A Thinking Reed

Category: War & Peace

  • Sovereignty, intervention, and self-interest

    Russell Arben Fox points us to a debate between scholar Michael Berube and what he calls “the Z Magazine/Counterpunch Left.” In a nutshell, the Z/CP crowd, notably iconclastic leftist crank Alexander Cockburn (and I say that affectionately as someone who enjoys Cockburn’s writing), accuses Berube and other left-liberals of being insufficiently pure in their devotion to anti-interventionism, while Berube charges the Z/CPers with making a fetish out of national soveriegnty (e.g. in their opposition to the wars in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in addition to the Iraq war; Berube opposed the Iraq war but supported the other two) and dubs them “the Sovereignty Left.” The point being, I take it, that it’s odd for leftists, who are supposed to be internationalists, to elevate the principle of national sovereignty to some kind of absolute, especially considering that most actually existing nation-states are controlled by the kinds of pernicious elites that leftism purportedly stands against. Meanwhile, the Z/CP-style response is that they’re not “pro-sovereignty” so much as they’re anti-imperialist. It has all the classic features of a intra-sectarian left-wing ideological battle. Russell also adds his own thoughts on the whole kerfuffle.

    Now, interesting as this all is, I have to say there is a certain surreal quality to this debate. What you have is various species of left-winger arguing about how best the U.S. government can serve the interests of foreigners in faraway lands. Should we leave them alone or selectively intervene to protect human rights? In the whole debate there is little or no discussion of the interests of Americans.

    I speculate that this is part of the reason that a lot of leftish ideas never gain any traction with most Americans. Polls consistently show that many Americans favor left-of-center policies, especially on economic issues, but if left-wing intellectuals frame their policies in terms of benefitting humanity at large rather than their fellow citizens, it’s only natural that most people, who, after all, think most about the well-being of themselves and their families, their communities, and their own country and certainly put it ahead of the interests of the citizens of other countries, will tune them out. Right or wrong, most people seem to exist within concentric circles of concern that diminish in intensity the farther they get from kith and kin.

    There was, to my mind, a perfectly good case agains the Iraq war that took American self-interest as the primary, if not sole, criterion: there was no demostrable or imminent threat from Iraq; the consequences of going to war were unpredictable; we had our hands full with the pursuit of al-Qaeda, etc. A variation on the same could be said about most of the USA’s other military interventions over the years. The bar for spending one’s own blood treasure ought, logically, to be high. This doesn’t mean that moral concerns aren’t also important, but if you don’t even reach the bar of self-interest then there’s no need to worry about the moral veto on your proposed action.

    And I personally think there are good reasons, at least at the national level, to take this kind of broadly self-interested view combined with what I would call moral side constraints on how we can treat others. To put it another way, what philosophers call “positive duties” are largely concerned with obligations to kith and kin, while “negative duties” (e.g. do no harm) extend to everybody. So, it’s entirely proper that a nation’s foreign policy be conducted primarily with the aim of protecting its own citizens, as long as in so doing it doesn’t inflict injustice on others. Some liberals and leftists have a hard time making peace with this idea, since it flies in the face of universalist and cosmopolitan tendencies that are deeply rooted in those outlooks (though more among intellectuals than actual politicians, most of whom tend to be unabashedly nationalist). But whether or not it’s a morally correct position, it’s important to recognize that it’s one that many, perhaps most, Americans hold. (It’s worth pointing out that there’s a species of internationalist universalism among some neoconservatives on the right that seems just as out of touch with sound patriotic concern for the well-being of one’s own country.)

    My point is simply this: whatever your idea of a saner American foreign policy is, it should first and foremost be a pro-American policy. I think this both because it’s the first duty of a government to look after its own citizens, but also because it’s the only policy that’s likely to actually sell.

  • Chuck Hagel and the need for a “serious” antiwar candidate

    The latest news still has Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel delaying his decision on the possibility of a presidential bid.

