Just War and American Wars

Cy Kellett:

In some ways, perhaps we might ask ourselves this question anyways, perhaps we have become comfortable with war as a normal part of the discourse between nations and the discourse between nations and non-state actors. But is it right for us to have so normalized war? Maybe the church’s just war teaching has something to say about that. That’s what we asked Joe Heschmeyer. He’s the guy asked when you got those kinds of questions. Here’s what Joe had to say. Joe Heschmeyer, apologist extraordinaire, author of The Early Church Was the Catholic Church, thanks for being with us.

Joe Heschmeyer:

It’s so good to be here, Cy.

Cy Kellett:

Lots of people love that book. Congratulations on it.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Thank you very much.

Cy Kellett:

We’ve been getting so much good feedback on The Early Church Was the Catholic Church. But here we’re going to talk to you a little bit about war.

Joe Heschmeyer:

What is it good for?

Cy Kellett:

Absolutely. Well, I don’t know if that’s true. Maybe that’s-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Not quite absolutely nothing. [crosstalk 00:01:32]

Cy Kellett:

Not quite absolutely nothing. Right. Yeah.

Joe Heschmeyer:

The church says legitimate self defense.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. I wonder if you have noticed something that I’ve noticed, and I may be the only one who’s seeing this, but it does appear that our society currently seems to find its way into a war every couple years.

Joe Heschmeyer:

I’ve-

Cy Kellett:

Occasional breaks.

Joe Heschmeyer:

I don’t follow the news closely, but I have noticed that. Yeah.

Cy Kellett:

Have you noticed that there seems to be … It’s not always a big war. Sometimes it’s just a few weeks of … But it’s war none the less.

Joe Heschmeyer:

[Crosstalk 00:02:01] America hasn’t had as much packs as you would imagine.

Cy Kellett:

At least recently. At least recently. Certainly since the attacks on the World Trade Center. But even before that, we were … That does raise a moral question, or it should raise a moral, but actually the problem is it often doesn’t raise a moral question. But it should raise a moral question, are we doing this right? Is the society supposed to be engaging in quite this much war? How would we evaluate that?

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. I think there’s a few ways we can evaluate it badly. One way to evaluate it badly is to just look at a very basic cost-benefit analysis. Can we get more through war than we can get through peaceful means? Or can we avoid some problem through war that we couldn’t avoid through peaceful means?

Cy Kellett:

That’s what we might call realpolitik probably. That’s-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. That’s not a sufficient examination. It’s a immoral, for starters.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

The second maybe opposite extreme view views the state as no different than a group of people.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. You can’t just walk down the street with your friends and start a war?

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. [crosstalk 00:03:14].

Cy Kellett:

At least you’re not supposed to.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. Well, like vigilante justice, all of that stuff. There’s a reason Commissioner Gordon is more in the right than Batman. Because one of them has a legitimate authority and the other one doesn’t. Being super rich doesn’t give you the right to just commit violence.

Cy Kellett:

Tell that to the super rich, Joe.

Joe Heschmeyer:

I’m afraid to. No, but in all seriousness, there is a legitimate difference between what a state can do and what an individual can do. But what a state can do is not unfettered, and needs to comport with the law of God, the demands of justice, and the church inner wisdom has laid out some pretty clear conditions that we should be looking at, and the problem is, I think, as you’ve said, is that instead of just war, we have just war. That pun works better in written form, but it’s true.

Cy Kellett:

[inaudible 00:04:04] capital letters. [inaudible 00:04:06] How much of this … Because we’re going to get into the details of how we might make this moral calculus, once we conclude that a moral calculus does in fact need to be made here, it’s not an easy thing. We can’t simply say the state really is just like an individual or a group of individuals, and resolve it that way. We just would … But by common sense say, “Well, if an individual can’t go to war against others, then the state shouldn’t be going.” We can’t say that. But on the other hand, we can’t take the realpolitik view that just says sometimes war is an efficient way of states achieving the ends that states legitimately achieve otherwise. If it’s more efficient, go ahead with war. We got to reason our way to a middle position somewhere.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. A better middle position looks at some sort of criteria like just war for going into war, but that’s actually not good enough either because that doesn’t end the moral analysis. A war can be just overall, meaning the casus belli, the cause for going to war can be just, and you can have every grounds by which to wage war, but you still don’t get a [inaudible 00:05:16] to do whatever you want during war. Right?

Joe Heschmeyer:

I’ll give you some real, if controversial, examples. World War II was certainly a just war. Not only were we attacked and we had legitimate self defense, but everything going on at the Holocaust and the massive … It was obvious who the aggressors were and who those acting in legitimate defense were. Yet some of the things those countries did, including the United States, were beyond the pale, were morally unjustifiable. You think about the firebombing of Dresden where intentional targeting of civilian cities to burn thousands upon thousands of people to death.

Joe Heschmeyer:

The firebomb of Tokyo, the atomic bomb, certainly. The church is very clear. No, the fact that you are a legitimately aggrieve person. In the same way that if someone does something wrong to you, if someone attacks you, if someone tries to steal your wallet, you can legitimately defend yourself. You can’t just light their mom on fire. You can’t do whatever you want. It’s not just it’s self defenses and therefore you’re good to go. It’s self defense and how you can defend yourself. Let’s look at what defense ought to look like.

Cy Kellett:

Many people will just dismiss that out of hand as unrealistic. But it seems to me that many morally reasonable people, it’s easier for them to see, for example, that the attendant evils to war, for example, rape is a common attendant evil to war, that that’s wrong and that’s a crime.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

But they don’t see that murder within the context of war is a crime.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. It is quite striking in that regard. I think a lot of it has to do with the distance. There’s something more personal, maybe that’s not the word I would ideally use, but you’re much more up close for something like rape or even an-

Cy Kellett:

Oh I see.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… on the ground kind of murder.

