 Welcome back to War Economy and State. This is the Mises Institute's Foreign Policy and International Relations podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, executive editor with the Mises Institute. And with me is Zachary Yoast, one of our foreign policy scholars. And we're back to talk about foreign policy in terms of just war theory. Now this has come up considerably more often in recent days, not really in name. I don't hear it mentioned a whole lot in using that exact phrase in the media. Scholars really are more the ones that mention it. And I've had readers criticize things I've written about the war in Israel right now. And they accuse me of being some sort of liberal, leftist, progressive, because I have expressed some reservations about the conduct of the war in Hamas. These people are apparently unaware that my reservations come from thousand-year-old ideas of warfare that come from Christendom, from late antiquity. And so either these people are just willfully ignorant about Western ideas of morality and war, or they're being dishonest toward me. I'm not quite sure what the criticism is. There is absolutely no reason to assume that any criticism of the current war or any war is based on some sort of left-wing commie thing. And so I want to talk a little bit about that. And we're not really going to hit you over the head, I think, with maybe its applications in any particular situation. But I think we will use examples and really just try to talk a little bit about this. And then we'll probably use this in future discussions as well. And so what is just war theory? Well, I think most people tend to date it back in its origins to St. Augustine. So we're talking late antiquity here, fifth and sixth century. And he, however, did not really flesh it out in the sort of details. We now have it. But I think really trying to get a handle on how can the conduct of war by a political leader be made to fit within the idea of Christian morality? And this is generally not something that was a primary concern of political leaders. Historically still isn't really. But there have been attempts throughout Augustine's time and into the Middle Ages where there were even efforts by the church in the Middle Ages to limit warfare by limiting the days of the week on which you could launch any sort of offensive or military operation. And just there was this belief that any effort that would reign in freedom by secular rulers to launch military attacks would be beneficial. However, as anyone who observes foreign affairs has noted, these principles are violated regularly and managing public perceptions of war, managing the public's ideas of what is acceptable in war is extremely difficult. And especially when you start to get into wars of national survival, people tend to forget any concern for morality. And I think we'll talk a little bit about some details there. But the mechanics of it, let's just get right into it. There are two elements, two main categories of the rules of warfare as explained by proponents of just war theory. Now, the first is justice in movement toward war, justice in the declaration of war. This is that you can only begin a war or declare war or begin initiate military actions for a just reason. And this falls under the Latin phrase use oddbellum, that is justice toward war. And so we can look at that and see, all right, what are some of the preconditions in there? And some of the basics here is that the resort to war can be justified only if there is a just cause. So simply a war of aggression, a war to ethnically cleanse a group, a war to simply justify the politically or to enrich the political leaders. Those are arguably unjust reasons for going to war. Now, of course, the things that would be justified under this would be resisting aggression and armed attack on one state and repulsing some sort of horrible unjust act that has been committed against your state by a neighboring state. Or of course, this is developed prior to the existence of states in many areas, your territory or even your clan by a neighboring group. So that's certainly one issue that's usually used to justify the declaration and movement toward war, also protecting your citizens from some sorts of rights violation. This has even been used to justify humanitarian wars. And also some other lesser important conditions would be the war must be declared by some sort of legitimate authority and fought with right intentions. So those are, of course, you can see fairly malleable things. However, it did some group within the state, declare war in the name of the legitimate state. That would be something that would factor into concerns as well. And then there are conditions that concern the consequences of the war. The war must have a reasonable hope of success. This old pagan idea of, well, we have no chance of success, but we're going to go down in a blaze of glory that is not actually compatible with just war theory. Because to die or to enter into war for essentially no reason could not be justified under this line of thinking. And so the war's destructiveness has to serve a purpose that one could hope could actually be accomplished. Another is that war must be a last resort. That is, you've exhausted all possible avenues of diplomacy. And then a final one, which has certainly been a topic of discussion in the current war in Israel is the issue of proportionality in the resort to war. That is, you're supposed to think about what damage is likely to result from the war and if that damage would be, and if the damage you plan to inflict would be disproportionate to the justice served by your cause. So those are things you're supposed to think about when you move to thinking about will we declare war? And then the other element is use in bellow. That is justice in war itself. And these are different conditions, which are also assumed to be independent of the first conditions. That is, you could be just in your movement toward war and your declaration of war, but unjust in the way that you are conducting war. That's a more likely situation than the reverse, which I suppose you could be somehow there might be an example of moving toward war for unjust