Abstract
Very often, the judgment of wars conforms to the most traditional ethics, in which the judgment of an action depends on the intention guiding it. Self-defense, the just cause, and right intention—these are the elements most at issue. The second aspect of thinking on just wars reflects another concern: the priority to be accorded to an assessment of the consequences of individual acts or collective decisions. It is outcomes that count and the decision that produces them is subjected to scrutiny, while individuals’ capacities for action and foresight are assessed, together with the performance of the institutions in which they play a part. Transgressing the rules of distinction and proportionality is what characterizes a bad decision, and political and military errors are seen as moral failings. The individual is judged responsible for his acts and thus perceived, a priori, as master of his existence, of the meaning he accords to it and of the fate of those he includes in his world—that universe whose borders he is rearranging.
Alea jacta est.
Caesar, 49 BC
Following his victory against the Gauls, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and re-entered Rome, having braved the authority of the Senate and Pompey and played his part in civil war.1
[The ‘final result of operations’] … depends, not merely on calculable factors, space and time, but also often on the outcome of previous minor battles, on the weather, on false news; in brief, on all that is called chance and luck in human life. Great successes in war are not achieved, however, without great risks.
Helmuth von Moltke, after the Battle of Sadowa against Austria, 18662
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Notes
In his history of preventive war, Alfred Vagts takes the view that Caesar’s expeditions were preventive wars. He cites as an example the war against the Helvetii in 58 BC. See Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy: the Soldier and the Conduct of Foreign Relations (New York: King Crowns Press, 1956), pp. 267–268.
Cited in Hajo Holborn, “Moltke and Schlieffen: the Prussian-German School” in Edward Mead Earle (ed), Makers of Modern Strategy — Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 178, emphasis added.
Wars can be declared as a result of an error of calculation linked largely to variables that are poorly mastered because of their unforeseen dimension. The Six Days War is an illustration of this. Roland Popp, “Stumbling Decidedly into the Six Days War,” Middle East Journal, vol. 60, 2, spring 2006, p. 282.
Bernard Williams, Moral Luck (Cambridge: CUP, 1981).
See also Bernard Williams, “Postscript” in Daniel Statman (ed), Moral Luck (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 251–258.
Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions (Cambridge: CUP, 1979).
Michael Fitzsimmons, “The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning,” Survival, vol. 80, 4, Winter 2006–2007, pp. 131–146.
Robert Goodin, What’s Wrong with Terrorism (Cambridge/Malden: Polity 2006). Sincere thanks to Christian Nadeau for having drawn my attention to this point.
Michael Gordon, and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II. The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006). See, in particular, Chapter 8: “A Little Postwar Planning,” pp. 138–163.
Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America, Policy Papers, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 58, 2001.
Rashid Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005);
Olfa Lamloum (ed), Irak, les médias en guerre, (Paris: Actes Sud, 2003);
Nawaf Salam, Le Moyen-Orient à l’épreuve de l’Irak, (Paris: Actes Sud, 2005);
Henry Laurens, L’Orient arabe à l’heure américaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 2005, 2nd edition).
Bernard Lewis’s positions on the Middle East are at odds with those of his intellectual community, whose members regularly denounce Westerners’ “orientalism.” For this reason, Lewis is criticized by his peers as a conservative. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (London: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1983), Book II, Chapter XIV, p. 312 (translation modified).
Cited in Pierre Favre, Comprendre le monde pour le changer—Épistémologie du politique (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2005), p. 162.
In the post-Cold War period, James Rosenau developed an approach of this kind. He incorporated the notion of chaos into his analysis of the international order (while excluding the possibility of chance and luck). James Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). See Chapter 3: “Delineating Disorder, Chaos, Complexity, and Change,” pp. 48–66.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XXV (Rockville MD: Arc Manor, 2007), pp. 99–100.
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War, Book IV, Chapter V (Radford VA: Wilder Publications, 2008), p. 84.
Harvey Mansfield, Manliness, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006).
Harold James, The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
For a comparison of these two empires at their hegemonic height and in their decline, see Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007).
Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958), p. 209.
Inis Claude, “Collective Legitimation as a Function of the United Nations,” International Organization 20 (Summer 1966): 267–279.
For recent thinking, both empirical and theoretical, see Ian Urd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
This is the name Ian Hacking gives to the first empiricists. Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge: CUP, 1975), p. 39.
Steve Shapin, The Social History of Truth (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995), p. 208.
The market sets great store by futurology. Several advisers have acquired considerable reputations and have the ears of the powerful. One of the best-recognized figures in this little world is Peter Schwartz, the author of many publications and chairman of the Global Business Network consultancy. Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View. Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World. Paths to Strategic Insight for Yourself and your Company (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
Like stock-market crises or natural catastrophes, terrorism is regarded as one of the pillars of “world risk society.” Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999). In practice these two fields are not isolated. In the eyes of politicians and market operators, there may be said to be connections between them.
Mark T. Hon, Jack Strauss, and Soo-Keong Yong, “Contagion in Financial Markets after September 11th: Myth of Reality?” Journal of Financial Research XXVII, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 95–114.
Robin Hansom, “Idea Futures Encouraging an Honest Consensus,” typescript; Françoise Guy, “Mieux que les astrologues, les économistes voient déjà 2007,” Allez savoir 36 (October 2006): 19–20.
Christopher Ketcham, “The Mother of all Gambles Looking to Figure out whether Saddam is Alive or Dead? Go Online and Check the Betting Line,” salon.com, June 4, 2007.
Andrew Leigh, Justin Wolfers, and Eric Zitzewitz, “What do Financial Markets Think of War in Iraq,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Papers 9, 587 (March 2003): 6.
See, among others, Cass Sunstein, Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
Research in this field goes back a long way. The criticism aimed at it has largely been intended to make the concept of “locus of control” more precise and useable, particularly in an area like that of health. See Julian Rotter, “Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcements,” Psychological Monographs 80, no. 609 (1966). For a critique, see H. W. Marsh and G. E. Richards, “The Rotter Locus of Control Scale: The Comparison of Alternative Response Formats and Implications for Reliability, Validity and Dimensionality,” Journal of Research in Personality 20 (1986): 509–558.
N. Mamlin, K. R. Harris, and L. P. Case, “A Methodological Analysis of Research on Locus of Control and Learning Disabilities: Rethinking a Common Assumption,” Journal of Special Education 34, no. 4, (Winter 2001): 214–225.
Karen Greenberg (ed.), The Torture Debate in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006);
Stanford Levinson (ed.), Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
Alan Dershowitz made a detailed reply to the accusations leveled against him following his public stance in favor of torture “warrants.” See Alan Dershowitz, “The Torture Warrant: A Response to Professor Strauss,” New York Law Review 48 (2003): 275–294.
This is a response to an excellent analysis of the political and moral issues raised by the use of torture in Marcy Strauss, “Torture,” New York Law Review 48 (2003): 201–274.
These torture memos directed to the executive arm indicate the limits of suffering that can be inflicted in an interrogation. The level regarded as intolerable is that of organ failure. For a critical edition of these various texts and reports, see Karen Greenberg and Joshua L. Dratol (eds), The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Graib (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 172–217.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror (New York: Beacon Press, 1990), pp. 40–41 (translation modified).
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© 2013 Ariel Colonomos and Éditions Denoël
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Colonomos, A. (2013). Good or Bad Fortune. In: The Gamble of War. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137018953_7
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