Philosophers have by no means agreed on the meaning and matter of war. Even a random sampling of their views uncovers a wide-ranging diversity.

Aristotle observed that "the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for the art of acquisition includes hunting, an art which we ought to practice against wild beasts, and, against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit; for war of such a kind is naturally just."[1] Any war against barbarians was thereby a just war. (Of course, the assumption that such government established through conquest will automatically provide the needed framework for virtuous living is false.) Although offering an implicit notion of a just war, Aristotle (in agreement with Plato) recognized the importance of economic rivalry as a prominent factor in bringing about war. He remarked, "poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."[2] If economic inequality is the cause of revolution within countries, then it is the same inequality among countries that contributes to international wars. But Aristotle shrewdly insisted that it is the gap between those who have wealth and property and those who do not have it that provokes revolution and that wealth itself feeds its own greed— an exaggerated preoccupation with money and material goods. People with luxuries want more luxuries just as people in desperate want desire the necessities. Such an appetite may be satisfied by war in a number of ways, especially through victors acquiring "spoils."

Centuries later "just war" receives some support from Augustine of Hippo[3] and detailed development from Thomas Aquinas. Holding that ware and Christianity were not antagonistic, Thomas insisted that three conditions be met: (1) an authoritative sovereign must declare that the war is a "just" one, (2) a just war requires a "just" cause (at least one that is clear enough that the monarch can specify it), and (3) the beligerents must have rightful intentions so that good will be promoted and evil will be avoided. For Thomas this meant that the "guilt" of the enemy justified killing them.[4] For us these remarks may seem uncommonly vague or even ridiculous. The notion that the guilt of the enemy justifies killing them seems preposterous for modern warfare. Total destruction and saturation-bombing tactics make it absurd to claim citizen guilt or even national guilt covers the havoc wrought! At what cost in innocent lives are the allegedly guilty persons killed? Modern military technology makes it very difficult to limit the damage one inflicts to enemy soldiers alone or even to military installations. Civilians are often hurt or killed by the necessary efforts to prevent the production and transportation of military supplies.

Or, to take the issue a step further, whose guilt serves as a warrant for the full-scale campaign of terror often waged against civilian populations? In the case of guerrilla warfare the guerrillas themselves abolish the conventional distinction between soldier and civilian. They do so by attaining widespread support from the local population. It must at least be admitted that guerrilla warfare greatly complicates (if it doesn’t make impossible) any argument for a "just" ware. Dr. Richard Wasserstrom argues that it is difficult to imagine a set of circumstances that would justify war since innocent persons would intentionally be killed by modern warfare. Wasserstrom writes:

In practice during the middle ages, the citizen (in the absence of overwhelming evidence that a war was unjust) would ordinarily assume that it was a just war. It is worth noting that no official Roman Catholic leader has ever declared that a war of his own nation was unjust.

Rousseau asserted that war is a relation between states rather than persons.

We may think of war abstractly (a conflict between state and state, not one between individuals) and we do justify war most frequently on the ground of defense. But, to think of it in that way does tend to blur the stark horror of it—its pain, suffering, death, and destruction!

J. G. Fichte believed that any violation of a treaty and any refusal to recognize a state were proper grounds upon which to wage war.[7] On Fichte’s view war is justified by what may be called backward-looking criteria. What has already happened is, on this view, relevant to the justice or rightness of the war that is subsequently waged. Both of the grounds for waging war seem to overlook the countless other ways of gaining recognition as a nation and securing compliance to a treaty.

John Stuart Mill (The British philosopher of the 19^th century) believed that to go to war of an idea, if the war is aggressive, is as immoral as to do so for territory or for revenue. We are as unjustified in forcing our ideas on others as we are in compelling them to economic obedience. There were, however, some instances where intervention in the affairs of another nation might be justified. These circumstances may be present when the intervention by an advanced nation in the internal affairs of an undeveloped nation took place since presumably the undeveloped nation was likely to benefit from such intervention. It is no surprise that Mill’s view is not out of step with the usual rationale for British empire-building.[8]

Hegel argued that war was inescapable, and insisted upon its usefulness in the development of nations. For Hegel the state was the most significant organization to which persons may belong. The state bestows upon each individual person authentic meaning, and sacrifice for the state is the universal duty of all its citizens. He thought of war as a way of settling international disputes and of "saving" nations. Lacking the vision of any international organization, he thought of nationalism as at once the epitome and limit of human loyalty.[9]

Kant, to his lasting credit, took a different view. In Perpetual Peace he urges a "league of nations" and a reassessment of the whole war issue in the context of some moral principles. He recommended the abolition of standing armies, and rejection of secrecy as a governmental strategy. By recommending an openness of action between nations he was attempting to get nations to discuss rationally their differences and to create a hospitable attitude among nations.