reasons, but conducting the war in a way that somehow satisfies use in bellow. I can't think of any examples, but I can certainly think of examples of the reverse. And so in these cases in use in bellow, they're there first and foremost, the most important is discrimination. That is distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants and that there are legitimate and nonlegitimate targets of military force. They're, of course, often not agreement about who these people are. And it should be noted that use in bellow does not preclude the possibility of death of noncombatants based on legitimate uses of force. That is, if noncombatants are not actually targeted, that it's not terror bombing, such as, say, the firebombing of Dresden, which was designed to demoralize the population and to convince the population that they should just give up without that target being a real military target. That would then not satisfy the requirements here. However, in cases where you bombed a military fort and civilians nearby were killed, that would not, under most people's readings, violate use in bellow. That's often called collateral damage. So you can't intend the deaths of noncombatants in this case, but there's certainly significant leeway there in terms of what you can do. There is a necessity condition that is what you are what you are doing in any particular in any specific tactical situation actually advances justice and the conclusion of the war. And then here there is also a proportionality condition separate from the proportionality in determining if war should be started. This is, well, it will a specific act and the conduct of the war in all in general be disproportionate to the harm that was inflicted on your country. So if your country did not suffer many civilian deaths committed by your enemy and you bomb one of their cities filled with old men, women and children, especially if this was not absolutely necessary, then that would not be justifiable under the situation. And so, of course, then all sorts of debates over whether something is proportional or not. And I'll look at some of that because I have found the discussion over proportionality to be pretty dumb in the current situation where people who support the war are providing really lame definitions of what constitutes proportionality. But that's just the basics. And a lot of this is reflected in the Geneva Conventions and especially in 18th, 19th and 20th century ideas of war. And that was, of course, as everybody knows, just from watching movies. The 18th century was arguably, I mean, obviously, there are many exceptions, arguably in many cases, sort of a golden age in terms of attempts to avoid the excesses of war right before you're burning your city down. We'll let you know ahead of time so you can evacuate that sort of thing. Of course, all of that went out the window in the 20th century, but some still cling to to these sorts of ideas of how can we avoid the worst consequences of war? So those are those are the basic principles. But I'll ask you, Zach, how well how well are we doing on the living according to these ideas and how popular are these notions in the actual practice of war today? Right. Yeah, I would say not not too popular. And I think it just my interpretation of just war theory is that it stems from a belief in natural law, which predates Christianity. I might be mistaken on this, but I believe that one of the criticisms of Julius Caesar before he crossed the Rubicon was that he was waging an unjust war in Gaul. I think Cato, the younger, made that argument. I might be mistaken there, but so this idea has been around. But I would argue, from my perspective, we live in a fallen world. So there is this, you know, right reason. There is this law that exists outside of human creation, but that we live in a fallen world. So we're never, ever going to be able to live up to that law. And even when people are actually trying to do so, it's not going to work in that there are competing. You can have two parties who are legitimately trying to live up to natural law and just war, who come to differing conclusions. Now, I do think it's helpful, though, just as a way of thinking. If you find yourself, you know, just saying, you know, carpet bomb them all. Glass insert X plays here. Well, then let's let's hold on. Let's let's stop and think about this a second. And I do think it's important to emphasize, though, that I I there's I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between just war and actual pragmatic action. I would say it's I think I've used this phrase on the show before. I'm quite fond of it. It was worse than a crime. It was a mistake. I think that can probably be said for a lot of violations of just war theory. You use the example of the firebombing of Dresden. As far as I'm aware, most of the studies on this issue show that strategic bombing campaigns, you know, leveling cities and whatnot does not tend to undermine support for the regime. It tends to produce a rally around the flag effect, you know. Oh, gee, the enemies are carpet bombing my city. I'm not going to blame the government. I'm going to blame the enemy. Look how ruthless they are. We better, you know, defeat them or who knows what they'll do before defeated. And similarly, I think this you can make a case that the Nazi Nazi Germany undermined its ability to conquer the Soviet Union by their just waging a genocide. And this is a view also held by Russian nationalists that, you know, and I'll just sort of side note here, Russian nationalists tend to view the Soviet Union as a disaster and hate Stalin on all of that sort of stuff. So one interpretation I've read is the reason millions and millions of Soviet soldiers surrendered to the Germans at the beginning of the war on the Eastern Front was because, well, it's not worth dying for Stalin. You know, he's a crazy person. You know, society has been totally messed up by the Soviet rule. Well, then the Germans killed like two million Soviet prisoners by like December of 1941, if I'm not mistaken. So it, you know, the quote unquote great patriotic war, I would argue, and this is also what Russian nationalists today argue was not about, you