WINNING IS LOSING The Tragedy of Just War Dr. Cian O’Driscoll ISRF Mid-Career Fellow, 2018–19
T
he idea that war can ever be ‘just’ is understandably controversial. So far as it suggests that the commissioning of young men and young women to kill and be killed by other young men and women may sometimes be a righteous activity, it is easy to see why it might be regarded as wrongheaded. Drawing on the latest scholarship, my purpose in this short essay is to introduce the idea of just war, to offer some thoughts on its relevance to contemporary international politics, and to ask what we learn about it when we regard it in light of its principal blind-spot, namely, the concept of victory. Considering it through the prism of victory, I will argue, tells us something very important about why, despite being so obviously problematic, we must take the idea of just war seriously. The Idea of Just War Just war is not, of course, a new idea. It boasts a long and venerable lineage that most scholars date back to the sunset of the Roman Empire, and to the 4th century CE writings of Saint Augustine in particular. Others trace its history even deeper, to ancient Greece and other classical civilisations.1 In either case, the idea of just war 1. For the standard history of the just war idea see: Jonathan Barnes, ‘The Just War’, in Norman Kretzmann, Antony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). On its classical antecedents: Rory Cox, ‘Expanding the History of the Just War Tradition: The Ethics of War in Ancient Egypt’, International Studies Quarterly 61:2 (2017): 371–384. The classic treatment of the history of just war thinking is provided by James Turner Johnson across several texts, most notably: Ideology, Reason, and the Limitation of War: Religious and Secular Concepts, 1200–1740 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981). 29
