A humanist approach to the ethics of war

By Richard Norman

This article is an edited and shortened transcript of Richard Norman’s address at the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in 2011. It remains highly relevant today. Richard Norman is Emeritus Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Kent and a distinguished humanist thinker. He is the author of What is Humanism For? and has written widely on ethics, secularism, and the moral challenges of war and peace.

Introduction

In July 2011, just weeks before this talk was delivered at the World Humanist Congress in Oslo, Norway experienced one of the darkest days in its modern history. On 22 July, a far-right extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, carried out two devastating attacks. He first detonated a car bomb in Oslo’s government quarter, killing eight people. Then, in an even more horrific act, he travelled to the island of Utøya, where he opened fire on a summer camp for young members of the Labour Party, killing sixty-nine people, most of them teenagers. The scale and cruelty of the attacks shocked the world. In their aftermath, Norwegians responded not with vengeance but with a reaffirmation of their values — openness, democracy, and human dignity. It was in this atmosphere of collective mourning and moral clarity that the World Humanist Congress gathered to reflect on peace, human rights, and shared values and it was against this background that Richard spoke.

In the aftermath of the recent terrorist attack, I found myself reflecting deeply on the values that underpin a humanist commitment to peace. Two values, in particular, strike me as central — and I believe they are ones that all humanists would endorse. The first is what I would call the unique and irreplaceable value of individual human lives. This is sometimes referred to, particularly by religious people, as the sanctity of life — the idea that life is sacred. And while we may or may not use that language ourselves, we share the underlying conviction. For humanists, what holds value is not life in the abstract, but individual lives, lived in all their complexity and depth.

To grasp what this means, we need to reflect on what a single human life contains: a unique world of consciousness, a distinctive stream of experience that unfolds over time. Each life carries its own set of hopes, plans, joys, sorrows and achievements. No two lives are the same. When a life ends — when that unique consciousness ceases — it cannot be recreated or replaced. It is gone forever. That’s what makes the taking of a human life such a terrible act. It is not just the ending of biological existence; it is the obliteration of a unique and unrepeatable centre of experience. And this, I believe, is the foundation for our deep moral rejection of killing. It’s also why the case for pacifism — or at least a powerful presumption against war — is so strong. Because war, by its very nature, involves killing on a mass scale. It is a systematic erasure of individual lives, each one of which carries that same unique value.

“Doing something terrible may be the only available means to prevent something even worse…”

War may sometimes be necessary 

It’s tempting, in light of the unique and irreplaceable value of every human life, to take the next step and say: one should never take any human life — and therefore, participation in war can never be justified under any circumstances. This is the classic pacifist position. It’s a compelling and morally powerful stance. But it’s also a difficult one to maintain — because it runs up against a second kind of moral value that I think we must also recognise. That is the responsibility we bear for the consequences of our actions — and for our inaction. In a harsh and often brutal world, we cannot escape this reality. Sometimes, tragically, doing something terrible may be the only available means to prevent something even worse. And this is why, however deeply we may long for peace, we cannot entirely rule out the possibility that war may sometimes be necessary.

Throughout this Congress, we have reaffirmed — quite rightly — the desirability of peace over war, of dialogue over violence. As humanists, we value reasoned conversation, mutual understanding, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. But that doesn’t mean the question of war simply disappears. It may still confront us with terrible moral dilemmas, in which no option is clean, and the best we can do is minimise the harm.

The just war tradition 

This is where the just war tradition comes in — a framework that has evolved, particularly within the Christian tradition, as a way of grappling with these dilemmas. The early Christians famously refused to participate in warfare. But once Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, that simple refusal was no longer sustainable. That shift wasn’t just the result of cynical political compromise — though there may have been elements of that. It also reflected a deeper moral recognition: that in the real world of politics, decisions about peace and war can’t be made solely on the basis of personal purity or individual conscience. They must also take into account the responsibilities of leadership, the welfare of communities, and the consequences of action or inaction.

Over the centuries, Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas worked to develop a more nuanced and morally serious way of thinking about war. Out of their efforts grew what we now know as the just war tradition. Though it has its roots in Christian theology, it has long since expanded beyond those origins. Today, it forms part of wider secular moral thinking and has had a profound influence on global ethical and legal frameworks. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the just war tradition has become the dominant way of thinking about the ethics of war and peace — especially in much of the Western world. It is reflected in international law and embedded in the principles of the United Nations Charter. And that is why we need to take it seriously — not simply to accept it, but to assess it critically and thoughtfully.

