WHEN PEACE IS NO PEACE 37
ARE VIOLENCE AND REVOLUTION ACCEPTABLE OPTIONS? (14)
THE IDEAL OF NON-VIOLENCE AND THE IMPERATIVE OF SELF-DEFENCE AND JUST PEACE (2)
Our discussion on violent and non-violent revolutions has brought us to the ideas of just war, self-defense and just peace. These arose with the background that peace and non-violence are the best option for socio-political, interpersonal, international, and national relationships. It is the best condition for the promotion of human dignity, human flourishing, human and social progress and general human well-being.

However we have also come to the painful recognition that evil is real and there are men, nations and groups who are so violent and less attracted to peace, who allow greed, ambition, and passion to blind their sense of goodness, fairness and proportionality that peaceful and non-violent entreaties and gestures mean nothing to them, which then provokes the question of what to do before such oppressive callous, violent and murderous people. These led theologians, philosophers, moralists and security-experts to posit the principles of just war, self-defense and just peace. These are conditions and principles which are supposed to guide the reactions of the victims who are under conditions of oppressive and destructive violence, ranging from conditions in which war may be waged as last option, to principles governing all acts of self-defense; to ensuring that peace is really peace. These principles are also a reaction to pacificism which objects to all acts of violence on moral grounds and in which one would not defend himself even if attacked directly.

We will start by examining the just war theory, even though war is not our central pre-occupation here but the principles involved in the just war theory will help us know how to deal with unjust aggressors, into which we classify many of the unrepentant despotic and murderous African leaders who oppress and callously exploit their people.

The just war theory took its early formulation in St Augustine, received its classic expression in St Thomas Aquinas and has been undergoing refinement, and at times being extended since the medieval times and recent times. It tries to delineate the conditions in which war can be permissible and morally defendable and the proper way of prosecuting such a war after all options for peaceful settlement has been exhausted. The central thrust of the just war principle is that the self defense of a people or a country cannot be made morally impossible. The just war principle has been accepted by almost all prominent international and world bodies and conventions and even the church from whom it emanated. The principle of just war can to day be expressed under the following conditions:

(1) It must be declared and waged by a public authority only after peaceful means have failed. This means that only a constitutionally empowered or competent authority, one who has proper authority and responsibility can wage war. Peaceful options could be diplomatic efforts, economic embargoes and sanctions, etc.
(2) It must be waged for a just cause with the view of ending the war as quickly as possible. Of course this is a very controversial condition for how does one determine when ones cause has reached the threshold of triggering a war. Some identified causes could be violations or threat to a people's sovereignty or vital national resources. It will include comparative justice which means that the moral merit on the one side must outweigh the moral merit on the other. There must also be probability of success. If the prospect of success is hopeless, war is not justified, no matter the justice of the cause. This means that there has to be a proportion between the foreseen evils of conflicts and the hoped for benefits of engaging in war.
(3) The belligerents should have a rightful intention. The intention of going to war must be to obtain or restore a just peace. desire to punish or humiliate are not adequate intentions.]
(4) The war must be waged by proper means. Evil means must be avoided. It could be expressed by saying that just conduct should be used throughout the war. This must include proportionality in the use of force. Non-combatants must never be made deliberate or primary targets of military action. This means that as much as possible the enemy must be treated in good faith in order to keep open the possibility of reconciliation.
This has been greatly emphasized by the Geneva convention, which prescribed certain rules of conduct for belligerents in war especially the respect of human rights and the forbidding of torture. There is no doubt that on paper and theoretically the principle of the just war, is well stated and in fact valued but the problem is the practice. Some of the conditions are complicated in practice.

It is common knowledge that hardly do nations observe these conditions in the waging and prosecuting of wars. Even the emergence of new weapons of war like the nuclear bomb and others with massive destructive effects has made it practically impossible to observe some of the conditions. Thus Vatican 11 observed: “the increase of scientific weapons has increased the horror and wickedness of war immensely. Actions carried out with these weapons can cause vast and indiscriminate destruction which goes far beyond the limits of legitimate self-defense. All these forces us to examine war in an entirely new frame of mind. Our contemporaries should know that they will have to give a very serious account of their waging war….” (the church in the modern world, V, 80)

These new situations even make some who accept the principle of the just war to develop some cold feet, including even the church today. Thus Pope John Paul 11 in his 1983 World Day of peace message declared “Is it not necessary to give everything in order to avoid war, even the limited (just) war?...given the evil that every war represents its price that has to be paid in human lives, in suffering, in the devastation of what would be necessary for human life and development”.

Even nations have also recognized the difficulty in the implementation of the just war principle and the many abuses that it may provoke. It is no other person than Barack Obama who recently said “for most of history, this concept of just war was rarely observed. The capacity of human beings to think up new ways to kill one another proved inexhaustible as did our capacity to exempt from mercy those who think different or pray to a different God. Wars between armies gave way to wars between nations, total wars in which the distinction between combatants and civilians were blurred”. Obama concluded on the need to think “in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace”.

There is no doubt that the just war as principle of self-defense has been abused and interpreted according to peoples' interests as in the case “in which the Romans used self-defense as a pretext for their village to conquer and rule a territory extending from England to Judea and the American people” have self-defended themselves from across to the continent to the Pacific and so to Hawaii and the Philippians”, yet the just war principle as different from the practical abuses and difficulty of implementation, remains valid, as a means of legitimate self-defense, as not only a right but also a duty. For a community that refuses to defend itself against aggression encourages further aggression. Under the rules of non-violence, the aggressors always win. There is nothing to stop them from marching around the world taking what they want, killing those who are inconvenient and congratulating themselves”

Of course the principle of just war applies in particular to relations between nations and states involving government structure and identifiable territory yet our special concern is in the cases that the aggressor or oppressor is internal like murderous despots and structures unamenable to peaceful overtures, and whose activities are ruining nations and their peoples.
Here also the principle of legitimate self-defense will apply, and what we said about the just war theory could be adapted here to deal with unjust aggressions by leaders.