Just War

From Zanecorpwiki

New point: Hitler (according to DeLong) was specifically following the ideas behind American expansion. He saw the eastern europeans as the equivalent of the American Indian. He was applying the same theory that justified Anglo-Saxxon erradication of the indengenous population to the populations of Poland, Hungary, etc.

Work in progress

I was talking with a friend recently, and he brought up a very good point regarding WWII. It may have had the potential to be a just war. However, after defeating Germany, the Allies allowed Stalin to claim the Eastern Bloc, commit genocide, and set the region up a century of instability and further genocide.^{[notes 1]}

Many, including myself, tend to point to the Nazi Germany and WWII as the unquestionable example of just war. Who can argue against a regime that engages in mass murder for the sake of mass murder?

Yet, if you peel back the layers, there are serious questions. Britain and France did not declare war on Germany till September of 1939, more than 6 years after the opening of the first concentration camp. Even after '39 (and the invasion of Poland) then, the US officially declared itself neutral. Yes, the full scope of the atrocities were not yet apparent, and there were good reasons to not get involved with the war, but here's the problem with a "just war": you can't have your cake and eat it to.

If it's "right and just" to fight the Nazis in '39 (or '41, if you're the US) because they're so bad, why wasn't it right and just before? And if you say, "We were wrong not to intervene earlier, but now we're here," then how can you allow the Soviets to do the exact thing that you were supposedly fighting to keep the Germans from doing?

This is not to demean the service of individuals, or to even to question the war on Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. The point is this:

1. War is never just. War may, at best, may be the lesser of evils, but it is never good.
2. Even if we define a "just war" as the least bad of options, it is almost certain that we will become war weary and cease the prosecution of the war prematurely.
3. It is also true that no war has ever been started for just reasons. Justice does sometimes add weight, but the lever which moves us from inaction to war has always been economic.

If these things were not true, we would have continued the fight on into Soviet Russia. They were aggressive, imperial, and genocidal. Everything the Nazis were. And given the build up and presence, and weakness of the Soviet Regime at the time, it would have probably been a relatively easy war to win (militarily at least).

If these things were not true, we would be in Dafur now. Clothing the Iraq war as anything moral or conscience driven is a joke when there's been racially motivated killings, rape, and displacement going on in Dafur since early 2003. Not only are we not there trying to stop it, we don't even talk about. We don't even give the UN or other bodies who are trying to stop it any real support.

"Just war" is a sad, sad, joke.

Notes

1. ↑ It is estimated that 3-10 million people died as a direct result of Stalin's purges. Some also attribute deaths resulting from famine and deprivation to Stalin. Unlike the Nazis, the Soviets deliberately obscured their records so a precise number is not forthcoming. Suffice it to say, a lot of people died.