    While it’s true that Hagel isn’t strictly anti-war or non-interventionist (and, indeed, has been a big supporter of the Bush administration on most issues), his relatively critical voice would be welcome in the primary debates, especially when the top three GOP contenders dissent little, if at all, on the Administration’s foreign policy (John McCain partly excepted, who is, if anything, further to the right than Bush). And unlike, say, Ron Paul, the quixotic libertarian congressman from Texas, a Hagel candidacy couldn’t be easily dismissed.

    Moreover, the Democratic field hasn’t exactly distinguished itself with antiwar zeal, with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all making threatening sounds about Iran and equivocating on Iraq (NM governor Bill Richardson and, of course, Dennis Kucinich are exceptions to this trend, and, perhaps not coincidentally, polling in the single digits).

    The fact is, it still seems to be conventional wisdom that bellicosity equals “seriousness” about foreign affairs, which is the sin qua non of having a snowball’s chance of getting elected. Any suggestion, say, that the idea of a global, generations-spanning “war on terrorism” and its attendant consequences for things like civil liberties and the treatment of prisoners might be an overreaction to a serious, but not existential threat has thus far been a one-way ticket to political irrelevance.

    That’s why having an indisputably “serious” candidate like Chuck Hagel in the field, someone who takes a more moderate line, could serve to move the debate in a more reasonable direction.

  • Preventive war is “inherently pernicious”

    Andrew Bacevich urges Congress to renounce the Bush Doctrine:

    The fifth anniversary of President Bush’s West Point speech [where he promulgated the “Bush Doctrine] approaches. Prior to that date, Democratic leaders should offer a binding resolution that makes the following three points: First, the United States categorically renounces preventive war. Second, the United States will henceforth consider armed force to be an instrument of last resort. Third, except in response to a direct attack on the United States, any future use of force will require prior Congressional authorization, as required by the Constitution.

    Of course, as Dana Carvey, in his GHW Bush persona, used to say, na ga happen. It’s a nice fantasy though, to think that our military policy might be brought into some semblence of conformity with our constitutional principles, not to mention the principles of Just War.

    At the very least, it would be interesting to see the question put to any and all of the prospective presidential candidates of both parties whether or not they embrace the principles of the Bush Doctrine and whether they consider preventive war to be a legitimate tool of policy.

    If there’s one element of traditional Just War theorizing that’s taken a beating over the last five years, it’s the requirement that war be a last resort. Granted that last resort can be a fuzzy concept; after all, there’s always something else you could conceivably try, however improbable. But the very real danger, one that Bacevich has expounded on at length in his book The New American Militarism, is that war has become a routine tool of policy.

  • More on giving teeth to JWT

    In a comment to the previous post, Michael Westmoreland-White asks a fair question of Just War theory:

    Has JWT EVER led to massive civil disobedience and refusal to fight on the part of a church’s members? Pacifists have often been arrested or executed for refusing to fight. When has this been true of JWTers? CAN the doctrine be given “teeth” or will it always just be a sop to the consciences of nationalistic warriors?

    The reason this is an important question is that, if the only effect of JWT is to bless whatever wars the government undertakes, then it’s not functioning as a theory of the morality of warfare. And I think it’s fair to say that many American Christians have gone along with the state’s war plans while using the rhetoric of just war more as a fig leaf than as a critical tool. Both the mainline and evangelical churches have been guilty of buying into forms of nationalism that serve to blunt criticism of the government’s actions, especially during wartime. It’s also worth pointing out that the vast majority of Christians aren’t taking to the street to engage in civil disobedience in protest of any of the other great evils our society is complicit in, whether that be abortion, poverty, ecological degradation, or what have you.

    Still, it has to be pointed out that many Christians, both clergy and laypeople, who have protested war have done so for broadly Just War reasons. Unless we’re going to assume, for instance, that everyone who protested the Vietnam war was a committed pacifist, there must’ve been at least some cases where opposition was motivated by people concluding that the war didn’t meet the standards of a just war. And I think it’s safe to say that this has been the case in more recent years as well. The mainline churches, none of which are officially pacifist, have been very critical of the Iraq war and many of their members took part in demonstrations protesting it. Granting all that, though, it’s safe to say, I think, that JWT doesn’t provide the controlling template for how most American Christians think about war.

