Virtuous War Chapter 5-9
Literature Review by Josh Sargent
Virtuous war combines two almost opposite aims. The first, or the virtue, is to use a just war for ethical reasons or to accomplish an ethical end and the second or the virtual is to accomplish these ends from a remote distance with a minimum of casualties. These two aims combine to form virtuous war, the model that the United States government and military has adopted as official policy.
The definition of virtue in war comes from just war theory in the Christian tradition, most well defined by Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas Aquinas, a Christian soldier shows virtue in war through charity. “Justice is the key cardinal virtue…but the virtue of charity is what gives the impetus for Christian participation.” Justice and charity lay the grounds for carrying out a just war both in the reasons for going to war and in the conduct during war.
Virtual war is the ability to choose a spot on a map and effect damage upon it or the people residing there, whether through a smart bomb, or cruise missile or UAV or any other method with no or minimal human casualties. It is networked war, where the enemy lacks a face or defining human characteristics. It is war in the Internet era and it is constantly being made faster, smarter, more accurate and less human to the point where someday America may not even field troops on the battlefield; only unmanned vehicles and aircraft.
Chapters 5-9 of Der Derian’s book discuss different points along his travels through virtuality. They serve as waypoints along his journey; though some may seem dated, as conditions have changed since the book was printed.
Chapter 5 attempts to define the virtuous enemy. When the book was written the American government refuses to identify any particular country as the enemy in their exercises and the list of rogue states has been replaced by a list of “states of concern.” Now America clearly defines its enemies, as President Bush outlined the infamous axis of evil in March 2003 and the terrorist organization Al Quaeda is considered the greatest threat to American security. Then enemy still is faceless, shown only on night-vision scopes where they look less real than figures in a video game. Videos of Afghanistan and Iraq being bombed look surgical and neat, and there are no formal declarations of war, only extended military engagements. As the physical violence and bloodshed are downplayed, war is easier to justify and bloodshed is only real when it happens on American soil.
War is not a game, except for when it is held in San Francisco. The war game in San Francisco could not happen today. The army does not have the personnel to do so and the protests against the war would have a focal point that could create another WTO riot, only magnified immensely. The war games have given way to the main event. And Waco reminds me that John Yoo, in his recently released memo on torture, argued that the 4th Amendment did not apply to the United States military, when acting against American citizens within the United States. The military is ever present and could in the event of a major terrorist attack be used as a policing force not bound legally by the same restrictions as conventional police.
The National Convention seems anti-climactic knowing the end result. The Cold Warriors won out over Hollywood stardom and so did on a platform that rejected the virtue in virtuous war and proclaimed that nation-building and humanitarian interventions were not in America’s best interest. America should operate on a platform of strict realism and only use military force for our own ends. The Drawbridge to Fortress America was raised. 9//11 followed and virtuous war returned as the use of war for ethical purposes, to create freedom and democracy, seemed to be in America and the world’s best interest.
To Wesley Clark, the American intervention in Kosovo was not a war; it was coercive diplomacy conducted with no self-interest. Any escalation the NATO forces took was intended to send a diplomatic message, not to force Serbia to surrender. Victory was having Milosevic back down and stop the violence in Kosovo. Bombing was a message, sending in ground troops was a message and all these messages Holbrooke used for diplomatic ends. Invading Serbia was a last resort neither side wanted. Yet to the Kosova being ethnically cleansed and to the Serbs being “bombed for peace”, it was war. Kosovo was war with the best of intentions yet Der Derian after spending all this time on war shies away from it as he tries to explain his new theory of virtuality.
Der Derian at his most ambitious is trying to replace both classical and post-modern theories of international relations with a virtual theory of war and peace. This theory seeks to understand how the way reality is seen affects the conceptuality and the actuality of an event or a representative, and thus what is represented. The interwar is seen as “eternally returning” yet if Der Derian’s virtual theory is fully realized not inevitable as global politics can change from being-between wars and arrive at becoming-different from war. This is Der Derian at his most utopian, seeing in virtuality the hope for a brave new world, one in which differences represent a “challenge of connectivity, creativity and responsibility”. Yet even as he grasps at this hope, he realizes when seeing a gruesome picture that all his theory and training and education pale when compared to an undeserved death.
A virtuous war is a war that combines virtue with virtual, using war to achieve an ethical end while realizing force from a distance. Virtuous war raises ethical and strategic questions, some of which Der Derian examines: Does the digitization of war make the enemy less real, less human and make civilian casualties easy to ignore? Does it make war too easy to fight as it requires no American sacrifice? Others he ignores: Is it better to demonize our enemies, as we have done historically, or is it better to dehumanize them? Is virtuous war a response to the Cold War and not appropriate to America’s current challenges? Is using a Christian framework of just war useful against non-Western enemies? Can and should America use military force to confront intractable political problems? These ethical and strategic questions demand answers, yet Der Derian answers none of them, giving us only the theoretical framework of the virtuous war and a vague utopian hope for the future.
Cole, Darrell. (1999). Thomas Aquinas on Virtuous Warfare. Journal of Religious Ethics 27 (1) 57-80.