If Any War Be Just…

Toward a moral understand of the Russo-Ukrainian War

I do not say this lightly…

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The study of history has made me wary of abstract concepts like capitalism, socialism, fascism, systemic racism, white supremacy, et. al. Words and terms of this kind tend to have their definitions extended and often twisted by the parties to this or that political dispute. Even worse, they’re often linked together in illegitimate ways, as is sometimes the case with capitalism and white supremacy.

One such term that has come particularly to bother me is just war. No one, I believe, who has experienced war or even studied it closely can hear this term or see it in print without a momentary shiver of revulsion. Given the nature of war, how can any war be just? In Carl von Clausewitz’s well-known formulation, war is a tripartite social and political phenomenon composed of atavistic, dehumanizing emotions; the play of chance and circumstance; and rational political calculation. It’s the first of these components that gives me pause when encountering an argument about just war theory.

So to argue, as I am about to do, that the Russo-Ukrainian War is, from the latter belligerent’s perspective, a just war, is not a task I undertake with a light heart. But if just war theory has any validity at all, then the war that the people of Ukraine are fighting is a just war. They are, not figuratively but literally, defending home and hearth, their country’s independence and its very existence, against a predatory aggressor bent on stamping out the Ukrainian national identity. That is a fact.

On the other hand, none of the arguments justifying Russia’s attack on Ukraine that have been put forward by V. Putin, his cabal, or his various apologists has the slightest validity. Ukraine poses no threat to Russian national security. Nor does NATO threaten Russia. Nor is Ukraine governed by a cabal of Nazis. Nor was the Ukrainian government tyrannizing over ethnic Russian in eastern Ukraine. Nor does Russia have a valid historical claim to Ukraine as a part of some mythical Great Russia. No, Putin’s attempted conquest of Ukraine is the first step in his long-range program for a restoration of the defunct Soviet imperium. And in his more candid moments, the Russian despot has admitted that.

Turning from war aims to the conduct of war, it will be seen that the Russian armed forces have behaved in a manner to be expected of the military servitors of such a regime as governs Russia. Indiscriminate bombardment of urban areas, destruction of critical infrastructure, mass killings of civilians, kidnapping of children, rape, torture, looting and other barbarities are so common as to suggest that they signify a deliberate policy of terror, all too reminiscent of the barbarities perpetrated in the USSR by the German armed forces during World War Two.

Putin & Co. should have paid more heed to the history of the Great Patriotic War for the Motherland, as it’s called in Russia. Had they done so, they’d have been reminded that a policy of terror is often self-defeating. Today’s aggressor is discovering, as the Germans did, that systematic terrorism arouses the anger of its victims, and a will to resist fueled by bitter hatred. In that sense, Putin’s imperial ambitions have been checked already: After all that has happened, the Ukrainian people will never accept Russian domination. Relations between the two peoples have been poisoned, if not for all time, then for a long time to come. Nothing short of a ruthless military occupation, employing terror without compunction, would enable Russia to maintain control of a conquered Ukraine. And such an occupation is beyond the power of the corrupt, ramshackle despotism that governs Russia.

Every evil associated with this war, and there are many, may thus be traced to the imperial ambitions of the Putin regime. And to the extent that the Russian people approve of their government’s policy of conquest and mass murder, they are complicit in the war crimes that have been committed against the people of Ukraine, just as the German people were complicit in the terrible crimes of National Socialism.

I do not exclude the possibility that Ukrainian troops and civilians may also have violated the law of war, for instance by shooting captured Russian soldiers. War is like that, as the record of the 1941-45 Pacific War reminds us. On a series of islands with sadly familiar names, the US Marines and the Japanese armed forces fought it out to the finish, with no quarter asked or given. In the large, one thinks of World War Two as a just war; a granular examination of its history casts a shadow over that comfortable conclusion.

Among opponents of American aid to Ukraine in its struggle for survival, there are some people—presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is one—who frankly back V. Putin and parrot his propaganda line. Others stick to a more moderate line—if moderate is the right word. They make out a case for moral equivalence: Of course Putin’s Russia is bad, but Ukraine is no better. Both are corrupt.

This argument is more plausible than logical, implying as it does that the present war was somehow started by mutual consent. But it was not: This war was started by Russia, because V. Putin decided to achieve his goals by force of arms. Even granting, as I do, that Ukraine has problems with corruption, the moral responsibility for the death and destruction caused by this war rests exclusively with the country that started it, Russia.

My conclusion: While the morality of any war is doubtful, in the case of the Russo-Ukrainian War, justice is with Ukraine. And that puts America on the side of justice—as long as we reject the pusillanimous counsels of those who for inexplicable reasons believe that the American national interest is somehow served by acquiescing in brutal aggression and crimes against humanity. That’s an assertion neither just nor moral but infamous.