    Whether or not JWT can become more effective as a genuine restraint on Christians’ willingness to participate in unjust wars depends, I think, on whether it can be effectively taught. My evidence is strictly anecdotal, but my impression is that JWT is rarely taught or discussed in most congregations. No moral framework can be put into practice if it isn’t taught and received. And this is true of any morality. Sexual morality doesn’t require abstinence in all cases, but it does require the practice of restraint and discrimination, as well as the development of virtues necessary for that practice. Likewise, putting JWT into practice means not just learning a theory, but also learning the virtues of restraint, moderation, and justice as well as faith, hope, and charity. That it hasn’t been taught and internalized isn’t necessarily a knock against the theory, but a knock against us. If mainline chruches are serious about JWT, maybe a first step would be to learn from the peace churches how they reinforce and inculcate the practices of peacemaking in their members.

  • William Cavanaugh, localism, and giving Just War theory teeth

    Eric directs our attention to this Godspy interview with Catholic theologian and “Radical Orthodoxy” fellow-traveler William T. Cavanaugh. He’s got some interesting stuff to say about globalization, the church, freedom, and just war theory among other things.

    I don’t agree with everything Cavanaugh says, but here are a couple of things that I thought were noteworthy:

    Globalization is an aesthetic which produces a way of looking at the world. It assumes that we’re a universal subject. We can go anywhere and do anything. But this has damaging effects. A few years ago my friends and I gathered for a dinner party and started discussing what should be done about Kosovo. I remember thinking how incredible it was that most of us had never even heard of Kosovo just a couple of weeks ago. But suddenly we’re all talking as if we know what’s right for this place on the other side of the world. It’s absurd.

    […]

    America in particular has this tendency to think it’s the universal nation, the exceptional nation, which means that we know what the solution is to everyone’s problems.

    I sometimes joke that if I were invited to give a commencement address—which I never will be—I’d never say the usual thing they tell the graduates: “Go out and change the world!” I’d tell them: “Go home! Go back to your little towns and please, dear God, don’t try to change the world!” The world has had enough of American college graduates who know what’s best for the world.

    He also talks about how the churches might give just war theory some bite when it comes to Christian participation in war:

    If we’re going to have a functioning just war theory, then we can’t abdicate this judgment to the leaders of the secular nation state, as if they can decide when a war meets Christian criteria and when it doesn’t. Historically the prince was traditionally responsible for making these kinds of judgments. But the prince in medieval Europe wasn’t outside the Church. This wasn’t a secular role, but a pastoral role within the Church.

    Also, individuals were never absolved of responsibility for deciding when princes’ judgments were just and when they weren’t. It’s always up to the individual to decide and to apply these criteria. And bishops and popes often intervened in these matters, excommunicating looters, imposing truces, interdicting the Eucharist, and so on. The recovery of the Church’s sense that it needs to be the place where these decisions get discerned is absolutely crucial, otherwise we’ve lost any sense of what it means to be Church.

    […]

    The first thing the Church needs to do is stop fighting unjust wars. Take the just war theory seriously. I’m not talking about pacifism. If there’s a war that the Church judges is unjust, then Catholics shouldn’t fight it. That’s the way the just war theory is supposed to work. It’s sometimes supposed to say ‘no’ to acts of violence. What the theory is usually used for, of course, is to justify whatever violence is going on. I can’t think of a single instance where it was used to stop violence. That is the most pressing issue.

    Imagine what would have happened if Catholics in the previous war had said in significant numbers, “No, sorry, this is an unjust war; we’re just going to sit this one out.” The world would have turned upside down.

    Of course, there may be a bit of wishful thinking in the idea that the church, even the Roman Catholic Church, will not only make definitive pronouncements on the justness of particular wars but get its members to go along with those judgments to the point of not participating in them. For instance, John Paul II and Benedict XVI may both have opposed the Iraq war, but neither one, to my knowledge, declared it unjust outright in any official capacity, much less forbade Catholics from participating in it.

