared by a lawful authority. In the United States, only Congress can declare war, although a president can set the military into action pending the authorization of Congress.

There's more to it than that. But once a war is started, then it must be combatants who are targeted, never civilians. There must be an effort to try to limit the effects of any kind of action of war so that it does not destroy civilization, but rather seeks to save it, to salvage it and to defend it. There must not be the use of any kind of warfare that would set loose forces of evil that cannot be restrained.

Now you also look at the fact that over time technologies have arisen that have required a new understanding of just war theory. One of the most obvious was the development of say air forces. When you had just land-based or sea-based military powers, then you just needed principles that extended to those. But once you add aerial combat, well things begin to change. You have the morality of whether or not it is right to bomb cities, as well as to say bomb military infrastructure. All that becomes very, very crucial. I'm bringing that to the fore in order to say that right now, it is very interesting that if you're paying attention to our national conversation, another technological change has greatly affected the understanding of just war theory, or at least has raised crucial questions that are going to have to be rethought. In this case, the new technology is the unmanned drone.

Just in recent days, The Wall Street Journal ran a front page article headline, "Low-Cost, Armed Drones Reshape War and Geopolitics." Now, as you're thinking about warfare, you tend to think of the big states that have the mighty air forces, the mighty armies, the super powers as they are known. There's a sense in which the United States is the world's last global superpower, massive navy that is represented in all the oceans of the world, dominance in the sky, dominance on land, at least that is the American military theory. There's not another country that at least, at present, could represent any such credible threat, any such credible power. During the time of the Soviet union, it was a bipolar world, the United States and its allies, the Soviet Union and its allies. Either one basically get show up anywhere in force on planet Earth. China's a rising military power, but China is a regional military power at this stage. It wants to expand its influence, but it would take it a long time to become a global power. For instance, with a seven-ocean navy.

You also have smaller nations that have developed outsize military importance, and North Korea would be an example of that. A totalitarian state that is basically run by its military leader. But one of the interesting things to think about here is that at least about the history of human warfare, humans have been directly involved. What does it mean when there is no human being on the ground, or on the sea or in the air at the site of combat? That's what changes with the development of the aerial drone? Now this will take many different forms, but the point being made by The Wall Street Journal is that the development of these drones has now destabilized the entire defense picture of the major powers of the world and the minor powers as well because here's another thing that the Christian worldview helps us to understand.

If you develop a new technology, you're going to have a very difficult time limiting that technology. If you have a tank, that was a major development, just as the longbow was a major development in warfare. If you show up on the battlefield with a longbow, the first time you win, if you're going over against swordsman, but the next time you have a battle, your enemy is likely to show up with a longbow as well. You show up with tanks, your enemy will show up with tanks, you show up with airplanes, your enemy will show up with airplanes. You show up with drones, it turns out your enemy shows up with drones, but as you're thinking about a massive air force, a massive navy, a massive army that takes massive money, but it turns out that the drone can be relatively, quite inexpensive and a little power with a drone can go up against a big power that also has a drone.

That's what Russia has found out. And it has found out as it has tried to engage in limited warfare with troops on the ground, jets in the air, tanks rolling along. It turns out that the drones were a major problem for the Russian military in recent engagements. The Wall Street Journal team of reporters tells us, "A soldier idles by a Russian made T72 tank. A moment later, a missile fired from a drone slams into the vehicle, exploding in an orange flash, blowing the man off his feet and leaving the tank a smoldering wreck." The reporters say, "The scene is one of dozens of aerial videos that were posted online in Azerbaijan last year, showing off a new weapon. Over six weeks, it helped the nation regain territory in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that had been held by Russian backed Armenian forces for more than two decades. The video show attacks on tanks, trucks, command posts, mortar positions, and radar installments."

The Journal then tells us, "Smaller militaries around the world are deploying inexpensive, missile equipped drones against armored enemies, a new battlefield tactic that proved successful last year in regional conflicts, shifting the strategic balance around Turkey and Russia. Drones built in Turkey with affordable digital technology, wrecked tanks and other armored vehicles, as well as air defense systems of Russian proteges and battles waged in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan." Here's the point. "These drones point to a future warfare being shaped as much by cheap, but effective fighting vehicles as expensive ones with the most advanced technology."

Now, as the story unfolds that The Wall Street Journal is telling us, the United States basically showed up with the drones first and we showed it with drones in a big way. Drones have become a major part of what three different administrations have sought to advance in our effort against global terrorism. The drones became a major part of the American arsenal and strategy under Democratic president, Barack Obama. They continued under Republican president, Donald J. Trump. They continue now under President Joe Biden. The fact is that the American military is able to command drones all over much of the world in places you and I certainly do not even know by classification. They are there active. The American government, the American military is extending its influence and its military might in a way that is indeed a form of warfare by using these drones that often come with some of the most deadly technology imaginable, including some we know, that now drop weapons that basically expand like a ninja set of blades, destroying everything within reach.

