Just Wars or just more wars?

Normandy Beaches in 1944: but are today's wars just?

BBC Radio 4's Analysis: Just Wars or just more wars? was broadcast on Thursday, 19 August, 2004 at 20:30 BST.

In the last fifteen years-from the Persian Gulf to Bosnia, from Kosovo to East Timor and now, most controversially, Iraq-it has proved impossible to reach agreement on what constitutes a just war. One side has asserted the justice of war, the other denied it. Disagreement has persisted because there has not appeared to be objective, or even agreed, criteria to judge what was just.

So where does this leave those struggling with these issues: political leaders who have to mobilise public opinion, military commanders who have to deploy troops and international lawyers who have to answer the questions of both? How can we determine just and unjust conflicts? And what now makes war just-both in the way it is declared and how it is undertaken?

In this week's edition of Analysis, Felipe Fernández-Armesto asks why we have reached this crisis about military conflict. After all, we used to know what a just war was. The conditions were laid down a millennium-and-a-half ago and, in the Western tradition, remained more or less unquestioned until today: to be just a war had to be launched to resist aggression or redress usurpation, and it had to be conducted with no more violence, against no more people than necessary to achieve those ends. And Islamic teaching on the justice of war was not wholly different from Christian.

Now, however, it has become harder than ever to tell when a war satisfies those criteria. The threats we face from terrorism and unprecedented weapons are distorting decisions about where and when to fight in self-defence. Victims of aggression by their own governments demand defenders-yet every intervention designed to achieve regime change exacerbates the injustice to those who are abandoned.

The United Nations and the United States dispute the moral authority to decide when and where to strike, but have the last ten years shown that either of them should enjoy that right? And even if a war is launched in justice, can we be sure it is fought without injustice, given that war breeds atrocities?

So can we find a new doctrine of just war, adjusted to the realities of a world dominated by a single super-power, yet scattered with terrorists, frequently bloodied by oppression and bristling with terrible weapons? Among those taking part: Sir Malcolm Rifkind, QC (former Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Defence) and General Sir Michael Rose (former Commander UK Field Army and Commander of UN Forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina).

Presenter: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Producer: Simon Coates
Editor: Nicola Meyrick