John Locke’s political theory is usually not perceived to have consequences for international relations. In this article I show how—using the view that commonwealths are independent entities acting under the Law of Nature, and therefore have the right to punish transgressors under that law—the scope and limits of a legitimate defense force may be deduced. Locke’s theory is also shown to have consequences for the nature of such a force. The Lockean model works well on the assumption of a world of autonomous nation-states, but may be less successful in today’s global community.
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References
1.
A. Cottley, T. Edmunds, and A. Forster, “The Second Generation Problematic: Rethinking Democracy and Civil-Military Relations,”Armed Forces and Society29, 1 (Fall 2002): 31-56, at p. 35.
2.
Cottley, Edmunds, and Forster, in “Rethinking Democracy,” p. 39, use J.S. Mill’s phrase “tyranny of the majority” (On Liberty) to refer to this danger. Burk, in “Civil-Military Relations,” p. 10, points out that a “key concern for liberal theorists is how to ensure that the power of the sovereign is not abused by overturning the rights and liberties of the citizens.”
3.
The Second Treatise is in The Second Treatise of Government: an Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent and End of Civil Government; and, A Letter Concerning Toleration, edited with a revised introduction by J.W. Gough (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976).
4.
The purpose of this paper is limited. It does not pretend to argue that only a Lockean theory can answer the hard questions of military morality, though the reason why the Lockean answers can seem like common sense may well be because they have entered the basis of our tradition of thinking about these issues. Of course you do not have to have a theoretical framework in order to see that certain answers work in practice. But it is always salutary to remind those who think that they are not assuming any framework that they are almost certainly working with one that is unacknowledged, and therefore may not have been subjected to adequate scrutiny. It was said long ago that the unexamined life is not worth living. The problem of getting from the morality of individuals to the morality of states can be illustrated by a simple example. The least contentious situations in which the use of force by a state is held to be justified are cases in which force is used in defence against invasion; and in the literature on the legitimation of force and violence the justification of the use of armed force in such a situation is often based on the right of individual self-defense. Thus R.K. Fullwinder (“War and Innocence,”Philosophy and Public Affairs5, 1 (1975): 90-96) attempts to find a method of distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants in a way that makes it legitimate to harm the former but not the latter. He does it by postulating that killing in war is killing in self-defense, and that the enemy combatant is part of the attacking force. The problem is that the situation of a soldier defending a country against invasion is not meeting a threat to the individual soldier; it is a part of the response to a threat to the state.
5.
Certainly the pacifist challenge must be taken seriously. An examination of the moral basis of pacifism is found in J. Narveson, “Morality and Violence: War, Revolution, Terrorism,” in Tom L. Beauchamp and Tom Regan (eds), Matters of Life and Death, New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1993), 21-159.
6.
M.W. Janis, An Introduction to International Law, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 276
7.
While civic republican theories may not quite be organic theories, they have this in common: that the citizen-soldier concept attributes value to an individual in terms of being a citizen. (Burk’s criticism of both theories is that they cannot adequately come to terms with today’s international situation. This question is discussed briefly in the section of the present paper titled “Nation-States and Supranational Bodies.”) But even if an organic theory were accepted, it would still not follow that the descriptive legal definition of a state could be justified, for the question would turn on whether a state described in those terms was in reality sufficient of an organic unity to be a moral being. Stepan, in Comparative Politics (p. 62), says, “However it is important to understand that a just and stable organic order is not necessarily to be equated with the established order.”
8.
Hobbes seems to assume that there can be no morality between states: “Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law no Injustice.” (Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], chapter xiii, p. 90). This may also have been the view of Niccolò Machiavelli (1469- 1527). Machiavelli’s treatise The Prince is an advice manual for attaining and holding on to power, and his discussion of the virtues that are to be cultivated by a prince focuses on how the prince is perceived.
9.
Hobbes’ theory gives a sovereign absolute power. In the seventeenth century, the alternative way of supporting the view that the sovereign has absolute authority was the “divine right” theory, by which kings ruled according to the will of God, and thus were not responsible to the will or consent of their subjects. Although such theories are not held today, they are analogous to organic theories in that a divinely constituted ruler can be regarded as the symbol of an organic state. They are different in that the legitimacy of the state is determined solely by the authority of a single person. By contrast, a “bottom-up” theory locates the original authority in the citizens of the state. Hobbes was unusual in advocating a bottom-up theory that gave absolute power to the sovereign. (That was why he was popular neither with the Tories—who advocated the divine right theory—nor with the Whigs—who advocated a theory which placed limits on the king’s power.)
