Regarding the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, it appears clear from Tuesday’s debate that Kamala Harris cannot say that she wants Israel to win, and Donald Trump is unable to say he wants Ukraine to win. This is at least disheartening to anyone who cares—comprehensively—about the protection of the innocent, the requiting of injustice, or the punishment of evil.
On Gaza, Harris reasserted the Biden-Harris administration’s inane demand for an immediate ceasefire as a necessity for getting back to a two-state solution. Whatever one thinks about a two-state or any other kind of solution, it should be clear—as I have argued again and again—that no solution will be created until Hamas is destroyed or somehow else rendered completely irrelevant. As long as they hold political and military power—or either—sufficient to hold sway over Gaza, any effort to grasp after peace will be frustrated, it will sift through the fingers like blood. Harris’ zeal for a ceasefire before Israel’s war aim has been met should remind us of the premature—read: foolish—armistice that, in the end, didn’t end the War to End All Wars. All the Treaty of Versailles managed to accomplish was to postpone any decisive conclusion to the conflict until another generation of young men grew old enough to harvest. The Second World War—the one that came after the War to End All Wars—testifies to the value of a decisive conclusion. Neither Germany nor Japan had any question whether they had either the capacity or the will to continue fighting. Both had been sufficiently beaten out of them so that they were now in the mood to partner in efforts toward a durable peace. There’s nothing to allow one to think the situation in Gaza is any different. Hamas—as a fighting and political force—must be destroyed if there is to be any reasonable hope that Hamas as an idea might fade away and make room for better ideas that might promote true Palestinian flourishing.
When it comes to Ukraine, at Tuesday’s debate it wasn’t what Trump said as much as what he apparently couldn’t say that was inane. He refused to answer whether or not he wants Ukraine to win and simply rambled on about how he would end the war in Ukraine before he even took office. His inability to affirm that US policy ought to be helping Ukraine to win is troubling. Trump should have vowed to help Ukraine reach a decisive victory against Putin. The more convincing that victory, the better the prospects for peace and European security, for weakening—or killing—Putin’s aggressive ambitions toward other regional targets, and for convincing China both that war is harder than one might think as well as proving that the West can stand united against common threats and to see conflicts through to a sufficient end, and that the US will decisively support its allies and partners. All these outcomes are good for US interests. Trump, for all his love of bellicose bluster, ought to have been eager to present himself as the one willing to address the Ukraine conflict loaded for bear rather than, pace Biden-Harris, slow-walking the conflict by merely poking the bear over and over again.
From Augustine to Luther to Calvin and onward, the purpose of war has always been primarily to restore the conditions necessary for peace. This peace is desired first for the innocent victims under unjust assault. But in the second place, this desire for peace extends to the enemy—toward the restoration of the enemy into the fellowship of reconciliation. Both the wars in Gaza and Ukraine remind us that you cannot reconcile with someone who has not seen the error of his ways, repented, and given you solid reasons to trust that he will not seek to harm you again. The point is simple: just warmaking is peacemaking.
In his letter to Boniface, the Roman military tribune in north Africa, Augustine insisted: “Peace should be the object of your desire; war should be waged only as a necessity…in order that peace may be obtained.” With the admonition there is a caution. It pays to remember, as Jean Bethke Elshtain reminded us, that Augustine is talking about the peace of the Pax Romana—a compelled or ordered peace. However unjust in the full light of eschatological shalom—that heavenly state of wholeness, harmony, and completeness—this imperfect peace was nevertheless very real and very significant. More than any competitor then in the market, the Roman Pax was capable of keeping neighbor from eating neighbor, and of preserving the interconnected web of culture, civilization, art, and tradition that, by Augustine’s day, was much in jeopardy. This imperfect peace was maintained, in part, by Roman power. It should have been easy at Tuesday’s debate for both Harris and Trump to commit to a vision of robust American power—political, diplomatic, military, and charitable—that could in turn strengthen allies and partners—like Israel and Ukraine—so that they, too, could be powerful enough to put down their enemies and be a force for peace in their region.
The implication of this is to double-down on my claim that this “striving” after peace cannot be a half-measure. If it is right to fight a war, it is right to fight that war to win it. This is not for the sake of chest-thumping, patriotic, or xenophobic bravado. It is rather, first, to remember that the offending wrongs that started the war in the first place ought to be corrected. To not try to do so, barring profoundly prudential excuses, is to hold the violated goods in contempt. Second, this vision of peace is aimed at the enjoyment of those goods that remind us of what political power ought to be about. As I’ve said before, no one has put this better than the late Jean Elshtain:
Mothers and fathers raising their children; men and women going to work; citizens of a great city making their way on streets and subways; ordinary people flying to California to visit their grandchildren or to transact business with colleagues—all of these actions are simple but profound goods made possible by civic peace. They include the faithful attending their churches, synagogues, and mosques without fear, and citizens—men and women, young and old, black, brown, and white—lining up to vote on Election Day.
Harris and Trump ought to be clear that this vision of civic peace will be possible for Ukrainians, Russians, Palestinians, and Israelis of good will only if there are Israeli and Ukrainian victories in the wars that were necessitated by the disordered passions of some Russians and Palestinians of supremely passionate ill will.