Cy Kellett:

But you can murder from a great distance.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. You can murder from a drone and you can be on the other side of the world while it happens. It feels more like a video game than a murder.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. Here I’d like to say that … When I opened, I said it seems that our country is at war pretty regularly, every 18 months to two years or something, and many people say, “Oh, list the wars then,” because what? We had Panama and then we had this [inaudible 00:07:32].

Joe Heschmeyer:

Glenala.

Cy Kellett:

But the fact is when you … For example, the other day, the American Special Forces, it might have been yesterday, I’m not quite sure of my calendar now, but went in to engage in warfare with a Syrian who claims to be or is claimed to be the head of ISIS. Right? This is a great victory. Well, this is war. We waged war and we don’t want to … I think sometimes people think, “Well, if there’s not tanks moving across the desert or-”

Joe Heschmeyer:

Or an official congressional declaration of war.

Cy Kellett:

Or an official declaration of war or mass battalions, that’s not warfare. But most of history, that wasn’t warfare. Most of history warfare is small raids.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. When we’re looking at these things, I think that this is an important point because we haven’t had a declared war in a long time. We have these military actions that we’ll call wars because they are, but they’re not legally wars. From a moral perspective, that’s just playing games. From a moral perspective, what we’re asking is can the state use lethal force? In this kind of war time context, the other context which the state can use lethal force is domestically with capital punishment. But here we’re looking at the other use of state lethal force in warfare. The church is very clear that, first, we should, both citizens and governments, catechism says in 2308, are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

That we can’t just be satisfied with the status quo of constant warfare. But on the flip side, we’re also told that as long as the danger of war persists and there’s no international authority with the necessary competence in power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self defense once all peace efforts have failed. In other words, we are not pacifist. We do not take a war as always wrong no matter who’s doing it or what. If someone attacks you and your choices are be totally overwhelmed by this enemy force-

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… or engage in legitimate self defense, you can legitimately engage in self defense. That’s an important [inaudible 00:09:38].

Cy Kellett:

In the defense of your family, defense of your home, defense of your country.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. The nation is an actual actor. The nation is not just an amalgamation of people. The nation has guardian angels. There’s an actual entity called the state, and it has certain abilities that individuals don’t. St. Paul says in Romans 13 that the ruler bears not the sword in vein for he’s God’s minister and avenger to execute wrath upon him that does evil. Now, that’s a pretty clear recognition that there’s some things that the ruler can do, that the state can do that the individual can’t.

Joe Heschmeyer:

But even still, St. Paul doesn’t think that just is anyone and everyone, right? He dies at the hand of the state. He’s not going to say, “Well, good. The state punished me, so therefore it must have been just.” No, of course. There’s limitations to state power, both in capital punishment and in warfare, and we’re looking specifically here at the warfare.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. Which would you like to emphasize? Because two things in the modern world seem real … Both of these seem very, very difficult comparatively. Now, I may be underestimating what the medieval world was like, but it seems like if you have a prince here and a prince here, and this prince is raiding the villages, then this prince has a right to go to war to defend. But in the modern world, you have things like the war on terror. Well, am I permitted to engage in a war on terror?

Cy Kellett:

It’s a war against something that’s abstract. Do I have to declare war against another state? You think of President Trump was quite averse to war. We didn’t have a great deal of war with President Trump, but he killed a general of another country on the land of a third country, but in the context of another war, which is the war on terror. Do you see what I’m saying?

Joe Heschmeyer:

I do.

Cy Kellett:

The moral calculus just seems so complicated, and I’m not even implying and I’m not even intending to imply a criticism. It might have been perfectly legitimate what was done, but the calculation seems very hard to make now.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. It does seem, in a lot of ways, the situation is more analogous to the old fights against pirates or bandits, or even barbarians, right?

Cy Kellett:

Yeah.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Barbarians were not saying, “We are the Visigoth nation and we’ve declared a declaration of war against you.” [inaudible 00:12:05] just say, “We’re going to take your stuff now.” It’s not unprecedented to have non-state opponents.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

It’s murkier. The moral calculation gets a little trickier when you … I think in that sense, it needs more the virtue of prudence because it’s harder to say when that kind of war is over. Are you going to fight against pirates until piracy no longer exists? Good luck. Are you going to fight against terrorism until terrorist no longer exists? It’s not going to happen.

Cy Kellett:

No.

Joe Heschmeyer:

What is the legitimate intention that you’re looking for now? Aquinas, he’s going to lay out three pretty clear criteria. The church now has more things to look at. He’s going to start with three and [crosstalk 00:12:46]

Cy Kellett:

These are criteria to entering into the engaging of the war. These are legitimate reasons to enter into war.

Joe Heschmeyer:

But I think one of them, in terms of intent, really speaks to what you’re getting at in terms of maybe the murky nature of the war on terror or these poorly defined or open-ended police actions where when do we know if the objective has been met? He’s going to look at three things. Number one, the authority of the sovereign. We’ve already talked about that. The state can do things that the individual can’t, and he points out that a private individual who’s aggrieved can turn to the state for redress.

Cy Kellett:

But the state has no state to turn to.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. Which is why the catechism talks about whether or not there’s a legitimate international authority. In other words, if there’s a trade dispute, we can go to the World Trade Organization. Or there’s some things where you don’t have to go to war because even nations have someone else they can turn to as some sort of multinational organization, the United Nations, NATO, whoever it is, and find some other recourse when the two nations aren’t getting along.