They now extend to the use of automatic weapons that can shoot bullets and other cartridges. And of course the missiles, the drones themselves, can in effect be missiles. And that is what is being used in so much of the developing world where it's not so much that the drones deliver weapons as the fact that the drone is the weapon. The Russians found that out the hard way. Just in terms of worldview analysis. We remember that ideas don't stay contained. Technology doesn't stay contained. It didn't with the longbow. It didn't with the development of iron. It didn't with the development of the tank. It didn't with the air force. It didn't with the navy. It won't with drones. It hasn't. And drones are now showing up all over the world in ways that are outside even the control of any kind of national actor. That is they're out of control of national militaries, because it's not just nations that can now obtain these drones.

Now that they're being developed and sold throughout different parts of the world, when you have countries such as Turkey that are now manufacturers as is China, the reality is that you don't even have to be a state actor to get your hands on one of these drones. And then you can conduct a great deal of mayhem with them. Just war theory is related only to states. The Christian understanding of just war theory is thus applied only to national governments that have the right to declare a justified, active warfare. And yet you're looking at the fact that technology just doesn't stay that limited. Bad ideas don't stay limited. Toxic ideologies don't stay limited in territory. They are simply transported like a virus, human being to human being and deadly technologies such as drones, it won't stay limited either. The United States showed up first, given our technological power, but you now have other nations that have drones and they can use their drones against the United States.

What happened against Russia? That's the point of the Wall Street Journal. That's the point of the American military. What happened against Russia de-stabilizing and what's called asymmetrical warfare. Symmetrical means you have basically something like historically, look at Europe, France and Germany going up against one another, big nations, prosperous nations in central Europe; that's symmetrical. The United States versus the Soviet union, symmetrical. A major empire like the Soviet union over against the Mujahideen and Afghanistan, asymmetrical. But you remember who won?

R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR.
 
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A Rebound of Toxic Ideas in France: What’s Behind the French Claim That Americans Are Exporting Bad Ideas?

France is complaining that it is being targeted with bad ideas coming from the United States, but turn around is fair play because many of those bad ideas came to the United States from France. There's a big story here. It's worth our attention. Why are the French upset now? It is because they are complaining that Americans are exporting toxic identity politics. Identity politics, by the way, is inherently toxic. It is inherently corrosive of any cultural system, of any society, of any system of politics. Once you begin to divide humanity along the lines of identity politics, you make race, ethnicity, culture, gender identity, sexuality, sexual orientation, it makes all of that simply< according to ideological cast, the most important issue about human beings. It separates human beings according to these designations of personal identity and, as we shall say, it just gets more toxic from that.

But nonetheless, France is now complaining that its current political moment, it's facing a big election at the national level, that it is now demonstrating on its college campuses, in its media, in its politics, the corrosive elements of identity politics, the kind of political correctness, the kind of critical race theory and other issues that have becomes so controversial in the United States. France says, "Don't export them here. The Americans are at fault for this. France is becoming more like America."

They're also making other claims saying that France in its media life is becoming more like the United States where you have the ideological differentiation across, say, the cable spectrum, where all of a sudden you have competing worldviews, competing political parties and arguments making their voices known through means of competing media. Yes. That's true in the United States, and it's increasingly true also in France.

There's another big picture here, and that is the fact that, whether you're looking at, say, Europe as a whole, countries like Germany, for example, not to mention the countries traditionally identified in Eastern Europe, they are demonstrating the same kind of ideological polarity you find in the United States. There's a far left and a far right. You're looking at a breakdown in the cultural and political consensus. And so, many of these countries, especially in Western and in Northern Europe. This is happening in the United States. It's happening across north America, but it's a particularly challenging issue to the French right now. And they want to blame a scapegoat. They want to blame someone. They're blaming the United States, blaming the Americans.

Writing in the New York Times Cole Stangler wrote it this way: "It's become a familiar refrain in French political life from President Emmanuel Macron and his cabinet to the far right opposition, from print columnist to talking heads, Americanization is increasingly held responsible for a whole set of social ills ailing the nation." Well, let's just take a little historical review here for a moment.

