In Saki's delicious short story The Forbidden Buzzards, the unfortunate Mr Lanner is never left alone but is accompanied at all times by a member of the household where he is staying because Clovis has told its chatelaine that Lanner is after some rare buzzard eggs nearby. We are told that Mr Lanner on occasion ‘would find Evelyn walking solemnly by his side. Evelyn was fourteen and talked chiefly about good and evil, and of course of how much one might accomplish in the way of regenerating the world if one was thoroughly determined to do one's utmost. It was generally a relief when she was displaced by Jack, who was nine years old, and talked exclusively about the Balkans war without throwing any fresh light on its political and military history’.
Faced with new forms of warfare just when we are getting used to the end of the Cold War and nuclear terror, we might well be tempted to fall back on our inner Evelyn or Jack and simply assert that war is a Bad Thing that must now be abolished or instead endlessly go over what facts we can glean about recent eye-catching wars without finding any meaningful analysis of why and how they happened. If we find the Evelyn and Jack attitudes good enough, David Fisher's book is not for us. Fisher – moral philosopher even (indeed especially) when working as a senior bureaucrat in the UK's security establishment – has provided a closely argued and immensely stimulating discussion of modern warfare from a moral perspective. He has written before (and well) on nuclear war; and if we wish, I suppose we may regard it as progress that what engages him now, and surely engages all moral beings, are the new forms of war (that ‘protean monster’ as he calls it) – such as wars of choice, humanitarian interventions, wars on terror. He is also most concerned with formulating a practical moral approach to the so-called new methods for prosecuting wars, such as the use of extreme measures (aka torture).
This is not, however, another book on Christian just war theory and practice, though these two matters are thoroughly and carefully addressed, indeed developed to deal with modern warfare; one real strength of the book is the focus on Aristotle, who along with Vitoria, gets most references in the index. (But I assure the gentle reader that Aquinas is well referenced too). From the first of these, Fisher convincingly urges the need for ‘practical wisdom’ which can flow only from the active cultivation of the virtues. He is horrified by the recent willingness of philosophers on the one hand and political scientists on the other to divorce morality from the conduct of public affairs: in these circumstances, where was Tony Blair as our Prime Minister to turn for moral understanding when the world seemed dark to him? As it happened, we know that Blair found his only reliable guide to be his own sense of what was ‘the right thing to do’, which even then didn't seem like practical wisdom.
In contrast to self-belief and sentiment, Fisher promotes his own concept of ‘virtuous consequentialism’, that is an ethical framework ‘that includes both the internal and external consequences of our actions, as well as the principles that guide those actions and the virtues needed to enact the principles in our daily lives’. The first part of the book is an argumentative discussion of moral concepts which bear or should in Fisher's view bear on modern warfare as he sets this ethical framework in place. The second part deals with modern types of war and the means used to support them, with examples (for instance the two Iraq Wars), worked in accordance with his ethical framework. He seems to me to do both parts very successfully, though those trained in moral philosophy (as well as many thinking Christians, of whom he is clearly one) will want to consider and perhaps respond to his philosophical argumentation – a response he would clearly enjoy. His discussions in part 2 are energetic and thoughtful; one particularly satisfying section is on humanitarian intervention where Fisher concludes – we may think almost shockingly – that ‘it is morally permissible to intervene militarily in the affairs of another state. Indeed, we may have not just a right to intervene but also, on occasion, a duty to do so’. If you find this assertion of such a duty not at all shocking but rather comfortable, you will nonetheless find the analysis that leads up to it helpful to underpin your comfort in unleashing the horrors of modern war on other states with different values. If you don't like it, beware of reading this book because you may well change your mind.
Another fine discussion is on the morality and legality of torture; in this chapter, Fisher takes full on the ‘ticking time bomb’ case that Michael Walzer has recently given us (and though a little dated, Walzer's 1978 Just And Unjust Wars remains well worth reading, though it lacks Fisher's basis in practical experience). Fisher shows that, even in such extreme circumstances as when a quickly done bad thing may prevent a very bad thing, the moral and legal arguments against so-called ‘extreme measures’ remain compelling. But in the chapter's conclusion, perhaps because the security bureaucrat is to the fore after the moral philosopher has examined the arguments, he writes that ‘it is possible to conceive of exceptional circumstances in which an individual act of torture might be justified … we might hope that our political leaders would be prepared to face the consequences of breaking the law … and that a jury might accept such a plea of necessity in mitigation … [but].. torture is morally wrong … and should remain illegal’.
Fisher very neatly formulates what he is aiming to help us all secure as ‘to make war just and to make only just war’. To get to this blessed state will, he argues, require that we make society just – that is, we must establish a recovery of society's moral self-confidence, supported by appropriate training and practice. How can a soldier, let alone a politician (he reasonably asks) be expected to act morally in relation to questions of warfare, if he or she has no real sense of the need for or no experience in acting morally in relation to public affairs as a whole?
This is a fine book, closely argued, full of stimulating ideas, within and using the Christian tradition of just war, but also reaching beyond and back in philosophical terms as it looks forward to the 21st century's take on the protean monster that is war. It will be of interest to the moral philosopher, to the Christian who wishes to think hard and to the security bureaucrat paid to grapple daily with the 21st century's version of the protean monster. We can only hope too that politicians without military expertise but excited by the possibilities of using organised force as things do not go their way in their own country or in other countries will read and understand it.