    In the case of Protestant churches (which I realize Cavanaugh isn’t speaking about) it gets even muddier. Without a magisterium it’s not at all clear how they would make and enforce this kind of judgment. Or, for that matter, whether they should. Cavanaugh is surely correct in rebutting the charge of theocracy in recommending that Christians put their allegiance to Christ ahead of the nation, but there is a danger of a kind of ecclesiastic authoritarianism if we decide that the church should legislate on such matters for its members.

    But, in fairness, maybe this kind of top-down legislation isn’t what’s being recommended. Maybe a better way to think about it is that Christians who are formed, at the parish or congregational level, by worship, prayer, sacraments, study, mutual encouragement and consolation, fasting, almsgiving and other charitable works, and other traditional Christian disciplines will come to see the world differently and this will shape their response to decisions like this. But this also has to allow for the possibility of divergent responses among different Christians. Which is, perhaps, as it should be. In the course of a post on the present difficulties in the Anglican Communion, *Christopher linked to this piece by Fr. William Carroll on subsidiarity in the church. Carroll is writing about the strife over homosexuality, but the principles he outlines seem like they would have wider application:

    True subsidiarity empowers local bodies to incarnate the Gospel in their local context. Much like modern organizational theory, it pushes power and authority as close to the action as possible. This enables the Church to become more flexible and mission-driven. It also brings us closer to Gospel models of authority. … A more adequate notion of subsidiarity, which characterizes historic Anglicanism at its best, emphasizes that decisions should always be made at the most local level possible

    Shaped by the context of their local church, Christians may well come to different conclusions about questions of war and peace. But that’s to be expected; Christians come to different conclusions on virtually all matters of significance. Rather than diktats from above, congregational study of the principles of just war theory, for instance, might be one way in which a responsible deliberation about these matters could be incarnated at the local level.

  • Cluster bombs and discrimination

    Jeremy at Eating Words blogs on this Christian Science Monitor story detailing the dangers posed by unexploded cluster bombs used by the Israelis in the recent conflict in Lebanon. One of the more hideous aspects of this problem is that it’s children who are disproportionately the victims. Kids have a tendency to pick up the unexploded “bomblets” from cluster bombs not realizing what they are (see also this).

    The Just War criterion of discrimination should have something to say about the use of such weapons. It’s not sufficient that we simply try to use what weapons we have in as disciriminatory a way possilbe, avoiding civilian casualties when we can. The very existence of such weapons is called into question.

    This is in some way a smaller scale version of the question that a lot of Just War theorists faced duing the Cold War about the use of nuclear weapons. Most mainstream JW thinkers concluded that the use of nuclear weapons against enemy populations could never be licensed. Notably, respected Catholic moral theologians John Finnis, Joseph Boyle, and Germain Grisez argued that the use of nuclear weapons even if only as a deterrent, was immoral by Just War standards. The reason is that some weapons, such as nuclear ones, are inherently incapable of being used in a way that respects the principle of discrimination.

    The same could be said about cluster bombs. If the majority of their victims are non-combatants (indeed, many of them after hostilities have ceased), then I think that’s a strong prima facie case that their use is impermissible. To be committed to justice in warfare requires, among other things, that we not treat the methods used as simply given and beyond the scope of moral evaluation.

  • Christian peace bloggers

    I’ve joined a “Christian Peace Bloggers” webring started by Michael Westmoreland-White of the Levellers blog. I think I properly fit into the catergory of “someone who believes war is a very last resort” and “that Christians are commanded to be working for peace so that such a resort doesn’t come.” In other words, I’m not a pacifist, but I definitely hold to a strict version of just war theory and think that war should emphatically not be regarded as a routine policy tool.

    The idea behind the blog ring is for members to post something on war & peace about once a week, so hopefully some useful reflections will come out of that commitment.

  • War, intervention, and risk

    Okay, here’s something that I’ve been mulling over for a while now. I’m not sure if this is right, but I thought I’d throw it out there. The question is: when are we justified in imposing the risk of death on others without their consent?

