Romain Pagès

What is a fair war?

Clausewitz said in “On War” that having a war was another mean of foreign policy. But is it a fair one? This debate started very early. Saint Augustin might be the first one to define the conditions of a fair war: - the initiative of the war has to come from your enemy (which would mean that fair wars are only defensive wars) - the war has to be led by a legitimate authority - it has to be decided only as the last resort
Then Saint Thomas d’Aquin came and said that offensive wars could also be fair under some conditions. They had first to be set off by a legitimate authority, then it had to answer to a fault from the enemy and finally they had to be rightly carried out, that is to say respecting the principles ruling war actions.
Later Hegel said war was necessary and fair if a country refused slavery and had to lead its action by a war. More recently, Dr Kissinger, who has been Nixon’s state secretary, thought a war could be fair if it could release a very dramatic situation. That conception is very close to the Clausewitz’s one: war is a political mean. But political means are not always fair, that is why special frontiers must be given to them, just to make them fair. That has been done for war. Nowadays, a military action has to find its justification in the Charter of the United Nations to be considered as fair. Signed by nearly all the countries, it gives to the Security Council the responsibility of deciding of the measures that have to be taken when it establishes “the existence of a threat against peace or an aggression case”. Actually, it is useless to ask the question of the definition of a “fair war”, it obviously exists in International law and philosophy. What is at stake and the question that has to be asked is to know until what point that concept is solid and consistent. In other words, is the “fair war” concept easily adaptable to all kinds of wars nowadays? Conflicts have changed,