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In Defence of War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Nigel Biggar
Nigel Biggar*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, Christ Church, Oxford, OX1 1DP
*
nigel.biggar@chch.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

This essay falls into two parts. In the first I offer a panorama of my book, In Defence of War (Oxford University Press, 2013), highlighting its main features. These comprise: its rhetorical position; its opposition to the “the virus of wishful thinking”, pacifism, legal positivism, and liberal individualism; and its promotion of the early Christian tradition of just war reasoning and of three kinds of realism – moral-ontological, Augustinian-anthropological, and practical. Then in the second part, I consider four controversial issues that the book raises: love, proportionality, Britain's entry into the First World War, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Keywords

Just warLoveProportionalityFirst World WarIraq
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 96 , Issue 1062 , March 2015 , pp. 192 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 The Dominican Council

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References

1 Biggar, Nigel, In Defence of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Most of the first part of this essay was first published under the title, “In Defence of War: What Is It All About?” in Soundings, 97/2 (2014). I acknowledge with gratitude the permission of Penn State University Press to reproduce it here.

2 Burn, Michael, Turned toward the Sun: An Autobiography (Wilby, Norwich: Michael Russell, 2003), pp.70, and 69–78, 148Google Scholar.

3 Roberts, Andrew, The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax (London: Papermac, 1992), p. 115Google Scholar.

Lisa Cahill, “How Should War be Related to Christian Love?”, Soundings, 97/2 (2014), pp. 186–95.

4 I refer in particular to Rodin's War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

5 Cahill, Lisa, “How Should War be Related to Christian Love?”, Soundings, 97/2 (2014), pp. 186–95Google Scholar.

6 Orwell, George, Homage to Catalonia (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 64Google Scholar.

7 Ibid. p.95.

8 Ibid. pp.178–9.

9 “First Light”, directed by Matthew Whiteman and first broadcast on BBC 2 television in 2010.

10 Clark, Christopher, Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin, 2013), p. 561Google Scholar.

11 Ibid. p.562.

12 Strachan, Hew, The First World War, vol. I: To Arms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 91Google Scholar. See also Stevenson, David, 1914–1918: The History of the First World War (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 30Google Scholar.

13 Marozzi, Justin, Baghdad: City of Peace, City of Blood (London: Allen Lane, 2014), pp. 351–2.Google Scholar

14 David Kelly, “Only regime-change will avert the threat”, Observer, 31 August 2013.

15 Antony Loyd, “Will Iraq Burn Again?”, Prospect (May 2013), p. 41

16 Some might be inclined to lay the current expansion of the horrendous Islamic State (or ISIL or ISIS or Daesh) at the feet of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003. I think not. The proximate causes of Islamic State's recent growth are the failure of the West to intervene early in support of the 2011 rebellion against Assad's regime in Syria, the funding of jihadist groups by individuals in the Gulf States, and President al-Maliki's pursuit of sectarian policies against Sunni fellow-citizens in Iraq. No doubt things would have been different, had the 2003 invasion not happened. But we do not know how they would have been different, since history does not march in straight lines and is usually determined by unpredictable contingencies.