Turning to a couple of American philosophers, consider the views of Thoreau and Emerson. Henry David Thoreau reflected on the moral callousness of war and the peculiar inversion of values that it produced. War, after all, destroyed the very things from which living gained its meaning.[10]

Ralph Waldo Emerson insisted that war would one day pass away as a sign that man had finally become mature. At the higher stage of development, which will denote his maturity, man will "turn the other cheek."[11]

R. G. Collingwood (an early 20^th century British philosopher) seems to have taken an ambiguous view of war. On the one hand, he argues that war and peace are not contradictories. This means (as he views matters) that there is not impossibility of war serving the cause of peace and of being justified when there is no other way to curb belligerent tyranny. Collingwood also admitted that war was a sign of diplomatic indecision and political weakness.[12]

Listen to what some recent and contemporary thinkers have said. Donald Wells (in a fascinating book called The War Myth) writes:

His scholarly presentation leaves us with a troublesome question: Is all talk of a just war merely a rationalization? Is our claim that there can be such a thing as a "just war" simply an exercise in self-deception?

L. T. Hobhouse in Social Development remarks that it should not take an advanced intelligence to see that pestilence, famine, and organized slaughter are not conditions for the advancement of culture.[14] Wars result in the loss of personal liberties in precisely those areas where the creative side of persons is most fruitful. Either a nation decides to work for those institutions that make peace possible, or it wages war with enthusiasm, and, as Nietzsche observed, pays the price by becoming insensitive, stupid, barbaric, and vengeful.[15] The army will always get along without culture, but no so-called civilized nation can. Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner both stressed the fact that, while armed might may have served a progressive end in the childhood of race, we long since have reached the stage where war does not promote civilization. (And we may wish to add that we reached this stage long before the development of the atomic and hydrogen bombs!)

Norman Thomas entitled one of his books War: No Glory, No Profit, No Need to indicate the total pragmatic failure of war to fulfill any of the ends it claimed to have been fought for. War is supposed to promote patriotism, but the nationalism that results is better unlearned because it blocks hopes for world order and feeds the fires of new aggressiveness. War is claimed to bring about the redress of grievances, but in the end, we must all come to the conference table, and it is there that decisions are constructively made. Even where war enthusiasts claim that it awakens the virtues of courage and self-sacrifice, they ignore the fact that such attributes are virtues only when they are directed toward worthy ends and when they utilize worthy means. When the ends and means are both foul, no virtue is present!

Let me share with you some insights from a recent book by a colleague of mine, Ronald J. Glossop, entitled Confronting War (1983). Glossop defines war as "violent conflict between organized groups that are or that claim to establish governments."[16] He then indicates that the "war problem" ("humanity’s most pressing problem") has four aspects, and any comprehensive solution must somehow deal with each of these facets of the problem.

Reflect with me on these four aspects of the problem. First, there are preparations for war. Huge expenditures of public funds are involved and a vast amount of human time, talent, and effort are expended on war projects, armaments, and military training of recruits. Even if an actual war never comes, this expenditure may be a great obstacle to our survival! Such expenditure is troublesome and detrimental to human progress for two obvious reasons: (1) use of resources, money, and human talent for war projects and the development of new weaponry diverts these items from being used creatively to solve pervasive human problems, and (2) once these preparatory steps have been taken and new weapons created, there is a stubborn inertia (whether economic or social) that impedes transforming these ‘swords" of destruction into "plowshares!" Let me illustrate the second point first. There is now a nuclear stockpile of weapons sufficiently powerful to kill 58 billion people, or to kill every person now living 12 times![17] Now, assume that all the nations of the world were to come to the conference table and decide to abandon nuclear weapons. What would these peaceful nations do with this enormous capacity for death and destruction? How could they transform these weapons of annihilation and use them to solve creatively the troublesome human problems?