know, oh, we must protect Stalin. We must protect the glorious Soviet Union. It was more like, you know, this is a war of existence. These Germans are going to kill everyone. And I mean, we literally have their plans to do that had they succeeded in conquering more of the Soviet Union. And it was less, you know, the glorious Communist Revolution and more, you know, oh, my family, my friends, my, you know, town, these barbarians are going to kill us all. And in turn, you know, when a war is especially existential, it becomes just unimaginably brutal. I mean, the number that I agree with is a 27 million Soviets were killed during the great patriotic war, as they call it. That's sort of just unfathomable. And when the Soviets reached, you know, Prussia and then Eastern Germany, they, you know, let's just say they were not practicing just war. I mean, it was extremely brutal. I was just, you know, I think there's a book, which I have not read but has been recommended to me called Bloodlands, I think, which is about the war on the Eastern Front, which is probably one of the most brutal conflicts in human history. And there's, we've talked about the. It's my it's slipping my mind, but sort of the force to German militia, which was far inferior to the Swiss model. But, you know, it was basically the same thing that happened in the Soviet Union in reverse, where all of the, you know, anyone who could carry a stick was fighting the Soviets because it was just a war of extermination, basically. So all that's to say, there are practical, pragmatic reasons to try and adhere to some extent to just war theory, but not that just war theories, you know, perfect. And I think there are two good quotes from the what's it called the Catechism of the Catholic Church has a section on just war theory. Paragraph 2312 says the mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes illicit between the warring parties, which I think is a good rule of thumb. And, you know, just because war has started, doesn't mean you can just start classing cities. Now, I do have other criticisms going back to just cause of war. But yeah, that's my sort of pitch for pragmatism aligns with just war theory to some extent. Well, and certainly I think the more extreme interpretations that you had of just war theory, and I don't use extreme as a pejorative, just more unusual interpretations, I would say. They can be found in the Middle Ages. There was an extensive anti-war movement led largely by Franciscans, not shockingly, plenty of opposition to the Crusades, which I would argue was a defensive war, actually, and could have been justified under just war theory. But many of the more diehard monks and such felt that it was unjustifiable. And I think it goes back to a lot of thinking in Augustine himself, who, well, Augustine is trying to get this idea. And this also plays into why a lot of people sort of dismiss it today, especially non-Christians, because they're kind of like, well, nice, just war theory, but point out to me a country that has ever followed it and still exists. Which I would argue, actually, some countries that are that are situated in places such as the United States could practice it and still exist. Poland, probably not, I'd but that's an argument for another day. But the reason it seems so extreme and unreasonable, I think, to some people is the way it was practiced by many Franciscans and other opponents of the war and based on this idea by Augustine that it was better to die than to commit sin. And so since the best Christians are the martyrs, essentially, in this early Christian view, that if your city is invaded and such, rather than risk committing some sort of war crime, they wouldn't use that term, but it's equivalent. And again, not all violence is a crime. He wouldn't claim that, but he would claim that if you allow yourself to be overcome by the lust for revenge or if you start interpreting anything you do as illicit, you do actually target women and children that it would be better to simply suffer evil than to commit it. And this was a fairly widespread view among many early Christians, especially your more diehard saints and monks and desert fathers and those sorts of people. And of course, many ordinary people don't find that terribly convincing. Nevertheless, it was a popular view and you can see it in Augustine where it comes up really quite often in city of God and in a lot of his shorter works, where he points out that the problem would say murder, independent of just a single murder or widespread murder, that the main problem is how it endangers the soul of the murderer. And so, oh, you were murdered. You're a child who was murdered by a child murderer. If you're baptized, you probably just go in heaven anyway. And, you know, so now you spend eternity in in sight of God and you're not the one who is in grave danger from this murder act. The the the real danger that is now posed is how the murderer himself is endangered his soul and now is in danger of spending eternity in darkness and pain. And so now, of course, most modern scoff at such notions. However, you can see that the idea of just war theory would be more meaningful to a person who is taking very seriously this idea that if I had to strike a balance between being a martyr or taking action against somebody in a violent way that could end up leading me to sin by by giving me a taste for blood or giving me a allowing me to adopt to myself the libido dominandi that is this idea that I wish to dominate others and I like the act of it that giving into the passions in that way would be worse than being killed in a military conflict. So sure, you're saying, Anthony, of the desert, you would be nodding your head 100 percent. You're a regular person who doesn't take those sorts of ideas very seriously. This might strike you as madness, especially if you're just a non-Christian altogether, which, by the way, Christianity isn't the most popular religion in the Levant at the moment. So you can see why a lot of participants in wars throughout the Middle East aren't aren't particularly taken with just war theory, certainly not as more radical Christian elements. So that gives you some idea of where this