10.
he wants to derive all knowledge from its basis in experience. See also Richard Cox, Locke on War and Peace (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p.186.
11.
Thus for instance Janis, International Law, mentions Hobbes as one of the originators of the theory of nation-states, but only mentions Locke (p. 241) in the context of human rights. Admittedly the principal purpose of the Second Treatise is to prevent the oppression of a people by its government, and the bulk of scholarship on Locke’s political philosophy rightly focuses on this aspect, but his theory has consequences in other areas. One of the few discussions in recent years of a Lockean theory of international relations is in chapter 7 of Howard Williams, International Relations and the Limits of Political Theory (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 90-109. The only book-length study, and the only previous author mentioned by Williams, seems to be Cox’s Locke on War and Peace. Cox also appears to have found that this aspect of Locke’s theory has been neglected. On p. xv he says, “It is true that Locke is not usually thought of as having had any particular concern with the problem of foreign relations.”
12.
The term Law of Nature has been capitalized throughout to indicate whatever Locke understands by the phrase.
13.
Cox, in Locke on War and Peace (pp. 140-147), discusses differences between Locke’s concept of the Law of Nature and that of other natural law theorists. In particular he notes that Grotius locates the authority of the law of nations in the agreement of states. My aim is the more modest one of seeing what we can extract from the Second Treatise, whatever Locke’s debt to earlier theorists may be.
14.
Libertarianism enters current discussions of morality in connection with such issues as third-world poverty and hunger. For an example, see O. O’Neill, “Ending World Hunger,” in Matters of Life and Death, p. 270.
15.
Although Locke does give specific content to the Law of Nature, he gives little to justify its moral claims, and for that reason a Lockean account of legitimizing force may need supplementing by a more robust theory of individual morality. Cox, in Locke on War and Peace (p. 90), traces Locke’s view of intrinsic value to his assumption that our survival depends on the use we make of nature. This grounds Locke’s discussion of property in chapter V of the Treatise and forms the basis of his morality of property rights.
16.
In the Letter Concerning Toleration (on p. 150 of Gough’s edition), Locke writes: “Covetousness, uncharitableness, idleness, and many other things are sins, but by the consent of all men, which yet no man ever said were to be punished by the magistrate.” Presumably the argument here is that, in the long run, a settled society based on the sanctity of property leaves everyone better off. The turbulent history of seventeenth-century England would no doubt make such an argument appeal to Locke.
17.
Narveson, in “Morality and Violence,” bases the claims of morality in general on the fact that it is in everyone’s self-interest to rely on morality as a social contract.
18.
M.J. Cresswell, “An ‘Ontological’ Argument for the Contract-Trust Theory,”Locke Studies1 (2001): 159-172.
19.
A.J. Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 129, n 19.
20.
This point is elaborated in Cox, Locke on War and Peace, pp. 137-139.
21.
Note that when discussing Locke, the “civil” law is opposed to the Law of Nature, and includes what lawyers would call both criminal and civil law, and indeed military law.
22.
The limits of the commonwealth’s power provide a justification for civil rights and liberties. In “Rethinking Democracy,” Cottley, Edmunds, and Forster point out that one of the problems in post-Communist Eastern Europe is that under the Soviet system there was subordination of the military to the civil power, but little democratic control and restraint of such power. They consider that to be a serious problem for the states involved.
23.
Locke allows tacit consent at §§113-122, in the case of people born into an already existing commonwealth.
24.
D.L. Bland, “A Unified Theory of Civil-Military Relations,”Armed Forces & Society26, 1 (Fall 1999): 7-26, at p. 9.
25.
He does say in §11 that reparation as opposed to punishment is only available to the wronged party.
26.
says, “Under natural law there is an obligation to come to the assistance of another individual threatened by breaches of the law. We might also see this as applying to states when one of their number is subject to aggression.” Cox, in Locke on War and Peace (p. 150), says that the right to punish “lays the ground for the elaboration of the idea of collective security.” Cox summarizes a Lockean just war doctrine on pages 154-162.
27.
and Cresswell, “‘Ontological’ Argument.”
28.
