Foreign Policy and International Justice
Fourth Quarter 2003
Are There Criteria for Judgment?
by James W. Skillen
Since 9/11, the Public Justice Report has published (in its last eight issues) a variety of articles and reader responses on the issues of terrorism, just defense, American military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, and international politics. In addition, the bi-weekly Capital Commentary—also published by the Center for Public justice—has aired diverse and sometimes conflicting views of these matters.
Not surprisingly, a number of readers have asked questions about the Center's stance or perspective on international politics and what makes our perspective "Christian." Gary Vander Hart (Minneapolis, MN), for example, wondered why so many of the articles and reader responses assumed "that imperialism, hegemony, and anything 'undemocratic' are automatically UnChristian. To date I have not read any biblical rationale for transnational government that would allow me to think of that option as anything but a standard secular-liberal idea." Moreover, he continued, "I feel that the United States is becoming ever more polarized in the opinions that are disseminated through the standard media channels. I hope that part of the mission of the Center for Public Justice is to provide an alternative to these messages."
Several readers have responded at length with their own commentaries or with responses to some of the articles and letters we published in the last seven issues of the Report. It is not possible in the space available here to publish all the essays and letters sent to us, but we have posted two such pieces on our web site, one by Bruce Wearne (Point Lonsdale, Australia) on how the US-Australian relationship has been weakened by the war in Iraq, and another by Nick Lantinga (Sioux Center, IA) in response to the letter/commentary by Bob Goudzwaard published in the second quarter issue this year.
In the space remaining, I want to respond briefly to questions about a Christian perspective (and criteria of judgment) on the state, foreign affairs, and international justice.
The Modern State System
The "state" as we know it today—the United States or Canada, Brazil or India—is a modern invention. It is very different in structure from that of the people of Israel organized under God's covenant, or the Roman empire, or the dynastic kingdoms of China that endured until the 19th century. The modern state system took shape in conjunction with the breakdown of the Holy Roman Empire in western Europe. And some of those "sovereign" states created new kinds of empires.
The two world wars exposed fundamental weaknesses in the modern state system, particularly with its imperialist extensions. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN) were founded to try to address those weaknesses while at the same time reaffirming the legitimacy of the modern state structure. The United Nations helped establish state identities in dozens of territories being vacated by the retreating British, French, Dutch, and other imperial governments after World War II. The UN, and particularly its Security Council, is, in fact, a highly ambiguous entity. On the one hand, the UN is built on and reinforces the principle that every state should be "sovereign," which is to say that a state is obligated to no authority outside itself. On the other hand, one of the chief motivations of the UN has been to advance international law that will be recognized by the states as binding on them. The Security Council in particular was granted authority to interfere in supposedly sovereign states where conflict is egregious. To take such action, a majority of the council's members, including all permanent members (the US, Great Britain, France, China, and Russia), must vote to do so. The veto power granted to each permanent member of the Security Council means, however, that for each of them sovereignty remains supreme.
Why have the UN and so many other international organizations been created since World War II, and why has the United States been one of the leading creators in each case? The reason is that in a shrinking world where the number of states has increased and where trade, dangerous weapons, and environmental pollution proliferate, there is no way for efficient, orderly international relations to be maintained and conflicts minimized by the actions of each state alone. The historical "logic" of this cooperative process is very much like the historical logic that led the new American states to scrap their first confederation (which gave too little authority to the con-federal government) and to replace it with a constitution that granted the federal government authority in foreign policy and commerce. In an ever more interdependent world, international authorities become essential, and imperialist and hegemonic states threaten stability and inhibit cooperation.
The "federalizing" process on many international fronts, leading to ever increasing interdependence among peoples and states throughout the world will require, I believe, ever increasing international and, yes, eventually, federal transnational authority to establish and maintain justice and order in the world. Now the question, appropriately raised, is this: What makes this contention or perspective "Christian"? Isn't the idea of transnational government just a secular liberal ideal?
What Is "Christian" about It?