Think with me about the first point: How could this money, human talent and resources be better employed? To answer this question you are invited to think about these mind boggling contrasts in priorities: "In a world spending $800 billion a year for military programs, one adult in three cannot read and write, one person in four is hungry."[18] "The developed countries on average spend 5.4 percent of their Gross National Product (total earnings) for military purposes, .3 percent for development assistance to poorer countries."[19] "There is one soldier per 43 people in the world, one physician per 1030 people."[20] Are not our real human problems those of education, hunger and health?

The second part of our war problem is the danger of a nuclear holocaust, whether by accident or intent. The superpowers, Russia and The United States, may unleash thousands of nuclear warheads that they have ready for launch. The warheads are ready; all it takes is a command and the turn of a couple of keys. And, these warheads are fast -- 30 minutes from launch to target (sometimes less). Some of the nuclear warheads on these missiles are 1500 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should come as no surprise that the radioactivity from an all-out nuclear exchange would eliminate or cripple in a hideous way higher life on this planet. "Nuclear winter" (our experts tell us) would likely involve a futile struggle (by those so unfortunate as to survive) for bare existence, while undergoing excruciating suffering and pain.

The third aspect of the war problem is the occurrence of conventional wars. These wars are very destructive and they seem to be on the increase in recent years. Since the end of World War II these conventional wars have generally been fought on the soil of the poorer countries. The number of maimings and deaths resulting from these wars is very great indeed. "Four times as many war deaths have occurred in the forty years since World War II as in the forty years preceding it."[22] Wars in these developing (or Third World) countries are especially crippling and sometimes damage or atrophy the development of the country for decades! In general, for these countries it has meant a five-fold increase in military spending since 1960![23] This has diverted from meeting the pervasive human problems—hunger, health, housing, and education—an enormous amount of resources and produced the accompanying pain, suffering, and death.

The fourth aspect of the war problem is intranational or civil wars. Merely to give examples accentuates the way in which these wars "spill over" into international conflicts. One thinks of the Vietnamese War, the Cuban revolution, the Biafran separatist movement in Nigeria, the on-going battle between the Greeks and Turks on Cyprus, the struggle in Northern Ireland, the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, the revolution in Nicaragua, and the struggle for control in El Salvador. In all of these (whether directly or indirectly, whether overtly or covertly) the United States and Russia have intervened to influence decisively the outcome. These wars may have been initially and essentially intranational or civil wars, but they did not stay that way for long.

Any lasting solution to our war problem would need to deal with these four aspects of the situation. Reduction in conventional arms and nuclear arsenals seems imperative. Challenging the massive military expenditures should be a primary concern. Redirecting funds to meet human needs wherever those needs are discovered could be an immediate goal.

Now, since war is a complex problem one should not expect a single, simple solution for it. Many proposals for trying to solve the problem need to be examined, and it seems plausible that some combination of them will be required to rid the world of war. To be rid of war or to have a warless world is perhaps a goal that is accepted by most rational humans. The effect of warlessness upon the human spirit is perchance not quite so apparent. One of my teachers, William Ernest Hocking, who, at one time approved of war, later (after the development of the nuclear bomb) rejected it entirely. Why? In part because of the inherent contradiction in war-making which treats human beings as things and yet presupposes that they will continue as persons, in part because warlessness will lift the cloud of nuclear war that hangs over life’s total meaning and dispel the horror, degradation and shame of war, but, most importantly, because a warless world will free the spirit of man to work in cooperation for lasting peace.[24]

Leaving aside many matters that are essential to solving the war problem focus with me on some changes in attitude that may provide a beginning (but only a beginning) in our approach to the complex war problem.

The preamble of the constitution of the United Nations, Education-al, Scientific, and Cultural Organization says: "Since wars begin in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." We can begin by reshaping ourselves, by changing our attitudes, if we are committed to a world in which peace and justice are to abide.

What sorts of changes in attitude would promote peace and cooperative effort? Let me mention four aspects of the peacemaker attitude.

