So what you actually mean given your caveat at the end of the OP is that declaring war is unjust, not that war is unjust. Right?

1.When faced with conflict and loss, people should choose the least damaging option.

2.The losses from war outweigh other peaceful solutions such as negotiation and political means.

3. When faced with conflict and loss, war is not the least costly option.

4. Unless it is unavoidable, If something causes harm and damage to people, it is unjust.

5. The war is avoidable.

6. The war causes harm and damage to people.

Conclusion: Therefore, a war is unjust. — Howard

Seems a bit of a messy argument. I don't have a strong view on this topic, but this seems somewhat naïve to my eye. Perhaps defining what a war is might be useful too.

Let's just take a few premises at random.

1.When faced with conflict and loss, people should choose the least damaging option. — Howard

How do you know what the least damaging option is? How do you not know that a small war in 2022 might prevent a much larger, more lethal war in 2024 saving millions of lives?

2. Peaceful solutions like negotiation or politics do not always work. Can you prove they do? Could we have negotiated with Hitler? Could the holocaust have been prevented by just sitting down and having a diplomatic chat with the Nazi's?

4. Does not make sense logically. Something causing harm and damage to people is not necessarily unjust. It might be regrettable, but unjust? Are cars unjust? Is Coke unjust?

5. The war is avoidable. Really? Which war is this? You could argue that most things in theory are avoidable, except death and taxes. But in practice this is just a statement that requires evidence to back it up. If Russia attacked London would war be avoidable?

Does just war exist？ — Howard

Yes. Militarily you invade or attack my country, how is my defensive casus belli against your military forces (and country) not just?

If one is an absolute pacifist, then no war can be just.

The Roman Catholic Church's definition of a just war is:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated .

Presumably Catholic teaching should conform to the teachings of Jesus. I don't recollect Jesus saying that there must be serious prospects of success.

Would you kindly rank a few wars. Here are several wars; which of these were just/unjust?

American Revolutionary War
Mexican American War
American Civil War
WWI
WWII
Vietnam
Iraq
Afghanistan

Of these, I would rank the American Civil War and WWII as more or less "just". The Revolutionary War was probably not necessary. The Mexican American War was an expansionary war. WWI was far too bloody and too vague to be counted as just. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were unjust wars, according to the principles of Catholic Just War doctrine.

The justness of the civil war to first preserve the union and secondly to end slavery is somewhat ambiguous. Maybe in the long run the Northern Union would have been better off without the Southern Confederacy--or maybe not. Slavery should not have occurred in the first place, but it did. How else to eliminate it?

WWII seems unambiguously to have been just (from the allied perspective). The two main Axis states--Germany and Japan--were intent on something between continental and world dominance. Other nations, like Britain, had achieved world domination. Was the British Empire a) better than b) worse than c) about the same as the intended Axis Empire?

WWII brought an end to the Japanese, German, and British empires. The US took its place as the dominant national power, a role we reluctantly shared with the USSR.

So: war can be just; it usually isn't.

So: war can be just; it usually isn't. — Bitter Crank

:up:

Also, I want to clarify that declaring a war is different from self-defense. If a country is invading another country, the self-defending country should not be considered as declaring war. — Howard

What you claim is that war out of self defense is just. That is the problem, when is self defense justified and by what means may a country defend itself? the state of affairs in this framework is very clear cut, either there is war or there is peace. However, the problem is that of 'casus belli'. What infringement can trigger your self defense justification?

Is the notion of a just war tenable/defensible?

It depends...do we/should we permit killing in self defense?

I see now why rape (so called Korean, Chinese, etc. comfort women are still acting as if WW2 hasn't ended) is never forgiven. It isn't killing..or is it? :chin:

There is no just war. (Do not start me with self-defense as it is a silly notion).
War happens because diplomacy and agreement failed. Country A might have a compelling reason to invade country B, but a compelling reason (and it might even be necessary to invade) is not the same as just war. If country A is forced to declare war, A is doing it not because it is a just thing to do. A is doing it because it is the only thing left to do.

