On Anscombe, expansive war aims, and lurking evil.
When it comes to war, philosophers tend to focus on conduct in war (Jus in bello) and the justice of war (Jus ad bellum). Even if one is hesitant about any conjunction between any kind of ‘jus’ and ‘bellum’ (say because one thinks that the absence of war is the condition of possibility for justice), some sober philosophers (including Plato, Hobbes, and Kant (recall here)) have noted the political significance of how one conducts war signals one’s expectations for the peace or state of affairs that follows war. The importance of this is fairly evident if we pay attention to the headlines on any presently occurring war.
Now, conduct in war is central to G.E.M. Anscombe’s objections to Oxford University’s (1956) plan (recall this post) to award then former President Truman an honorary degree. She articulated her objections on various occasions and places, including her privately printed pamphlet “Mr. Truman’s Degree” (but she returned to it later in “War and Murder” and arguably (albeit less centrally) in “Modern Moral Philosophy,” too.) Her main interest is, of course, in Truman’s decision to drop two atom bombs on civilian populations in Japan.
Here my interest is in an issue Anscombe introduces early in the pamphlet, that is, the significance of the content of and how one articulates war-aims. I don’t want to claim her interest in this is original with Anscombe; after all, Max Weber (in “Politics as Vocation”) and Carl Schmitt (in “The Concept of the Political”) had also confronted it after WWI. But while in some respects Anscombe is rather close to Schmitt (about that another time), her position is distinctive enough to discuss it on its own terms. I quote the salient passage:
The only condition for ending the war was announced to be unconditional surrender. Apart from the ‘liberation of the subject peoples,’ the objectives were vague in character. Now the demand for unconditional surrender was mixed up with a determination to make no peace with Hitler’s government. In view of the character of Hitler’s regime that attitude was very intelligible. Nevertheless some people have doubts about it now. It is suggested that defeat of itself would have resulted in the rapid discredit and downfall of that government. On this I can form no strong opinion. The important question to my mind is whether the intention of making no peace with Hitler’s government necessarily entailed the objective of unconditional surrender. If, as may not be impossible, we could have formulated a pretty definite objective, a rough outline of the terms which we were willing to make with Germany, while at the same time indicating that we would not make terms with Hitler’s government, then the question of the wisdom of this latter demand seems to me a minor one; but if not, then that settles it. It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil. The connection between such a demand and the need to use the most ferocious methods of warfare will be obvious. And in itself the proposal of an unlimited objective in war is stupid and barbarous.—G.E.M. Anscombe Mr. Truman’s Degree [Emphasis added—ES}
Before I focus on the emphasized sentence, it is worth noting that Anscombe makes a number of points that are central to, as it were, post-Clausewitzian strategic thinking: for example, the insistence that clear and delimited war aims are needed to guide strategy and tactics in war. The significance of making distinctions within one’s war-aims (say between regime change and occupation). These kind of (strategic) maxims about the conduct in war are themselves unconnected to justice, but clearly have important political and moral consequences and salience (assuming that while keeping all else equal, anything that can limit the ferocity and length of war is itself morally welcome).
Okay, with that in place, Anscombe returns to the significance of the demand for unconditional surrender throughout the pamphlet, including a passage I quote below for completeness sake.* I note four features: first, notice that Anscombe implies that the demand for unconditional surrender is not just “stupid” but itself unconditionally wrong (“barbarous”). I view her use of ‘barbarous’ as signaling commitment to adhering to norms of civilized conflict, that is, jus gentium. (In the pamphlet she avoids the term, but rather seems to defend the existence of some absolute prescriptions or “general moral laws.”) In “War and Murder” she explicitly speaks from a Catholic perspective, but here she leaves that more opaque. Unfortunately, she leaves a bit unclear why it is stupid, although I suspect she thinks (as most who have thought seriously about it) that it will lengthen war unnecessarily. Why she thinks it is barbarous is pretty clear.
For, second, she clearly holds that the “demand” for unconditional surrender opens the door to the felt “need to use the most ferocious methods of warfare,” (emphasis added). The connection between means and aims is surely not as tight (empirically or conceptually) as she assumes. (And one may well think of empirical refutations of the claim.) Undoubtedly, other (including) reputational considerations enter into the issue. I return to this below.
But in so far as during wars there is an intensification of passionate hatred of the enemy, Anscombe is surely pragmatically right as even cursory knowledge of both world wars reveals. This matters because deploying the most ferocious method of warfare has consequences not just for how war is conducted (including its impacts on non-combatants and the innocent) and for signaling and even making possible the kind of resolutions and settlements after.
This second feature is central to Anscombe’s overall considerations for objecting to the honorary award for then former President Truman. His conduct in war, in fact his means to try to end it altogether, is the central point of contention (alongside what kind of considerations one can bring to bear to honorary awards). So, while I will be somewhat critical in what follows, from the perspective of Anscombe’s main argument my actual criticisms are relatively minor quibbles.