One preliminary point is worth emphasising: we should not be misled by the phrase just war, as if it implies that war is inherently just or that the theory glorifies conflict. Sometimes people treat it as an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. But that’s a misunderstanding. Just war theory does not claim that war is typically just, or that it is ever to be celebrated. On the contrary, it begins from the recognition that war is morally difficult to justify. What the theory seeks to do is to identify strict conditions that must be met if any war is to be considered morally permissible.

The just war tradition is usually divided into two parts, expressed by the Latin phrases jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The first refers to the question of when it is right to go to war in the first place. The second addresses what it is right to do in the conduct of war, once war has begun. Let me focus first on the conditions that have emerged over time as necessary for a war to meet the requirements of jus ad bellum.

• First, the war must be fought for a just cause. That may sound obvious, but as we’ll see shortly, there’s a great deal to unpack within that idea.

• Second, the principle of proportionality: the good that the war aims to achieve — or the evil it aims to avert — must be great enough to outweigh the terrible costs that war inevitably entails.

• Third, there must be a reasonable hope of success. Even if the cause is just, there is no moral case for going to war if there is little chance of actually achieving the intended good or preventing the evil.

• Fourth, war must be a last resort. That is, it should only be undertaken when all other, less harmful options — such as diplomacy or negotiation — have been exhausted. If the desired outcome can be reached by peaceful means, then those means must be pursued.

• Finally, two additional requirements: war should be waged only by a legitimate authority — in most cases, a recognised and responsible government — and there must be a formal declaration of war, so that the action is publicly accountable and not waged in secret or by private actors.

These are the criteria traditionally used to assess the justice of entering into war. You can see straight away, I think, that the jus ad bellum conditions — the criteria for deciding whether it is right to go to war — are something of a mixed bag. They’re not all on the same level of moral seriousness. The first, the requirement of a just cause, is fundamental. It addresses the most basic question: how can war — the organised killing of human beings — ever be justified? That is the deepest moral challenge, and it deserves special consideration, which I’ll come back to in a moment. The next three conditions — proportionality, a reasonable hope of success, and war as a last resort — all reflect the concern I mentioned earlier: the importance of consequences. Even if there is a just cause, that alone doesn’t settle the question. The expected outcomes must be sufficiently good — or the evil averted sufficiently grave — to outweigh the immense human cost of war. The final two conditions — that war should be waged by a legitimate authority, and that there must be a formal declaration of war — are, I think, of lesser moral significance. They are best seen as conventions of international relations, norms that govern the behaviour of states. They matter legally and diplomatically, but not to the same degree as the more substantial moral criteria.

So much for jus ad bellum. Let me turn now to the second half of the just war tradition — jus in bello — which is concerned with how wars are fought. This division into two parts reflects an important insight: it is not enough for a war to be entered into for a good reason. Even a just cause cannot justify a war that is then conducted in unjust ways. A war that meets the standards of jus ad bellum may still be morally indefensible if it fails to meet the standards of jus in bello. The two main requirements under jus in bello are, first, proportionality, and second, the principle of non-combatant immunity.

The idea of proportionality here is applied differently than in the earlier context. Now, it’s about the conduct of the war itself. It demands that the means used in war must not be so destructive that they overwhelm any possible good the war might achieve. Excessive violence, wanton destruction, or use of weapons that inflict suffering far beyond military necessity — all these would violate the principle.

The second requirement, non-combatant immunity, is the principle that innocent civilians must not be deliberately targeted or killed. War, if it must be fought, should be directed at combatants — at those engaged in the fighting — and not at those who are simply trying to live their lives.

