Just War and Just Peace

As the Ukraine War passes another milestone, can any war be considered just? Christine Schliesser explores Just War theory and a possible path to Just Peace.

Christine Schliesser

Christine Schliesser lectures in Theology and Ethics at Zurich University, and is a scientific collaborator with the Center for Faith & Society at Fribourg University.

Civilian evacuation across Irpin River during the Ukraine War.

Yan Boechat/VOA via Wikimedia Commons.

Will Germany deliver Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine? No? Yes? When? Media discussion of the war that the Russian Federation started against Ukraine in 2014 and that entered a new stage one year ago, currently centres on questions of weaponry. Who else will send tanks? And what about fighter aircrafts? No? Yes? When?

In classical military ethics, which has long been dominated by the so called Just War Theory, these questions fall under ius in bello, the right conduct in war. This also includes discussions on proportionality, military necessity and the differentiation between combatants and non-combatants.

Just War Theory has a long tradition in Christian thought. Church Father Ambrose argued that whoever does not ward off injustice from his fellow man (or woman for that matter) when he can, is as guilty as he who commits it. Ambrose’s student, Augustine, then developed this thought in more detail as he laid the foundations for what could be called a bellum iustum, a just war.

Even before going to war, the criteria of the ius ad bellum, the right to go to war, must be satisfied. These include, for instance, a just cause, legitimate authority, prospect of success, right intention and last resort. We encounter these criteria again in slightly modified form in our modern international law. In view of these guidelines, of Russia’s breach of international law, and of Ukraine’s right to self-defence, the on-going war in Ukraine clearly seems to be a just war. Or is it?

Nothing holy or just

Two points need to be made in this discussion. Firstly, there are no just or holy wars. Period. Or as 150 churches, after the horrors of the Second World War, put it in Amsterdam in 1948: ‘War is contrary to the will of God.’ Wars are always an evil and an expression of the failure of human beings to strive for peace. This also holds true for the war in Ukraine. And this means that we need a new dimension in the debate, namely guilt.

Every action – and inaction – here involves guilt. As the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis for his engagement in a plot against Hitler, put it:

‘everyone who acts responsibly becomes guilty’.

And even if we become guilty for the sake of the other person, our guilt remains just the same. Yet, as Bonhoeffer concludes, we trust in the grace of God, who calls us to responsible action. , Bonhoeffer’s ideas have been considered dangerous and easily misused to justify any crime, as forgiveness is always available. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge the reality of guilt that pervades any war, including the war in Ukraine.

Just Peace

Secondly, recent years have seen a new kid on the block: Just Peace Theory. While Just War Theory looks at a conflict from the perspective of violence, Just Peace Theory puts the focus on peace. This includes adding a third set of criteria. Ius post bellum looks at justice after a war. We know that after a conflict is before a conflict. We therefore need to pay more attention to what happens after the weapons finally fall silent.

Here, the experiences of truth and reconciliation processes worldwide can help. Both dimensions belong inseparably together and both already begin during a conflict, not just after it. Truth, for example, requires the documentation of war crimes committed by all parties to ensure the prosecution of war criminals later on. And reconciliation is the conditio sine qua non for sustainable peace.

Russia’s war against Ukraine and its threats against NATO and Western countries demonstrate, not least that after the end of the Cold War, opportunities for genuine and sustainable reconciliation were missed as latent hatred, prejudices and stereotypes were allowed to linger.

Just Peace Theory emphasizes that building peace is an art and a craft. It requires specific skills, training and preparation. It also requires virtues of grace, persistence and forgiveness, Countless documented examples world-wide supply empirical proof that these methods actually work. Perhaps it is worth devoting some of the $2,113 billion (2021) of global annual military expenditure for training non-military approaches to address conflict resolution? To learn how to build peace as much as how to wage war? No? Yes? When?

Pathways to Peace

One such initiative is Pathways to Peace. Aiming at peace, justice and reconciliation in times of war, this initiative is currently being developed through the Conference of European Churches, a group of some 120 member churches in 38 countries. With their long-term involvement and intimate knowledge at the grassroot level, faith actors in civil society seem uniquely positioned to connect people, heal relationships, offer a new social imaginary and facilitate practical help.

The objectives of Pathways to Peace include among others to facilitate safe spaces for honest exchange between Ukrainian and Russian church leaders, to develop a network of church leaders and other civil society leaders for exchange on the preparation of peace or to bring together European youth, in particular Ukrainian and Russian young refugees.