Wars cannot be just or unjust; a war is not a moral agent, nor are states. The individuals participating in wars are moral agents, and whether they act justly must be considered on a case-by-case basis.

To judge wars (or the states the conduct them) as just or unjust is inaccurate.

Ultimately war is about violence, and in my view violence is fundamentally an unjust means. Use of it is always bad and undesirable. Though, one can imagine situations in which one has no choice, or the alternatives are arguably worse. That still wouldn't make violence justified. Rather it creates a dilemma without any good outcomes.

Aut consilio aut ense (Either by meeting or by sword/war). Thank god! Meeting (negotiations) is the first option. That must count for something, oui? Upon seeing an armed soldier assuming a shoot to kill stance, we have to remind ourselves, poor brute, he has no choice! Nobody resorts to violence unless backed into a corner: neca ne neceris (kill lest you be killed). Are some of us overreacting?

Does just war exist？ — Howard

That question doesn’t really make much sense to me.

There are ‘reasons’ to start a war. Any reason can seem ‘justified’ in the eye of the beholder, and I don’t find it inconceivable that a scenario could not be imagined in which a declaration of war was what I would call ‘appropriate’ - maybe a ‘global threat’ instigated by another body of people that would indirectly cause death/genocide.

In reality the chances of such hypothetical scenarios coming into play is likely really small. This is why people talk of ‘justification’ for any action. There is a need to weigh and balance the good against better and the bad against worse rather than to just assume everything as merely good versus bad (which in my personal experience does not exist other than in abstraction/delusion).

Defending against an invasion is just as long as the invader isn't just in their invasion.
An invasion that is just needs to have a just cause.
A just cause for invading requires the invaded to conduct human rights violations, genocide, global threat or war crimes.

Those are absolutes that need to be existing. Some nations (cough Russia cough), use invented reasons, i.e false flag operations, to create the illusion of a just cause. But for a war to be truly just there needs to be no question as to the reasons being just, they need to essentially exist.

To just boil down war into only just or unjust and there can only be one answer is essentially making an enormous simplification of what "war" is.

For example, a war to stop Hitler is considered by most to be just. The lives saved by taking down his delusional empire were worth the lives lost. If we were to speculate just giving Hitler what he wanted just to save lives for the moment would have led to massive deaths at the hands of that empire, maybe even prolonging that regime for decades.

To blindly look at war as a spreadsheet of death and suffering statistics doesn't lead anywhere. It's as empty as high hippies dancing around singing about love peace and understanding. While all would agree with the will for peace, they have a naive perspective that just because they live and breathe love, everyone else is the same. This bias creates ideas and idealisms around peace that ignore those who lust for blood. Just as we have people in society that are broken, like for example serial killers, similar people are not unable to exist in positions of power. And through countless psychological experiments, it's been proven how bad people are at being genuinely good all the time.

There will therefore always exist people in power that go too far. Who start wars, who kill, who conduct genocide for no other reason than their own broken selves.

To initiate warfare to stop such people is always just. As long as the intention is to stop them and not be like them when doing so.

Just as we can discuss the negatives of a police force, the state having that monopoly of violence, it's not black and white, police always bad or always good. But no one would argue that when bad things happen and police stop it with violence, it saves lives, it fixes the situation for the moment. The same goes for war, it's a way to halt a progression out of control, to stop something bad to become worse. When all peaceful means to stop something bad fails, there has to be an act of violence that becomes required.

So it's rather not a question of unjust or just war, it's about morality. When is a nation, a leader or someone else in power, immoral? And when is that person or group so immoral that it justifies killing them to stop them? If that moral question is solved, it becomes a blueprint for a just or unjust war.

FIGHT-OR-FLIGHT-OR-FREEZE RESPONSE

3 options in an emergency (life-threatening situation):

1. FIGHT
2. FLIGHT
3. FREEZE

Just wars don't exist!

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/466473

Some more just war theory background.