Nuclear war

These two principles — proportionality and non-combatant immunity — can be powerfully illustrated by considering the case of nuclear war. A war fought with nuclear weapons could not possibly meet either condition. The scale of destruction would be so vast that it would obliterate everything a war might claim to protect — it would wipe out all the features of civilised social life. And it would do so indiscriminately. Civilians and combatants alike would be engulfed. A nuclear conflict could not respect the principle of non-combatant immunity. In the 1950s, theorists tried to distinguish between counterforce strategies (targeting military sites) and countercity strategies (targeting population centres). But with nuclear weapons, that distinction becomes meaningless. The sheer destructiveness is so extensive that even if you target military installations, the surrounding civilian population is inevitably affected. In practical terms, there is no way to separate the two. That’s why it’s widely agreed — and I would certainly argue — that nuclear weapons violate both key requirements of jus in bello. They are not just morally questionable. They are morally indefensible. And this example brings out with particular clarity what those requirements are meant to protect — and why they matter.

As I said earlier, the most fundamental condition of jus ad bellum — the moral criteria for going to war — is that the war must be fought for a just cause. This is central, and I want to return to it now. At first glance, it may seem tautological — as though all it’s saying is that a just war must be just. But there’s more to it than that. The requirement of a just cause does real work: it rules out a wide range of wars that have historically been justified on other grounds. It excludes wars fought simply to promote national interest, no matter how important those interests may appear. It rules out wars of imperial expansion — wars fought to acquire territory or build an empire. It rules out wars for the sake of controlling natural resources or securing economic advantages. It even rules out wars fought for seemingly loftier or humanitarian goals, if those goals are justified only on consequentialist grounds — that is, if the war is defended purely by the good that might result from it. The just cause requirement insists on more than that.

“Early Christian thinkers such as Augustine tended to see war as analogous to punishment. A just war, in their view, was a form of collective punishment against a wrongdoer.”  

What it says, in effect, is that any war must be morally grounded in a response to a prior injustice. It must be fought not for gain, but to right a wrong. And not just any wrong, but a specific kind of wrong — a wrong serious enough to justify the use of organised violence. That, of course, raises further questions. What sort of injustice counts as a just cause? What kind of wrongdoing can legitimately be met with war? Early Christian thinkers such as Augustine tended to see war as analogous to punishment. A just war, in their view, was a form of collective punishment against a wrongdoer — typically a prince or ruler — who had perpetrated grave injustices. War was permissible only in response to such acts, and only when undertaken by legitimate authority. In the modern era, however, the theory has shifted. In a world of sovereign nation-states defined by territorial borders, contemporary just war theory increasingly holds that the only injustice serious enough to justify war is an act of aggression — specifically, the invasion of one state by another. In this framework, states act unjustly when they cross borders unprovoked, when they attempt to conquer, annex, or occupy territory by force.

The analogy with individual self-defence

So, modern versions of just war theory tend to focus on a central proposal: that in today’s world, the only just war is one fought in defence against aggression. But why should that be enough to meet the requirement of a just cause? Why is a war of defence against aggression considered just? More specifically: why is that sufficient to justify the wholesale destruction of human life? The standard answer appeals to an important analogy — the analogy with individual self-defence. The idea is that collective defence against military aggression is morally comparable to an individual’s right to defend themselves against physical attack. And this analogy plays a central role in modern moral thinking about war. So we need to take a closer look at how it works.

Remember, our starting question was: How can it ever be right to take another human life? How, in any circumstances, can it be morally justifiable to kill another human being? Most people — though perhaps not everyone — would agree that there is at least one clear exception to the principle that it is always wrong to kill another human being. That exception arises when someone is threatening your life. We can express this in the language of rights. The value we place on each individual life can be framed as the idea that everyone has a right to life. But if I have a right to life, and someone else is trying to kill me, then I must also have a right to defend my life. That right to self-defence is part of what having a right to life means. If someone is threatening me, and the only way I can protect my life is by killing them — if I cannot reason with them, or disable them, or escape — then it is argued that I am morally permitted to use lethal force. If my attacker is trying to destroy my life, and all other options are closed off, then killing in self-defence becomes a tragic but morally justified act.

The moral reasoning here rests on a distinction between the innocent victim and the aggressor. As the innocent victim, I retain my right to life — and with it, my right to protect myself. The person threatening me, by contrast, forfeits the moral protection that the right to life normally affords. By initiating violence, they have placed themselves in a morally different position. They have no right to kill me. But I may have the right to kill them — if that is the only way to preserve my own life.