came from and how there are certainly disagreements in interpretation. And as Zach, and I think as you'll find just from the discussion between me and Zach, there are lots of interpretations and disagreements over just war theory within the scholarship. I mean, it's just endless discussion in the journals and the books about it and attempts to nail down this aspect or another aspect of just war theory. So this what we're not saying here is here is the correct version of it, because that hasn't been given. Now I have my own interpretations. I actually my interpretations a little bit more extreme to the war avoidance side. But and so I do think that just war theory actually provides many, too many exceptions to what's acceptable in most cases. But we do not deny, as just in some of these examples that Zach has mentioned so far, that under many circumstances, boy, it's just kind of a lost cause to get people to adhere to it, especially when you're starting the conflict with one side, blatantly violating concepts of morality and war, as did the totalitarian Nazi regime, where you're right, there was no need to kill a bunch of prisoners. And all it did was excite your enemy against you, which more savvy conquerors throughout the ages knew that that was exactly not what you should do, that you should make it easy on the conquered parties to join your side. But of course, Hitler, it's such a weird fanatical ideology about the Slavs and all of that. And I guess that just didn't really fit into their their idea. And so once you're in a situation where you feel that, yeah, no matter what you do, you're probably going to be murdered. So it becomes the law of the jungle, essentially, where, OK, if I don't fight back by any means necessary, then we're just all dead. And this is going to be a problem, especially for those groups that are evenly matched or have few defenses against some group from the outside that is seeking to kill you. So if you don't have the luxury of calling in superior military force that might be able to put up effective defenses that could actually stave off conflict and really put you in a position where you could refrain from just savage, hand-to-hand fighting and just killing anyone that you suspect of being an intruder. And these all lend themselves toward violations of just war theory. Then you're going to be in a situation that's that's probably going to lead you down the road of being in violation. Whereas if you were, say, in a situation like the United States where you've got oceans on each side. Yes, the enemy has attacked some fringe area, some borderland, some outpost you have. That's that's a lot easier than in that situation to follow the basic concepts in within just war theory. And and when you are a very wealthy country that has many means of exercising defences or disposal, then I think you probably are in a position where you could be held more accountable, we're actually more guilty for violating just war theory because you had options, whereas some Russian peasant in Western Russia surrounded by Nazis. You could you could hardly blame the guy for just open firing on anyone you don't recognize. And so these are these are very different situations. And I want to go back real quick to talking about the church fathers and whatnot, well, desert fathers and monastic orders and whatnot. And here is one reason why I really love Klaus Rinn. He was recently retired from Catholic University of America. I highly recommend his work, but he makes a distinction between I mean, I don't think this is unique to him, but sort of the emblematic story he uses to draw this distinction is the rich young ruler who comes to Christ and is like, you know, good teacher. I have followed all the commandments, you know, what's next? And Jesus says, you know, give up everything and follow me. And the rich ruler can't do that. Now, they're differing interpretations of that. Usually, at least the interpretation I was raised with was, you know, well, you know, rich people, this person can't give up their material possessions. An alternative interpretation is that this person is called to a different vocation in life, basically. There are those called to the religious life in the sense of like a religious order. And there are people called to other lay non-religious vocations in life, such as, you know, being a leader in a society. And what Rin would argue is that it would be morally wrong for, you know, the leader of a town or city or state to turn the other cheek, as the saying would be. It would not. That would be a dereliction of his moral responsibilities, which are to, you know, steward and protect the society. So that's I find that to be a useful framework. I don't think that, you know, if you're not a pacifist, that you're a bad Christian or something like that, which as you point out, people have argued. So I don't know if you agree with that interpretation or not, but I find that a useful distinction to make in, you know, I'm opposed to pacifism. Well, without turning, that's in the Bible study hour. I would I don't I don't think my my problem with that interpretation contradicts your point, just that in that story from the gospel, that particular guy was clearly being called to the ascetic life because he was directly told by Jesus himself to sell everything. But I would agree that the interpretation is that not everyone is called to that because Jesus clearly didn't go around telling everybody, sell everything you have, give it away and follow me. He only told specific people that. And so, yeah, he told this particular guy that and it doesn't even make it clear that that guy was damned after that, right, just that he had missed his opportunity to achieve his true vocation. And so, yeah, I would that's not really relevant to our overall point here. I just couldn't I just had to add my own two cents on that particular verse. But no, I would agree. Yeah, not everybody is called to the life of the desert father. But that their interpretations are relevant and should be considered. But in the case of, say, you are the leader of a town and heck in the late Middle Ages, right? Bishops after the empire collapsed, they found themselves in