Cy Kellett:

But there’s always a coercive power behind that.

Joe Heschmeyer:

There is.

Cy Kellett:

Nations maintain arms so that when they win in the World Trade Organization, they can follow up on that by demanding-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. At a certain point, if push comes to shove, a nation either will use potentially lethal force or it won’t. A nation that won’t, its threats, I think, ring someone hollow. That even a police officer may not be carrying a weapon if you’re in the United Kingdom or something, but the police authority is grounded on the fact that they can lawfully use a force that you can’t lawfully use.

Cy Kellett:

Right. Right. Right. Okay. Say it again the first-

Joe Heschmeyer:

That’s the authority of the sovereign.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. Do we have an-

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:14:29].

Cy Kellett:

I just can’t like, “I’m the king of this part of California and I will wage war on Orange County.” I can’t. There has to be a legitimate sovereign who has the right to engage-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Even the governor of a state in the US context doesn’t have … Where is lawful authority vested? That’s the first question. Second, you need a just cause. That’s pretty clear. Augustin talks about one who avenges wrongs when a nation or state has to be punished for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects or to restore what it has seized unjustly. If the nation or even members within the nation, if you are harboring terrorists, think of the role of Afghanistan where they weren’t directly Al-Qaeda, but if they’re giving military bases to Al-Qaeda and allowing them to [crosstalk 00:15:17]

Cy Kellett:

United States went to war against Canada for this reason at one time.

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:15:21] 12.

Cy Kellett:

Canadians raiding the … No, little later than that, I’d have to look it up. [inaudible 00:15:26] But, yeah. Afghanistan didn’t directly attack us, but Afghanistan is harboring and supporting the people who attacked us. We have a right to go there and redress that.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. If a state could and isn’t stopping this harmful act within it, then its failure to do that justifies another state stepping in and to say, “Well, we’ll do it then. If you won’t discipline your subjects, if you won’t stop this kind of stuff, then [crosstalk 00:15:52]”

Cy Kellett:

I have to say, this is a real touchy one at the moment, because Russia is on the borders of Ukraine and we’re all supposed to take sides in this. But what’s very common is a country that wants to invade another country will say, “Well, your guys came over and they might be false flags.”

Joe Heschmeyer:

The little green men and [crosstalk 00:16:12].

Cy Kellett:

They’ll try to generate an offense against them of this nature, so they can say, “Well, we have the right to go in.” I guess it’s a tip of the hat to virtue in a certain way, but-

Joe Heschmeyer:

It is. It is. Go back to the opening chapter of Mere Christianity. C. S. Lewis points out that even people who are doing wrong will make an argument why it’s virtuous, why it’s permitted. There’s a special reason in their particular case. This is the honor that injustice pays to justice or that vice pays to virtue, and that you never see it going any the other direction. The virtuous person never says, “Well, I’m doing this because it’s unjust.”

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. Right. Right.

Joe Heschmeyer:

It shows that the orientation towards virtue is something we all know, and we know we should be striving for that.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. You needed a sovereign and you needed-

Joe Heschmeyer:

You needed a just cause.

Cy Kellett:

… a just cause.

Joe Heschmeyer:

We should say a proportionate cause too. This guy came over and he robbed an American citizen, so we’re going to invade your country. That’s not a proportionate cause.

Cy Kellett:

No. But what about this? Because this is very common today. We have to act preemptively because they’ve armed themselves are about to arm themselves with a nuclear weapon. We have to attack Iran, for example, which may happen.

Joe Heschmeyer:

There’s going to be more of a moral debate on that. We have the framework for it, but you can still have legitimate disagreements about it. Likewise, with self defense, you have these cases where it’s okay, well that person, maybe they had a gun, but they weren’t pointing it at you. Is that self defense? Or at what point can you claim it? Now US law is a little clearer and international law is a little murkier about what steps are considered to cross that line?

Cy Kellett:

I suppose this would be like a person reaching for a gun. [inaudible 00:18:02]

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. But if you’re reaching for a gun, usually that’s enough.

Cy Kellett:

Right. For someone to take lethal action against you. Maybe you would say Iran is, in a metaphorical way, reaching for the gun. But then we have the problem that happened in the Iraq war where we said, “Well, we just can’t let them have these weapons of mass destruction,” and then-

Joe Heschmeyer:

They didn’t. Yeah. Look, we have this in the domestic context where the suspect was reaching for a gun and then it was a toy or a passport or driver’s license. We’re not-

Cy Kellett:

That’s a legitimate mistake sometimes, and probably sometimes it’s not. But no, not probably certain-

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:18:34] likewise with international law. Legitimate mistakes sometimes. Sometimes Colin Powell lies to the United Nations.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. Well, you seemed to have come down quite firmly on that one. [crosstalk 00:18:44]

Joe Heschmeyer:

Well, he admitted it was untrue.

Cy Kellett:

But did he know it was untrue when he said it?

Joe Heschmeyer:

He did.

Cy Kellett:

Oh, he did? I didn’t know.

Joe Heschmeyer:

He was complaining about it before because he was being told to say things he didn’t believe in.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. The last criterion?

Joe Heschmeyer:

That it’s necessary that the belligerent should have a rightful intention, so they intended the advancement of go to the avoidance of evil, meaning you can drum up some legitimate reason to go to war, but that’s not your real intent. Your real intent is something evil. It’s still not a just war. Again, some of this is going to be very hard.

Cy Kellett:

That sounds like the US-Mexican War, Polk’s war. What we really wanted was the land.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

We can say all the other things, but what we really wanted was the land.

