Just-war theory and conditional surrender
Gerald W. Schlabach
10 December 2024
Commonweal
Earlier this year, Pope Francis took the bait from a Swiss journalist and mused publicly about whether Ukraine should raise a white flag and offer to negotiate with Russia. Asked if calling for surrender would “legitimize the stronger party,” Francis replied: “I believe that the stronger one is the one who sees the situation, who thinks of the people, who has the courage of the white flag, to negotiate.” Misunderstandings, along a number of different lines, were inevitable.
One misunderstanding of the pope’s words was that raising a white flag simply means surrender. No. A white flag is a call for a parley under the protection of the norms of battlefield behavior, which were once chivalric and are now diplomatic. During the parley, some kind of surrender may have to be on the table, but the very purpose of negotiations is to ensure that it is not an “unconditional” surrender but an “honorable” one, with conditions attached that allow the surrendering force to avoid utter humiliation.
Another pervasive misunderstanding is that those who fight for a just and honorable cause betray that cause if they even consider the possibility of surrender—of any kind. That may be the case in a holy war. If a cause is so “just” as to seem holy, all other moral considerations—including every requirement for waging war lawfully, proportionately, and discriminatingly—fall aside. “You gotta do what you gotta do” and win at all costs, or die trying. Having thankfully distanced itself from the Crusades, the Catholic Church now officially condemns such vicious and indiscriminate warfare. In contrast with holy war, the Catholic just-war tradition emphasizes self-restraint, even in the defense of a very just cause.
But perhaps the deepest source of misunderstanding arising from the pope’s remarks came from just-war thinkers themselves. Many have shown a reluctance to recognize just how much just-war theory actually demands of them. As I’ll try to show, just-war theory means that surrender can never be off the table—not despite the justice of one’s cause, but because of it. …