those positions. Yeah, exactly. Saint Leo, the great had to go out and negotiate with Attila and convince him to not sack the city of Rome. Now, what went on in that discussion is unclear. But presumably Rome had some means of defense and Leo would have used them if necessary, but preferred not to. So negotiated in some way. Also, it just would violate not not just your moral responsibility to take no action if the vandals are at the gates of your city. It would violate your contractual obligation, right? You've been hired, essentially the division of labor is the reason you have soldiers and people designed to defend your city. So, yes, I would I'm not a pacifist myself. So I would agree. Yeah, security guards serve a real purpose. And especially if they can serve a defensive purpose, that that is extremely important. Of course, those are all real clear cut examples, right? There's others, a horde of barbarians at the gate. You could kill all of the ones that happened to come to the gate for the most part and not violate any just worth here. However, if you went and you found the vandals villages and burned them all to the ground and killed all the women, that would be another matter. But yes, I don't think either you or I are taking the the pacifist position here at all. And certainly it almost nobody argues that just war theory is a pacifist doctrine because it makes so many exceptions. And Augustine himself was was not one in spite of his caution in terms of avoiding the the outcomes. Yeah, I think he was involved in the defense of hippo from the. Yeah, vandals are God. Yeah, that's why he was literally. That was his job. Now, in the in the last siege of his life, he died in bed during the siege. So he had to relegate to delegate those those duties to others. But certainly, yeah, he wouldn't have just said, hey, here, open the gates and let them have it at all our women and children. That was not his position. And I think what you mentioned is a good point to turn to where it gets more foggy with you said, you know, defensive nature and everything, and especially well, really, I suppose for most of history, it's hard to know that weapons aren't, you know, a a Kalashnikov is not inherently defensive or offensive. And that's where the security dilemma comes in, in that, you know, the world is radically uncertain, the knowledge problem. We don't know the intentions of other states. And as we have all these examples through history of, you know, if you're at the mercy of some other state, well, then, you know, then it's the the million, the fate of the millions in the million dialogue from the Peloponnesian war, the strong do what they can in the week, do what they must. And so people don't want to be in that position. And I think that leads to interpretation, trouble, even for people who are, you know, good intentioned and honest when it comes to justifying a war. And we can look at lots of examples from this past century. I recently finished reading How States Think by Mirsheimer and Sebastian Rosado, which was OK. But it has lots of good history in it, which where they point out, you know, from a structural realist perspective, these wars were likely to happen. I mean, Mirsheimer says, whether or not Hitler ever came to power, something like World War Two was likely. And where sort of these preventative wars, preemptive wars come into play is in the relative balance of power where it's right now my state is strong. But projecting to the future, we're going to lose relative power to the Soviet Union, say. So I mean, Mirsheimer and Rosado argue it was a rational decision under their definition of rationality for Nazi Germany to attack the Soviet Union because. That was perceived that they would be at a disadvantage down the road. And it's similar with Imperial Japan's decision to fight. They were not under any illusion that they were had great odds. I mean, there's quotes where they basically say, yeah, we're probably going to lose. But projecting out due to the oil embargo and other things, they're like, in three years, we will be completely at the mercy of anyone else. So either we lose then and are at the enemy's mercy, or we give it a go now. That's not to say, I mean, Japanese committed numerous atrocities, as did Nazi Germany, that violated just war. But you can, I think you can see why that provokes a dilemma of. Well, you could make a case from just war theory that Imperial Japan bombing Pearl Harbor was, you know, made sense from that perspective. Which sort of then it's like, oh, well, World War II was justified by just war theory. How useful is it? So it's, I think, I do think it's useful, but it is not as clean cut as people would like for sure. Well, in many cases, of course, it is clean cut from the you when we're talking about the United States. Oh, for sure, for sure. Yes, right. And as I to get back to now bring it up. So bring up the discussion to the last part of my last comment, which is that wealthy countries are have more luxuries and more choices in war and countries that are situated in a in an advantageous defensive position. So did the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the invasion of some minor Aleutian islands justify the fire bombing of Tokyo that killed tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 men, women and children in a night. And interestingly, Robert McNamara says, No, he says in the fog of war that very good documentary that interviews McNamara just about his whole history, not just his role in Vietnam. He says just point blank. Curtis LeMay and me, this is McNamara speaking, Curtis LeMay and me were behaving as war criminals. If we had lost the war, we would have been tried as war criminals because he agreed that the fire bombing of Japan was not proportional to the chiefs that they were trying to end. And then presumably the nuclear bombs as well would be included in that case. And so that's that's certainly a luxury the United States had because it didn't really. I made the propaganda the American propaganda was the Japanese are going to invade the American mainland any day now, but that was never realistic. And so you simply didn't have to do that. Another example would be