This is the moral structure underlying the analogy between individual self-defence and collective defence — and it’s this analogy that is often invoked to justify defensive war. The argument then proceeds by extending the self-defence analogy from individuals to states. Just as an individual has the right to defend themselves from an attacker, so — it is claimed — a country has the right to defend itself when it comes under attack. This is the core of how the analogy is used in just war theory. Now, that analogy may already strike you as questionable. And in a moment, I’ll suggest that it doesn’t quite hold up. But before critiquing it, I want to bring out its plausibility — because it’s not hard to see why it appeals to so many people.

It’s an analogy that has often been used, for example, in tribunals where conscientious objectors have been questioned about their willingness to fight. One common line of questioning has been: What would you do if someone attacked you? Or, more emotionally charged: What would you do if someone attacked your sister? Or your mother? There always seems to be a female relative involved. The underlying implication is clear: if you think it would be right to use lethal force to defend a loved one, then surely the same logic applies to your country. If you are prepared to kill in defence of your mother, why not in defence of your fellow citizens? The analogy concludes that, just as there is a right to resist individual aggression, so there is a right to resist collective aggression — and therefore a right to kill enemy soldiers who are part of the attacking force. They, like the individual attacker, are said to have lost their right not to be killed. They are no longer innocent victims. They are combatants — and thus, legitimate targets. This logic underpins not only the case for jus ad bellum — the justice of going to war in self-defence — but also jus in bello, the ethics of how war is fought.

Civilians and combatants

Take the principle of non-combatant immunity, for example. The same analogy is used to support the claim that while enemy soldiers may be targeted, civilians must not be. Civilians are not taking part in the fighting. They have not forfeited their right to life. They remain innocent and must be protected, even if their country is at war. This idea — that there is something especially wrong about killing innocent civilians — has a powerful intuitive force. We rightly recoil at the deliberate targeting of non-combatants. And from that, a corresponding implication follows: if it’s especially wrong to kill civilians because they are innocent, then soldiers — by contrast — are considered not innocent. That is why, according to this reasoning, they are legitimate targets.

So the analogy with individual self-defence plays a dual role in just war theory. It underpins both the idea that defensive war can be morally justified (jus ad bellum), and the claim that killing enemy combatants in war can be morally permissible (jus in bello). It’s a powerful analogy — and widely invoked in moral arguments about war. But, as I’ll now suggest, it is also a problematic one.

“Just war” theory faces some insurmountable problems

I’ve tried to present just war theory—and the self-defence analogy that supports it—as sympathetically and plausibly as possible. It is, after all, a serious ethical response to the fundamental moral dilemma posed by war. It doesn’t take the decision to go to war lightly. On the contrary, it acknowledges the heavy moral cost involved. At the same time, it is realistic: it recognises that in a harsh and sometimes violent world, war may be the only available means of resisting aggression or preventing catastrophe. For all these reasons, just war theory deserves to be taken seriously. It is not a position to be dismissed out of hand, and we do ourselves no favours if we ignore its strengths. That said, I believe the theory is ultimately flawed—seriously flawed, in fact—and I want to suggest that it faces some insurmountable problems. I’ll focus on two main difficulties.

The first, as you may already have sensed, concerns the analogy between individual self-defence and collective defence in war. Although it is intuitively appealing, and though it plays a central role in contemporary versions of just war theory, I think it turns out to be inadequate for the moral weight it is asked to bear. Here’s the core issue: in cases of individual self-defence, the reason one is permitted to kill an attacker is that the attacker is personally responsible for threatening one’s life. It is the attacker’s culpability that justifies the defensive use of lethal force. But this analogy breaks down when applied to war. The soldiers who are killed in war rarely carry that kind of individual moral responsibility. They may bear some responsibility, of course, but it is not the same as that carried by a direct aggressor in a personal attack. Soldiers, in most cases, are acting under orders. The decisions to go to war are made by governments, not by individual combatants. Responsibility lies with the political leadership. The soldiers—whether they have volunteered or been conscripted—are not, by and large, the ones who have chosen to initiate war or aggression.

Even when soldiers are not conscripted but serve voluntarily, they are often bound by the terms of service for a fixed period of years. They are not in a position to assess and determine the justice of the wars they are commanded to fight. To hold them personally responsible for the decision to go to war, and to treat them as legitimate targets on that basis, is to demand of them a moral agency that most do not have in that context. And yet, just war theory typically draws a very sharp contrast between combatants—who are considered liable to be killed because they are culpable participants in the war effort—and civilians, who are said to retain their right to life as innocent bystanders.

