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War & peace

16 March 2023

4 min read

Just War and Just Peace

As the Ukraine War passes another milestone, can any war be considered just? Christine Schliesser explores Just War theory and a possible path to Just Peace.

Christine Schliesser

Christine Schliesser lectures in Theology and Ethics at Zurich University, and is a scientific collaborator with the Center for Faith & Society at Fribourg University.

Civilian evacuation across Irpin River during the Ukraine War.

Yan Boechat/VOA via Wikimedia Commons.

Will Germany deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine? No? Yes? When? Media discussion of the war that the Russian Federation started against Ukraine in 2014 and that entered a new stage one year ago, currently centres on questions of weaponry. Who else will send tanks? And what about fighter aircrafts? No? Yes? When?

In classical military ethics, which has long been dominated by the so called Just War Theory, these questions fall under ius in bello, the right conduct in war. This also includes discussions on proportionality, military necessity and the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants.

Just War Theory has a long tradition in Christian thought. Church Father Ambrose argued that whoever does not ward off injustice from his fellow man (or woman for that matter) when he can, is as guilty as he who commits it. Ambrose’s student, Augustine, then developed this thought in more detail as he laid the foundations for what could be called a bellum iustum, a just war.

Even before going to war, the criteria of the ius ad bellum, the right to go to war, must be satisfied. These include, for instance, a just cause, legitimate authority, prospect of success, right intention and last resort. We encounter these criteria again in slightly modified form in our modern international law. In view of these guidelines, of Russia’s breach of international law, and of Ukraine’s right to self-defence, the on-going war in Ukraine clearly seems to be a just war. Or is it?

Nothing holy or just

Two points need to be made in this discussion. Firstly, there are no just or holy wars. Period. Or as 150 churches, after the horrors of the Second World War, put it in Amsterdam in 1948: ‘War is contrary to the will of God.’ Wars are always an evil and an expression of the failure of human beings to strive for peace. This also holds true for the war in Ukraine. And this means that we need a new dimension in the debate, namely guilt.

Every action – and inaction – here involves guilt. As the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis for his engagement in a plot against Hitler, put it:

‘everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty’.

And even if we become guilty for the sake of the other person, our guilt remains just the same. Yet, as Bonhoeffer concludes, we trust in the grace of God, who calls us to responsible action. , Bonhoeffer’s ideas have been considered dangerous and easily misused to justify any crime, as forgiveness is always available. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge the reality of guilt that pervades any war, including the war in Ukraine.

Just Peace

Secondly, recent years have seen a new kid on the block: Just Peace Theory. While Just War Theory looks at a conflict from the perspective of violence, Just Peace Theory puts the focus on peace. This includes adding a third set of criteria. Ius post bellum looks at justice after a war. We know that after a conflict is before a conflict. We therefore need to pay more attention to what happens after the weapons finally fall silent.

Here, the experiences of truth and reconciliation processes worldwide can help. Both dimensions belong inseparably together and both already begin during a conflict, not just after it. Truth, for example, requires the documentation of war crimes committed by all parties to ensure the prosecution of war criminals later on. And reconciliation is the conditio sine qua non for sustainable peace.

Russia’s war against Ukraine and its threats against NATO and Western countries demonstrate, not least that after the end of the Cold War, opportunities for genuine and sustainable reconciliation were missed as latent hatred, prejudices and stereotypes were allowed to linger.

Just Peace Theory emphasizes that building peace is an art and a craft. It requires specific skills, training and preparation. It also requires virtues of grace, persistence and forgiveness, Countless documented examples world-wide supply empirical proof that these methods actually work. Perhaps it is worth devoting some of the $2,113 billion (2021) of global annual military expenditure for training non-military approaches to address conflict resolution? To learn how to build peace as much as how to wage war? No? Yes? When?

Pathways to Peace

One such initiative is Pathways to Peace. Aiming at peace, justice and reconciliation in times of war, this initiative is currently being developed through the Conference of European Churches, a group of some 120 member churches in 38 countries. With their long-term involvement and intimate knowledge at the grassroot level, faith actors in civil society seem uniquely positioned to connect people, heal relationships, offer a new social imaginary and facilitate practical help.