not necessarily in the conducting of battle, but in other types of arguable war crimes, which would be a good point, for example, was made that because of the U.S. is relative security, right? That makes the internment of the Japanese seem all the more unnecessary and excessive from the American point of view. And a good point that one could make, though, because you can point out, oh, the Japanese were treated fairly well within the internment camps, obviously. And I would agree not a comparison to a death camp from the Eastern front of Europe. So, okay, I fully fully will admit there's not a comparison there. However, some have made the point as an disciple point that the U.S. didn't have to resort to that sort of treatment. If the U.S. had been losing the war, if the U.S. had been running out of money to conduct the war, you can be sure that the treatment of the Japanese in those internment camps would have been far, far worse. That where would be an easy place to cut food rations if your country is running out of food? Well, you just cut back in all those internment camps and any other prisoners of war. And then, of course, if the Americans were losing the war, it would have been much more easy for them to justify in their own minds. Well, maybe just start killing the people in those internment camps because they're a drain on our population. And you can look at how the Germans freaked out after Stalingrad when it became clear that Germany probably was not going to win this war. And then they start rounding up the dissidents. They start killing more people in the concentration camps. And so the U.S. just simply wasn't in that position at any time during the war. And so had it committed similar sorts of offenses, like, say, Soviet treatment of the Nazis in their camps, that you could have easily made the case that, yeah, this was a much, this was more a clear war crime because they weren't really driven to it in any sense. And so there is the application, I think, and vary from country to country. And then just more recently, right, looking at the American involvement in Iraq, right, very hard to make a case that justified either use oddbellum or use inbellum. I don't see how that could be justified under just war theory at all. You might be able to make the case that the war in Afghanistan satisfied on some level use oddbellum. But the way the war was conducted for 20 years, starving out the population. I mean, these just simply did not satisfy just war theory, especially since they really served no defensive portion position and advantage for the United States. And as you pointed out, in the end, they proved to be strategic disasters. And so it was this is absolutely the worst than a crime. It was a mistake sort of situation. And so you can see there how these are easy cases, I think, at least in my thinking, to say, yeah, these clearly don't justify just war theory. Now the current, of course, debate over this is in with the Israel Hamas war. And I think this is where issues like proportionality come up and is there right intent in the conduction of the war. I would say that it's I don't find terribly convincing that right intention could be attributed to Hamas. But I know some people would claim that. However, because there was deliberate targeting of noncombatants in those case now there was targeting of combatants as well. So there is a bit more complexity in there than the enemies of Hamas are saying. However, I think we're at the stage now where Hamas has been clearly repulsed, pushed out of Israel proper. And now the question is, is the ongoing response proportional? And that's where I think I see most of the most of the debate, because I think even the international response, even among Arab countries, was that, OK, they slaughtered people at a music festival. I appreciate why Israel would respond with alacrity and a significant use of force. But as time wears on when you start to see that and it's going to be well in excess of 10 times as many casualties on the Palestinian side is on the Israeli side. OK, at what point is proportionality a serious issue? What is it being violated? And it's hard to find any agreement on that. Now, of course, I've seen some of the defenders of Israel use just terrible claims and attempts to just push that aside. I saw one guy on the BBC claim that what does proportionality mean? He says, well, proportionality, we can't hope to be proportional because proportionality would mean that we kill exactly the same number of Palestinians as they killed Israelis. And it would mean that we drop exactly the same number of bombs. And which is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Nobody claims that that is the definition of proportionality. This was obviously an attempt by some hack to portray proportionality as always stupid and pointless. Because obviously no one can satisfy those conditions. And actually, I'll provide a link to that video. Yes, his name escapes me, but he... Oh, Douglas Murray. It's Douglas Murray. Total Neocon supported going into Iraq and all that. And I've got to assume that he was just lying about what proportionality means, but I can't imagine he actually thinks that's the real definition. Just to blame propaganda to portray proportionality in that way. One could disagree with Douglas Murray that the war from the Israeli side is justified and still not have such a stupid definition of proportionality. And I think this goes back to our previous episode of, I mean, it's life is so complicated. The Israel-Palestine thing is obviously complicated. The US is only involved in this because of our pouring cash everywhere, raining cash down on the whole region. Funding Palestine, funding Israel, funding Egypt. If we were not involved because we don't have a national interest at stake there, the US would not have to have a view on this. I mean, I really can't say, like, this is the just solution to this decades-long conflict where so many people have died. I can't say that. And I doubt, I mean, part of me doubts there is a quote-unquote, you know, perfectly just correct solution to this. It's messy, like all of human history is extremely messy. And one point I think is worth bringing