On this week's episode of the Rational Security podcast, the various co-hosts had a version of the argument that many of us have had with our friends over the past year or more—namely: the justification, or lack thereof, of some of the Israeli government's actions under international law. They weren't talking about Gaza or the West Bank this time, however; rather: the discussion focused on Israel's choice to bomb targets inside Syria after the fall of Assad's government.
The scale of these attacks has been astonishing. The New York Times notes that the IDF launched as many as 350 air strikes at Syrian military targets, in the wake of Assad's ouster, and before the incoming government (whatever form or none it may ultimately take) could even take power. Reportedly, these strikes demolished almost the entire Syrian navy—as well as various other assets (including, according to the IDF, the former Assad regime's chemical weapons stockpile—which none of us should miss!)
The reporting on these attacks has emphasized the brazenness of taking out another country's military assets at a moment of government transition. And indeed, there is something cynically opportunistic about striking at this moment. It feels objectionable to hobble a new government's defense capacity before it has even had a chance to establish what form or character it will take (even if there are sound reasons to be worried about its future trajectory).
But I also find myself thinking: wait, weren't there people presumably still stationed on those Syrian navy vessels? Am I missing something here? To diminish a historic adversary's military capacity when it is in a brief window between governments is one thing—arguable enough in itself. But if hundreds of Syrian soldiers and sailors were also killed in these strikes, while awaiting orders from a new government that hadn't even taken power yet—that seems even more barbaric and indefensible.
I suppose one could argue that Israel and Syria were in a state of de facto active hostilities—because of the Assad regime's policy of funneling weapons to Hezbollah. In that case, striking military targets becomes simply a continuation of an ongoing conventional war.
However, I find this argument strained when the attacks came after Assad's departure for Russia. The Syrian military—which didn't do much to defend his regime in its final days—were presumably awaiting instructions from their new masters. Many of them didn't seem to be very fond of Assad in the final analysis, and—to repeat—we shouldn't prejudge the incoming government lest our worst fears become self-fulfilling. So: I don't think Israel could be seen as being still at war with Syria when they struck.
Is there any other defense of the attack? Some of the Rational Security hosts floated the possibility of analyzing this as a preemptive strike in self-defense (which seems to be how the IDF is viewing and characterizing it). But, the hosts then acknowledged: for a preemptive strike to be justifiable under international law, there has to be a genuine imminent threat. Simply fearing what a new hypothetical government might do with its weapons some day is not enough.
Of course, there have always been cynics who doubt the validity of this whole line of analysis. They say that the distinction between aggression and self-defense is an arbitrary construct anyway—since any strike against a powerful adversary is always ipso facto defensive. Francis Bacon offers this argument in its classic form, in one of his Essays. Nations don't have to wait around for a "precedent injury or provocation," he argues: since the presence of a dangerous foe is threatening in itself to their interests.
And indeed, it's true that aggression and self-defense probably sit on a spectrum with one another, and the distinction between them is somewhat artificial. Israel could argue: why not take out these weapons now, since we have good reason to believe they may be turned against us in future, based on past practice? Why do we have to wait for these fears to actually be fulfilled before we act?
But if we recognize this argument as valid, we very quickly lose any principled basis to oppose any form of aggression. After all—as E.H. Carr has pointed out in a classic study—every aggressor believes that they are acting from a motive of "self-defense." The enemy's attempts to increase their own power can be seen as disguised "aggression"—or as preparation for future aggression—and so one's own quest for power at their expense can always be reframed as preemptive defense.
Indeed, this is of course Russia's argument right now in Ukraine. One of the various justifications they have floated for their actions, through their international mouthpieces—which have by no means added up to one coherent argument—is that the invasion was purportedly necessary to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. It was therefore a "defensive" war, in their eyes. But to any unbiased observer, of course, the sophistry of this is plain: the invasion was a quintessential example of aggression.
If the hard distinction between aggression and self-defense is confessedly something of a fiction, therefore—it is nonetheless a fiction that is absolutely essential to maintain, unless we are to collapse into total moral relativism, and all international conduct is to become a Hobbesian war of all against all. And this state of affairs, however disappointing, shouldn't really surprise us. The laws of war are full of arbitrary and artificial distinctions of this sort, which are nonetheless invaluable safeguards.
I recall having this debate with a friend earlier this year, after Israel's successful "exploding pager" attack against Hezbollah. My friend defended it. While admittedly terrifying to civilians in Lebanon, he argued—the attack was actually far more "targeted" than conventional airstrikes would have been. In other words, the exploding pagers probably killed fewer innocent parties than dropping bombs would have done—since they were specifically pagers linked to Hezbollah operatives.
Still, though—there seemed to me something distinctly shameful and underhanded about this tactic. My reaction to it was something like that of a character in Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers, when he first hears reports that both sides are using poison gas in the trenches of the First World War: "this is not a chivalrous weapon." And it would seem that international law agrees with me: the laws of war actually prohibit the booby-trapping of everyday civilian items as a tactic of war.
Is that an arbitrary distinction—when it is apparently considered lawful to bomb people with conventional weapons from the skies? To a certain extent, yes. But so is the prohibition on chemical weapons, for that matter. It's not entirely obvious why it is morally worse to kill someone by burning their lungs with mustard gas than it is to burn their bodies with explosives. Both are ghastly fates. And yet, international law does make a distinction between them.
It's impossible to describe why we should draw these arbitrary lines without recourse to somewhat antiquated concepts—which themselves only seem to underline the artificiality of the whole construct: terms like "fair play," "chivalry," "honor," etc. These terms threaten to make of war an aristocratic game. And yet, as Johan Huizinga argues in his classic study on the "play-element in civilization," Homo Ludens, being willing to treat war as a game in this sense is indispensable to civilization.
War is not a "game," for Huizinga, in the sense that it is unserious. As Huizinga notes, games can be played "in deadly earnest." And he recognizes that the stakes of war are among the highest in any game. Yet, the valuable and civilization-enhancing thing about games is that they are governed by rules. By agreeing to play by these terms, therefore, one learns to practice "self-restraint" and self-limitation. One is forced to operate according to the laws of something other than sheer power and force.
Is the distinction between aggression and self-defense somewhat artificial, therefore? Yes. Is the distinction between booby-trapping pagers and bombing people from the skies, on grounds of "chivalry," artificial? Yes. But these distinctions are all the more valuable and worth maintaining, for that reason. "[C]ivilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain play-element," Huizinga writes, which he defines here as accepting that one's actions are "enclosed within certain bounds freely accepted."
He goes on: "Civilization will, in a sense, always be played according to certain rules, and true civilization will always demand fair play."
Of course, Israel has spent the past year or longer fighting foes who recognize no such principle of self-restraint on their conduct. Hezbollah has been lobbing rockets randomly at Israeli territory—with no attempt to seek out military targets, and with seeming total indifference at best as to how many civilians may be in their path. Hamas's violations of the laws of war have meanwhile been even more obvious and unspeakable. So, there is no sense of reciprocity in the laws of war here.
However, the whole point of the laws of war is that they apply regardless of reciprocity. Hamas and Hezbollah, by their actions, have obviously placed themselves outside the realm of civilized war. But that is no reason for their opponents to do the same. Israel, after all, still seeks to defend its actions according to recognized principles of humanity. It still seeks to retain a place within civilization. And so long as it does so—it ought to accept certain outer bounds to its conduct—however "artificial" they may seem.
No comments:
Post a Comment