Abstract. ーIn Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer presents “mixed motives” as an inescapable element of military interventions and argues that their ubiquity prevents just war judgements from hanging on their influence. This paper presents Walzer’s position before analyzing the various pitfalls posed by his characterization of “mixed motives,” most notably with respect to his assumption of moral pluralism and the threat “mixed motives” pose to jus ad bellum conditions.  

The late Canadian Economist and Diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” After reading Michael Walzer’s commentary and arguments on military interventions, it seems that the same can sadly be said of the modern just war theorist. In his chapter on interventions, Walzer makes two more or less non-arguments which lend credence to this indictment. The first is a subtle evasion of any phraseology that would make military intervention compulsory. While Walzer provides multiple concrete examples of when intervention is permissible, he never goes as far as to say it is imperative, leaving the decision of whether or not to wage war to whomever is in power. His hedging is likely due to the second, arguably more central, issue: his milquetoast addressment of mixed motives. Unwilling to appeal to any moral ontic referent, Walzer, instead of salvaging an argument for just intentions, engages in little more than rhetorical hand wringing before concluding that since mixed motives are ostensibly an indelible fact of life, just war judgements cannot hang on their influence. In this paper, I will argue that Walzer’s broad characterization of military intervention as optional rather than obligatory is a downstream effect of his permissiveness towards the problem of mixed motives that together create a situation where jus ad bellum is severely compromised and morally defensible, even requisite, desertion necessarily follows. 

“War is hell.” This is one of Michael Walzer’s early refrains in Just and Unjust Wars, and an enduring and relevant aphorism in the realm of war ethics. After all, if “war is hell,” entering in ought not be taken lightly. Indeed, it begs the question: why go to war at all? Now, in instances of self-defense, the answer is quite obvious. A wrong has been received, creating “just cause,” and military redress is therefore permitted. However, when the fight is external, belonging to another nation or people, the answer becomes a good deal murkier, moving beyond the realm of self-defense and rapidly into the realm of self-interest. It is for this reason that fairly narrow circumstances must exist for one nation to justifiably violate the sovereign boundaries of another. 

In his chapter on military interventions, Walzer argues that there are three distinct circumstances, or “just causes,” for violating the sovereign boundaries of another nation: secession, civil war, and humanitarian intervention. However, while delineating the reasons why it would be permissible to intervene in each of these instances, at no point does he claim it would be morally obligatory to do so, going as far as to say, “Even if counter-intervention is ‘honorable and virtuous,’ it is not morally required, precisely because of the dangers it involves.” He then goes on to say that even in cases of severe human rights violations, military intervention is a “right” of the intervening state rather than an imperative: “Any state capable of stopping the slaughter has a right, at least, to try to do so.” Thus, according to Walzer, while states might be permitted to intervene in cases of secession, civil war, or humanitarian violations, they do not have a moral duty to do so. Unfortunately, in the absence of duty, desires are all that can move men to action, and it is from this pragmatic position that the issue of “mixed motives” emerges. 

For Walzer, the term “mixed motives” actually carries a dual significance, describing two distinct yet related phenomena. The first, and perhaps more obvious of the two, is the idea of normatively mixed motivations (i.e. a blend of altruistic and avaricious motives underlie the decision to intervene). In his book, Walzer gives the example of The United States’ intervention in Cuba which was undertaken both as a relief effort and as a means of securing the U.S.’s economic and strategic interests. Another example of this kind of “mixed motive” is Hernan Cortes’ decision to lay siege to the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan which, in addition to ending the Aztec practice of human sacrifice, also resulted in the amassment of a significant amount of gold for the Spaniards.  Both of these instances are examples of the normatively mixed motives that often undergird military intervention. However, there is another way in which the term “mixed motives” can be understood and, indeed, is understood by Michael Walzer, and it derives from his positive understanding of morality as inherently pluralistic. 

