Just War Tradition

While Orthodox Christianity lacks the historical tradition of just war theory to criticize war, it does have a theological resource it could draw upon to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: personhood.

The BBC should bring back the skepticism of pacifism that Doctor Who used to have.

In our day it is difficult for some, perhaps many, to recall that the West’s Cold War policy of nuclear deterrence—anchored in traditional just war moral principles of just cause, right intention, proportionality, and discrimination—helped avert war rather than increase the prospects of nuclear conflagration.

With a seemingly genuine response, John Kirby reflects well on Americans and illuminates something of the Western way of war, which follows the Just War Tradition.

Either we deter Russian aggression, which means that we convince Putin that we will not tolerate his first-strike nuclear threats and be intimidated, or we passively acquiesce to nuclear blackmail and Russian butchery of a nation that was promised its integrity and sovereignty five years after the Cold War ended.

The war in Ukraine, with its indiscriminate slaughter and mass murder of thousands, forces us to admit the reality of evil.

I appreciate Michael McKoy’s recent “What Does Pacifism Have to Say About Ukraine?” But I remain unimpressed by the pacifist view.

Pacifism argues that the only means of breaking the cycles of violence is to recognize the short-term and long-term devastation of war, examine the decisions and dynamics that perpetuate these cycles, and make the tough decisions necessary to reject violence and ensure peace.

As the Russia-Ukraine War continues, is World War III inevitable—or has a new kind of world war already begun?