“In reality, many of the combatants killed in war are no more responsible for the conflict than the civilians who are caught up in it.”

I agree that there is an important distinction to be made between those who fight and those who don’t. But I think the just war tradition relies on a too rigid version of that distinction. In reality, many of the combatants killed in war are no more responsible for the conflict than the civilians who are caught up in it. And in that sense, the moral basis for treating soldiers as having forfeited their right not to be killed begins to unravel.

The second problem is closely related. The principle of non-combatant immunity—central to jus in bello—states that war must not be fought by deliberately targeting civilians. That’s a principle I fully endorse. But the uncomfortable truth is that, in modern warfare, that principle is routinely violated. In fact, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine war being fought without significant civilian casualties. This is not simply a matter of moral decline or the accidental by-product of fighting in densely populated areas. It is often a direct consequence of the methods of warfare themselves—most notably, the reliance on aerial bombing. In many cases, the bombing of civilian areas has been not just tolerated, but planned. During the Second World War, both the Allied and Axis powers deliberately targeted civilian population centres as a means of undermining morale. These were not accidents of war, nor unfortunate collateral damage. They were part of strategic policy.

And while the Second World War may be the most prominent example, it is not unique. Even when the targeting of civilians is not deliberate, the scale of civilian casualties in modern warfare is often unavoidable because of the weapons and strategies used. The result is a persistent and often devastating erosion of the very principle that just war theory seeks to uphold.

A typical strategy in modern warfare is to begin not with direct engagement on the battlefield, but with the bombing of command and control centres. This includes government buildings in cities, power supplies, and critical transport infrastructure like roads and railways. The fact is that in modern wars, civilian casualties have become effectively inevitable. That reality is sometimes dismissed or softened by the phrase collateral damage. It’s a term that has become part of the military lexicon—originally coined, I believe, by the American military—and has since entered common use. But “collateral damage” is really just a contemporary rebranding of a much older idea in moral philosophy—the doctrine of double effect. This doctrine has its roots in traditional Christian ethical reasoning and tries to navigate the moral ambiguity of actions that have both good and bad outcomes. In its simplest form, the doctrine of double effect holds that while it is morally wrong to intentionally kill civilians, it may be morally acceptable if civilian deaths occur as an unintended side effect of an action that has a just aim. The key distinction lies in intention: the harm must not be the purpose of the act, even if it is foreseen. Now, this idea is highly controversial. Philosophers and ethicists have debated it at length, and there are arguments both for and against its validity. I would go so far as to say that in some contexts, it has a degree of plausibility. There is, I think, a case to be made for it in certain tightly defined circumstances. But in the context of modern methods of warfare, and particularly in view of the predictability and scale of civilian casualties, I believe the doctrine of double effect becomes deeply problematic. More than that—it becomes an evasion of moral responsibility. If you know in advance that bombing urban areas will almost certainly result in the deaths of large numbers of civilians, then calling those deaths unintended stretches the meaning of the word beyond what it can bear. When the bombing of populated areas, and the civilian deaths that result, are an integral part of the war strategy itself, we cannot hide behind the comforting language of side effects. The deaths may not be the primary aim, but they are neither incidental nor unexpected. And that, I believe, undermines the ethical justification that just war theory attempts to offer.

The failure of just war theory

Having tried to give just war theory a fair hearing—having allowed it, as it were, a run for its money—I want to conclude by saying that, in the end, it fails. It fails, I believe, not because it is unserious, but precisely because it is a serious attempt to grapple with a real and profound moral dilemma. It tries to make sense of how war might ever be justified. But when applied to the reality of modern warfare, I do not think it can succeed. It cannot succeed because it does not give sufficient weight to the human cost of war. That cost is not abstract or hypothetical. It is borne in the lives lost, in the grief of families, and in the irreversible severing of individual human experience.

