Roughly five centuries ago, indigenous peoples across the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa began to encounter a particularly aggressive form of “European hospitality.” Not content with simply saying hello, Europeans arrived with flags, firearms, and a staggering sense of entitlement, swiftly laying claim to other people’s lands and resources. Resistance was typically met with massacres — yes, including women and children, because apparently conquest was a family affair. Survivors were often rewarded with disease, chains, or both. Charming.
Naturally, this wholesale plundering eventually made even a few European theologians and jurists feel a bit uneasy — not enough to stop it, mind you, but enough to scribble down their moral musings. They insisted indigenous peoples were indeed the rightful owners of their lands (how gracious), but being products of their time, they also laid the conceptual groundwork for continued subjugation by proposing that it was all perfectly acceptable under the right philosophical lighting — via the ever-handy notion of just war.
Enter stage left: Just War Theory. A delightful concept suggesting that while war is terrible, it can be slightly less terrible if done properly — think of it as the ethical abattoir of geopolitics. The idea being that war is not always the worst option — sometimes it’s just what a nation needs to feel better about itself.
The roots of this noble tradition go back as far as Ancient Egypt, where Pharaohs justified their conquests with divine sanction (a time-honoured trick). In Warring States China, the emperor could wage war as a last resort — questioning him was not allowed, but not to worry, victory itself was considered divine approval. Meanwhile, the Indian epic Mahabharata offered the first real debate on righteous war (dharma-yuddha), while Aristotle kindly introduced the idea to the Greeks, who were already quite fond of fighting each other anyway.
In the West, theologians took up the banner with gusto. For Christian thinkers like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, a war could be just — provided it was waged by the right people (read: Christians), for the right reasons (usually something about heresy or trade routes), and with the right amount of pious regret.
Western legalists, in their infinite wisdom, later claimed “Just War” as an exclusively Western innovation — and not at all like that entirely different concept of jihad, despite both being concerned with when killing is permissible if done for the “right” reasons. Convenient, that.
Legitimisation
Eventually, legal theorists adjusted the so-called law of nations to reflect, and thus rubber-stamp, the status quo of European dominance. A discipline originally born of grappling with colonial slaughter transformed into a polite set of rules for civilised states to chat amongst themselves while excluding the rest of the planet. By definition, “civilised” meant European, of course — an efficient way to keep the club exclusive.
International law, such as it is, posits the existence of a global society of states that politely nod to certain norms. But let’s be clear: these norms are binding only in the sense that everyone agrees they are, and unenforceable in the sense that no one actually does anything when they’re breached. It’s all very genteel.
As Thomas Hobbes once pointed out, “all laws are silent in the time of war,” which neatly captures the mood. Even with modern humanitarian law attempting to whisper through the gunfire, the general assumption remains: if you kill someone in war, it’s fine — unless someone makes a real fuss about it. In peacetime, of course, murder still requires a good excuse.
With the legal vacuum of war conveniently legitimised, all one needs to launch a military escapade is to convince a home audience (or a few foreign allies) that the other side are barbarians, monsters, or perhaps even worse: uncivilised. Sprinkle in a few atrocity stories and a rousing anthem or two, and off you go.
Highly recommended viewing for those interested in the fine art of manufactured war: Wag the Dog (for PR tips) and Dr. Strangelove (for nuclear etiquette and polite doomsday planning).