Presidents Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska, as it happens on August 15, the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, the end of World War II. As public discourse is so laced with shallow analogies, any reflection on the coincidence should be voiced with deliberation. But some salient points about this date do not get much attention, so a certain review seems in order.
World War II ended in the defeat of the nations that started it. They started that war out of raw appetite for conquest, mixed, in Germany’s case, with a desire to avenge prior defeat. Before 1914, international relations admitted a legitimacy to nations pursuing their “interests” by war. A nation declaring that it wanted some territory, concession, or benefit from another could declare war to get it, and legitimately, by those norms, claim that stake if it won.
The trauma of World War I led to a new sentiment, that war should not be a means of conducting relations, notably captured in the Kellogg Briand Pact of 1928. While World War II certainly showed naivete at best, maybe even cynicism, behind the Pact, it did give legal form to a new idea, that aggressive war is illegitimate.
After 1945, the idea of war as a legitimate tool for national interest became that much more repugnant. Partly as a result of that repugnance, partly due to the workings of international relations, most wars since then have been over disputed borders, ethnic dislocations and disputes, and other, less naked, claims – including our own morally tenable but negligently deliberated invasion of Iraq in 2003. The idea of a declaring war because “we want X” has generally become taboo. The two truly blatant cases come from Iraq in 1990 – and from Russia in 2022. Even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 had the look of other conflicts, with an ostensibly pro-Russian population on the wrong side of an arguably arbitrary border. International reaction was relatively muted, at least in part because of this muddiness.
But the full scale invasion of 2022, overtly motivated by a claim that Ukraine should not exist as an independent nation, not only violates any norm of non-aggression, but offends against what amounts to a universal moral tenet of war. The theory of justice in war, perhaps best captured in Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer, sees such aggressive war as unjust. Putin, in his characterization of the 2022 invasion, has done the world the favor of declaring his intent.
What does this have to do with America’s interests, deep down? Of course there are those who decry the idea of the U.S. making itself the world’s policeman, with motives ranging from isolationism to anti-Americanism to pacifism. This blog argues that America’s fundamental national purpose is to validate our founding tenets, of rights equally endowed in all, and of government existing to secure those rights, legitimated by consent of the governed. Those tenets are abstract, and admit of a range of interpretations for our real world needs. That said, a world without norms of international conduct is a world where no nation, and no nation, is safe except by force of arms. A nation of rights will either need a preponderance of arms, or a world with effective norms, or some combination of both.
The post-1945 expectation that aggressive war would be denounced, opposed, and punished, serves our needs and carries moral value. While we realize that moral lines can sometimes be vague, blatant transgressors should end up as Saddam Hussein did. Or Hitler or Tojo. However essential that may or may not be to America’s core interest, an outright invasion of another sovereign’s territory, with no justification save naked self interest, should gain no reward, and no acceptance, from anyone.
Common Conviction 