War is just. The modern technology-based means are unjust.

"There is no just war....diplomacy failed...etc."

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic reasoning that feels nothing is worth a war is worse. A man who thinks there is nothing worth fighting for, or who cares about nothing more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who can never be free unless made, and kept so, by the exertions of better men than himself." - J.S. Mill

To me, even when diplomacy fails, every living human has the right to defend himself against harm, right or wrong. It would be silly to enact a law of any kind that a person who thinks he is in the right must still cast aside his defense and submit to someone else intent upon imposing his/her will on them whom he thinks is wrong so that the aim of a warless society can be sustained or achieved.

Further, to me yet again, it is a moral duty to prevail when you feel justified values, principles, or laws exist without which you would rather die. The honest and inevitable outcome if I am wrong is that nobody should ever defend those things, even when every other living creature agrees that you are in the right on the matter of division. If there is such a thing as a God, and that entity insists that you are correctly oriented to a matter of division with another, you must submit and at worst do nothing to prevail against the forces opposite because somehow the war you contemplate is unjust. I can't see the logic.

Whether it does or not, hypocrisy surely does. As in, any nation, group of people, or even individual has a right to kill, obliterate another if they are so able to or perhaps in need to do so. Who is to say either entity be it plural or individual is simply failing to cultivate what they need to prevent such action by their own inability or other state. Everyone's cause for death and destruction is usually just, if not in their own mind. So. There are two factions.

Of course, things are not always black and white. We know what we are told and allowed to know. Little more. I suppose, in short, an unjust war that was successful will likely never be heard of after the fact.

To me, even when diplomacy fails, every living human has the right to defend himself against harm, right or wrong. — gloaming

Of course. Any nation being oppressed has the right to defend its sovereignty. So, they enter an unjust war.

I see that if one side aggresses, a war can be unjust, but not all wars are unjust.

A defender of sovereignty, or of any other principle, law, or custom, deemed universal or not by either side or by onlookers, enters a just war if they enter it at all. The initiator of hostilities can be just, as would have been the case when, and if, the North had fired from Fort Sumpter, and not been the recipient of the first shots. It would have been a tactical error to have done so, but that's another matter. IOW, an aggressor is not de facto wrong.

Would it be just to come to the aid of people in one nation where the powers that be are systematically killing/torturing/raping them?

In simple terms it is a just cause to stop such acts even if it meant going to war.

A defender of sovereignty, or of any other principle, law, or custom, deemed universal or not by either side or by onlookers, enters a just war if they enter it at all. — gloaming

It's cause you think of wars you saw in movies. The brave underdog nation defending its territory. War is a political relationship. Let's read up on history as to the timeline of what led to a war.

Would it be just to come to the aid of people in one nation where the powers that be are systematically killing/torturing/raping them?

In simple terms it is a just cause to stop such acts even if it meant going to war. — I like sushi

Yes. So it becomes just? There is only one war in your scenario. It isn't just when there's raping, torture, and killing. One enters an unjust war. And winning an unjust war could not make it just.

You're straw manning the argument. You have introduced sovereignty, rape, torture. These are naturally widely understood as unjust, but they needn't be appended solely to wars.

BTW, I spend 30 years as an officer practicing and studying war professionally. Later, I did graduate work in conflict analysis and management. Later still, I taught a professional development course for junior officers at the 400 level that was titled 'Leadership and Ethics'. Very little of my learning was gleaned from movies.

Sorry, didn’t realise this was some stupid word game. Bye

You have introduced sovereignty, rape, torture. These are naturally widely understood as unjust, but they needn't be appended solely to wars. — gloaming

It wasn't me who introduced these elements. It's I like sushi.

BTW, I spend 30 years as an officer practicing and studying war professionally. — gloaming

Then tell me an example of actual war that's just. What nation started a just war?

Sorry, didn’t realise this was some stupid word game. Bye — I like sushi

Goodbye. Word game is a catch all argument if one is not happy with the way the thread is going.