In the literature of war—especially in novels and poetry—you find, again and again, the same haunting moment: a soldier kills an enemy, and afterwards comes to recognise that the person he has killed was more than an enemy. Perhaps he finds photographs of a wife and children, or personal letters, or just catches a glimpse of the face. In that moment, the enemy becomes once again a fellow human being. And the soldier understands, perhaps too late, that he has ended a life that was as irreplaceable as his own. That, to me, is the real human cost of war. And it is a cost that the distinction between combatant and non-combatant does not fully capture. It does not do justice to the moral weight of what is lost.

Moreover, I have argued that modern wars cannot be just in practice, because they do not only involve the killing of soldiers. They also—and inevitably—involve the killing of civilians. The idea that modern warfare can be neatly confined to legitimate military targets is a fiction. Civilian casualties are not unfortunate accidents. They are, too often, an inescapable feature of how modern wars are fought. And that is why, even on its own terms, just war theory fails to offer a convincing moral framework for the realities of contemporary conflict. In the end, then, the case for peace is not only a matter of hope or aspiration. It is a moral imperative, grounded in the recognition of the value of each individual human life—and the irreparable harm done whenever that life is extinguished.

A humanist approach to the ethics of war

So where does that leave us? I want to suggest that a humanist approach to the ethics of war must begin with a clear recognition: if war—and the killing it entails—can never truly be just, then our moral priority must be to prevent war in the first place. We cannot content ourselves with asking, case by case, whether a particular war can be justified. Instead, we have to think seriously about how to make wars less likely, and how, wherever possible, to prevent them altogether.

Even if we accept that war is unlikely ever to be abolished entirely in the foreseeable future, we still have a moral duty to ask: what can be done to reduce the likelihood of war, to contain its spread, or to mitigate its worst consequences? And that kind of thinking needs to be rooted not in abstract arguments about innocence or guilt, or in the theoretical distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, but in the concrete realities of the world we live in—in political institutions, in diplomacy, in international cooperation and law, and in the dynamics of power and conflict on the global stage.

These are not hypothetical concerns. In fact, they are at the heart of this very Congress. Much of what we’ve already discussed—and much of what we will continue to explore in later sessions—centres on conflict prevention, conflict resolution, and the political and cultural conditions for peace. These are vital components of a humanist ethic, and they form an essential part of our shared commitment to building a world less vulnerable to violence and war.

But important as these long-term efforts are, they do not remove the immediate ethical questions that arise in particular cases. When our own government contemplates going to war, what should we do? Should we support it, or should we oppose it? When, if ever, is it right for a government to go to war? And when, if ever, is it right for us—as citizens, as voters, as moral agents—to support that decision? These are questions that many of us have faced directly, for example in the lead-up to the Iraq War. During those months when the United States, the United Kingdom, and other nations were deliberating military intervention, millions of people around the world—including many in this room—marched in protest. We judged that the war was unjust, and we refused to be complicit in it. Those were not abstract moral questions. They were practical, urgent, and deeply political. So while we must absolutely work toward long-term solutions—toward a world in which war is less likely—we cannot avoid these hard, immediate dilemmas. We are still left with the question: in each particular case, is it right to go to war? And what should we do when our governments choose to do so?

Now, when reflecting on those tough ethical questions about war—whether to support or oppose it in particular cases—we may once again be drawn to the position of absolute pacifism. And I imagine there are people here who do adopt that position, who would argue that there can never be a moral justification for war, under any circumstances. But what I want to suggest now is something slightly different. I want to propose that, even if we reject the framework of just war theory, there is a strong practical case for retaining two of its central principles. Specifically, I believe we should uphold the idea that the only acceptable reason for war is defence against aggression, and the idea that civilian populations should never be targeted in war. However, I propose that we retain these principles not because they are rooted in a moral analogy with individual self-defence, as just war theory suggests, but because they are grounded in international law and have been institutionalised in the post-war global order. These are not merely philosophical ideals; they are embedded in real-world political frameworks that are designed to prevent war and limit its devastation. Consider Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits wars of aggression. This is followed by Article 51, which explicitly recognises a country’s right to self-defence. These are not abstract principles—they are part of a globally agreed-upon system of norms, agreed in the aftermath of the most destructive war in human history. Similarly, the principle of non-combatant immunity is not simply an ethical aspiration. It is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their 1977 Additional Protocols, which clearly state that the civilian population shall enjoy general protection from military operations and must not be made the object of attack.