    One occassionally runs into arguments about whether “the Iraqis” are “better off” now than before the war. Usually this is in the context of an attempt to justify the war retrospectively. This strikes me as an essentially unanswerable question, though. It seems clear that some Iraqis are better off and others are worse off. Obviously the dead who would otherwise have lived are worse off, but so also, arguably are those who’ve been injured, lost family members, now live in fear of sectarian enemies, etc. It’s not clear that it would be possible, even in principle, to tally up all Iraqis’ sense of whether by their own lights they’re better or worse off now than under Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to arrive at a sense of whether the Iraqis as a whole are better or worse off. How would you even go about weighing the goods and evils that all the Iraqi people have individually experienced. (How many dead relatives is a sense of political freedom worth? Does the question even make sense? The problem of interpersonal comparisons of utility also seems relevant here.)

    But this seems to me to have prospective as well as retrospective importance. Suppose that you’re living under a brutal dictatorial regime. Would you regard the deaths of your family as an acceptable trade-off for the removal of that regime? Opinions would perhaps differ, but that’s the point: how would you weign one person’s choice against another’s in order to arrive at the correct answer? It’s at the very least not surprising that someone who’s lost his entire family might be less than grateful about his “liberation.”

    This seems to imply that there’s something questionable about an outsider making these kinds of choices for you. By what right would a prospective intervener decide for you whether the loss of your family was an acceptable risk to run for, say, the prospect of political freedom? How can they make the kinds of evaluations that would be necessary to determine what risks, all things considered, were allowable? The imposition of unchosen risks seems, other things being equal, to be wrong. It just doesn’t seem to be my place to put your family at mortal risk without their (or your) consent even if it’s “for their own good.”

    The question then becomes how one nation justifies intervening militarily in another, allegedly on behalf of the subject population, without their explicit consent to the risks involved. Given the realities of modern war it’s a virtual certainty that innocents will be killed in the course of the intervention, and yet no one asked them if they were willing to undertake those risks for the sake of improving their situation relative to the status quo.

    Note that the issue here isn’t whether we actually have reason to believe that most people will in fact be better off after a proposed war. (Though given the limitations of our knowledge and recent history such considerations certainly ought to weigh heavily.) The issue is whether we have the right to impose mortal risks on those who haven’t given their informed consent. It seems at least prima facie that we don’t have that right. What might give us the right is if someone was already in mortal danger and the only way to save them was to undertake a mortally risky course of action and securing their consent was, for all practical purposes, impossible. But in the case of war, at least some of those upon whom we impose the risk of death wouldn’t have died otherwise, so it’s far from clear that the burden is met.

    Obviously this only applies in cases of so-called humanitarian intervention. In a legitimate case of self-defense it might well be justifiable to impose the risk of death on innocents if that is the only way to forestall one’s own death. One would be in a sort of lifeboat or state of nature situation (at least in terms of what we might call “natural” justice; I’m leaving aside whether a “higher” morality might call for self-sacrifice here). Of course, in modern war, “self-defense” often takes on an inflated meaning that includes maintaining our “perimeter of defense” or “our way of life,” cases where imposing the risk of death on innocents seems much harder to justify.

    Really all this is a long-winded way of making the point that in war one is proposing to kill (and injure and maim) other human beings. Any morality worth its salt would have a strong presumption against that. To impose the risk of death on someone, whether for their own good or for one’s own, requires that the good in question be sufficiently weighty that it would seem to rule out most wars. The exceptions would seem to be wars in which either oneself or the proposed beneficiaries were as likely (or more likely) to meet death if there was no intervention.

  • War and peace: some notes and links

    I haven’t blogged directly on politics much over here, but this article by Andrew Bacevich in The American Conservative caught my eye. Bacevich takes on both the neoconservative proponents of the “surge” as well as the establishmentarian “wise men” of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group:

    Almost without fail, media references to the Baker-Hamilton commission emphasize its bipartisan composition as if that alone were enough to win a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Yet to imagine that bipartisanship signifies wisdom or reflects a concern for the common good is to misunderstand the reality of present-day politics. The true purpose of bipartisanship is to protect the interests of the Washington Party, the conglomeration of politicians, hustlers, and bureaucrats who benefit from the concentration of wealth and power in the federal city. A “bipartisan” solution to any problem is one that produces marginal change while preserving or restoring the underlying status quo.