Third, it is a bit odd that Anscombe claims “It was the insistence on unconditional surrender that was the root of all evil.” In context, this claim is very odd because in this paragraph (and the four subsequent numbered ones) she is actually not discussing the war in the Pacific but the war to defeat Nazi-Germany. And she herself has just acknowledged that Hitler’s regime is itself especially bad. And so, it is surely at least partially responsible for the ferocious means the war was fought.
The evil she probably has in mind is the “great change: we [viz., the allies] adopted the system of ‘area bombing’ as oppose to ‘target bombing.’” (This is now associated with the flattening or firebombing of Dresden or Tokyo.) The important difference is that area bombing deliberately targets innocents. (In fact, I suspect she really objects to is what is now known as ‘strategic’ or ‘terror bombing.’) Her wording implies that in “all evil” she means the evil perpetrated by the US/UK in Germany. (This is especially clear because she ignores the manner in which the Soviets and Nazis fought each other which, in many ways, was even more brutal including the execution/deportation and maltreatment of prisoners of war.)
Now, my objection is that target/strategic bombing is not a necessary effect of aiming at unconditional surrender. After all, it’s become pretty clear that most versions of it do not shorten the war and also involve significant opportunity (and reputational) costs. It is known that even during the war there were debates among the British at the highest level (including questions in Parliament) about the practical utility and costs if only to their own interests of such bombing. So, in a very nearby possible world the British would have pursued the war with less evil despite insisting on unconditional surrender (say if Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris’ tenure would have been cut short for any reason or if Churchill had been willing to persist in his demand to end such bombing.).
Does this matter? I think so. Even unwise overly expansive war aims can be pursued in numerous ways during a war. That is, as I noted above in war the conceptual and empirical link between means and ends is not as tight as Anscombe insists. In fact, in war, even during the most foggy moments, there are lots of choice nodes/moments in which competing means have many different kinds of foreseeable moral valence.
I wanted to end here. But there is a final, fourth feature that is rather important. Anscombe’s objections to the effects and signals of demanding unconditional surrender on the conduct of war is (explicitly) not due to a commitment to pacifism, nor due to a kind worldly squeamishness about applying moral terms to politics or war-making (or that prevent one from registering some acts as evil altogether). She herself is willing to use ‘evil’ to describe certain forms of war-making, and she clearly thinks certain political acts that produce evil in war are abhorrent (i.e., terror bombing of all kinds). This commitment is compatible with her explicit acknowledgment that in war there are going to be innumerable “borderline” cases where one may well disagree over the means chosen. That is, Anscombe is really focused on the cases where good faith controversy is impossible; here she is not trying to promote casuistry about them.
This leaves hanging what she means by ‘evil’ in the pamphlet. And here there is a source of confusion. In disagreeing with the pacifist, she seems initially to grant that war is evil, while simultaneously suggesting that it is ineliminable. (This is a theme she develops in “War and Murder.”) But, I think the response to the pacifist is not her final word in the pamphlet. For, importantly, she also goes on to explicitly deny that war itself is evil. It is for her a “misfortune” that involves badness: “The correct answer to the statement that ‘war is evil is’ that it is bad ‘i.e., a misfortune’ to be at war.”
But to target innocents in war is not just misfortune or badness, it is for her real evil. I don’t know her all-things-considered view on Satan, but it’s hard not to read her as claiming that it is the work of the devil. The phrase “work of the devil” is used in the pamphlet, but it is not wholly clear if she is merely describing the pacifist’s attitude toward killing in war, as it were, at arm’s length, or describing her own views. So, I am not using it as evidence that the view I am attributing to her is definitely correct as an interpretation of Anscombe.
Rather, the way I understand her is as follows: that in light of our sordid human nature, by introducing unconditional surrender and other maximum war objectives even against the worst political regimes, one opens the door for the devil to have more opportunities to do his work, that is, to create means of conduct that involve what she calls “ghastly evil.” Even if one does not share her theology or ways of conceiving morality, Anscombe points to an enduring truth.
*7) In 1945, at the Postdam conference in July, Stalin informed the American and British statesmen that he had received two requests from the Japanese to act as a mediator with a view to ending the war. He had refused. The Allies agreed on the ‘general principle’ — marvellous phrase! — of using the new type of weapon that the Americans now possessed. The Japanese were given a chance in the form of the Potsdam Declaration, calling for unconditional surrender in face of overwhelming force soon to be arrayed against them. The historian of the Survey of International Affairs considers that this phrase was rendered meaningless by the statement of a series of terms; but of these the ones incorporating the Allies’ demands were mostly of so vague and sweeping a nature as to be rather a declaration of what unconditional surrender would be like than to constitute conditions. It seems to be generally agreed that the Japanese were desperate enough to have accepted the Declaration but for their loyalty to their Emperor: the ‘terms’ would certainly have permitted the Allies to get rid of him if they chose. The Japanese refused the Declaration. In consequence, the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The decision to use them on people was Mr. Truman’s.