First, let's go back to the Bible and to the history of Christian struggles with this question. The Bible nowhere identifies the state as the God-approved form or ideal of political organization in this world. God's covenant with Israel was a demonstration that God was Israel's ruler as well as the ruler of the world. When God sent remnants of Judah into Babylonian exile, Daniel became the medium through which Nebuchadnezzar realized that Daniel's God is supreme over all earthly authorities, including Nebuchadnezzar. When Jesus came as Israel's Messiah he neither reconstituted Israel as the ideal political entity, nor asked his followers to establish a new form of government that would match God's ideal. Governing authorities of whatever kind are recognized (by Jesus and the apostles) as having the responsibility, under God, to do justice. As Paul puts it, they serve as God's ministers to commend the good and to punish the evil doer (Rom. 13:1-4).
What is overwhelmingly clear in the New Testament as in the Old is that God rules as the only true sovereign above all human authorities and that Jesus is the Messiah of God who claims all authority in heaven and on earth. In this respect no imperial, feudal, or state authority may legitimately claim to be sovereign. For this reason, it seems to me, a Christian perspective requires that we do two things at the same time. On the one hand we must call into question every absolutization or idolization of nation, state, or imperial sovereignty. Christ holds nothing less than global authority. On the other hand we must ask how well any form of political organization is doing in establishing justice in God's world. This means that neither the modern state (including the United States) nor an ideal of world government may serve as our chief criteria for judging political legitimacy. Rather, we must judge all forms and institutions of governance by criteria of public justice—both domestic and international justice.
Much can be said in favor of widely distributed territorial governments (as in the state system today) if those governments uphold the rights of citizens, protect the nongovernmental institutions of society, and remain accountable to a sound constitution and to their citizens. I can imagine no legitimate transnational form of government that could do justice to people by eliminating all the local, territorial forms of government existing today. A unitary, absolute, world government in the hands of anyone other than Jesus Christ would be a monster.
At the same time, the very design of the modern state system is such that each state government is supposed to have "sovereign" authority within the defined territory of its state. This is a truly secular-liberal idea. With respect to international responsibility, states recognize no necessary obligation, for each exists to protect its own people and to look out for its interests in relation to outside dangers and opportunities. Obviously, in such a system, there is no authority beyond the state that bears responsibility to make sure that justice is done among states and for the global commons that they share in God's one world.
A "Global" Perspective
In contrast to statism and nationalism, a Christian point of view requires a global perspective--not secular-humanistic globalism, but a viewpoint grounded in the recognition that this is God's one globe on which all peoples and states are obligated to respond to God's call for justice. There is more to earthly affairs than simply the multiple interests and territorial governing responsibilities internal to each state. We might say that since Christ is the world's sovereign, then human governments bear responsibility not only for justice within their respective territories, but also, jointly, for nurturing the "common good" of the world's territory as a whole. But how can they exercise that joint responsibility?
Recognizing their interdependence and need for cooperation, states have worked to fashion international laws and agreements through different kinds of international organizations that will be binding on all of them. For more than 1500 years, Christian have contributed to the development of criteria for justly engaging in defensive warfare and nurturing numerous means to try to reconcile differences and maintain peace among states. Christians have had a global perspective from the time Jesus sent his disciples out to the far ends of the earth (Acts 1:6-8).
But of course in a state system the strongest states have greater power to shape the international rules to their own advantage, to advance their interests, which will always come first for them. Insofar as this is the case, sovereign states are simply not sufficient to establish and uphold international justice.
In the case of Iraq, the Bush administration argued that the need to disarm Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction and to topple his government was urgent for American security and the security of other states in the region. Yet the U.S. refused to follow through with the UN Security Council process of achieving this goal, even though the Bush administration took the issue to the council in the first place. Moreover, many of us were not convinced that the president had established a sufficient "just-war" case for independent US military intervention against Saddam Hussein. Nor did the president explain to the American people and other Security Council members how the US would go about building a better government and help reconstruct Iraq following military intervention.
