Week 4 - Protesting the Vietnam War: Political theories of just and unjust war

This week we consider another focal point for conflict and protest in the US across the 1960s: the United States of America’s war against the communist government of North Vietnam. Just as the civil rights movement was supported by, and in turn gave rise to, theories of civil disobedience, opposition to the Vietnam war galvanised activism, which soon provoked a rejuvenation of broadly liberal theories of just and unjust war.

Once again, we organise our consideration of political theory around three axes of analysis. First, we very briefly explain why the US became involved in Vietnam, the toll of the war on US lives, and the controversial methods of warfare employed (including intense bombing, mass collateral killings of Vietnamese noncombatant civilians, the use of chemicals including napalm, Agent Orange, and a defoliant powerful enough to strip clean the dense forests of the Vietnamese resistance etc.). This was the context for large anti-war protests in the US, which spread around the globe.

Next, we consider the theory of just and unjust war that the communitarian liberal Michael Walzer proposed, to try to articulate the moral principles that had grounded his own activism. Walzer was the first post-war political theorist to systematically provide a theory of war, explicitly locating the theory in thinking ‘about the American intervention in Vietnam’. We lay out Walzer’s answers to his two main questions, namely, ‘under what circumstances, if any, is it justifiable to engage in war?’ and ‘How ought people to fight in war?’ To the first, Walzer argues that war is always a crime, the aggressor is responsible for all of the horrors of war, and, once attacked, a state is obliged to resist (an argument against pacifism). To the second, Walzer answers that a ‘war convention’ would include the principles of noncombatant immunity, proportionality, and combatant equality. This theory came to be known as a traditionalist theory of war.

Finally, we draw on Seth Lazar’s work to consider some revisionist criticisms of Walzer’s theory, which originated in taking seriously moral indignation at situations that Walzer’s theory would accept. Revisionists have insisted that the party who starts war is not always in the wrong, if the objective is humanitarian. They have also asked for greater specificity about what counts as the first aggression. Revisionists have also objected that combatants should not be conceptualised as losing their rights in war. Revisionists have also objected to the idea that proportionality permits equating the value of military objectives with a certain number of noncombatant lives. Finally, revisionists have pointed out that noncombatants are not always immune from implication, because their work and activities can directly or indirectly support war (e.g., they may design and manufacture weaponry that they know is used in war).

Next week we will study the theories of conscientious objection to the draft that were also formulated during this period.