Joe Heschmeyer:

He’d run on the promise of getting the Southwest from Mexico.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. But I’m sure there’s pretext, there’s certain chaos in Mexico, there’s certain reasons why you would go across the border into Mexico, but it’s pretext. It’s-

Joe Heschmeyer:

You will not lack being able to drum up some reasons why the neighboring country has done you some wrong. Every country I think on earth can probably point to this other [inaudible 00:19:52] like Iceland because they don’t have any neighbors. It’s not difficult to find that if you’re looking for a reason to go to war, which is why having a legitimate scope and legitimate intention are going to be really important.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. All right. Those three, now I’ve got all those. In many cases, we might criticize this or that, a president or Congress for being on the war path too much. But in general, it does seem that there’s a general respect for this in much of the modern world.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

People are not going to argue that, I don’t know, President Bush is not the legitimate sovereign or that there wasn’t a good intention of really intending to relieve the world of a dictator and prevent the use of mass weapons or-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Oh, I think people did argue that one. [crosstalk 00:20:41].

Cy Kellett:

Well, yeah. I guess that’s right.

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:20:43] a good amount of the [crosstalk 00:20:44]

Cy Kellett:

I don’t know where exactly … I was going somewhere with that, but I don’t know what my point-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Well, I think what you’re saying, if I can try to guess.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah, go ahead. Try to guess because-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Old school wars were sometimes just we want your land, we’re just going to come in and take it. There was no dressing it up as anything other than just naked greed. Now, even when that is happening in Russia, you still have countries at least pretending that it’s about something noble or something different.

Cy Kellett:

I have to say, Joe, I saw a US Senator on television say people don’t want to get involved in this war with Russia. They think we should stay out of it, and I’m one of those people. I’ll just confess. He says, “Well, they’re not going to like the price of oil if we just let Russia-”

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yikes.

Cy Kellett:

I thought, “Did you just say we’re going to war for oil?” That’s literally-

Joe Heschmeyer:

You may be a subtext text, I think. That’s what they called [inaudible 00:21:34] said the quiet part out loud.

Cy Kellett:

In any case, once we’ve engaged in the war, once war has been engaged, and this is for the war fighter mostly, right? I have to say, spending of my life on or near US military bases, tremendously honorable people in the military, self-sacrificing people, people who genuinely love their country and want to defend it. They don’t usually have to make the calculation about just war. Right?

Joe Heschmeyer:

It’s tricky. [crosstalk 00:22:09] Some more or less moral theologians would say a soldier who dies in an unjust war is dying in a state of grave sin. That if you go along with your country in an unjust war, it’s not enough to say, “Well, they told me to.” That is-

Cy Kellett:

I see.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… a tough question that moral theologians are divided on. [inaudible 00:22:28].

Cy Kellett:

But [inaudible 00:22:28] this seems unreasonable. All those people who fought for Germany in the Second World War, every single one of them is committing a mortal sin by participating in that?

Joe Heschmeyer:

You also have questions of compulsion. But if someone who’s signing up to go fight for the Nazis, it does seem like there is-

Cy Kellett:

Oh yeah. There’s a different thing. That’s right. Some people are like, “I love Nazisism, and I’m doing …” But other people are like, “I’m a German citizen, I owe a debt to my country, and I’m going to fulfill that debt by defending her.”

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. As I said, it is a disputed point. I don’t come down hard on one side or the other. Nazis, I think, would be the last example I would’ve used. But you take the French and English war. You have these complicated claims about Norman Supremacy and who has the rights to the crown and the throne. Presumably in a situation like that, you’re going to find people who are acting in good faith on both sides, who at the very least have reason to believe it’s a just war. I think the danger would be, if you was a soldier are convinced that you are in an unjust war where every action you’re taking-

Cy Kellett:

Okay. If you’re convinced. Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. Maybe you don’t have the same moral responsibility as a lawmaker to determine the validity of the war. But if you’ve been asked to do something that you have good reasons to believe is actually unjust, you shouldn’t do it. In conscience, if you can’t do it, you have to not do it.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

In other words, if you are convinced the thing is sinful, it’s sinful to do. Even if someone else could do it in a clear conscience, if you can’t, don’t do it.

Cy Kellett:

Yes. Okay.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Then take whatever consequences come your way. That’s much easier said than done, but that’s just your duty as a Christian, as a person who loves justice, as a person who loves goodness and truth and doesn’t want to give a foothold the sin. That’s the overall going to war at all. The other issue, of course, is once you get into war, and the catechism makes the obvious point that the moral law doesn’t just stop because it’s war time.

Cy Kellett:

No.

Joe Heschmeyer:

That there’s a permanent validity to the moral law. In particular-

Cy Kellett:

Go ahead.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… non-combatants, wounded soldiers and person … And prisoners, excuse me, must be respected and treated humanely. 2312, 2313. The mere fact that wars regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes listed between the waring parties. Then finally, actions deliberately contrary to the law of natures and to its universal principles are crimes. In other words, what the Nazis did was against international law and against moral law, even though there was no written law anywhere that said they couldn’t do what they were doing, for many of these things. That they were against-

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. You could … right.

Joe Heschmeyer:

They were against justice. These were the kind of actions that were unlawful. Elizabeth Anscombe has an essay where she points out that a country can pass a law against unlawful killing without having a prior law defining what’s unlawful killing. That you can say murder is unlawful killing and people can understand what that means because we have enough of a sense and conscience through reason alone to know the kinds of killings that are unjustifiable.