Now that the toppling of Hussein's government has been achieved, it is becoming clear how inadequate was both the American case for war and its preparation for post-war justice. No weapons of mass destruction have been found, and the rebuilding of Iraq will cost much more in human life and dollars than the Bush administration prepared the nation for. Moreover, the terrorist potential from inside Iraq now appears to be greater than it was before the US attack. Instead of bolstering American stature in the world by showing other states how dependable we are in fighting injustice, guaranteeing freedom, and upholding just international law and institutions, the US has to some degree undermined its potential for giving leadership in the fight against terrorism and in building a more just international order.
The US is not capable of establishing and upholding international law and order on its own. Nor, as a separate state, is it capable of acting independently for the just ordering of the world as a whole. Consequently, if the US acts by disregarding the very international laws and institutions it helped to establish, without working to create better international laws and institutions, then it inevitably undermines the very possibility of doing justice among states and for the global commons. American interests will necessarily always come first, but if an administration overreaches, it might even be undermining American interests in the long run. For the more that American power grows at the expense of international and transnational capabilities to uphold justice, the more other states will react to the US and even find new ways to band together ("balance of power") to resist US hegemony and imperialism in order to protect their own interests.
The reason, then, that I would criticize imperialism and hegemony as unjust from a Christian point of view is that they are forms of governance that work primarily for the interests of people within their borders, not beyond them. If someone responds by saying that the US did actually work for the interests of the Iraqi people by destroying Saddam Hussein's regime, then we have to ask whether bringing down that highly unjust regime in the way the US did was sufficient to advance both good governance in Iraq and greater international cooperation against terrorism and unjust states in the future. The US at this moment may appear to be the "good guy" who toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, but it has also perpetrated considerable instability and uncertainty both within Iraq and internationally. For the US to present itself as the great good nation that slays evil regimes and terrorists in the world represents a degree of pretentiousness that may keep us from seeing the wrong we do and inhibit the very cooperation needed among states to restrain injustice. The question facing us now is whether the US can cooperate in restoring or building anew sufficient international cooperation to help Iraq become a more just state, to help that region become more stable, and to advance what must be an international policing effort to withstand terrorism around the world.
In Sum
By way of summary, then, some of the key criteria, from a Christian point of view, for judging the justice of modern state actions and of the international order are the following:
1. Recognize that no system or form of human governance is a God-ordained ideal that Christians should try to hold onto at all costs. Governance should be shaped to meet the demands of justice within particular territories and worldwide.
2. Within territories and regions where just governance is required, we should ask, What is the best form of government to achieve that end? Constitutionally limited, accountable governments in territorial states may hold the greatest promise for doing justice within each of these many different territories at this point in history, depending on the cultural conditions of different peoples. But those states in and by themselves are not structured for the purpose of upholding justice among themselves and across the global commons.
3. No state or hegemon or empire on earth may legitimately lay claim to ultimate sovereignty. That belongs to God alone through Jesus Christ. Thus, even in their legitimacy as the highest and unchallenged governments in their territories, states have an obligation to a higher authority.
4. Moreover, all states together bear an obligation to help bring about international justice, and that requires international and eventually federal, transnational institutions and authorities. Thus, we have to ask how well any state's actions help to advance international justice together with the institutions needed to maintain international justice, even as we ask how well its government is doing in upholding justice for its own citizens.
FOR FURTHER READING
Paul Marshall, God and the Constitution (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), Chap. 8, "International Relations," 157-176.
David T. Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions (InterVarsity, 2003).
Bob Goudzwaard, Globalization and the Kingdom of God (Baker Books, 2001).
James W. Skillen, "American Statecraft, The United Nations, and Iraq," Pro Rege (Dordt College), March, 2003,1-12.
James W. Skillen and Keith J. Pavlischek, "Political Responsibility and the Use of Force," Philosophia Christi, Series 2, vol. 3, no. 2 (2002), 421-445.