If you go back to the early decades of the 20th century and follow that last century through France was a net exporter of culture to the United States. That was true when it comes to film. So, many of the films that led to the explosion in the movie industry started out as French in their origin. It was so French, indeed, that even cowboy movie set in the United States included French actors speaking French with French mustaches. Not exactly what you would have found actually in the wild, wild west. America took over the film industry, of course, and Hollywood became preeminent, but it really started as a major industry and cultural momentum in France. France, after all, considers culture to be its great gift to the world. But that culture has often itself turned toxic.

Paris became one of the most liberal centers of cultural influence in the 19th and especially in the 20th century, holding up not only alternative forms of art that rejected the traditional forms but also flouting sexual morality, gender identity, and other conservative traditional conventions in order to make France the absolute cutting edge of so many of these moral and cultural movements. Also, artistic movements and architecture, particularly in painting and drama in literature. France was the source of existentialism, another of the toxic exports from France and the 20th century. And France also was heavily involved in exporting to the United States the ideological currents that became known as postmodernism.

Postmodernism in the last half of the 20th century was in many ways a French invention. You had figures such as John Francois Leotard who defined postmodernism as the death of the meta narratives. If that sounds very obtuse, it means the death of all the grand explanations of the world and human history. That means also, according to postmodernism, the death of the biblical meta-narrative, the death of the Bible as a central cultural authority, not to mention theological authority in Western civilization. The argument made by the postmodernist is that the old narratives have died, like Christianity, and the newer narratives have failed, like Marxism. And so, we are past the age of the grand narratives. And, instead, we just have to live in little narratives of our own social construction. And they need to be narratives that will liberate humanity. From what you ask? From oppression, such as the oppressiveness of a traditional Christian moral understanding of the universe.

Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstructionism, key to that entire movement known as postmodernism, argued for what he called the death of the author, meaning that it is the reader, not the author of a text that is in control of the interpretation. The author is dead, is Derrida's argument, whether the author is biologically dead or not. Once the text is written, the author disappears. It is radical subjectivity. The text means whatever the reader says it means. And the reader is also to bring a reading methodology that will liberate humanity from any kind of absolute truth. Postmodernism denies any form of absolute or objective truth. Postmodernism says that everything, all claims to truth are socially constructed, they're perspectival, and they are probably being foisted upon society by forces of oppression. That old Marxism is always there lurking in the background.

It is interesting. However, as we think about toxic ideas and worldviews spreading, in France, postmodernism had primary influence in the university structures, even though the faculties moved on from postmodernism to what must be like post-postmodernism and post-post-post-postmodernism. And it also infected the museums and the art world, but not so much French politics until now. But now, you'll notice they're blaming the Americans because postmodernism jumped the Atlantic coming from France into the United States where it didn't, in the United States, stay in the academic circles, in the academic culture. It did, first of all, gain influence there. But these toxic ideologies have now entered the political mainstream in the United States where you have such movements as critical theory and other things such as this basic idea that all truth is socially constructed, that all truth claims are oppressive, that liberation comes from overthrowing the entire structure of claims of truth. This has now leaped from the doctoral seminar at Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton into the cultural mainstream and right onto the streets of America.

But it's really interesting now to see the French complaining that what they sent here has come back in an even more virulent and toxic form. As the New York Times tells us, "Perhaps the most common gripe is that ideas and practices imported from the United States are making the French obsessed with ethnic, religious, and sexual difference at the expense of their shared identity as citizens of the universal republic."

Now, there's something else to note here. And that is that, as you're looking at French history, remember that the American revolution, which was in essence a reformation of society, took place in the late 18th century and the French revolution took place just a few years thereafter. But the French revolution was explicitly radical, ideologically extreme, and explicitly secular. Whereas in the English speaking world, there is at least an acknowledgement that the entire frame of reality was established by biblical Christianity in the European, the Western, the North American worldview. Even as there are those who will argue that it needs to be overcome, there's a basic acknowledgement of that heritage. Not so much so in France.

In France, you're looking at an increasingly secular nation with an explicitly secular government that is pressing an official policy of secularism that is known as laïcité, that is as in lay rather than clerical. It is an extreme form of secularism, which means that you have, for example, British towns saying that Muslim women can't wear certain kinds of bodily coverings or face coverings because it violates laïcité.

But you'll pardon me for feeling little sympathy for the French, even though I sympathize with their position, because they are in large part responsible ideologically and in worldview terms for how the infection got to the United States in the first place. But, in the United States, there is no excuse here. There was an open embrace of these toxic ideas in the American academy. But it didn't stay in the academy. It went to the streets. It went on cable news. And now, it is being streamed from the United States all over the world. And it is now affecting French politics, to the consternation of the French. A reminder to us that, in worldview terms, bad ideas usually don't die. They usually don't even fade away. They just come back again and again in evermore virulent forms.

From The Briefing
Thursday, June 17, 2021
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
 
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