He alludes to this in Just and Unjust Wars, writing, “The judgements we make in cases such as this don’t hang on the fact that considerations other than humanity figured in the government’s plans, or even on the fact that humanity was not the chief consideration. I don’t know if it ever is, and measurement is especially difficult in a liberal democracy where the mixed motives of the government reflect the pluralism of the society…” He makes this point more clearly in his article on the problem of “dirty hands” in politics wherein he writes that morality is a communal phenomenon “constituted at least in part by rules, the knowing of which (and perhaps the making of which) we share with our fellows.” It is here that Walzer’s belief in the democratization of morality is more fully on display, but whether he applies this principle to war or politics, the fact remains that in doing so, he tacitly endorses moral relativism, precluding any kind of moral duty for military intervention and thereby enshrining normatively mixed motives as an insurmountable element of just war reasonsing. Unfortunately, the problems with this position are significant.

To begin with, mixed motives necessarily diminish the ultimate rectitude of any military intervention in which they have a hand. In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant provides a general principle to this effect, contending that while potentially honorable and praiseworthy, good actions driven by “inclination” are inherently inferior to those dictated by duty. Given that Walzer denies any duty of military intervention, all actions taken under his paradigm must be understood to be inclination driven which, by Kant’s reasoning, makes them morally deficient. What’s more, this criticism does not even consider the larger issue of morally objectionable motives in military interventions or the effect they have on the tenability of Walzer’s argument.

The fact of the matter is almost every nation that engages in military interventions is doing so in order to advance their own interests. While circumstances like secession, civil war, or humanitarian violations may provide a righteous veneer, states’ reasons for involving themselves and risking the lives and censure of their own citizens are almost always pragmatic. Walzer himself acknowledges this, writing, “States don’t send their soldiers into other states, it seems, only in order to save lives. The lives of foreigners don’t weigh that heavily on the scales of domestic decision-making.” In this respect, calling the motives nations have to wage war “mixed” in the normative sense might actually be too generous. 

In Introducing Moral Theology, William Mattison makes this point: “It is surely the case that we commonly have many reasons to do a certain act. But remember that intentions are properly understood to be action guiding… Sometimes different circumstances may reveal that we would not have done the act, and that does indeed reveal something about our true intentions.” Given that foreign lives are always being lost when questions of intervention arise, if Walzer is correct that states don’t send their soldiers into other states only to save those lives, the inciting, or “action guiding,” motive for military intervention must then rest, not on moral considerations, but on material circumstances. Thus, what Walzer has termed “mixed motives” may actually be better understood as fixed motives (i.e. the political or pecuniary interests of the state) which have merely been vindicated by so-called “just causes.” 

The ramifications of this proposition cannot be understated. In his Second Relectio, Francisco De Vitoria makes clear that neither expansion nor glory are “just causes” of war. Therefore, if it is in fact the case that “mixed motives” are little more than a front for the avaricious aims of a particular nation or individual, the justness of a war, per the “right intention” condition of jus ad bellum, is quickly and critically compromised, and when jus ad bellum is no longer assured, a cascade of adverse effects necessarily follows. 

The first is that political and military leaders, being intent on appearing “just,” become invested in obfuscating the real or “fixed” motives behind military interventions, offering platitudes and “… ‘rendering reasons,’ though not always honest ones.” Their dishonesty creates a situation where the servicemen and women under their command must be and are kept intentionally ignorant of the true nature of their intervention. However, when it comes to ongoing military engagements, ignorance is rarely, if ever, invincible, and as soldiers become aware of the “mixed” and unjust conditions under which they are fighting, disillusionment and morally defensible desertion are quick to follow.  Now, it is understood that desertion in wartime is no small matter; however, when jus ad bellum conditions have not been met, such as in the case of mixed motives, desertion becomes not just morally defensible, but potentially obligatory. In Killing in War, Jeff McMahan argues that combatants fighting under unjust ad bellum conditions have an obligation to desert or surrender, writing, “To surrender individually, without an order from a superior and without being compelled to do so by the enemy, could count as desertion. Yet if the war is objectively unjust, this may be what morality requires.” McMahan’s exhortation levies a tremendous burden on unjust combatants, including those fighting under dubiously just conditions. Therefore, it is absolutely imperative that the problem posed by “mixed motives” not go unasked or unanswered, and rather than simply yielding to the reluctant realism of Walzer, it may be time for an atavistic revision–a reversion to an ethic of war where rather than being pragmatically deployed for greed or glory, military intervention is instead seen as a harbinger of peace that is both characterized and compelled by compassion.

Just Wars. Fall 2019. Grade Earned: B