On Thursday 11 September I took part in a ‘Great Disputation’ at the Church of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London. The motion was “This House believes that the West has not fought a just war since 1945”. Those speaking in favour were the former Guardian journalist, Richard Norton-Taylor; Stop-the-War Coalition founder, Lyndsey German; and activist and journalist, Barnaby Raine. I spoke against the motion, alongside former Parachute Regiment Major, Andrew Fox; and former Army Reserve Lieutenant-Colonel and serving Shadow Foreign Secretary, Tom Tugendhat, MP. What follows is the text of my speech.
I’m sure we can all agree that war is destructive. It’s terribly destructive. People get maimed and killed. Sometimes grandparents, pregnant women, and children get maimed and killed. And the scars can last for generations. So, if we can avoid it, we should.
Well, not quite. Full-on pacifists believe that we should avoid war always and everywhere. That there is always a better, peaceful alternative. But better for whom? In 1994, it was good for the British, French, and Americans that they didn’t go to war. It was good for them that they stayed at peace. But their staying at peace left the Hutu at peace to disturb the peace of the Tutsi and slaughter 800,000 of them in the Rwandan genocide. Because no one stopped them. Because we stayed at peace.
Peace isn’t always simply good. Peace for whom? Peace at whose cost? If war is morally complicated, so is peace.
That’s the first of four general points I want to make about war, before I talk about my chosen case of a ‘just’ war fought by the West since 1945.
