When Russia attacked Ukraine in February of 2022, many expected them to achieve victory in a matter of days, if not hours. They expected Russian tanks to be rolling into downtown Kyiv and a Russian flag hanging over Mariinskyi Palace by the end of the week. There were even reports that Russian generals, envisioning a swift and immediate victory, had been booking restaurant reservations in Kyiv.
Unfortunately for them, those reservations had to be canceled. This is because a swift and immediate victory never came to pass. In fact, no victory whatsoever came to pass for Russia. Instead, an armed conflict well into its third year with no signs of stopping any time soon has emerged.
From an American point of view, the debate surrounding Ukraine primarily tends to focus on the numbered amount of military aid the U.S. should supply Ukraine to fight the war, if it warrants any aid at all. It has become a partisan wedge that has taken up all of the oxygen on the subject, and the result has been a seemingly strong anti-Ukraine sentiment breaking out among factions of Americans, specifically conservative factions. While the merits of financing allies in foreign countries to fight their wars is a worthwhile discussion, there is a more rudimentary one that needs to be had with regard to Ukraine and Russia. And it is a topic that has immense roots in the history of the Christian faith tradition, as well as western civilization as a whole.
This conversation is on the moral justification of waging violent wars. Or as it is more commonly known today, the Just War Theory.
A very common stance held in the world today is the quasi-pacifist view that all war is bad by its very nature, and that there can never be any good reason for a country or group of people to go to war. The premise starts out good: seeking to avoid mass destruction and death at all costs is indeed a good notion. And it cannot be understated that wars waged in the 21st century are substantially more destructive than any previous period in human history.
So, how can anyone possibly attempt to justify using violence in a war setting? And more over, how can it be the Christians of all people defending the waging of war? The answer lies in its inevitability.
The Christian defense of using armed force in wartime understands the basic premise of the human soul. The simple fact of nature is that, in a fallen world, violence will always be initiated, and engaging with it is almost always unavoidable. Christian or not Christian, it is indisputable that evil objectively exists in humanity. All mainstream philosophies, religions, and worldviews yield this conclusion, even if they differ on other parts.
With the recognition that the capacity for evil that exists in every man, the inevitability of war is well understood by the Christian tradition, which necessitates a response. And that response is rooted in defense.
The heart of the Just War doctrine is self-defense; that the innocent have the moral and God-given right to use the appropriate force necessary to repel evil that is being inflicted upon them. The Catholic Church, which has historically been the largest and most powerful of the Christian traditions, lays out the most concretely defined doctrine of just war.
One of the strict requirements needed to define a war effort as morally justified is the premise that the damage inflicted by the aggressor must be grave and perilous, all other efforts to safeguard peace have either been tried or are nonpractical, the prospects of success must be serious, and the use of violence must not be more grave or wicked in nature than the aggression. This firm and specified defense of moral warfare leaves almost no room for subjective abuses and cannot easily be taken advantage of to justify petty conflicts or acts of violence by governments or terrorist groups. Rather, it is exceedingly hard for many historical conflicts to meet all of these criteria.
With a clear set of guidelines in place to define a just war, we must ask ourselves a very important question: Why should we care in the first place? What is the importance, or even the significance, of the just war doctrine in the present day?
The answer lies in the conviction necessary to preserve God’s Kingdom.
The just war doctrine presupposes that there must be something, and therefore someone, worth defending. To defend is to preserve. One might even call it conserving what is good for society. In Ukraine, peaceful and law-abiding citizens of a sovereign state are being threatened by a tyrannical invasion seeking to impose societal slavery upon them. And several actions of the Russian military, such as targeting civilian hubs, kidnapping then deporting thousands of Ukrainian children, and specifically targeting critical infrastructure with the intent to cause suffering, are examples of evil being inflicted on a society en masse. It is not compassionate, progressive, or otherwise moral to deny those people the right to defend themselves, and their families, from this imposing evil.
The same thing is true for our own culture, where once strong and moral institutions have been recrafted as dispensaries of sin. The phrase “culture war” is often used to describe the fight between the left and the right over the future of America. How can we be expected to fight a war without recognizing the reason we are fighting it?
The war in of itself is over the entirety of America’s soul. The fear of being combative or seeing conflict as contradictory to the life of a Christian, is a radical mistake. For as long as evil men persist in the world it will be a necessity for people of good will to stand up and fight it.
When it comes in the form of a traditional war and a tyrannical usurper such as Vladimir Putin, the call to arms is a literal one, using military force, and ultimately violence, to repel his agenda.
And when it comes in the form of cultural Marxism, gradual indoctrination, gender mutilation, and child murdering, the call to arms is for men and women in all fields of society to stand up and push back.
To do nothing would be pacifist, surrendering what is good and leaving it decimated. But to stand up for what is right, and to fight back against it? That would be fighting for God’s Kingdom in concurrence with the Just War tradition.
And just like all other traditions before it, the Just War doctrine will survive so long as we preserve it in our service to God and country.
