Just War: Venezuela

              Upon waking up to news about our attack on Venezuela, images played on repeat of massive explosions and burnt out Venezuelan military vehicles, and reports of their president and first lady, the Maduros, capture… with militias gathering up for reprisals and other South American countries activating their militaries, I went back and looked at previous pastoral letters I’ve written, one from when it looked like President Obama was about to invade Syria because they used chemical weapons, and another after the assassination of Iranian General Soleimani in the first Trump Administration.

              I started those letters with words that loom large in my heart today as well. Kyrie Eleison—Lord have mercy.

              Kyrie Eleison… This is how we start our opening prayer to God in worship—the start of the prayer, in which we pray for peace from above and for our salvation—peace for the whole world.

              And I would ask that you take a moment to pray this prayer from our Hymnal:     

“Gracious God, grant peace among nations. Cleanse from our own hearts the seeds of strife: greed and envy, harsh misunderstandings and ill will, fear and desire for revenge. Make us quick to welcome ventures in cooperation among the peoples of the world, so that there may be woven the fabric of a common good too strong to be torn by the evil hands of war. In the time of opportunity, make us be diligent; and in the time of peril, let not our courage fail; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

              Now, our present moment is a little different from the two previous times I responded with pastoral letters, as there is a quasi-policing veneer to last night’s attacks, the situation has been escalating for months, and there is a sense (incorrect I believe) that what happened last night ends things. Our killing of Soleimani didn’t stop attacks on US soldiers in the Middle East or our bombing of Iran a few years later. Likewise, our inaction in Syria festered for a decade until Assad was deposed by his own people. As someone who studied the history of war as an undergraduate, I would point to that truism that every soldier can quote by van Moltke, “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Engaging in battle has a force to it, choosing to fight innately radicalizes the goals of those who go to war—if you give a general a cookie, he’ll keep the tanks moving. Additionally, war tends to reshape national identities in unexpected ways.

              And our faith has something to say about such things. For two thousand years we Christians have been struggling with being faithful in the world as it is, in situations of persecution, famine, feast, might, and war. And those struggles have given us a rich tradition of thought and action, something much deeper than the knee-jerk reactions of TV pundits and political intellectuals.

              In the early days of the Church, Christians were known for being pacifists. In fact, the Society of Friends (Quakers) and Mennonites still are pacifists, they see refusing to go to war as a witness to the world that the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, reigns. Other Christians, such as us Lutherans, follow a tradition that includes Just War Theory, “which requires certain conditions to be met before the use of military force is considered morally right. 

These principles are:

1.      A just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.

2.      A war is just only if it is waged by a legitimate authority. Even just causes cannot be served by actions taken by individuals or groups who do not constitute an authority sanctioned by whatever the society and outsiders to the society deem legitimate.

3.      A just war can only be fought to redress a wrong suffered. For example, self-defense against an armed attack is always considered to be a just cause (although the justice of the cause is not sufficient--see point #4). Further, a just war can only be fought with "right" intentions: the only permissible objective of a just war is to redress the injury.

4.      A war can only be just if it is fought with a reasonable chance of success. Deaths and injury incurred in a hopeless cause are not morally justifiable.

5.      The ultimate goal of a just war is to re-establish peace. More specifically, the peace established after the war must be preferable to the peace that would have prevailed if the war had not been fought.

6.      The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered. States are prohibited from using force not necessary to attain the limited objective of addressing the injury suffered.

7.      The weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians. The deaths of civilians are justified only if they are unavoidable victims of a deliberate attack on a military target.”

              Additionally, this Church, the ELCA, in 1995, created a document “For Peace in God’s World” which particularized our understanding of Just War Theory to the challenges of the 20^th and 21^st century. Here are a few stand out statements:

            “Wars, both between and within states, represent a horrendous failure of politics. The evil of war is especially evident in the number of children and other noncombatants who suffer and die.”

            “Helping the neighbor in need may require protecting innocent people from injustice and aggression. While we support the use of nonviolent measures, there may be no other way to offer protection in some circumstances than by restraining forcibly those harming the innocent. We do not, then--for the sake of the neighbor--rule out possible support for the use of military force. We must determine in particular circumstances whether or not military action is the lesser evil.”

            “From the posture of the just/unjust war tradition, the aim of all politics is peace. Any political activity that involves coercion should be held accountable to just/unjust war principles. They are important for evaluating movements, sanctions, embargoes, boycotts, trade policies to reward or punish, and other coercive but nonviolent measures.”

            And finally, and most solemn, "Any decision for war must be a mournful one."

            And so, I conclude this letter as I did the last two, Kyrie Eleison.