up because I held this view when I was sort of a radical college student and all of that is if one side does something wrong, that means they are just no justice to their cause at all. The Allies firebomb Dresden, they rounded up Japanese, they killed prisoners. I mean, that definitely happened on the Western Front too and quite amazingly, really, because it received DOD support. In Save It and Private Ryan, right at the beginning, we see a scene where two Czech conscripts are trying to surrender and the American GIs just gunned them down and laugh about it. That was a thing that happened on the Western Front. In preparation for D-Day, like thousands and thousands of French civilians were killed in the preparatory bombing campaign by the Allies. Although Charles de Gaulle was like, the French people will bear any sacrifice. He wasn't being bombed, notably, but I think one thing I've read that helps me sort of come to terms with thinking about this stuff is a letter that J.R. Tolkien wrote to his son, I believe. It's letter 183 in Tolkien's letters, where he says that in Lord of the Rings the conflict is not basically about freedom, though that is naturally involved. It is about God and his sole right to divine honor. Then he goes on and talks a little bit about the nature of evil. And then he says, if he, he being Sauron, had been victorious, he would have demanded divine honor from all rational creatures and absolute temporal power over the whole world. And this is the important line. So even if, in desperation, the West had bred or hired hordes of orcs and had cruelly ravaged the lands of other men as allies of Sauron, or merely to prevent them from aiding him, their cause would have remained indefeasibly right. As does the cause of those who oppose now the state God and marshal this or that as its high priest, even if it is true, as it unfortunately is that many of their deeds are wrong, even if they were true, as it is not, that the inhabitants of the West, except for a minority of wealthy bosses, live in fear and squalor while the worshipers of the state God live in peace and abundance and in mutual esteem and trust. So not saying that one party or the other is Sauron incarnate in any of these contemporary conflicts we're talking about. But I do think it's important not to lose sight that, you know, think bad humans are fallen so there will never be some perfect war. There will never be some quote unquote humanitarian war where no civilians are killed, no innocent people are damaged, wars messy, which is why we should try and avoid it at all possible because the costs are extreme and immense and can't even be tallied up for literally like decades afterwards. So I think that's just important to keep in mind. And it's also I don't think would be in conflict with saying Augustine or anything like that that we've been talking about. Well, I think Tolkien's a little, he's a bit, a bit mainstream for my tastes in terms of his justification as people have pointed out right. The movies get us very excited about killing the bad guys. And I like those movies. I like Tolkien, but as has been pointed out, Tolkien only includes the really like one conversation in the whole book that sort of humanizes the orcs a little bit when they kind of talk about their private lives and such. And most of it is they're just animalistic hordes that we can all kill without any sort of problems to our conscience whatsoever. Which is probably the main problem with the books, I would say. And that's probably fine. It's as a high fantasy, right? I don't want necessarily my high fantasies, which I don't read many of to be filled with lots of hand wringing about, can we kill the bad guys? I get it. It's fantasy. And fantasy serves a purpose, too, whereas we can we can indulge in these sorts of thoughts without applying them to real life as well. But of course, the situation is different when you're talking about bombing people in cities, even when they're not actually the targets. And I think that's the nut that just where theory is trying to crack is and we're seeing it right now with the bombing of Gaza City, right? People point out, oh, well, the the the state of Israel is not deliberately targeting the civilians. Okay, first of all, I don't know what the regime's actual policy is. I know what their stated policy is. And of course, their stated policy is not, hey, we're deliberately targeting civilians. They're not going to say that. So first of all, it is important, I think, to approach the regime's acts with some skepticism in terms of whether right intention actually exists or not. Maybe talk to some people on the ground. We can in the at the end of these conflicts, we can always find plenty of examples of troops who delighted in killing civilians, certainly among Americans. That has been the case. And it seems more horrible when it's a war that is difficult to justify. This is why everybody talks about World War Two is it's the good war. And even when we do bad things, well, they were fighting Nazis. But of course, in Vietnam and such, the burning down of villages and the shooting of women and children and stuff, a lot harder to justify. And we can find plenty of cases where Americans were perfectly fine with that while they were over there. Because they were driven to it in many cases where they were tired of having their friends all blown away. So they thought, hey, we can't tell which ones are the bad guys. We'll just kill them all. This is an example of the problem with war that Augustine would point out. This is a point Hoppe brings up in the private production of defense, I think the edited books called. He points out that with the advent of the modern state, combined with Uber nationalism, the populations become identified. As the state as well. So it's like that we are at war, not with the state of Nazi Germany. We're at war with Germany and all of its people who are entirely enmeshed in its war, you know, war making enterprise as it were. So I think yeah, that's the point I really like from that book among many. But why it's easier for people to justify, you know, glassing Dresden or wherever. Well, and there's very little distinction between civilians