Cy Kellett:

Well, I’m going to take another Nazi example just to … You think of Nazi or the … Not Nazi, but German U-boats in the Atlantic would sink a ship. Then there are always survivors when you sink these ships. Hitler ordered the Navy to just machine gun the survivors. Well, the Navy didn’t machine gun the survivors. It seems to me that sinking a ship somehow fits into the moral calculus of war, but machine gunning helpless sailors in the water does not, and these sailors recognize that. These German sailors and commanders recognize that.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Sinking a passenger ship is still against international law.

Cy Kellett:

Okay, yeah. But-

Joe Heschmeyer:

But [inaudible 00:26:21] sinking a military ship. Yeah, because then at a certain point, these people are more like POWs than they are combatants. Can you go in and kill a combatant while they’re sleeping? Those kind of questions. At what point does that end? Can you kill someone who’s home on leave? Those sorts of things. Can you target them and intentionally kill them when they’re not presently engaged in warfare?

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

If someone’s in the army reserves, are they legitimate combatant? I think most people say no. But sometimes I think you’re getting to something real. The line between combatant and non combatant is sometimes a little murky. One of the ways the US tried to justify the atomic bombing is that I think Mitsubishi had an arms factory in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Now, that’s probably too remote. You know what I mean. It’s probably a legitimate target for bombing, not for an atomic bomb. Not for-

Cy Kellett:

That’s exactly it. It’s a legitimate atomic for bombing, but it’s not a legitimate target for taking out an entire city in order to reach that target.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. You couldn’t probably kill the workers intentionally. See what I mean? You can blow up the factory, stop the production of the arms. But intentionally killing the individuals building the stuff, they’re probably too far removed, they’re in the realm of non-combatants. Some of that, you just have to make a moral judgment on. At what point is a person sufficiently involved in the combat? Because they don’t have to just be directly pulling a trigger. The guy driving the tank is involved in combat, not just the guy operating the tank’s gun.

Cy Kellett:

Well, people make fun of the US military’s mode of waging war nowadays because they say there’s lawyers in the room when they’re deciding. Can we drop a bomb on this car because it’s got terrorists and four children? They got to make … I actually don’t think you should make fun of the military for that.

Joe Heschmeyer:

No. No. Not at all.

Cy Kellett:

That’s a very important thing to do, make that calculus. A moral obligation accrues to you when you have a greater power of discrimination. If the only way to get to that car is, “I don’t know who’s in it. I don’t know, and I got to drop 1,000 bombs to take the road out,” then you’re only responsible for what you can do. But if you can make a pinpoint precise decision, you now have a higher moral obligation.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. Take something like an actual terrorist attack. Let’s say you could discourage the opposing country by committing just horrendous acts of violent, intentionally targeting the most innocent members of society. You just blow up a nursery or something. The sheer number of those killed may be rather low. But I think almost anyone has enough conscience to say, “That is off. That’s horrendous.”

Cy Kellett:

It’s not right. You can’t [crosstalk 00:29:04].

Joe Heschmeyer:

It doesn’t matter how good your cause is. To purposely target people who are non-combatants, who are innocent children in this case is indefensible. On the other hand, almost all those same people would say, in some context, you could bomb the munition’s factory next door even if you know there’s a really good chance that inadvertently those kids are going to die.

Cy Kellett:

Yes, that’s right.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Those kinds of questions, in terms of principles, we’re looking at what’s called double effect. If your intention is a good one, if you don’t intend the evil, and if the good is proportionately large, that it outweighs the evil that you don’t intend, you can pursue it. You are trying to do a good thing the fact that inadvertently a bad thing is going to happen. If you swerve to avoid hitting a kid, knowing you’re going to hit a dog, that’s totally morally fine. If instead you swerve just to hit the dog, that’s not morally fine.

Cy Kellett:

Or if you don’t swerve to save the kid, that’s not morally fine, which is I think the problem we have nowadays more, but we value the dog more than the kid.

Joe Heschmeyer:

True.

Cy Kellett:

Okay. I feel like I’m clear now on the justifications to enter war, that you have to have these three criteria met. But in general, what are you saying about once I’m engaged in warfare? Even if it’s just warfare, but I’m the war fighter?

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

What are the [inaudible 00:30:31] Or I’m the commander or whatever, what’s the …

Joe Heschmeyer:

I mentioned a couple of them. You still have to show due respect to non-combatants, wounded soldiers, prisoners. You still have to obey the moral law, so rape and murder are still wrong like they always are. Additionally, we’re warned specifically against warfare directed to indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas, that this is a crime against God and man. This is strong language from the church saying large scale atomic bombing, even large scale non-atomic bombing, you use MOABs or whatever, to blow up a huge area, and you are not trying to hone in, that’s immoral. That’s wrong and so crime against God and man, that you’ve done something seriously abhorrent.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Even if your cause was a good one, you can’t just willingly engage in atomic, biological or chemical weapons. Those are specifically cited in this warning in 2314. Then of course, everything else that goes with that. If you are doing something that would be immoral in peace time, it’s probably immoral in war time, with the exception of fighting opponent combatants. There’s a narrow category of things that aren’t in your own self defense, but are in the self defense of your country. You can do those things. But in general, if it’s not a moral thing to do, you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s basically what we can say about just war during war.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Then in addition to all of this about entering into war, about our engagement during the war, we haven’t even talked about the broader surrounding issues like the arms race and accumulation of weapons. All of those are things that are threats to peace and that we should be very wary of. You mentioned the nuclear arms race and attacking a country preemptively because they’re going for nukes. Here, I want to draw a little bit of a potentially controversial analogy to the Ahmaud Arbery case. Okay. The guys who were convicted of his murder pulled a weapon on him and then felt afraid when he tried to defend himself, and then his self defense, they used as-

Cy Kellett:

Justification to kill him.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly.

