Just War theory and North Korea.

[An aspiring Thomist]

I would like to apologize for the last part of my last post. Wasn't really thinking straight.

Depending on the situation, the principle of double effect may apply. If you know they will nuke you, you can nuke their nukes before hand. As far as the deterrent goes, you cannot nuke a whole nation indiscriminately. Your deterrent could be to kill the leaders. If you or someone else could demenstrate the morality of nuking a nation in retaliation, then I would take a look at it. Pointing to the consequences isn't enough. 

The fundamental issue here is that you are using Utilitarian moral reasoning. That reasoning logically justifies the crucifixion of Christ (at least assuming that's the only way redemption could take place). You can say good buy to Catholic morality and you will become that which you despise.

[Greg]

Then you would never know they are going to nuke you.  We don't know North Korea's intention now.  We never knew the Soviet Union's in the cold war.  We only found out decades later that twice they were within a hair's breath of pushing the button and in one/two cases a man decided to disobey order or not follow protocol.

Nuclear states tend to keep that knowledge limited to a few people until the button is pressed for obvious reasons.

Unlike conventional war there is no build up of tanks and planes.  At best, your satellite is lucky to be passing over and sees the ICBMs being fueled.  But 99% of the time the first thing you see is the warning light tracking the launches.

By then "double effect" is meaningless.  You're dead already.  Launching at that point is a pure act of revenge even targeted launches

The fundamental issue here is not that I am using utilitarian moral reasoning.  The fundamental issue is that if I don't use it, I am in a paradox.  I MUST submit to nuclear blackmail.

You might then say, as others have that the Catholic Church needs to debate and re-define just war theory.  Perhaps.  But they better hurry up.  If I see two theologians sitting on a couple of armchairs debating JWT after a nuclear war I am going to beat them to death.  Now THAT is utilitarian moral reasoning, because they are good for nothing.

Killing the leaders is nigh on impossible in the real world.  We had multiple goes at Saddam and Gaddafi with million dollar laser guided precision weapons and never got them.  They tend to be in hardened bunkers or moving around.  Same with nukes.  They are in submarines and on mobile launchers for that reason.

Let's deal with the real world here.  Have you been reading the news?

[Xavier]

The fourth criterion for just war means you cant do something that might reasonably be expected to lead to worse outcomes than you hope to prevent, by waging war in self defense against an aggressor. Most would agree waging war to stop Hitler in WWII was justified. Is Kim Jong un as much of a threat?

Whatever the case, I personally think that given their repeated threats (they threatened to destroy Japan just a while ago) the world cannot afford a nuclear armed North Korea that has the capability to strike the US mainland or other distant continents. If their current capacity paralyzes others now, what will happen when the range of their weapons increases? North Korea certainly will get there soon unless diplomacy or a successful military strike deters them. The steps to prevent it should have been taken 20 years ago - as of now, while of course a nuclear first strike should be ruled out, I dont think military action can be discounted so easily. It may become necessary very soon.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/07/11/north_korea_the_case_for_war_111767.html

[Greg]

Is Kim Jong un as much of a threat?

With nuclear weapons?

Yes.

[Greg]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmIBbcxseXM[/yt]

[An aspiring Thomist]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmIBbcxseXM[/yt]

The video doesn't give any moral justification except for the consequences. How is nuking a populated city full of innocent people not murder? You might say that murder in that case was justified, but that's what every murder says, just food for thought.

Greg, you need to do two things to prove your case:
1. Show how utilitarianism is true or how the ends can sometimes justify evil means.
2. Reconcile that with Catholic teaching.

The burden of proof is on you, because at least on the surface, your view point is against Church teaching or theological tradition and because you need pretty good reasons to kill innocent children and women.

[Greg]

I'm stopping my own women and children (and those of my allies) getting killed by a mad man with nukes.  Which if he is allowed to keep developing is a very high certainty.

Principle is the same as self defence.

His "country's" women and children are unfortunately in the way.  Intention is not to kill them but stop his crime family from killing several million of us and allies.  Proven by the fact that other diplomatic efforts, over 20 years, have been exhausted, billions paid and Kim has more nukes now than ever.

You can't even invade North Korea with a conventional army, because as soon as the buildup begins Seoul and Tokyo get shelled and very probably nuked, so, that civilian friendly option is off the table.  You need a massive sudden attack on North Korea to minimize their ability to shoot back. 

Church teaching does not override reality.  Or, in this case it would suggest that since there is no way to stop him, Kim should be allowed to develop more nukes.  The church can teach geocentrism, but it simply isn't true.  The earth goes around the sun and attempts to show otherwise make those who espouse them objectively wrong.

Had you had a shoulder launched missile that would have taken out Stephen Paddock's 32nd floor hotel room but, likely, destroyed the rooms above and below would it have been justified to use it?

Let's say there is a 50:50 chance those room are occupied and they have 2 occupants each.  That is 4 innocent people killed to stop him.  Once those bullets are raining down on the crowd you shoot him to stop him.  If you see him breaking the window and getting ready to shoot you still blast him from your room in the Luxor.  You don't wait until the bullets start flying.  Once you know he is real and present danger you kill him weighing up the likely outcomes and choosing the least death and destruction that is reasonably foreseeable.

My good reason for killing NK's innocent women and children is that they are in the blast zone of the most effective weapon I have to stop or minimize NK's response.  So tactical nuke the entire DMZ and take out Pyongyang with an ICBM since the loyalists live there.