First, we need an attitude of commitment that is proportionate to the problem. War (as we have insisted) is a complex problem; it is also a long-standing problem; it has been with us for thousands of years. We need a whole-hearted commitment to the abolition of war. Allow me to take an example from my own country. Much ado has been made recently of the legislation signed last October (1984) establishing a United States Institute of Peace. The Institute is to be an independent, non-profit institution that will accomplish three goals: (1) promote research of the conditions that make peace possible, (2) train persons to bring about conflict resolution (specialists at resolving conflicts), and (3) serve as a resource center for information on peace studies. Now, these are noble goals, and it is the hope of peace-loving peoples that the institute will achieve them. The refusal to allow either political party (the Democratic or the Republican) to dominate the Institute through its 15 member board offers a ray of hope. However, the fact that the Secretaries of State and Defense of the U. S. government will be members of the board and that only $4 million was initially appropriated surely raises some doubts about its independence of governmental control and the strength of Congressional commitment to its objectives! Four million dollars is very little money in comparison to the 1985 defense budget of $274.4 billion! Our commitment needs to be proportionate to the difficulty of the task we confront.

Second, we need to concentrate on non-violent means both for removing injustice and for obtaining justice. Peace is certainly something other than the mere absence of war, but there can be no peace when war is present. The organized violence and killing that are involved in war perpetrate additional injustices. The attitude of the peacemaker is that which employs nonviolent means for removing injustice and obtaining justice. If humankind is to achieve the maturity for which Emerson hoped, violence must be renounced.

Why? Using violence in situations of disagreement and conflict between nations is a radical error for many reasons. Here are a few. The use of violence is based upon a false assumption. Employing violence assumes erroneously that the stronger is "right." The person forcing or coercing the others is assumed to have the ‘correct" ideas. This assumption is so obviously gratuitous or false it is difficult to imagine why violence is viewed as a solution to anything! Again, if violence is employed, resentment is aroused among those who are coerced into acting against their wills. Rather than resolving the disagreements, violence fosters new and deeper conflicts and disagreements. Certainly the violence of war brings about injuries, pain, death, destruction, loss and sadness.

Third, as individuals we need to be especially sensitive to injustice within our own society and in the relations of one nation to another. The argument that is sometimes offered for waging "a just war" is that the armed conflict and killing will alone rectify the horrible injustices that are present. There are difficulties with this argument. An obvious defect is that those who are injured and killed in war are quite often not the individuals or groups inflicting the injustices within the society. Often it is the innocent who are injured or killed, while those within the society who brought about the injustice go untouched. But, the attitude that promotes peace is the sensitivity to injustice and the willingness to remedy the situation before it becomes severe or extensive. This sensitivity to injustice keeps people from turning to war by removing the underlying basis for resort to violence and killing. In brief, as an appropriate epigram states: "If you desire peace, work for justice!"

A fourth aspect of this attitude is the re-directing of energies to the global problems of humankind. The peacemaker must be acquainted with human problems regardless of the geographical boundaries in which they are found. this attitude would give highest priority to meeting urgent needs of human beings wherever they may be located. The problems of population explosion, world hunger, the health of peoples, waste disposal, and enormous use of non-renewal resources require our full effort and commitment.

In a word, the attitude and commitment of the peacemaker can be characterized by the word: humatriotism.[25] (It rhymes with patriotism but it differs radically from it.) It includes acquiring knowledge concerning other societies and, indeed, awareness of the global community and its problems. It must be a loyalty that is developed in young people and nurtured in older people. It is a loyalty to the whole human race. It requires continual renewal and recognition (in word and deed) that war, huge military expenditures, waste of resources, pollution, diseases, and natural disasters are "the enemy" against which rational human beings need to direct their united and unrelenting efforts.

Humatriotism would surely mean changes in our nationalism. It would require that loyalty to one’s country be radically dissociated from the military. It would require that the interests of the nation not be promoted in ways detrimental to the large world community.

Our war problem will not easily be solved. Let us make a beginning by adopting the attitude of peacemaker.

[1] Aristotle, Politics, Bk. I, Ch. VIII, 1256, in Richard McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 1137.

[20] Ibid.