Cy Kellett:

Well, that doesn’t seem right at all, Joe. I think I oppose that.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. In fact, the State of Georgia, back in 1920, had a similar case where the Supreme Court was very clear. In that case, I think someone had pulled a gun, somebody else pulled a gun to defend himself, and then the first guy shot him because he was afraid of the second guy’s gun. But it’s like, “Well, you pulled the gun first, buddy. You don’t get to do that.” Likewise, with the arms race, how much are we contributing to other nations feeling the need to arm themselves because the only country in history to ever use nuclear weapons has a very large arsenal?

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. That is a fantastic point. I do think we have historical precedent for this. The 19th century thinking in Europe, mostly after some very prominent [inaudible 00:33:45] war thinkers said, “What we’ll have is a balance of power.” Then the way you have a balance of power is everyone gets armed to the teeth. But now you have not really created a balance of power, you created a powder keg that all that has to happen is once Serbian prince gets killed, or it probably could have been many other things.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes. Calling him a Serbian prince was a very controversial [crosstalk 00:34:11]

Cy Kellett:

Well, whatever. I mean [crosstalk 00:34:12]

Joe Heschmeyer:

Our Serbian listeners are not going to love that description of [inaudible 00:34:15] [crosstalk 00:34:16]

Cy Kellett:

Yeah, that’s right. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for digressing.

Joe Heschmeyer:

I stayed in Serbia and across the street from our hotel, there was a statue to the guy who-

Cy Kellett:

The guy who killed him.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… assassinated him, which I was shocked by. This guy unleashed the most bloody terror of the … The 20th century blood bath was begun with this one assassination.

Cy Kellett:

Right. But it wasn’t because-

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:34:38]

Cy Kellett:

But it’s not possible for this guy by killing the archduke to start the First World War. The First World War is a consequence of decades of perfecting the art of war and never perfecting the art of deescalation, never saying, as a society, “You know what might also work is if we all agreed that we won’t have any of the … Or we’ll limit the number of cannons so that …” People laugh at that, but all throughout history, deescalation efforts have worked when people tried them.

Cy Kellett:

It is entirely possible to do it, but Europe didn’t do it. Europe did the other thing because they were so smart, they had figured out this balance of power thing, and so they murdered each other for four you years in the grossest ways. I am so sympathetic to what you’re saying, because when have we in a open and fair and honest way gone to Russia and China and other places and said, “Look, the nuclear thing is really dangerous. We want to be partners in reducing this?” Well, I’ll tell you what?

Joe Heschmeyer:

[crosstalk 00:35:42] the START treaties.

Cy Kellett:

When we did it, it actually worked. It actually had a positive effect.

Joe Heschmeyer:

[inaudible 00:35:47] our obligations though.

Cy Kellett:

What’s that?

Joe Heschmeyer:

We didn’t hold up our … Actually, under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we actually violated these non-proliferation treaties we’ve signed and then actually threatened countries for also violating these treaties we violated. But it points to your overall point that in as much as we’ve gone with this, it hasn’t led to apocalypse. It’s actually deescalated tensions and moved the nuclear clock back a little bit. But it’s tricky. I think there’s a very natural temptation to reach for violence as a solution and to assume that it’ll get results, even though empirically it doesn’t have a great track record.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Take the British in Northern Ireland. They tried to use overhauling power, they brought in military and were just brutal, and the result was that they really launched the troubles at a much higher intensity than it had been before. The track record of let’s respond to any provocation with violence or the threat of violence is usually to anger and annoy those around and doesn’t cultivate an atmosphere of peace.

Cy Kellett:

Well, but I think a key point here though is that we often use the excuse that the technology is what’s driving all of this. But we make choices about how we relate to technology.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

Then we say, “Well, we had to because this new technology was coming along.” But you’ve made choices about how to employ that technology. You could have made other choices. Europe in 1900 could have made other choices. It didn’t.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. The US, we put nuclear weapons in Turkey, dangerously close to the Soviet border. They responded by putting nuclear weapons in Cuba, and the world nearly went to war. We had one of the closest brushes with large scale nuclear warfare in history. We’d provoked it in this very misguided attempt to aggressively posture in this arms race sense. We weren’t trying to start a war. We were probably trying to avoid one by being very aggressive, and rather than scaring off our opponent into peace, it’s more likely to scare someone into committing active violence.

Joe Heschmeyer:

The same way that if you try to produce peace by waving your gun at people, there’s a good chance someone’s just going to freak out and shoot you back, even though that may not be what you’re going for. We should know that kind of posturing is itself dangerous, itself contrary to the aims of peace. I mentioned that just because when we talk about just war, we tend to talk about when can we declare war? What should we do in war? Which are of course the heart of it. But we ignore this other prior question of, well, how did we get into this situation in the first place?

Joe Heschmeyer:

Are there things we can do to deescalate? The catechism, I think very wisely, connects these things and points to those as things we should be really mindful of because we often have this very short historical memory to think of, “Well, why are they mad at us? Or why are we potentially going to war right now?” It’s better to think of, “What could we do to maybe make that less likely?”

Cy Kellett:

Yes. Right. I’m so glad that you got to that part too, because preparations for war are part of the cycle of war, and failing to do all that we can to secure peace is part of the injustice of war. I really appreciate what you said about sometimes we compel our opponents to arm themselves when we are on the scene with very heavy armaments, ourselves. I don’t think that America is to blame. I think the role of the British Empire in the 18th century, it did have good effects, it wasn’t all bad effects.