This also makes the Chinese and the Russians crap their pants.  Neither will threaten a nuclear response if they think Trump won't hestitate to wipe them off the face of the earth.

[Greg]

As for "innocent".  Imagine this scenario.

CIA had intelligence that ICBM would be ready for launch in 4 weeks.  It dropped 3 million leaflets over Pyongyang saying get out of town.  All the loyalists turned up to act as human shields with their children.  Are they innocent ?  No, they are putting themselves in harms way deliberately.

The people of North Korea have had 60 years to overthrow their government, which is really nothing more or less than a crime syndicate, they haven't, and now that lunatic has nuclear weapons.  So they are partially to blame for that.  Because of their collective inaction we now have a nutcase with nukes.

Likewise the Germans are partly to blame for Hitler.  And the Russians for Putin, whether he turns out good OR bad.

[Greg]

Kim must be stopped.
The North Korean regime of crazies with their fantasy history must be killed or exiled to an island somewhere.
There is no conceivable way this can be achieved without a significantly increased risk of a nuclear strike on Tokyo or Seoul at the very least.  Within 2 years the US west coast.
The solution with the greatest chance of the least death and destruction is the best choice.

[james03]

The is an interesting concept of collective guilt.  Parts of the Bible make no sense unless it is real.  God instructed the Israelites to wipe out all the Caananites because of their sacrifices to Moloch.  Little Caananite kids had nothing to do with Moloch.

And saying God is "allowed" to do this goes against Thomist philosophy, since God is goodness itself.  Therefore the act was inherently good.

[An aspiring Thomist]

@ Greg

I will answer your hypothetical situation if you address my post concerning the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Concerning, nuking North Korea, I think you could only do so if there was a very, very high probability that they will nuke us or someone else, which I don't think there is. If there were a high probability, the principle of double effect might apply.

[An aspiring Thomist]

The is an interesting concept of collective guilt.  Parts of the Bible make no sense unless it is real.  God instructed the Israelites to wipe out all the Caananites because of their sacrifices to Moloch.  Little Caananite kids had nothing to do with Moloch.

And saying God is "allowed" to do this goes against Thomist philosophy, since God is goodness itself.  Therefore the act was inherently good.

What follows is my response to James if he is trying to say the Bible justifies nuking the Japanese. If he doesn't mean that, then I'm sorry for misinterpreting him.
No, God has rights over us since he is our creator which we don't have. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; Blessed be the name of the Lord. The same cannot be said for us. If what you are saying is true then the Israelites would have been justified in killing the children and women without God's order, which obviously seems pretty problematic.

God is the supreme good so everything is directed towards him as an end. God's nature is on a compleatly transcendent level from ours, so it's not smart to judge His actions as if they are on our level.

[Greg]

Might apply?  Very very high?  What good are those?

You cannot roll dice to discover what those odds are.  Nor can you untangle them from the fog of war later.

It's hard to conjure up a situation where a mad man with nukes could be more dangerous.  I think I would prefer ISIS to have nukes than North Korea.  ISIS are far more incompetent and surrounded by desert, they would be much easier to deal with.

In Hiroshima, Nagasaki and especially this case you have to win or face an appalling destruction of your own nation or that of your allies.  The secondary and tertiary effects might very well be even worse.  Two major trading nations nuked?  No more Toyota, Honda, Samsung, Kia and a collapsed world economy.

There cannot be a situation where God allows a moral president to be held captive and then face a situation that his nation is destroyed because his hands were tied by just war theory.  The first principle must be to survive.  Not sit around in the nuclear wasteland patting yourself on the back for doing the right thing.  It we had not carpet bombed Berlin, fire bombed or nuked Japan there is a very good chance we would have lost the war.  Just a few years later America reached a stalemate in Korea and lost in Vietnam.

[bigbadtrad]

Greg your point is interesting and probably correct. Most of the theories made by respected theologians were on a local or regional level. The principle of what is just war should be based on the force or even the threat of force. You are correct in saying a just war with weapons would mean the death of nation.

On a parallel to this would be economic theory. There is no current economic theory by the Church to deal with globalization and automation. It just doesn't exist and with the changes happening to economic and military actions happening so rapidly it would be hard to keep up with a good working theory that wouldn't involve massive injustice in some shape or form.

On the military level if you don't act first you can get wiped out or have your allies wiped out.

On the economic level if you don't build artificial intelligence to get a leg up on the world the world will and wipe you out economically.

While it's true it's very dehumanizing nevertheless.

[Greg]

If in 100 years the world is stable and economically functioning nobody is going to really care about the justice of nuking 5 million North Koreans back in 2018.  They'll be a few hand wringing liberals writing books but they are not going to be best sellers.  100 million people were murdered by Mao.  Nobody really cares and you can still buy cups and T-Shirts with his face on them.

If 3 American cities are turned into nuclear ash, then no American is going to opine that striking back at North Korea was "immoral" because by then the damage was already done and it was an act of revenge.

If the world economy is collapsed and you are queuing for rationed food and some armchair theologian pipes up that "the USA would have been saved by angels plucking the missiles from the sky if it only had faith in God and not retaliated against a first strike", that person is going to be dragged out of the queue and beaten (hopefully to death) as a traitor.

From our comfortable western armchairs we can criticise the President of the Philippines's ex-judicial killings of drug users/pushers as against their human rights.  When you are living in the shack down the road and terrorised by these scum, then you are all for it and cheering Rodrigo Duterte on.

If we were all speaking Japanese and German now then such fanciful ideas would no more exist in our world than they do in China or North Korea today.