In my last blog I argued that the armed attacks on Nazi Germany and imperial Japan which formed the basis of the Second World War were morally unjustified. They were an incredibly destructive course of action, which ultimately led to the even greater threat of worldwide nuclear conflict. Readers might leap to the conclusion that if I do not think that this war was morally justified, I probably do not think that any war would be. But this is a mistaken impression. I am not a total pacifist. Some defensive wars may be justifiable. Even some invasions may have been. I have in mind cases where the invaders know with virtual certainty that they can secure a good outcome for the people of the invaded country and everyone else affected – the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983 was perhaps an example of this.
But I now wish to shift the perspective somewhat by considering not military action per se, but simply the possession by countries of armed forces. Now one might think that since I have argued that war may occasionally be justified, I would regard the possession of armed forces ready to be utilised under the appropriate circumstances as morally acceptable. But I am much more resistant to this than might be expected from what I have said so far.
The trouble is that almost no country on Earth can boast a good record of behaving responsibly with extensive armed forces. Consider America. It may have acted laudably in Grenada (may have – I don’t really know enough about it to be certain), but most of the time it acts very badly indeed. (Vietnam, Iraq, and many other cases come to mind - including, as we saw previously, Germany and Japan.) Heavily armed countries do not, as a rule, do their utmost to steer clear of conflict, using their weapons only as a last resort. If they do not have a good reason to use their weapons, they tend to find bad ones. Of course, the bad reasons are usually not openly acknowledged. Instead, the talk is of ‘vital national interests’ or ‘national security’ (often tendentiously interpreted) or of the pressing humanitarian needs of beleaguered countries (usually rather selectively chosen). An honest estimate of the costs to everyone affected is rarely made. And the real reasons – such things as national pride and a desire for more than one's fair share of certain resources – are rarely made clear.
But is it not correct to say that nations need armed forces to defend themselves against potential aggressors? Against this, I would suggest that the need is often overestimated. If we look at the origins of enmity between nations and how this frequently leads to war, we find it is rarely the case that there are objectionable actions only on one side. For a particularly clear example, we can again cite the Second World War. At the end of the First World War, the victorious powers – Britain, France, and the U.S. - 'punished' Germany for its aggression by demanding large reparation payments. The exact degree to which this action contributed to the rise of Hitler and the Nazis has been debated by historians, but it seems more than likely that the sense of national humiliation which it brought about was easily exploited by Hitler to further his political and military aims. Britain and the other countries involved could instead have behaved in a more constructive way, with the result that the German acts of aggression leading to the Second World War would have been less likely to occur. When one country's interests are threatened by another country’s questionable behaviour, its government all too often seeks to increase its support at home by taking disproportionate retaliatory measures. This increases tension and makes it more difficult to find a peaceful resolution of the problem. Hostilities can eventually seem unavoidable – but only because of intemperate behaviour on both sides. Cases of complete moral asymmetry in which one of the nations is completely in the wrong and the other completely innocent are quite rare.
But now, to consider a specific instance, let's focus on the case of Britain at the time of writing (that is, the middle of 2021). Should the U.K. have armed forces? Now there are of course certain countries and groups which do not have the best of intentions towards the U.K. They include, for example, Russia and certain Islamic terrorist groups. However, it is not clear that the U.K. has always behaved wisely in such matters. From the very inception of the Soviet Union, Britain sought to undermine it. Though allied with the Soviets during World War Two, the British were later active participants in the Cold War against the Soviets, mainly through espionage. This hostility has continued to a large extent after the demise of the Soviet Union. Previously, Britain could point to the autocratic character of the Soviet regime, arguing that a militarily powerful tyranny of this kind needed to be kept in check. But however convincing this may have been at the time (and it overlooks the possibility that Soviet aggression may have stemmed largely from understandable paranoia), it has little force now, since Putin, though an autocrat, appears to have no desire for world domination.
In the case of Islamic terrorists, Britain again has itself to blame to a large extent. As an imperial power in the Middle East, it set up a homeland for Jews (a questionable act in itself, since it hardly made sense to create a ‘Jewish state’ where many non-Jews were already living), but in 1948 abandoned it in the face of conflict between the Jewish settlers and the Arab inhabitants. Since then, it has done little to oppose the expansion of the Israeli state and has been effectively indifferent to the oppression of the Palestinians. The British also joined America in pursuing a 'War on Terror', involving military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq and, at home, erosion of civil liberties. Such actions have provided a political pretext for various acts of terrorism such as the London bombings in 2005 and the Manchester Arena attack in 2017.
The last point is very important, as currently, the only significant military threats to the U.K are not from nation states like Russia, but from terrorists, and the troops and weapons which it has are mostly useless against them, unless they are deployed to invade countries protecting the terrorists but doing this tends to produce consequences (including increasing terrorist recruitment) which make it almost always contrary to a sensible balancing of harms and benefits.
In my view, a somewhat different approach to combating terrorism ought to be tried. There would be two aspects to the strategy. The first is conventional, consisting in the maintenance of a high level of security, including effective undercover operations, to minimise as far as possible the chances of any attack being successful. For the second plank of the strategy, convicted terrorists should be detained to take part in certain activities. The first activity would be to receive and consider an apology from the government for the sorts of actions described above which have made them angry with Britain. The second part would consist in attempts to achieve restorative justice by organising meetings with victims and their relatives aimed at reconciliation. When an offender has sincerely participated in this programme and appears to have absorbed the truths it has exposed him to, he can be considered for release into the community. The aim of this proposal is to prevent, as far as possible, further terrorist attacks by using both conventional security measures and sincere attempts to overcome the differences and mistrust which lead to such attacks.
Some critics of adopting a conciliatory approach have pointed out that many terrorists have not personally been victimised by Western imperialism. On the contrary, they are often privileged young men who have arguably benefited from the pro-Western stance of their countries. (This was true of the 9/11 ringleaders, for example.) However, this overlooks the fact that such individuals often identify with their co-religionists, such as the Palestinians, who are suffering at the hands of Western-backed governments. Such anger, though it may in a sense be vicarious, does need to be sympathetically addressed.
Even so, to many these proposals it will appear utterly unrealistic. In particular, it seems to take no account of the rawness of the feelings involved. It is ridiculous, it might be said, to expect the victims of egregious acts of terrorism to sit down with their attackers and try to empathise with them. It may appear equally unrealistic to expect that the terrorists themselves would be likely to change their hostile attitudes and violent tendencies as a result of such a process.
Such a quick dismissal is, I would contend, unfair. However, my essential purpose here is unaffected by the question of how exactly we should deal with convicted terrorists. My main point is that it is not, at any rate, through being a heavily armed nation that the problem can be solved. Some contend that nations need to have a wide range of sophisticated weapons to be able to respond appropriately in a world of unpredictable threats. But the trouble with this argument is that it could be used to justify an indefinitely high level of expenditure on weaponry, with other important needs such as health and education grievously suffering as a result. Worse still, it is highly plausible to suggest that the possession of these arsenals actually puts the country in greater danger, for purely defensive intentions may be mistaken for plans of aggression - an especially alarming prospect in the case of nuclear weapons.
So, to clarify my position: We should not have armed forces, though, if we do have them, there may be some circumstances in which their use is justified.