Cy Kellett:

That role got passed on to the United States after the world wars. The United States Navy has kept the peace in many, many places because so many good brave US sailors were on the scene to make sure that, for example, piracy doesn’t happen in whatever straits are currently threatened. But we see the success and we don’t ask ourselves … I think a lot of people go, “Well, look, mutually assured destruction, it worked.” Well, did it? Shouldn’t we check in 100 years and see if it worked? See if the planet is still here?

Joe Heschmeyer:

Right. It’s a good question because there are all these downstream unintended consequences. When we talk about mutually assured destruction, we’re assuming two countries, the US and the USSR. There’s all sorts of downstream consequences, everything from a loose nuke in the State of Georgia to the new independent states after the dissolution of the USSR and what’s going to happen to all the nukes then. There were serious concerns about the security up in near, what is it? [inaudible 00:40:52].

Joe Heschmeyer:

Near Finland. The water over there, there’s some nuclear submarines that may have functional nuclear weapons that have sunk. There’s all sorts of these kind of … Thanks be to God none of these things have turned out disastrously, but we’ve courted disaster, more times than we can count. The fact that we’ve narrowly missed destroying a ton of people, multiple times, we’re counting that as a winning success. Maybe there were better ways. Just pointing to the way we got into mutually assured destruction is at least in part that we threatened to nuke the Soviet Union over Korea. The arms race in part was that when we had nukes and no one else did, we got-

Cy Kellett:

Of course [crosstalk 00:41:39].

Joe Heschmeyer:

… an itchy trigger finger.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. Right. We didn’t count on the Rosenbergs.

Joe Heschmeyer:

No.

Cy Kellett:

You never do. You [crosstalk 00:41:47] never see that coming. But a world where everybody has a gun to everybody else’s head, that not peace.

Joe Heschmeyer:

No. It may be the absence of violence. It’s probably a ticking time bomb, but it’s not peace in the meaningful sense of the word. We can do better as a people.

Cy Kellett:

Yeah. But do you have confidence that, for example, China, as currently constituted, is a massively oppressed people being lorded over by evil communist, dictators who are violent and nationalists, even to the point where they almost seem fascist now, not communist? Do you have confidence that we can deal with such things in a peaceful way, or … Because your theory of war has to fit the real world.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:42:42].

Cy Kellett:

Or it’s not a helpful [crosstalk 00:42:42].

Joe Heschmeyer:

I totally agree. I will say this. If you find yourself in a situation where the only way to win a war is to do something grossly immoral-

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… it’s better to lose the war. Even if someone else is going to do bad things if they win, it’s better than you doing bad things. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul is true in international politics, as well as personal. But having said that, I think there are a lot of concrete things. In the case of China, we gave the most favored nation status. We helped them enter the World Trade Organization. We really accelerated the rise of China in a pretty misguided belief that once they got rich, they would just become capitalist and free and all of this, and none of that came true.

Joe Heschmeyer:

We took some pretty bad gambles on helping China rise to power. There were a lot of non-lethal things that could have been done along the way and still are. Economic influence, that sort of thing. Not just by the US. Actually, a lot of other countries in the world have more influence and more clout than I think they realize they have. China is deeply involved throughout Africa, deeply involved in Latin America. If countries said, “We’re just not going to trade with you until you stop treating the wiggers this way, until you stop treating the Taiwanese this way, until you stop-”

Cy Kellett:

Stop treating your own people this way. Yeah.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Because China is bigger and stronger than any of these individual countries. But if countries banded together and said, “We’re not going to put up with this, we’re tired of being bullied,” they’re not going to just attack everyone. They don’t show that kind of track record. They’re more likely to make some accommodations with enough what we might call soft power or diplomatic interventions. Now, again, maybe my gamble there is as naive as US policy towards China throughout the ’90s and the 2000s. But it is a lot less bloody than what some people are thinking would be a good idea.

Cy Kellett:

Right. Right. Always in the background, you must have the calculus of the possibility of nuclear war.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

Nuclear war, on a large scale, is such a grave evil that there’s nothing that can say, “Well, it was justified in that case to wipe out cities and countries.” But it’s such a real possibility that even in dealing with China, it has to be part of the calculus. It can’t always be, “Well, if you don’t stand up to the bully, then the bully …” Well, yeah. But sometimes you got to make friends with the bully. Sometimes you got to invite the bully over. I’m not saying that that’s … I realize that sounds very naive to say it that way, but nuclear weapons obligate us to a very high standard of caution.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes. Yes. I agree with both that and the people who say, “Don’t just let a bully get whatever a bully wants.”

Cy Kellett:

Yes. I think that’s [crosstalk 00:45:53]

Joe Heschmeyer:

If you incentivize people to show if you have nukes you can do anything, that has a real [crosstalk 00:45:57].

Cy Kellett:

Then everybody’s going to get the nukes. Yeah.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Exactly. We’ve shown in the past. Mao was allegedly ready to sacrifice half his population to win against the United States. We had a pretty effective policy of containment followed by, of course, the realpolitik that you described, that Nixon going to China. Yeah, we’ve taken different approaches that have been pretty bloodless other than the Korean War. I think this is a good point to add here that the catechism is a little more specific than Aquinas is in looking at some of these factors.