So I am making the case for retaining these principles—the prohibition of aggression, and the protection of civilians—not because of their roots in just war theory, but for practical and political reasons. These principles have been codified in international law. They form the basis of a rules-based order that, while imperfect, offers us the best available foundation for restraining the use of violence between states. But why should we treat these legal rules as morally binding, especially if their historical foundation in just war theory is, as I’ve argued, morally inadequate? Why should we continue to uphold them? The answer, I believe, is that there are pragmatic moral reasons for doing so. Upholding these principles makes war less likely. If every country were to accept the prohibition on aggression, and if all states recognised that the only legitimate reason for going to war is self-defence, then logically—if that principle were universally followed—there would be no wars at all. Of course, we are far from that goal. There are enormous political obstacles. But the point remains: the United Nations Charter, and the principles it articulates about aggression and self-defence, provide the right starting point for building an international order that aspires, however imperfectly, toward a more peaceful world. Likewise, if the Geneva Conventions, with their protections for civilian populations and their insistence on non-combatant immunity, are effectively upheld, then wars become harder to fight, and they become less destructive when they do occur. Again, these are strong pragmatic reasons for supporting and maintaining such principles. They don’t sanctify war or render it morally acceptable, but they impose limits that reduce suffering and may help deter the impulse to wage war in the first place.

I want to emphasise again that these are pragmatic justifications, not moral ones in the traditional sense. Upholding the principles of non-aggression and non-combatant immunity may make war less likely, but that does not mean a war fought in accordance with those principles becomes a just war. That, in the end, is my response to the just war tradition. I believe that the very language of justice is the wrong language to apply to war. No war is a just war. Every war is a moral tragedy.

Conclusion

Much of what I’ve been saying today stems from the recognition that the ethics of war is so morally difficult because it confronts us with a profound conflict between two kinds of moral values. On the one hand, there is the irreplaceable value of individual human lives—the core of what gives humanism its moral seriousness. On the other hand, there is our inescapable responsibility for consequences—the fact that in some situations, we may be forced to do terrible things to prevent even greater harm. I’ve acknowledged the moral seriousness of the just war tradition and the strength of its roots in Christian thought. But I’ve argued that, at least in the modern world, war cannot truly be just. At best, it may be a tragic necessity, perhaps justified in response to aggression. But it is never morally clean. It is always a moral tragedy—and a tragedy measured above all in human lives.

Beyond the lives lost, we should not forget the other, often less visible, costs of war: the destruction of social and economic institutions, the deepening of poverty and suffering, and the way in which war frequently sows the seeds of future conflict. We see this, for example, in the East Africa crisis, which is in part a consequence of the continuing instability in Somalia. The effects of war ripple far beyond the battlefield. And while some of you may wish to defend certain wars as just, I would maintain that, historically, most wars have been unjustified—fought not out of necessity or defence, but for reasons of power, expansion, or revenge. That’s why I believe we must always begin with a strong moral presumption against going to war. When we are faced with the question of whether to support military action by our own government, the burden of proof must fall heavily on those who wish to justify it. Our default position, morally speaking, should be opposition.

We should also ask: is it morally acceptable to maintain armed forces for deterrence? Should we follow the example of countries like Costa Rica, which has no standing army? Is it permissible to possess the tools of war as long as we don’t use them? These are important and challenging questions. I’m conscious here of stepping beyond the bounds of my expertise and would not want to speak with unwarranted authority. But I would say that if you accept the principle enshrined in the UN Charter—that states have the right to defend themselves against aggression—then there is at least a moral argument for maintaining the capacity for defence. The deeper question is how that power is used, and under what ethical constraints.

Ultimately, none of these dilemmas has an easy solution. But as humanists, we must face them honestly, critically and compassionately. And we must never lose sight of the truth that every war, whatever the justification, is a profound moral failure of the human imagination—a failure to find another way.

Links

Richard Norman speak a the World Humanist Congress part 1 of 5.mov

Richard Norman speak at the World Humanist Congress part 2 of 5.mov

Richard Norman speak at the World Humanist Congress part 3 of 5

Richard Norman speak at the World Humanist Congress part 4 of 5

Richard Norman speak at the World Humanist Congress part 5 of 5