in Gaza and agents of Hamas. Some people have pointed out that the leaders of Hamas are extremely wealthy while ordinary people in Gaza live in horrible poverty. But if you peruse many conservative websites, there are many efforts to say to come up with any sort of data they can or a poll or whatever, or a video clip to show, hey, look, the people of Gaza love Hamas. Look how anti-Semitic they are. Look how awful they are with the implication that this justifies therefore widespread bobbing in the city, because as you say, well, they're identified with the state, well, you know, the quasi state of Hamas. And so therefore they're part of the problem. Right. And look, and I've gotten emails from people just straight up saying, well, if you are against the current actions by the state of Israel in Gaza, then you are on the side of savages, which and so therefore presumably they can all be killed. And that you can't take into account any of these just war provisions. And what's interesting is after our talk about one of our previous discussions where we had noted that there were I had noted at least I don't know of you. I don't want to put words in your mouth. There were parallels between these sorts of conflicts and the US treatment of the indigenous population in North America. Right. And I wrote an article on this as well as like, look, I'm in a settlement and I'm near an Indian reservation or some Indian lands. They come over to my village. They kill everybody, even though we're living on land that they had possessed a decade earlier. They kill us. Well, now that justifies just the compuck us completely wiping out their settlement now. So is this endless back and forth then justified on both sides? How all those other guys are barbarians and savages and our very existence depends on them being wiped out. And so I see when I actually was at a party, I guess a going away party the other night and regular people had some questions about just war theory. It was a Catholic audience that I was talking to, not an audience, but just other people and they asked a question about about this. And so I started talking about, you know, just the basics that we've covered here. And it was amazing just to listen to the justifications that immediately started to come out of the woodwork. Right in that. Oh, well, you had to fire bomb Japan because look at those crazy guys who were on those those islands like 20 years after the war ended, they were fanatics. So you couldn't you couldn't conduct the war in a normal way. They were they were fanatical. And so that absolves us of just war considerations. And so when you can portray the other side as simply being beyond reason. And that robs them of their humanity a little bit and makes it a little bit easier than to carpet bomb the entire city. And as long as you can just say, well, our policy isn't to actually target non combatants, that it's all collateral damage that would then fit under just war theory, which is just shows how flexible it can be in some situations. And so I'm just I disagree with that interpretation. And so I would say bring a little bit more skepticism about what the state is saying it's doing versus what it's actually doing. And you have to, as just war theory suggests, you have to consider the actual outcomes and the the the actual results, not just the stated goals in order to come to a conclusion. And just the final point I think I would make is just that when you raise children, you notice that it's a very human impulse is to point out that this thing was this crime was committed against me, you know, my other kids stole my toys or whatever. And so now I'm basically justified in doing whatever is necessary to get my revenge to set things right to reestablish justice. Of course, you know, three year olds don't state it that way. The feeling of being wrong, basically all bets are off, I can now do whatever because that person has established by committing that bad act that they are undeserving of justice on any level. And you can you can see that this is just this is inbred in the human psyche to behave that way so you still come across those arguments. All the time now it starts to get complicated when you start to argue that. Well, those people in Japan did these horrible acts right they committed war crimes in China, for example. So therefore we're justifying and bombing a bunch of third parties who happen to be the same ethnicity as those people who committed war crimes in China. So that immediately adds a red flag to your response because you're not actually targeting the people who committed the crime. But a lot of people just gloss that part over so it is helpful to have at least written down somewhere a framework for. Okay, these people are combats those people are you can't just attack third parties because of something somebody else did. But there is a recognition in the theory that that wars are in fact messy and that these people are going to get killed the question is, you need to give it some real hard thought as to whether it's justified or not. Yeah. Now do you have anything you want to add at the end. I think you summed it up pretty well. It's complicated and messy, but that doesn't mean we can just go wild and slaughter all of our enemies, although as you one small point. As you pointed out this sort of human impulse of like, they took my toys. Now I can beat them with the stick. You know, in a way, it is so human because, you know, just sort of evolutionarily speaking, back in the, you know, when life was nasty, brutish and short. You know, humans were extremely violent and, you know, humans who weren't got selected out, basically, because they were killed and all their stuff was taken. It is, you know, maybe in a few thousand years will be a little better, but I doubt it. Well, on that note, I might note that our last episode was noted by some readers as the most depressing episode ever. So I think this was a little lighter, but on that depressing note, we will end this episode of war, economy and state. Thank you for listening. We hope this has been helpful. And so we'll be back next month, which I guess is January with another episode. And so we'll see you next time.