The objectives of Pathways to Peace include among others to facilitate safe spaces for honest exchange between Ukrainian and Russian church leaders, to develop a network of church leaders and other civil society leaders for exchange on the preparation of peace or to bring together European youth, in particular Ukrainian and Russian young refugees.

The immense potential of faith actors in transforming conflict and building sustainable peace seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the public sphere. Given the prominence of faith in this conflict, it is about time that all relevant actors in our societies, including faith-based initiatives, joined forces to counter this major crisis of our time.

Article

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Community

Freedom

Politics

5 May 2025

4 min read

From councils to conclaves, there's a vital common ingredient

Church and state alike need pluralism.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A gate to a churchyard displays a sign saying polling station.

A polling station through a churchyard.

Southwark Diocese

Rumours that Donald Trump may suspend the US constitution in order to seek a third term as president and yet darker threats that his regime may even harbour autocratic ambitions have reminded the West that we should not take democracy for granted.

Parliamentary democracy, we have widely assumed, is A Good Thing. It’s so good that we not only want to share it but impose it on other populations. The Iraq war on which the UK and US embarked in 2003 was fought, we were told, for freedom and democracy, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

By democracy, we tend to mean political accountability, through which parties of government exercise power through the will of the people they serve, expressed in regular plebiscites which ensure that no one can cling unchallenged to power. The recent English council elections are a small example of what we mean by that.

The Trump phenomenon, though, begins to point towards the prospect of a popular will that is in favour of a form of government that doesn’t correspond to our usual liberal assumptions. There are voices, among them that of the writer Margaret Atwood, which anticipate a suspension of US democracy as a consequence of the President’s insanity.

Most of us in the UK might argue that democracy need to be more than a system in which majorities have their way. We want our governments to be under the law too. And then we have to decide not only what law, but whose law. For those of religious faith, that question will partly and significantly be answered by God’s law, on which arguably western civilisation is built.

This is where pluralism comes in, without which democracy can’t operate effectively. A state is a collection of political and civic communities, in which individuals have rights and duties, which are protected in law.

This model is based on Roman legislature, intensely centralised and systemically suspicious of private societies, which is why early Christians were persecuted under it. The collapse of that empire left a legalistic vacuum, into which stepped nation-state kingdoms and the early medieval Church.

Unlike political parties, we don’t compete for control, but form a community that points towards a saved and healed world.

It was this latter organ of state that inherited the basic principles of Roman law, centralised, universal and sovereign, under the Pope. And it is that organ that will meet in conclave to elect a new Pope. To describe that election as democratic is more than a stretch, in that the demos, as in common people, are uninvolved and arguably unrepresented.

So the Church is not a democracy, any more than God is accountable to his creation. Rather the other way around – some denominations speak of God’s “elect”, those he chooses for salvation. In Christian thought, God is a servant king, but nonetheless an absolute and, some who oppose the divine might say, tyrannical authority.

How are we to respond to an undemocratic deity? One answer to that might be found in that pluralistic characteristic of democracy. We’re not good, frankly, as recognising pluralism in our faith systems. At best, we operate in a kind of absolute duopoly – you believe, or you don’t. A pluralistic model would be one in which we learn of the divine will through the entirety of creation, all manifestations of belief and unbelief, rather than simply our own.

Pluralism is healthy, in secular politics as well as in religious observance. It has been observed that the old UK political duopoly of Labour and Conservative has been broken in these local elections by Reform UK and resurgent Liberal Democrats and Greens. It’s the polar opposite of the gathering autocracy in the US and gives a voice to a range of worldviews.

This is not an argument for theocracy, but it is to claim that the Christian tradition rests on the principle that no political order can claim the authority of God other than the Body of Christ. And the Body of Christ incorporates all members of the human race. Unlike political parties, we don’t compete for control, but form a community that points towards a saved and healed world.

The choice here is between a kind of secular citizenship, a form of multi-culturism which strikes an accord between varied communities on universally enlightened principles. Or we can respond to the energy on which that secular utopia might be founded, in building communities of the willing towards global justice and peace. That is a diversity mission for the Church.

So, it’s less about democracy than pluralism. And that pluralism has to become a recognisable characteristic of the body of the faithful, which it all too often historically hasn’t been. One can only hope and pray that it might be a mission that is also at the heart of the deliberations that lead to a puff of white smoke from the Sistine Chapel in the coming days.

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