    The status quo, shared by both groups, who pretty much dominate foreign policy discussions in the US is the assumption that America must continue to manage events in the Middle East:

    When it comes to U.S. policy in the Middle East, neither the cavalier urgings of Frederick Kagan nor the confident reassurances of James Baker will provide the basis for defining a “way forward.” Despite superficial differences, their prescriptions point in the same direction: they will simply exacerbate our predicament. Further militarizing U.S. policy, always the first choice of neoconservatives, will only compound our dilemma; yet so too will deference to self-appointed Wise Men, who created that dilemma in the first place.

    Neoconservatives like Kagan believe that the United States is called upon to remake the Middle East, bringing the light of freedom to a dark quarter of the world. Pseudo-realists like Baker believe that the United States can manipulate events in the Middle East, persuading others to do our bidding. Both views, rooted in the conviction that Providence has endowed America with a unique capacity to manage history, are pernicious.

    And, as paleocon uber-blogger Daniel Larison points out, even Chuck Hagel, who’s been heralded by pundits left and right as a potential GOP “peace candidate” doesn’t repudiate interventionism as such. He’s more of an old-fashioned realist/internationalist (which, admittedly, would be preferable to what we’ve currently got). Plus, while I don’t share the paleocon antipathy to immigration, I agree that Hagel’s position there could hurt him with grass roots GOP voters, even ones disaffected with the Bush administration. He also isn’t much of a red-meat culture warrior, despite his fairly orthodox conservatism, and that would no doubt hurt him with the Religious Right types.

    It remains to be seen what kinds of positions the (seemingly inumerable) Democratic candidates will take on the war issue. Michael Westmoreland-White of the Anabaptist blog Levellers notes a spectrum of proposals ranging from “capping” the number of troops in Iraq to withdrawal at various rates. But no one except the real fringe candidates (Kucinich on the left, Paul on the right) is talking about any kind of large-scale paradigm shift in US foreign policy. Most of the Democratic criticisms at this point simply hark back to the good ol’ days of multilateral hegemony and UN-approved bombings.

    UPDATE: Ross Douthat at The American Scene makes a similar point, quoting David Brooks to the effect that the DC policy elite remains firmly entrenched in an interventionist outlook (he also cites this crazed Max Boot column to the same effect). However, Douthat also suggests that younger pundits and policy wonk-types (the elite of tomorrow) may be less sympathetic to bipartisan interventionism:

    The Iraq War has, I think, made questioning the neoconservative/neoliberal consensus far more common among young, wet-behind-the-ears wannabe pundits than anyone would have expected four years ago. Maybe this is a temporary thing, maybe it’s just the narrow circles I move in. But when I look around the world of D.C. journalism, and the wider blogosphere, at the under-30 writers I respect, there seems to be a lot more sympathy for either libertarianism or paleoconservatism (or both together) among young conservatives, and McGovernish sentiments among young liberals, than there is for foreign-policy centrism of the kind that everyone from Boot to Ignatius subscribes to.

    You’d like to think so. But then maybe our up-and-coming elites will “mautre” in office and “grow in stature” ultimately adopting the worldview of the elders. I mean, that’s what the New Left essentially did when it finally acheived instutional power isn’t it? The 60s radicals of yesteryear became, well … the Clintons.

  • The perils of the “virtuous minority”

    Marvin continues his series on vegetarianism wth a post on the eschatological expectation that predation and violence are aspects of creation which will ultimately be done away with. Vegetarianism, then, can be seen as a “living into the kingdom,” a kind of anticipation of what is to come:

    In the present age one cannot dismiss eating meat out of hand, but one good rationale for vegetarianism is as a sign of the kingdom to come. Vegetarianism, like a commitment to non-violence, or a vow of celibacy, may be an appropriate witness to the new heavens and new earth that God will one day create.