Obviously no claim is being made either way about the rightness or wrongness of the particular example, or whether the argument really applies in the recent situation in Iraq. The point is to show how a Lockean approach would have to go. Locke’s philosophy has certainly been applied to the American Revolution, and while scholars may differ on the precise nature of his influence, there can be little doubt that the influence was there and was acknowledged. See A.P. Grimes, American Political Thought, rev. ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), especially pp. 77- 97.) This paper does not defend Locke’s notion of the Law of Nature, but merely points out what he thought its content was, and how that content can be applied to the legitimation of the use of force by a state. Janis, in International Law, discusses the legal question of intervention in the “internal” affairs of another country on the ground of the nature of the regime in charge (p. 180f).
29.
This has the consequence that the military cannot be “privatized.” See Burk, “Civil-Military Relations,” on some of the difficulties posed by the complexity of today’s society and technology in clearly distinguishing the military and civilian spheres. Janowitz, in The Professional Soldier, recognized early on that technological advances have important consequences for the view of the military as a profession.
30.
The need for such a transparent and impartial judicial process is regarded by Locke as one of the principal reasons for forming commonwealths and, in addition to the passages quoted later in the text, there are many passages in which he stresses people’s tendency to be partial in their own case. See, for instance, §§13, 87, 88, 90, 136.
31.
Huntington, in The Soldier and the State (p. 11), uses the phrase “management of violence.” While violence often has a pejorative connotation, what he meant was presumably that the force must be disciplined and legitimate. Just as an airline employee has to be taught to be polite, even if firm, to an abusive customer; and just as the police have to restrain themselves in ways that lawbreakers might take advantage of; so a member of the armed forces must be trained to discipline the use of force.
32.
This might cause a tension between regarding a soldier as a “means”—a cog in a machine—and as a human being—an “end” in the sense of Kant’s ethical theory (see Regan, p. 18, and O’Neill, pp. 258-267, in Matters of Life and Death). In this respect a military society seems very different from civil society, needing teamwork, hierarchical arrangement, lack of civilian freedoms and a different legal system.
33.
The role of the armed forces in internal matters is usually severely circumscribed. In New Zealand, the internal use of the armed forces can take place only if a state of emergency is declared; and the conditions under which it can take place are governed by a number of acts of parliament. The International Terrorism (Emergency Powers) Act, 1987 “made it the duty of the Commissioner of Police to inform the Prime Minister that emergency powers would be required to cope with an emergency situation involving international terrorism. The Prime Minister is then required to call a meeting of not less than three Ministers to determine whether or not the situation justifies the use of those emergency powers. Further the House of Representatives is required to extend those powers, and can revoke the emergency powers if required. In addition, both the Civil Defence Act 1983 and the Defence Act 1990 limit the circumstances and manner in which a state of emergency can be declared, and the powers granted to the parties involved.” (R.M. Kennedy, “Constitutional Issues in the Control and Employment of New Zealand’s Armed Forces,” No 40 Staff course 1999, p. 23f.) And recently in Britain, tanks deployed to guard Heathrow Airport were under the command of the Metropolitan Police.
34.
The reason is that no supranational body will have the power to enforce their decisions. States, of course, can amalgamate into larger commonwealths. Perhaps that is what the EU will eventually become, and Locke’s view is compatible with world government. Cox, op cit, p. 190f, makes some suggestions about why that possibility might not appeal to him.
35.
Burk, “Civil-Military Relations,” pp. 20-23.
36.
Janis, in International Law, takes the view that the “members of the European Economic Community plainly remain sovereign states and subjects of international law even though they have delegated certain important powers over their national economies to the Common Market” (p. 77). Whether that is still as true today as it was in 1993 is perhaps less clear.
37.
See, for instance, the case of Michael New, described on p. 25 of C. Moskos, “Toward a Postmodern Military: The United States as a Paradigm,” in The Post-Modern Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War, ed C. Moskos, J.A. Williams, and D.R. Segal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 14-31.
38.
Burk (“Civil-Military Relations,” p. 23f) makes some tentative suggestions about a federal model, and recommends that we learn from early US theorists—but that topic goes far beyond the examination of the Lockean model that I have been discussing in this paper.
39.
The term “international community” may be less than helpful here.
40.
and M. Ignatieff, “Handcuffing the Military? Military Judgment, Rules of Engagement and Public Scrutiny,”Military Ethics for the Expeditionary Era, ed. P. Mileham and L. Willett (London: Royal Institute for International Affairs, 2001), chapter 4, pp. 25-41.
41.
The connection between military activity based on security concerns, and the environment is stressed by Gregory Foster, “Environmental Security: The Search for Strategic Legitimacy,”Armed Forces & Society27, 3 (Spring 2001): 373-395.
42.
See the table on p. 15 of Moskos, “Postmodern Military.”