Joe Heschmeyer:

I want to give you the factors that the catechism gives in 2309 in light of what you just said about nuclear weapons and as we weigh those kind of calculus. Says that one at the same time, the damage inflicted by the aggressor on a nation or community of nations must be lasting grave in certain. In other words, don’t go to war for some trivial reason, even if you’ve got a legitimate trivial grievance. Two, all other means put into it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective. We don’t rush to war. Three, there must be serious prospects of success, and so [crosstalk 00:47:08]

Cy Kellett:

That’s a-

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah, that is one-

Cy Kellett:

In the modern era.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… that Aquinas doesn’t talk about, but we should really think about. The shortest war in history, right? Is the Zulu war against the British. It lasted 33 minutes. There was probably not a serious prospect of success. Zulu didn’t have modern weapons. The British did. The Zulu were undoubtedly in the right, in terms of British encroachment and invasion. But is there a serious prospect of success? If not, you shouldn’t be going to war. Now, what’s a serious prospect of success? It’s hard to predict the future. But if you know this is an unwinnable war, make peace. Our Lord says that. An army of 10,000 going up against army of 20,000.

Cy Kellett:

Yes, send out a messenger.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. Fourth, the use of arms must not produce evils or disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition. That’s the point you just made, that with the threat of nuclear weapons and with the use of large scale conventional weapons often extremely destructive. You don’t want to create a mountain out of a mole hill. You don’t want to commit some worse act of violence to stop lesser acts of violence or lesser acts of injustice. Those are all things weigh very heavily. You can see why this is a difficult calculation that probably, if we took these things seriously, there’d be a lot fewer wars.

Cy Kellett:

Yes.

Joe Heschmeyer:

We would find other less aggressive means of resolving our conflicts.

Cy Kellett:

It’s a bad habit.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yes.

Cy Kellett:

Don’t you think it’s a bad habit to think, “Well, the regular resort to war is normal.” At some point, you have to go, “We need this to stop being normal now.” It’s a habit to break.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Not just a habit, but you create a massive industry for it. I sound like a conspiracy theory or President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But you create a military industrial complex. You create massively influential military companies that produced defense contracts. I used to live in D.C., I knew people who were defense contractors, and I knew retired generals who were, now working for defense contractors, making-

Cy Kellett:

Sure.

Joe Heschmeyer:

… a fortune selling to the United States, and they would set up production plans in every state so that no senator felt like they could-

Cy Kellett:

No, the Congressmen don’t want to say, “Yeah, we’re against this program.”

Joe Heschmeyer:

Go get rid of these jobs in my state. That’s a major force for this question. They don’t have the national interest in mind. They have their own economic interest in mind. That’s something that I think you need people of strong will to stand up to that when appropriate. That not everything that [crosstalk 00:49:54]

Cy Kellett:

Is justification for war.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Cy Kellett:

Right. Yes. Right. When there is prospect to peace, just keep pursuing it. This is the way I … I don’t know what’s going to happen with Russia and Ukraine and all that, but I do feel like as a nation, we treat Russia as an enemy and rarely do you have the idea of, well, what would it take to make that not the case? Because there’s no reason for them to be a natural enemy. There’s no natural opposition between us. There’s no cause for that entity other than people are choosing it. Now it may be that we’re choosing it because there is no other viable option. But I don’t know, I’ve seen an awful lot of war in the last 25 years. It’d be really nice to see someone say, “This time we’re going to talk it out.”

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. If you think about the fact that, in the 1940s, our mortal enemies were German and Japan, both of them, we get along with pretty well now. It does seem like we should … The moral imagination is often very limited.

Cy Kellett:

That’s a great phrase, the moral imagination. I feel like we’re lacking imagination now. We’ve resorted to war so many times that we’re not imagining other ways of doing it, and therefore we’re not giving them a try.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. Go back and look at who the US historical enemies were, the United Kingdom. In the Civil War, I guess each other. All of these, we’ve made-

Cy Kellett:

Each other seems to be popular again.

Joe Heschmeyer:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. That’s true.

Cy Kellett:

That seems to be coming back around.

Joe Heschmeyer:

But yeah, in all of these, what would it look like to imagine something a little more sophisticated, a little more nuanced, a little a Christian than just, “Let’s just tear each other apart?”

Cy Kellett:

Amen brother. Thank you, Joe.

Joe Heschmeyer:

My pleasure.

Cy Kellett:

I always feel really grateful when we get to have these kind of free ranging conversations with apologist as we got to have just now with Joe. It’s not that we have all the answers to every single question, and I hope it doesn’t come across that way. As we discuss specific instances, there’s lots of prudential judgements to be made and we could be wrong about those. We could be wrong about every single specific instance that we discussed.

Cy Kellett:

But the general principles, I think we can have a great deal of confidence and the church has done a lot of work, a lot of reflection on the gospel, on the natural law, on human nature over the centuries, and has come up with a quite reasonable way to talk about war, a way that points us towards maybe doing more preparation for peace, doing more to lay the groundwork for a future that doesn’t have quite so much war, and certainly alerts us to the dangers of very high tech weapons that some of which are so destructive, it’s almost impossible to think of a just way to use them.

Cy Kellett:

Very much grateful to Joe Heschmeyer for coming in. We’d love to hear your thoughts. I know this is one that arouses passions. If you’d like to communicate with us, maybe suggest a direction we didn’t go, we could go with another philosopher or teacher, maybe take up again with Joe, shoot us an email, will you? Focus@catholic.com is where you can reach us. Focus@catholic.com. We need your financial support to keep doing what we’re doing. We would appreciate it. You can go over to givecatholic.com to give. We don’t have subscription fees or anything like that.

Cy Kellett:

We just put this out for anybody. But we do need supporters in order to make it available. Go to givecatholic.com if you feel you are ready to do that. If you’re watching on YouTube, hit that little bell down there. That way, you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. If you’re listening on any of the podcasts systems or whatever, I don’t know what they’re called Spotify, Stitcher, Apple, just subscribe. In that way, you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.