    However, in comments to Marvin’s post, Jonathan of the Ivy Bush observes that some theologians, such as Karl Barth, have called vegetarianism a “wanton anticipation” of the eschaton, trying to live, as it were, beyond this present fallen age. But Jonathan, himself a committed pacifist, worries that this could cut against pacifism as well.

    I think that’s a good point. In fact, John Howard Yoder, in his book Nevertheless: Varieties of religious pacifism, discusses how “the pacifism of the virtuous minority” can end up marginalizing the pacifist witness. To relegate pacifism to the status of a special calling for a distinct minority, Yoder worries, can enable the majority to ignore the pacifist’s arguments:

    One normal implication of this minority stance is to approve by implication, for most people, the very position one rejects for oneself. The Catholic understanding of the monastic morality has no trouble with this. Those in this tradition do not identify the freely chosen Rule with everyone’s moral obligation. They tell Christians in the Historic Peace Churches to accept such minority status and be accepted in it. Thus the minority stance can be a special gadfly performance to keep the rest of society from being at peace with its compromises.

    This understanding of a vocational role for the peace churches has been fostered by the relativistic or pluralistic mood of modern denominationalism. The question of objective right and wrong is relativized by the acceptance of a great variety of traditions, each having its own claims to truth arising out of its own history. Each may be recognized as having a portion of the truth, on condition that none impose their view on another. (p. 81)

    Yoder continues:

    Various stances may be recognized as “valid” or “authentic” or “adequate,” but none specifically as true. In this spirit many nonpacifists since the 1930s have been willing to concede to the pacifists a prophetic or vocational role. Nonpacifists grant this recognition on condition that in turn the pacifists accept always being voted down by those who have to do the real (violent) work in the world. (pp. 81-82)

    Likewise, the view of vegetarianism as a special witness or calling to a creation without violence may also fall prey (pardon the expression) to this kind of relativism. And ultimately vegetarians could be similarly marginalized as harmless eccentrics who aren’t trying to make claims on the consciences of others.

    The two issues are somewhat disanalogous though. In one sense vegetarianism is more demanding than pacifism because, while war is a relatively exceptional event in the life of most societies, the use of animals is something that is woven into the very fabric of most societies, especially industrialized ones. On the other hand, the sacrifice of vegetarianism is ultimately less serious. People can live perfectly happy and healthy lives on a plant-based diet, so no one is being asked to sacrifice their life for the sake of animals. Pacifism, by contrast, requires that we be prepared to give up our lives rather than commit violence (though the blow may be softened by noting that war isn’t a very efficient means of getting what you want anyway).

    I would add that most vegetarians ure unlikely to say that meat-eating is always and everywhere wrong. It’s quite likely that there are times and places where killing animals for food is the only way for human beings to survive. In that sense one could devise an ethic of “just meat-eating” that allowed for exceptions for legitimate human need and health. It’s hard to see how that would justify the large-scale industrial production of meat that actually exists, though.

    The point is that vegetarians (and pacifists, and others with unusual moral views) shouldn’t refrain from making arguments to persuade others of the truth of their position. If one takes a moral view seriously, then I think one is committed to its universalizability: that is, that anyone in the relevantly similar circumstances ought to make the same choice.

    That said, I still personally wouldn’t want to try and make vegetarianism a litmus test for Christian discipleship. This is mainly because it’s not obvious that personal vegetarianism is the only, or even the best, way to address issues of animal mistreatment. And secondly because there is no “pure ground” to stand on where one has extricated themselves from involvement with industries and practices that abuse animals. If “ought implies can” it would be foolish to demand an unattainable level of moral purity.

    This is where I think the “Barthian caveat” is helpful. In our fallen world moral choice will always retain an element of ambiguity. And being aware of that will help one avoid pride and self-righteousness. Moreover, trying to live as an example, as proof that it’s possible to live a less violent life, may well end up being the most effective form of argument.