Pope Francis, Just War, And Clausewitz

This piece at Breitbart reports on remarks by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin on the Ukraine conflict:

“The use of weapons is never something desirable, because it always carries a very high risk of taking the life of people or causing serious injury and terrible material damage,” Cardinal Parolin told the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva when asked whether European nations should be sending weapons to Ukraine.

“Nonetheless, the right to defend one’s life, one’s people and one’s country sometimes also involves the sad recourse to arms,” the cardinal recognized. “At the same time both sides must refrain from the use of prohibited weapons and fully respect international humanitarian law to protect civilians and non-combatants.”

“On the other hand, although military aid to Ukraine may be understandable, the search for a negotiated solution, which silences weapons and prevents a nuclear escalation, remains a priority,” Parolin added.

The piece then draws an unwarranted conclusion, that this is "an apparent contradiction of Pope Francis’ rejection of Catholic 'just war' doctrine."

On Friday, Pope Francis ruled out the possibility of “just wars,” saying they do not exist.

. . . “Wars are always unjust,” he said, “because those who pay are the people of God. Our hearts cannot fail to weep in front of the children, the women killed, all the victims of war.”

In its explanation of “just war doctrine,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a compendium of Catholic belief, lays out a series of conditions necessary to justify the use of military force, summing up the teachings proposed by Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The implication seems to be that Pope Francis is yet again contradicting Catholic doctrine, but I don't see this. As far as I can tell, Cardinal Parolin's remarks appear to have been very carefully drafted, and at least as quoted, he doesn't use the specific phrase "just war". He does refer to an implied natural "right to defend one’s life, one’s people and one’s country", but he also says the use of weapons is "never something desirable". He says "military aid to Ukraine may be understandable", but this is quite some distance from saying it's a just war.

In fact, I would almost put this in the context of Catholic moral theology that on one hand recognizes there are objective sins, but on the other also recognizes mitigating factors -- on one hand, a child steals a loaf of bread; on the other, the child is starving and hasn't been to Sunday school.

Elsewhere, quoting the Washington Post behind a paywall, this report says,

Pope Francis on Friday denounced the “perverse abuse of power” on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine and called for aid to Ukrainians who he said had been attacked in their “identity, history and tradition” and were “defending their land.” …

It came just days after Francis told the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, that the concept of a “just war” was obsolete since wars are never justifiable and that pastors must preach peace, not politics.

So it looks as though there's little or no actual daylight between Pope Francis and Cardinal Parolin. Parolin does not use the term "just war", but like Francis, he says Ukrainians are defending their land and their national identity, a sad state of affairs that has been forced on them. In fact, it looks as though the Vatican has a consistent foreign policy here, especially in light of the large Ukrainian Catholic minority there. It simply falls short of calling anything a "just war".

A recent blog post by the neo-Thomist philosopher Edward Feser outlines, I think, the core of the Vatican's problem. He quotes the relevant part of the Catechism on the criteria for just war and concludes,

[M]ilitary action to repel Russia’s invasion clearly is legitimate, and justice requires favoring the Ukrainian side in the war. In the abstract, support for Ukraine could include military action against Russia by any nation friendly to Ukraine. However, the justice of the cause of defending Ukraine fulfills only the first of the four criteria set out by the Catechism. What about the other three?

. . . Even a localized nuclear exchange would also render unlikely the fulfillment of the third condition for just war, viz. the “serious prospects of success.” If Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine or NATO itself, would NATO countries really retaliate in kind? If they did not, it seems that Russian victory would be assured. But if they did retaliate in kind, it is very far from clear that this would not spiral into a conflict that no one could win. Nor can it be said that all the less extreme alternatives to NATO intervention have been exhausted, as the second criterion for just war requires.

Feser's overall argument is specific to an issue that arose earlier in the war, whether the US or other actors should impose a no-fly zone. He concludes that this could lead to a nuclear escalation, which would create "evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated". The problem, though, is that while the specific question of a no-fly zone has faded in importance, other issues have also changed the balance. The third just war criterion, there must be serious prospects of success, seems to have tilted in Ukraine's favor in subsequent weeks even without the no-fly zone.

But in general, rereading Feser's post in light of subsequent public remarks from both Francis and Cardinal Parolin, I suspect those behind the Vatican's public position went through a mental process close to Feser's.

The difficulty with declaring a "just war", I think, is also implied in Clausewitz's concept of friction:

Theoretically all sounds very well; the commander of a battalion is responsible for the execution of the order given; and as the battalion by its discipline is glued together into one piece, and the chief must be a man of acknowledged zeal, the beam turns on an iron pin with little friction. But it is not so in reality, and all that is exaggerated and false in such a conception manifests itself at once in war. . . . Further, every war is rich in particular facts; while, at the same time, each is an unexplored sea, full of rocks, which the general may have a suspicion of, but which he has never seen with his eye, and round which, moreover, he must steer in the night.

Circumstances change from battle to battle and from day to day, and the fog of war surrounds everything. Evaluating the criteria for a "just war" in a modern context is harder and harder. For now, I think Francis and Parolin are being both realisic and prudent, while at the same time, the prayers of Catholic parishes at mass these past few Sundays have clearly been for the people of Ukraine.