The immense potential of faith actors in transforming conflict and building sustainable peace seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the public sphere. Given the prominence of faith in this conflict, it is about time that all relevant actors in our societies, including faith-based initiatives, joined forces to counter this major crisis of our time.

Article

Comment

Digital

Film & TV

Masculinity

31 March 2025

4 min read

How our social media turns us against ourselves

We treat others differently when our eyes and hearts are forced inwards.

Cameron Wiltshire-Plant

Cameron is training to be a vicar in the city of Leicester.

An unhappy father sits next to a scared son in a police interview room.

Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper star in Adolescence.

Netflix.

My wife turned to me this week whilst watching the compelling Netflix drama Adolescence and asked if it was based on a true story. That proves the quality of the acting, script, and storyline. But it also demonstrates the drama’s prophetic nature. Conceived two and a half years ago by Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, the perversion of Jamie’s underdeveloped brain and developing masculinity by social media forces has come to reflect real-life extreme violence by young men. With the sentencings of murderers Axel Radakubana and Nicholas Prosper in recent weeks, Jamie’s actions resonate deeply. Adolescence isn’t based on a specific true story, but that doesn’t prevent it from being true.

What about the role of social media in these narratives? Radakubana and Prosper were radicalised by violent content they had accessed online. With social media, extreme content does well, particularly on sites with no filters on pornography and violence like Reddit and X. We are beginning to discover that content algorithms are not neutral, instead siloing us into echo chambers that are deliberately forming us into better consumers of content, advertising, and objects. Social media harvests our data and sells it on- meaning it cultivates us as the product.

Yet these manipulations cover over the deepest issue. Social media depersonalises us, preventing us from making genuine human connection and perverting our view of anybody but us. The German philosopher Martin Buber differentiated between two different ways for humans to exist in the world. One was I-It; in a person treats everyone and everything they come into contact with as an ‘It’- something to be used or taken advantage of.

The other was I-Thou, in which humans approach every other person as a unique being, with resources to offer the I which ensures that a mutual, open, present connection ensues. For Buber, the ultimate ‘Thou’ was God, with whom humans can have the deepest and most transformative connection.

Social media ensures we see life in ‘I/It’ mode by removing genuine contact with others and providing curated, fake, existences that can never be open to genuine connection with others. Love and affection become commodified; likes, follows, reactions. Our presentation of ourselves becomes more extreme, more perfect, more beautified, to keep mining the commodities. Our eyes and our hearts are forced inwards, and we lose any sense of encountering a ‘Thou’ on the way. We just keep encountering the I: our own thoughts, needs, desires, self-radicalised by our own insular minds.

This can be our contribution to the conversation on the culture our young people, and particularly young men, are growing up in. To live I/Thou lives.

The great St Augustine back in the fourth century developed the idea of ‘original sin.’ All humans are prone to destruction: it’s in our DNA. The evidence for such an idea is found in every human experience, as the destructor and the one destructed. Left unchecked without genuine connections with others to challenge and expand our hearts, an I/It life digs deeper and deeper into these destructive impulses until our humanity is twisted into violent obsessions.

The I/It life focuses completely on self-glorification through any means, something amplified by social media. What if we don’t get enough likes, follows, reactions? What if we cannot achieve self-glory through the more banal mediums of attraction, attention, popularity?

Both Radakubana and Prosper said they wanted to be notorious, attempting to find the most extreme channel for their violence as possible to ensure they are never forgotten. They will not be the last. Jamie continues to deny his crime but in episode three of Adolescence he states that he could do whatever he wanted to Katie, the young girl he murdered. The same impulses come through; others as objects to take advantage of in achieving self-satisfaction.

The good intentions for human connection that some of those early social media sites were set up for has been largely lost. But the good intention can remain in our own resolution to live an I/Thou life. Putting down social media and picking up connections with humans in the real world by seeing the other with curiosity and openness will ensure that we are constantly turning our heart outwards, embracing genuine relationships, and finding space in our heart to think of the other before ourselves. These are the relationships that will make us more human.

Ultimately, Buber was right that the ultimate ‘Thou’ connection we can make is with God. The Christian story is full of God’s desire to seek out relationship with humanity, to allow us to find a connection with God that surpasses our own human experience and transforms us to be people that slowly grow away from our destructive instincts.

What might Christian faith have to contribute to the conversation on the culture young men are growing up in? To live I/Thou lives that are curious, open, and seeking truest divine and human connection. Such a life might even touch those who have been ravaged by social media and ignored by other I/It lives. It might even inspire them to compassion and curiosity that look beyond the content that turns them inwards, to turn outwards and find a healthier future.

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